Hardware & Technical New AMD Adrenalin 2019 drivers released. many new toys including auto undervolting and overclocking

[The Chairmaker]

Highly recommend all AMD radeon card users get the latest Adrenalin 2019 edition drivers released on the 13th December.

Lots of new features.

Vega card owners get auto overclocking and undervolting.
RX 400 series and above also get memory timings control which tightens memory timings so more memory bandwidth which adds a few frames in games.
game advisor which you set to run while playing a game and it will monitor framerate and frametimes and suggest tweeks to settings get the best overall performance from your game

lots of other features such are Relive instant replay which is a picture in picture mode that lets you playback your favourite moments on the fly.
you can also stream your games to mobiles and play on mobiles if you are so inclined.

Full details here

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-18-12-2

 

[Chris Simon]

I just wish they'd allow me to increase the memory voltage on my Vega 56. I know I could flash the Vega 64 BIOS on it, but I'm kind of scared to do that.

 

[The Chairmaker]

I just wish they'd allow me to increase the memory voltage on my Vega 56. I know I could flash the Vega 64 BIOS on it, but I'm kind of scared to do that.

are you sure you cant increase voltage on vega memory, you can do it on an RX480 ?

at the very least i recommend enabling level 2 memory timings.

 

[Chris Simon]

are you sure you cant increase voltage on vega memory, you can do it on an RX480 ?

at the very least i recommend enabling level 2 memory timings.

No, the "Memory voltage" slider in Wattman isn't actually increasing the memory voltage. It only sets the bottom voltage boundary.
Memory voltage on 56 is stuck at 950mV. 64 has, I think 1100mV, so you can get much higher clocks.

 

[marx]

"Vega card owners get auto overclocking and undervolting." - Hm, interesting. On my main desktop, I use a Vega 64 that lucked out well on the silicon lottery: I'll be curious to see how close this automatic undervolting (and OC) will be to what I set.

 

[Chris Simon]

"Vega card owners get auto overclocking and undervolting." - Hm, interesting. On my main desktop, I use a Vega 64 that lucked out well on the silicon lottery: I'll be curious to see how close this automatic undervolting (and OC) will be to what I set.

I just tried this. The problem is, as far as I found out, I might be wrong of course, that there are three buttons. You can either overclock it, OR undervolt it, OR overclock the memory and you can't raise the power target.
As I actually have the card undervolted AND overclocked AND memory overclocked AND the power target cranked to max, the automatic will never reach the levels I have achieved.

But it's a nice option for people who simply want to push a button and immediately have some extra power or less heat.

 

[The Chairmaker]

I just tried this. The problem is, as far as I found out, I might be wrong of course, that there are three buttons. You can either overclock it, OR undervolt it, OR overclock the memory and you can't raise the power target.
As I actually have the card undervolted AND overclocked AND memory overclocked AND the power target cranked to max, the automatic will never reach the levels I have achieved.

But it's a nice option for people who simply want to push a button and immediately have some extra power or less heat.

Its not really aimed at those who are well versed at tinkering its more a case of it being aimed at the great mass of people who would normally be wary of altering any settings.

Hopefully though with time it can be improved upon to the state that when installing a graphics card the drivers will automatically attempt to optimise your own cards performance. Something like Ryzen Master for CPU's would be great for GPU's.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I tried this in a couple of my AMD boxes. Something went quite wrong somewhere in a couple of them and now I get strange "LoadLibrary failed with error 87" issues and the driver version listed is now ancient.

Now, these are remote systems so RDP may have had something to do with it - and I won't get a chance to take a proper look until I can be bothered with the drive out there

The two I have locally went without a hitch - even on my ancient 7950 - and I'll give it a shot tonight and see how it goes.

 

[Chris Simon]

Okay, so after some more testing, today, I have rolled back to the previous driver.

I don't know if it's a "feature" but the new fan curve thingy is broken. Well, not broken per se but it doesn't allow me to set the fan speed below 48% (which is about 1200RPM, not loud, but audible even with headphones on. Strix isn't exactly stealthy). Which is really annoying. Under the previous driver, the fans stop completely when the card is under 40°C, so unless I'm gaming the PC is almost completely silent. With the new driver the fans don't stop, the "fans off" button doesn't do anything and the curve can't be moved below 48%.