AMD Releases Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition: Streaming for Videos, Games, & VR
by Nate Oh on December 13, 2018 9:01 AM ESTA Helping Hand with the 'Radeon Advisors' Recommendation Tools
With the annual feature updates, AMD has taken particular note of the UX and its ease-of-use as part of their driver software development. Naturally a software package offers a lot more than basic drivers and raw settings. Also new features are being added in regular fashion, the result is that many newer or non-enthusiast users are bound to overlook or confuse the options at hand.
In that sense, a sleek UI doesn't solve this issue, and to better address this aspect, Adrenalin 2019 is introducing new user-friendly Radeon Advisor tools, aimed at assisting entry-level gamers: Game Advisor, Settings Advisor, and Upgrade Advisor.
The first, Game Advisor, is tied to Radeon Overlay. While running a game in exclusive full-screen, selecting ‘Start Monitoring’ in the Game Advisor tab will measure and analyze performance for 90 seconds. Once complete, returning to the Game Advisor tab will show the performance log and subsequent recommendations, making suggestions such resolution/quality reductions when performance is lacking, or suggesting resolution/quality increases when performance headroom is ample.
The tool doesn’t apply the changes itself, but offers entry-level users guidance in tweaking the various knobs of in-game quality presets, performance-taxing rendering settings, resolution, and in-game render scale.
Similarly, Settings Advisor seeks to clarify the major features available to a user and offers suggestions best suited for the given system. Especially with the major feature updates over the years, Radeon Software now includes and governs E-Sync, Chill, FreeSync, and more. Combined with advances in display technologies with higher refresh rates and HDR support, the slew of options may be overwhelming or unfocused to entry-level users, who might overlook or not be aware of certain potentially helpful settings.
With a specific icon on the Radeon Settings taskbar and automatic scan on first installation, Radeon Software will offer system-based recommendations in enabling certain features and functionalities.
Lastly, Upgrade Advisor rounds out the new trio, being a revamped version of a pre-existing but somewhat out-of-the-way feature in Radeon Settings.
Now located under the Gaming tab, the Adrenalin 2019 Upgrade Advisor now offers AMD hardware recommendations based on whether the system meets the minimum or recommended specifications of installed games.
Partnering with Can You RUN It and System Requirements Labs, AMD is comparing the system’s hardware and scanned games with CYRI’s hardware and games database, highlighting potential deficiencies and upgrade recommendations.
While full-featured graphics driver software is always detecting and collecting system information, clicking on the hardware upgrade suggestions leads to an Amazon page by way of CYRI affiliate link. Be that as it may, some enthusiasts may not appreciate this feature or its undisclosed nature, and AMD stated they had no plans to highlight that connection within Radeon Settings by an asterisk, notification, or the like.
In any case, within Radeon Settings Preferences there is an option to toggle ‘Show Upgrade Advisor’ off, though it is not clear if that setting fully disables the functionality and detection.
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limitedaccess - Thursday, December 13, 2018 - link
Are there any plans to bring Gamestreaming to desktops? Preferably via a portable style implementation?Despoiler - Thursday, December 13, 2018 - link
Not sure what you are referring to. You've been able to stream from desktops using AMD Relive since last year's driver update.limitedaccess - Thursday, December 13, 2018 - link
Actual remote game streaming? I don't mean streaming game play to watch but to actually play the game on another machine like the mobile streaming and VR streaming implemented in this release. But in my case I'm looking for a solution in which the client is a Windows PC and does not require any installation of software (preferably fully portable leaving nothing behind).SetiroN - Friday, December 14, 2018 - link
Actual remote game streaming. Even in vr now. They have an android app.limitedaccess - Friday, December 14, 2018 - link
I know they have it now for mobile and VR. What I'm asking about is plans for PC to PC (desktop/laptop) preferably with a fully portable client app.Targon - Friday, December 14, 2018 - link
That's the whole point of ReLive. If you mean running the game on one machine and being controlled by another, that is another story.Rocket321 - Saturday, December 15, 2018 - link
I came here to say the same thing. They put in all this work to allow remote gaming on a phone but still no first party solution for PC to PC remote gaming. Those of you willing to do a third party tool check out Parsec. Still hoping AMD will fix this for PC as well as FireTV/Android TV/ etc.Targon - Monday, December 17, 2018 - link
You need to understand that there is the whole issue of complexity. Streaming video is fairly simple with a 720p data stream, but trying to have anything complex that requires more CPU/GPU power is going to be more difficult. I don't consider most phone/tablet games where remote gaming is possible to really be able to compete with ANY game that is actually running on that device.Rocket321 - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
I totally agree - it was basically a waste of time to bring game streaming to mobile phones. On the other hand, bringing remote play capabilities to laptops/desktops would be super useful for quite a few people.Steam streaming was awful the last time I tried it. Parsec works pretty well, but I'd sure prefer a first party tool from AMD to give parity with the green team.
abufrejoval - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
I was going to say that Steam already offers that for Steam titles, but this leads me to believe that the experience may be different with AMD GPUs. I've only ever tried this on Nvidias, where it works extremely well as long the network is good enough.So much so that I've actually upgraded my 24x7 box with a very quiet GTX 1060 and then have people wonder how my Chuwi Atom notebook plays ARK Survival Evolved at great resolution, detail and speed.
But Nvidia has put highly latency optimized x264 encoding block into the GPU hardware specifically to support that use case, which incidentally even works with Android tablets and a beta Steam client (as well as the recently discontinued Steam link box).
One of my kids still has a Radon 290X, perhaps I'll run a Steam test with that to compare.