AMD’s Radeon 18.5.1 driver adds support for Ryzen APUs and 4K Netflix streaming

AMD has begun dishing out is Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.5.1 driver release with improved support for the April 2018 Update for Windows 10, along with support for PlayReady 3.0 and 'Raven Ridge' Ryzen APUs.

PlayReady 3.0 is a Microsoft DRM scheme that is required to stream Netflix content in 4K and HDR. This latest driver release unlocks that capability for Radeon RX 400 and 500 series graphics card owners.

It also introduces unified support for AMD's recently released Ryzen 5 2400G and 2200G processors with Vega graphics, which previously required using different drivers. AMD also says the new drivers deliver performance gains in Ancestors Legacy, up to a 6 performance bump on Radeon RX Vega 56 cards at 1080p (compared to the 18.4.1 driver release), and up to a 13 percent gain on Radeon RX 580 cards, also at 1080p.

There are half a dozen bug fixes as well. Here's a look:

  • HBCC options may not properly reset to default when Radeon Settings "Restore Factory Defaults" option is selected.
  • Destiny 2 may experience increasing load time durations when the game is run for extended periods of time.
  • Tearing may be observed in some borderless fullscreen games on Radeon FreeSync enabled displays when Radeon Software performance metrics is enabled.
  • Netflix playback through a web browser may experience corruption or hangs when using multi GPU enabled system configurations with Radeon RX 400 series or Radeon RX 500 series graphics products.
  • Radeon ReLive streaming or uploading of videos to Facebook may intermittently fail.
  • Brightness or white screen issues may be observed when playing The Crew on daytime maps. 

You can download the Adrenalin 18.5.1 driver release right now, or wait a bit to see if others report any unforeseen snags. As with any GPU driver update, doing a clean install or forcibly removing previous drivers using Display Driver Uninstaller can help if you run into difficulties.

Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).