AMD Radeon 22.7.1. OpenGL Optimisations Tested – Huge Gains!

AMD’s OpenGL Boosting Drivers

With the release of AMD’s new 22.7.1 GPU drivers, Radeon GPUs have recieved a huge boost to their OpenGL performance, significantly increasing the smoothness of classic OpenGL games. In games like Minecraft (Java Edition), AMD has marketed performance gains of around 90%, almost doubling the game’s framerate on AMD hardware. 

While most modern PC games run on DirectX 12, Vulkan, or DirectX 11, OpenGL remains the only usable API for many popular games. Minecraft is an obvious example here, though classics like Wolfenstein: The New Order are also worth mentioning. Practically no newly released games use the OpenGL graphics API, making the impact of AMD’s new OpenGL optimisations limited in scope. That being said, these optimisation have forever addressed a weakness within AMD’s  graphics drivers, and that is a big deal. 

The Problem that AMD could have Ignored

As mentioned before, OpenGL is not a commonly used API anymore. Vulkan has effectively replaced OpenGL, and that means that AMD’s new OpenGL optimisation will not impact any newly launched PC games. That said, the games that launched using OpenGL still exist, and players of those games deserved more performance from modern AMD hardware. 

A prime example of AMD’s problems with OpenGL is Wolfenstein: The New Order, a game that can only be played using the OpenGL graphics API. Before the release of AMD Software version 22.7.1, Wolfenstein: The New Order ran poorly with AMD graphics cards. This results in a situation where Radeon graphics users a disappointed in their new hardware whenever they play this modern classic. This results in a poor user experience, and a poor reception of the Radeon brand, so AMD decided to fix things.

Credit where credit is due, AMD could have said that their poor OpenGL performance only affected a minority of games and left their OpenGL drivers as they were. Instead, AMD decided to work on their OpenGL drivers to make their performance issues a thing of the past. Wolfenstein fans rejoice!

  

For our testing, we will be comparing Radeon’s newest AMD Software release, version 22.7.1, and AMD’s older AMD Software 22.6.1 driver. This drivers will allow us to test AMD’s OpenGL performance before and after the release of their new OpenGL optimisations with AMD Software 22.7.1. 

The good news for AMD users is that the company’s new OpenGL optimisations are available to all currently supported Radeon graphics cards. This includes graphics cards as old as AMD’s Polaris-based RX 480.

Full Test System Specifications

Below are the full specifications of our game testing system, which we built in mid-2020 to meet the needs of future games. Alongside this system, we will be testing using AMD’s Radeon RX 6800

To help support the website, we have included Amazon affiliate links below should you wish to purchase the same or similar PC parts. You can read more about our games testing system here.

OC3D Game/GPU Test Rig (Affiliate Links Below)

AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Processor with Prescision Boost Overdrive
ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula (X570) Motherboard 
Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB Series DDR4 3600MHz (2x8GB) Memory
Corsair RM1000i Power Supply
Corsair iCUE H150i RGB Pro XT All-in-One Liquid CPU Cooler
Corsair MP600 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD
Corsiar Obsidian 500D RGB SE Case
Windows 10 x64