Fed up with poor RDNA 3 GPU performance in some games? AMD's new driver fixes some big issues

AMD has released a new graphics driver which ushers in some pretty jaw-dropping boosts for some PC games (although why this is the case - well, we'll come back to that later).

YouTuber Ancient Gameplays has been test driving the latest version, quite literally in the case of Forza Horizon 5, finding that AMD's version 23.7.1 Adrenalin release boosts the average frame rate by 67% in one case (compared to the previous driver release).

That's with the Radeon RX 7900 XT at 1080p resolution, and the 7900 XTX also witnesses a very healthy boost with the new driver to the tune of 32%. (All of this must be regarded with a little caution, as it's based off one round of testing on one particular PC configuration, of course).

At 1440p resolution, Forza Horizon 5 is still much faster on driver version 23.7.1, with a 46% and 30% increase for the 7900 XT and 7900 XTX respectively.

The Last of Us is another game which benefits from the new Adrenalin driver, though not to the same extent as Forza Horizon 5.

Ancient Gameplays found that The Last of Us was a healthy 22% faster at 1080p with the 7900 XTX, and 14% quicker at 4K resolution.

There are some robust upticks for older RDNA 2 graphics cards here, too. For example, AMD's RX 6800 is 24% faster at 1080p with the new graphics driver - pretty impressive indeed.

Let's get cynical...

You may of course be rightly cynical about some of the bigger gains, as seen with Forza. Because just as we've observed with Intel's Arc drivers making huge frame rate leaps at times, this must be about correcting unoptimized or wonky driver code, rather than magically managing to manufacture a near-70% increase from nowhere (in the best-case improvement). That kind of boost just doesn't happen under normal circumstances.

So yes, Forza Horizon 5 had serious problems with RDNA 3 GPUs. As Ancient Gameplays points out, these graphics cards actually ran slower than their RDNA 2 predecessors with the game, so clearly, something was badly wrong.

Still, AMD has now fixed those gremlins, and those with an RX 7000 GPU can certainly be thankful for that.

However, the bad news is that with Adrenalin 23.7.1, some games have seen frame rates drop. It doesn't seem like there's anything too nasty here, mind, but the YouTuber highlights issues with Rocket League, and in the comments on the video, a gamer observes slightly worse performance with Hogwarts Legacy (using ray tracing with FSR 2.0).

Finally, Ancient Gameplays does mention Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, noting that there are frame pacing issues present, but that this issue is most likely due to an update for the game, as it's also something affecting the previous Adrenalin driver.