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AMD Adrenalin driver 22.5.2 tested: big promises, but no GPU miracle workerGraphics performance boosts fall short on the Radeon RX 6500 XT
Graphics performance boosts fall short on the Radeon RX 6500 XT
This week,AMD Software Adrenaline Edition 22.5.2released, making that new Radeon driver available to anyone who didn’t fancy switching to preview builds. Armed with anRX 6500 XT(a low-end card that desperately needs a performance kick), I gave the new software a whirl – and found that, for all those big numbers, Radeon owners should probably lower their expectations.
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I’m not saying bigger gains won’t be had on other graphics cards, or in games besides the ones I’ve tested. But there’s a pretty wide gap between the reported results of AMD’s internal testing, and my own. For reference, these were recorded using the RX 6500 XT with anIntel Core i5-12600Kand 16GB of DDR5 RAM, with all games running at 1080p:
Across all four of these games, the combined difference was just 2fps.
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InWatch Dogs Legion, for example, AMD reported performance gains of up to 10%. I in factlost10% after switching from the Adrenalin software’s 22.4.2 version to 22.5.2. Granted, I don’t think you’d notice a 3fps difference even around the 30fps mark, but I mean… that’s the wrong way round, right?
It’s worth noting the vast gulf between my PC specs and the ones AMD used for their in-house testing, the latter comprising aRadeon RX 6950 XTGPU,Ryzen 7 5800X3DCPU, and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. It could just be a case of more powerful AMD graphics cards extending their leads over the likes of the RX 6500 XT, which doesn’t have much more left to give.
Still, if you own or are considering a Radeon GPU that’s not the brand-new, £1050, top-of-the-range model, don’t count on this driver update propelling it pastNvidia’s best graphics cards. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try it but results, as they say, will vary.
