AMD Ryzen Mobile APUs in Laptops Will Now Get Regular Radeon Vega GPU Driver Updates

AMD has fulfilled a promise to bring its Ryzen Mobile APUs under the umbrella of its regular Radeon Software driver and feature updates. Prior to this, laptops with AMD Rryzen Mobile APUs could only obtain drivers through laptop manufacturers, who are not as regular as AMD and other component manufacturers are when it comes to validating and distributing updates. In response to growing customer protests online, AMD promised in November 2018 to work with laptop manufacturers to guarantee at least two updates per year. While still far behind the regular pace at which drivers are released for desktop GPUs, this was at least an improvement.

In January this year, AMD CEO Lisa Su announced at her CES 2019 keynote that future Radeon Software updates will be released for Ryzen Mobile APUs. This was in contrast to the November statement, released on the AMD subreddit, which put the onus of driver updates entirely on laptop manufacturers. At the time, AMD said “It is important to understand that our graphics drivers are typically tailored for specific OEM platforms, so releasing generic APU graphics drivers across all AMD Ryzen mobile processor-based mobile systems could result in less-than-ideal user experiences.”

Now, it seems as though those problems have been surmounted, or AMD agreed with user feedback on the Reddit thread that using drivers that are more than a year out of date is already a less-than-ideal experience. The new driver's release notes state “We have evaluated all customer feedback/concerns, and believe we can provide a unified driver for the AMD platforms in market, and have delivered on the requests of our end-user community.”

Going forward, all monthly driver releases will support Ryzen Mobile APUs as well as desktop Ryzen and Athlon APUs. AMD still recommends that users choose the drivers released by device manufacturers first, either directly or through Windows Update. This is unlikely to prevent enthusiasts from making sure they have the latest drivers directly from AMD.

The newly released Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition, version 19.2.3, will bring all Ryzen Mobile APUs up to date. Not only does the release contain updated drivers, but users will also be able to use the Radeon Settings software which allows for all kinds of control over a Radeon GPU, including resolution scaling, global and per-game optimisations, game compatibility recommendations, performance monitoring, automatic updates, and the AMD Link mobile app. Further, AMD says that Ryzen Mobile users can expect bug fixes, and an average 10 percent performance improvement. The new driver is said to deliver up to 17 percent better performance in esports titles in particular, compared to the Ryzen Mobile launch driver, version number 17.40.