AMD today released its first driver update in more than two months for Radeon RX 6000 series and RX 5000 series, the Adrenalin 23.2.1 WHQL. The drivers introduce optimization for "Forspoken," with up to 7% performance improvement on offer at 4K with an RX 6950 XT GPU; and optimization for "Dead Space" (2023). The drivers also introduce IREE compiler using MLIR interface on Vulkan, and a handful of new Vulkan API extensions. The drivers also catch up on the past two months of optimizations that were only released for the RX 7000 series, covering Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, Hogwarts Legacy, and some performance improvements to games released in the past six months.

Among the issues fixed with this release include the "Delayed Write Failed" error noticed in Windows 11 22H2, SpaceEngine lower-than-expected performance, display corruption in the Points Shop section of Steam; YouTube playback with Enhanced Sync on some RX 6000 series GPUs; game crashes noticed with Door Kickers 2, Baldur's Gate (Vulkan), Emergency 4, and Sea of Thieves. These drivers unify the driver release trunk, spanning RX 400 series, RX 500 series, RX Vega series, RX 5000 series, RX 6000 series, and RX 7000 series.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 23.2.1 WHQL

AMD today released the Adrenalin 22.9.2 drivers. These drivers add support for the Radeon Graphics iGPU of the new Ryzen 7000 desktop processors that go on sale today. Game optimization is added for "Grounded." A handful of issues have been identified with the release. Radeon Super Resolution failing to trigger after changing resolution in games such as Nioh 2, has been identified. Improper rendering of Oculus dashboard menus with RX 6000-series graphics cards has been identified. GPU utilization being stuck at 100% in Performance Metrics after closing games in some cards such as the RX 570, has been identified. Display briefly showing corruption when switching between video and games in some GPUs such as the RX 6700 XT, has been identified. Vertical Refresh Sync being set to "off" globally causing stuttering or driver timeouts, has been identified. Dropped frames in video playback have been identified.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adreanlin 22.9.2 beta

The upcoming AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT has recently appeared in a benchmark listing on the GFXBench website where it performed 2% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT. The Radeon RX 6750 XT is an upcoming refresh of the RX 6700 XT featuring faster GDDR6 memory running at 18 Gbps and increased clock speeds. The RX 6750 XT achieved a score of 366.5 FPS in the single GFXBench 5.0 Aztec Ruins High Tier off-screen entry which is 2% faster than the average RX 6700 XT score at 362.2 FPS for the same test. This initial test is not likely to be a representative sample of the card's performance but we would expect further tests to leak in the coming days. The AMD Radeon RX 6750XT is set to be officially unveiled on May 10th and will gradually replace existing RX 6700 XT offerings.

Update: The card has also been tested in various other GFXBench 5.0 tests including Aztec Ruins Normal Tier, Manhattan, and T-Rex where it achieves scores 6% - 12% above the RX 6700 XT.

Some interesting technical specifications of the elusive two GPUs behind the Intel Arc "Alchemist" series surfaced. The larger DG2-512 silicon in particular, which forms the base for the Arc 5 and Arc 7 series, is interesting, in that it is larger in every way than the performance-segment ASICs from both NVIDIA and AMD. The table below compares the physical specs of the DG2-512, with the NVIDIA GA104, and the AMD Navi 22. This segment of GPUs has fairly powerful use-cases, including native 1440p gameplay, or playing at 4K with a performance enhancement—something Intel has, in the form of the XeSS.

The DG2-512 is built on the 6 nm TSMC N6 foundry node, the most advanced node among the three GPUs in this class. It has the highest transistor density of 53.4 mTr/mm², and the largest die-area of 406 mm², and the highest transistor-count of 21.7 billion. The Xe-HPG graphics architecture is designed for full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature support, and the DG2-512 dedicated hardware for ray tracing, as well as AI acceleration. The Arc A770M is the fastest product based on this silicon, however, it is a mobile GPU with aggressive power-management characteristic to the form-factor it serves. Here, the DG2-512 has an FP32 throughput of 13.5 TFLOPs, compared to 13.2 TFLOPs of the Navi 22 on the Radeon RX 6700 XT desktop graphics card, and the 21.7 TFLOPs of the GA104 that's maxed out on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti desktop graphics card.

The Alphacool Eisblock Aurora acrylic GPX water cooler with backplate is now also available for MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming X graphics cards.

More performance! Voltage converters and V-RAM is now cooled much better and more effectively with liquid cooling. This is due to the components being brought closer to the cooler through the use of thinner, yet more powerful Thermal pads. The reduction of the thickness of the nickel-plated copper block to 5.5mm and the constant optimisation of the water flow within the heat sink promise a significant increase in performance. In addition to performance, design also plays an important role. The addressable digital RGB LEDs are embedded directly in the cooling block and give the cooler its very own visual touch.

AMD on Monday released the latest version of the Radeon Software Adrenalin drivers. Version 20.10.1 beta comes with optimization for the Windows 11 operating system. Game-specific optimizations include "Far Cry 6," where it posts 10% performance gains over the previous driver; "Battlefield 2042 Open Beta," "Naraka: Bladepoint," and a 12% performance uplift for "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" with DirectX 12 at 4K with Ultra settings.

Among the issues fixed include rare driver timeouts noticed on "Horizon Zero Dawn" and "The Medium" on RX 6000 series graphics cards such as the RX 6700 XT, and when gaming+streaming on RX 500 series cards. An issue with high idle memory clocks on multi-monitor setups has been fixed. Incorrect power reporting by Radeon Software at full load, has been fixed. Foliage artifacting in "Arma 3" and "Wreckfest" have been fixed.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.10.1 beta

AMD today released the latest version of their Radeon Software Adrenalin drivers, guaranteeing the best possible experience for AMD GPU users. The latest driver revision introduces support for World War Z: Aftermath, and Amazon's New World MMORPG. Besides that initial game release support, the drivers also deliver an up to 13% performance improvement in Diablo II: Resurrected. This performance increase seems to solve a rendering bottleneck experienced with the RX 6700 XT graphics card at 4K resolution, with Very High settings enabled.

AMD also fixed four outstanding issues with this driver release. The CPU Additional Metrics section within the Performance tab should now show up for all users; compatibility error messages when trying to load a previously saved tuning profile should no longer appear; water should no longer spontaneously evaporate in Hitman III for RX 6000 series users; CPU Auto Overclock in Radeon Software should no longer be absent for users sporting an AMD 5000 series CPU alongside an RX 6000 series graphics card. Check after the break for the list of outstanding issues; as always, you can grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.9.2

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin. Version 21.8.2 beta comes with optimization for "Myst," with up to 6% performance improvement seen at 4K medium settings on a machine powered by a Radeon RX 6800 XT, compared to the previous 21.8.1 drivers. The drivers also feature optimization for "Aliens: Fireteam Elite."

The drivers also fix a handful of issues. Difficulties ending an OBS recording session with h.265 or HEVC codec on some of the newer Radeon GPUs, such as the RX 6800 XT, have been fixed. An image corruption bug with split-screen multiplayer on "F1 2021," has been fixed. Unresponsive behavior with Radeon Software in rare cases, has been fixed. Lighting corruption noticed in "Control" with DirectX 12 on cards such as the RX 6600 XT, has been fixed. Upgrading to the lastest Radeon Software causing auto-updates in Ryzen Master to stop working, has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.8.2 beta

A user discovered a manufacturing defect with their PowerColor Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card. Apparently a card still has the protective covers of its thermal pads still in place on a finished graphics card. "angry_kitten" on Reddit posted pictures of a disassembled PowerColor RX 6700 XT graphics card showing protective covers over the thermal pads that pull heat from secondary components such as memory chips and VRM. The user spotted the blue protective film before installing the card, and decided to take the card apart. With modern memory chips and MOSFETs capable of heating up beyond 100 °C, this card would have raised quite a stink. This is likely a defect at the plant that assembles the card, installing the cooler onto the PCB, rather than at the OEM that makes these coolers. These protective covers are meant to be removed at the final assembly line. There's no evidence at this point to suggest that the issue is widespread.

The Alphacool Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX for the reference design with backplate for AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards is a complete redevelopment of the previous Alphacool graphics card water coolers. No technical compromises were made, but the entire technical know-how flowed into the development and implementation. Style meets performance!

The water flow inside the cooler has also been optimized. All important components such as the voltage transformers and the memory are now significantly better and more effectively cooled by the water. All this ensures a significant increase in cooling performance. The design is new and special attention was paid to the lighting. The addressable digital RGB LEDs are embedded directly into the cooling block and run along the entire cooling block. The effect is an illumination of the entire cooling block. The aRGB LEDs used here give the cooler its very own visual touch.

Late last month, PowerColor teased the first image of the all-white PCB of its upcoming Radeon RX 6700 XT Spectral White graphics card. VideoCardz is out with high-quality press images of the card ahead of its launch. The pictures reveal not just the all-white PCB from the teaser, but also a comprehensive whitewash that extends to the cooler shroud, the backplate, the fan-hub embellishment stickers, and even the metal rear I/O bracket. Out of the box, the RGB illumination of the three fans appears to be bright-white, but you can customize it to be anything. There's also a physical switch to turn the lighting off. There's no word on whether the Spectral White has any different state of tune than the normal RX 6700 XT HellHound. A product launch could be just around the corner.Update 08:01 UTC: PowerColor just formally launched the card. The press-release follows, the card has the same clocks as the vanilla HellHound.

PowerColor today teased an upcoming variant of its Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound graphics card, featuring an all-white PCB. It's likely that the card will be built around the white color-scheme, with white extending to the card's back-plate and cooler-shroud. It remains to be seen if any other changes are made to the RX 6700 XT Hellhound, such as clock-speeds, or lighting. Based on the 7 nm Navi 22 silicon, the RX 6700 XT features 2,560 stream processors, 40 Ray Accelerators, 144 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide memory interface, holding 12 GB of memory.

AMD's recently released Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1 WHQL drivers lower non-gaming power consumption, our testing finds. AMD did not mention these reductions in the changelog of its new driver release. We did a round of testing, comparing the previous 21.3.2 drivers, with 21.4.1, using Radeon RX 6000 series SKUs, namely the RX 6700 XT, RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. Our results show significant power-consumption improvements in certain non-gaming scenarios, such as system idle and media playback.

The Radeon RX 6700 XT shows no idle power draw reduction; but the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT posted big drops in idle power consumption, at 1440p, going down from 25 W to 5 W (down by about 72%). There are no changes with multi-monitor. Media playback power draw sees up to 30% lower power consumption for the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. This is a huge improvement for builders of media PC systems, as not only power is affected, but heat and noise, too.

Capcom, the Japanese video game maker, has today announced specification requirements for its upcoming Resident Evil Village PC game, needed to play the game at certain resolutions/graphics presets. Starting with the minimum settings, Capcom is thinking of 1080p 60 FPS gaming. To achieve that you need at least an Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor paired with 8 GB of RAM. The minimum specification also requires a DirectX 12 capable GPU, with 4 GB of VRAM, just like NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 560. The company notes that using this configuration, framerate may drop below 60 FPS during heavy loads. If you want to use raytracing, which is now also present in the game engine, you must switch to at least NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT.

The recommended specification of course requires much beefier hardware compared to the minimum specification. If you want to have a steady 1080p 60 FPS experience without frame drops, Capcom recommends an Intel Core i7 8700 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor, paired with 16 GB of RAM, and a GPU like an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700. However, if you want the raytracing feature you need a better GPU. To achieve a 4K resolution with 60 FPS and raytracing turned on, the GPU needs a bump to at least an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 or AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. You can check out the game requirements in greater detail below.

TUL Corporation, a leading and innovative manufacturer of AMD graphics cards since 1997, announces its HELLHOUND AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards offering remarkable performance, a robust design with mysterious LED lighting and efficient cooling. HELLHOUND together with RED DEVIL and FIGHTER AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards, are designed to be absolute gaming monsters, making them a must-have weapon for 1440p gaming.

The RED DEVIL AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT shares the same cool and relentless appearance as the highly awarded RED DEVIL AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. It is armed with a triple-fan cooler design to keep the card at low temperatures while providing an incredible gaming experience with whisper quiet operation at the highest speeds.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of premium gaming hardware, today announced new AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card - AORUS Radeon RX 6700 XT ELITE 12G, powered by AMD RDNA2 gaming architecture. Inheriting the last-gen RGB three-ring design and light effect, the light source guides light internally so that it creates a brighter and natural RGB light effect. Thereby achieving a wonderful balance between cooling and RGB lights.

AORUS Radeon RX 6700 XT ELITE not only keeps the design spirit of the last-gen, but also has a distinct product recognition in the hardware industry, perfectly expressing the art of gaming, and once again remixes the classic style. Furthermore, gamers have more DOF (degree of freedom) to mix unique RGB lights, customizing with up to 8 kinds of color patterns on the "Dazzling" light effect via RGB Fusion 2.0 software.

Sapphire today launched its two custom-design AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards, the premium RX 6700 XT NITRO+ (which we reviewed here), and the cost-effective RX 6700 XT Pulse. The NITRO+ comes with a high-end looking triple-slot cooling solution with three fans, a compound aluminium fin-stack heatsink, an independent heatsink for the memory area, and a trio of fans. It also comes with all the RGB illumination you want, and also puts out a 3-pin ARGB header. The card comes with Sapphire's highest factory overclock, running the RX 6700 XT at up to 2.65 GHz max boost (compared to 2.57 GHz reference).

The Sapphire RX 6700 XT Pulse appears to be using a slightly cut-down version of the NITRO+ PCB, with a smaller cooler dubbed Dual-X. The card is strictly 2 slots thick, and 26 cm in length. It features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink in which the main heatsink handles the GPU, as well as the memory and VRM, and is ventilated by a pair of 100 mm fans with webbed-edge impellers. The Pulse has a mild factory overclocked speed of 2.58 GHz. You still get the handy dual-BIOS feature that's also available in the NITRO+. The RX 6700 XT Pulse is expected to be priced around $529, and the RX 6700 XT NITRO+ goes for $579, both rather steep premiums over the $479 baseline price for the RX 6700 XT.

XFX is gearing up to offer three different versions of AMD's upcoming RX 6700 XT graphics card. Joining the QICK and MERC models that XFX has already presented in some form or another with other SKUs, the Speedster SWFT309 builds upon those bullish, robust, yet aesthetically clean designs by adding a number of details and protrusions to the cooling shroud. XFX's industrial design philosophy is kept with the black color scheme, but there's some added complexity nonetheless.

Apart from those aesthetic considerations, the Speedster SWFT309 seems to carry the same cooling design philosophy as other XFX offerings, with a triple-fan setup, a backplate with aesthetic cutouts and XFX's SWFT branding, and the same 2x 8-pin as other offerings for this particular AMD chip. Pricing remains to be seen (both MSRP and actual street pricing), especially considering how reports have placed available supply at launch in the order of thousands for a region such as the European union.

The global supply chain of graphics cards is currently not very well equipped to handle the massive demand that exists for the latest generation of GPUs. Just like we have seen with the launch of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series Ampere, and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series Big Navi SKUs, the latest generation graphics cards are experiencing massive demand. And manufacturers of these GPUs are not very well equipped to handle it all, so there is a huge scarce for GPUs in the global market. With AMD's recent announcement of the Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card, things are not looking any better, and the availability of this GPU could be very tight at launch.

According to information obtained by Igor's Lab, AMD could supply only a few thousand Radeon RX 6700 XT GPUs for Europe as a whole. To be precise, Igor's Lab notes that "If you condense the information of various board partners and distributors to a trend, then there are, depending on the manufacturer and model, only a few pieces (for Germany) to a few thousand for the EU as a whole." This could be a very bad indication of AMD's supply of these new GPUs globally, not just for Europe. The company is currently relying on the overbooked TSMC, which can only produce a limited amount of chips at the time, and we don't know how much capacity AMD allocated for the new chip.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of TechPowerUp GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and monitoring utility. With the latest version 2.38.0, we are introducing the ability to detect Resizable BAR support. GPU-Z can now tell whether Resizable BAR is supported, and if so, whether it is enabled. AMD refers to Resizable BAR as AMD Smart Access Memory, but it is a feature developed by the PCI-SIG, which lets your CPU see the entire video memory of your discrete graphics card as a single addressable block, rather than through 256 MB apertures. This feature has been found to improve performance in games that can take advantage of it. Resizable BAR status can now be viewed from the main tab, right next to the multi-GPU status.

The latest TechPowerUp GPU-Z also adds support for new and upcoming GPUs, including AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT, RX 6700, RX 6600 XT, RX 6600, and Ryzen "Lucienne" mobile processor iGPUs. Support is also added for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile. Other new features include the ability to monitor negative temperatures on NVIDIA GPUs. We fixed video BIOS extraction on AMD RDNA2 GPUs (Radeon RX 6000 series). Grab GPU-Z from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.38.0The change-log follows.

ASRock, the leading global motherboard manufacturer, today announced its AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT series graphics cards. The new products include the high-end, triple-fan AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Phantom Gaming D 12GB OC, the mid-range, triple-fan AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Challenger Pro 12GB OC, and the mainstream dual-fan AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Challenger D 12GB graphics cards.

ASRock's AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT series graphics cards leverage 7 nm process technology and the breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, and support the DirectX 12 Ultimate API, hardware-accelerated raytracing and HDMI 2.1. The product line features 12GB of GDDR6 memory, and supports the latest PCI Express 4.0 bus standard. With these advanced features, the ASRock AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards level up your 1440p gaming experience.

AMD has just announced its Navi 22 RDNA 2 devices, spanning the middle-end gaming sector. The Radeon RX 6700 XT, which is the latest addition to the 6000 series of Radeon graphics cards, is carrying the Navi 22 chip inside it. However, AMD GPUs need to satisfy another sector in addition to the desktop market and that is the laptop/mobile market. With the past 5000 series of laptop GPUs, AMD has made a bit of a disappointing launch. Given the availability of the first-generation RDNA GPUs in mobile devices, many gamers were unable to find 5000 series Radeon GPUs in laptops, as it was rarely a choice. MSI and Dell have carried a few models with the Radeon RX 5500M and RX 5600M, and the highest-end Radeon RX 5700M availability was limited to Dell Alienware Area-51m R2 laptop.

During the announcement of Radeon RX 6700 XT, Scott Herkleman (CVP & GM AMD Radeon) has announced that AMD is preparing the launch of the next-generation RDNA 2 based RX 6000 series of graphics cards for mobile/laptop devices. While there should be a range of models based on Navi 22, Navi 23, and Navi 24, the availability is unknown for now. The only information we have so far is that it is "coming soon". The exact configurations of these chips remain a mystery until the launch happens, so we have to wait to find out more.

TUL Corporation, a leading and innovative manufacturer of AMD graphics cards since 1997, today announced the new PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card. Powered by the groundbreaking AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture and featuring AMD Infinity Cache, AMD Smart Access Memory and other advanced technologies, the new graphics card delivers the ultimate in 1440p gaming performance.

The PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card is built upon 7 nm process technology and AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, designed to deliver the optimal combination of performance and power efficiency. AMD RDNA 2 based graphics cards are optimized to deliver real-time lighting, shadow and reflection realism with DirectX Raytracing (DXR). When paired with AMD FidelityFX, developers can combine rasterized and ray-traced effects to provide the ideal balance of image quality and gaming performance.

ASUS today launched a trio of custom-design AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards. These include the RX 6700 XT DUAL, the TUF Gaming RX 6700 XT OC, and the top-of-the-line ROG Strix RX 6700 XT O12G. All three a factory-overclocked cards, and while the company didn't disclose the clock-speeds, one can make out how the three stack up—the ROG Strix at the top, the TUF Gaming OC next, followed by the DUAL. The company will also sell reference-design RX 6700 XT cards. The ROG Strix RX 6700 XT O12G leads the pack with its latest-gen DirectCU III cooling solution that's featured across its custom RX 6000 and RTX 30-series lineup; which features a large aluminium fin-stack heatsink, a trio of the latest-gen Axial-Tech fans, a blinding amount of RGB bling, and the strongest VRM setup among the three, which pulls power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and other goodies such as dual-BIOS, RGB and case fan headers.

The TUF Gaming RX 6700 XT OC is next up, along with its acclaimed TUF Gaming cooling solution that exposes much of its heatsink's bare-metal, through an airy metal shroud; and uses a trio of Axial-Tech fans. This card pulls power from two 8-pin PCIe connectors, much like the ROG Strix, but is expected to have a slightly downsized VRM, and lower factory-overclocked speeds. You still get dual-BIOS. Lastly, there's the RX 6700 XT DUAL, slotted in the company's sober-looking PRIME family of motherboards and graphics cards. It features a more compact board design, with a lighter aluminium fin-stack heatsink that uses only a pair of Axial-Tech fans. This card pulls power from 6-pin + 8-pin connectors. All three are expected to launch on March 18, 2021.

GIGABYTE today rolled out a pair of custom-design AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards. These include the RX 6700 XT Gaming OC, and the RX 6700 XT EAGLE. The company will also sell reference-design "made by AMD" RX 6700 XT cards. The RX 6700 XT Gaming OC features a WindForce 3X cooling solution that looks practically identical to the Radeon RX 6800 Gaming OC card, with possible modifications to its heatsink's base-plate. Three aluminium fin-stacks are skewered by five 6 mm-thick copper heat-pipes that make direct contact with the GPU. Additional base-plates pull heat from the memory and VRM areas. The card draws power from a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include two each of HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 connectors.

The Radeon RX 6700 XT EAGLE is the more slender of the two custom-design RX 6700 XT cards by GIGABYTE. It is strictly 2 slots thick, and uses a slimmer heatsink. Three aluminium fin-stacks are joined by three 8 mm-thick copper heat pipes that make direct contact with the GPU. The power input configuration is the same as the Gaming OC card, as is the display output configuration. GIGABYTE didn't disclose the factory overclock speeds or either cards, but the Gaming OC card is expected to be the faster of the two. Both cards are expected to launch on March 18, 2021.