Making good on its post-New Year promise, AMD late Thursday released its first Radeon Software Adrenalin iteration for the year, version 18.1.1 Alpha. Being flagged "Alpha," these are very early drivers, the use of which are not backed by any warranties. They're not fully tested to work by AMD.

Version 18.1.1 Alpha addresses critical bugs that caused some of the older games to break following Adrenalin 17.12 release. The games, which are nearly a decade old, are AAA blockbusters which are based on the older DirectX 9 API. A number of older DirectX 9 games, such as EA's "Command & Conquer 3," "Command & Conquer 4" series, "Battle for Middle Earth 1-2," and "The Witcher Enhanced Edition" had simply refused to start following the 17.12 driver update. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.1.1 Alpha

Right in the last corner of 2017, as our collective minds were getting ready to move onto a new year at full warp speed, we covered this bit of news regarding AMD's Adrenalin Driver incompatibility with some older game titles under DX9 ("C&C3 Tiberium Wars," "C&C3 Kane's Wrath," "C&C Red Alert 3," "C&C Red Alert 3 Uprising," "C&C4 Tiberian Twilight," "Battle for Middle Earth 1-2," and "The Witcher Enhanced Edition.") At the time, AMD stated that they were "unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue." User backlash ensued, and with the new year comes a new AMD: one that has found the valuable engineering resources needed towards working on a fix for said issues.

Apparently, the problem stemmed from a driver-level incompatibility with SAGE engine games, and AMD's Terry Makedon took to Twitter to make things better for fans of those games, saying that "We will for sure fix this bug with SAGE engine games in an upcoming hotfix." All in all, a good guy move by AMD. For sure, the initial statement might not echo the full sentiment of the entire company on the issue, though it's a fact that it was an AMD employee that started the whole debate. That said, the user backlash certainly goes to show that PC gamers want their systems to always have backwards compatibility with older games - one of the more important differentiating factors between PCs and games consoles.

AMD ended 2017 with its year-end mega driver release, the Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition (17.12), which introduced a large number of new features. The drivers, incidentally, also inadvertently caused bugs with some 10-year old games running on the older DirectX 9 API. When AMD Radeon users took to Reddit, and other tech forums to report these issues, AMD responded on its official support forums that it is "unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue."

Among the games affected, old as they may seem, are AAA blockbusters, including "C&C3 Tiberium Wars," "C&C3 Kane's Wrath," "C&C Red Alert 3," "C&C Red Alert 3 Upising," "C&C4 Tiberian Twilight," "Battle for Middle Earth 1-2," and "The Witcher Enhanced Edition." AMD blames its inability to fix these issues to outdated API models. The company's full statement reads "This title is from 2007, so we are unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue, which is most likely caused by outdated API modules."

AMD today released an update to their Radeon Software Adrenalin Drivers and software suite. Under the Beta label, the new version brings many resolved issues to the table, whilst listing some unresolved - but recognized as existent - issues behind it still. Some problems with AMD XConnect for hot-swapping external GPUs should be fixed, some areas of Star Wars: Battlefront II that were displaying graphics corruption should no longer do so, and your Netflix playback should finally let you chill without any kind of AMD-caused stuttering, among other quality of life improvements.

Look for the full patch notes after the break, and keep in mind you can download the latest AMD drivers right here on TPU. Just follow the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 17.12.2 Beta