Does AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Q2 2018 driver improve APU performance?
Does AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Q2 2018 driver improve APU performance?
There is a lot of fanfare surrounding these low-cost CPUs, providing gamers with strong quad-core CPU performance with the highest performing integrated graphics solutions on the market, combining their Ryzen and Vega CPU/GPU architectures to create a compelling product.
In our Ryzen/Raven Ridge APU Gaming Review last month we found that AMD’s latest APUs can offer a great gameplay experience on most modern titles, albeit below 1080p in a lot of cases. Our question today is whether or not AMD’s latest drivers will offer gamers a notable performance boost, especially within games which have received day-1 driver optimisations in recent months for AMD/Radeon’s dedicated graphics cards.
AMD’s APU (CPU + Integrated GPU) drivers have merged with AMD’s main series Radeon Software Adrenalin driver stack theoretically giving Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G users access to a range of new graphics optimisations, giving users a better gaming experience. Will these new drivers increase the performance of AMD APUs?
(AMD’s previous APU driver is listed as version 17.7, which dates back to 2017)
Test System
For today’s testing0, we will be using our usual Raven Ridge benchmarking system, which means that we will be combining Corsair’s Vengeance LED 3200Mhz memory with ASUS’ Prime B350-PLUS motherboard.
AMD Ryzen APU Game Test Rig
AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
ASUS Prime B350-PLUS
Corsair Vengeance LED 2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz
Corsair 460X System Chassis
Samsung 850 EVO 512GB SSD
Corsair CX450M
Wraith Spire
Radeon Vega Integrated Graphics
Windows 10 x64 “Creators Update”
