How to install and configure AMD drivers on Windows with extra tips

What is a driver?

In general terms, a driver is a piece of software that communicates directly with the operating system like Windows, Linux or MacOS. They allow for direct communication with the hardware through an interface.

Why do I need to install them?

Windows comes with a generic driver by default, but the performance is poor and can result in artifacts and crashes while playing games or using other graphics applications. The driver from your graphics card manufacturer such as AMD, Intel or Nvidia is made specifically for your hardware and will provide the best performance and stability.

Installing the recommended drivers is a requirement.

Installing the driver on Windows

AMD provides a driver installer on their website, there are a few things you need to consider when installing it and I will guide you through them.

The official link contains the installer, click on the "Download Windows Drivers" link and launch the executable.

Official download link

Follow the installer and later choose the "Express Install" option.

Once you have downloaded and installed the software you will need to restart your PC, but don't do it just yet as we will first dive into the features of the AMD adrenalin software.

Using AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition and configuring the driver

AMD has a ton of features packed into their driver software, ranging from performance metrics, game analytics and smart technologies to improve your gaming experience. In this section we will see those more in detail.

1. Performance metrics and in-game overlay

First, select the performance menu as shown below:

Under the metrics section you can monitor the graphics card temperature, memory usage and current framerate. This menu is very basic and also gives you CPU usage information.

Now a more interesting aspect of this panel is the in-game performance overlay, enabling you to get all the hardware information real time from your game.

In the image below you can configure which metrics to monitor and log, such as FPS, hardware latency, GPU and CPU clocks, temperature and memory usage. To enable a metric you need to click on the eye icon, you can also show the data as a graph my pressing the graph icon.

To enable the overlay go to the "Overlay" tab and select "Enable Metrics Overlay", you can then set the location and size. The overlay will only be enabled in full screen games if the "Game Detection for Metrics Overlay" is enabled, to always get the data you must disable that option.

If you want to toggle the overlay while in-game you can choose the hotkey to do so in the settings cog on the top right and select the "Hotkeys" tab. There you can set the "Performance Hotkeys > Toggle Performance Overlay" option. Pressing the hotkey will toggle the metrics overlay as previously configured.

2. Tuning and optimizations

Inside the "Tuning" tab of the Performance section you can overclock or undervolt your hardware. I do not recommend touching these settings if you are already getting good temperatures and performance.

One option that you need to make sure is always enabled is "AMD SmartAccess Memory", this enables the graphics card to directly communicate with your other hardware and reduce overall system latency. Read more about it here.

Navigate to the "Gaming" > "Graphics" tab for further configuration.

In the "Global Gaming Experience" section, you have 2 options, either use "HYPR-RX" for automatic optimization or select "Custom" to configure it to your linking.

Assuming you have selected the custom option, we will now do some basic changes.

Make sure to enable "Radeon Anti-Lag", "Radeon Enhanced Sync". You can enable "Video Upscale" if you watch a lot of lower resolution videos.

"AMD Fluid Motion Frames" is a frame generation technology that increases FPS in all DirectX 11 and 12 games, which is most of them. You need to enable it on a per-game basis. It deserves a separate article [coming soon...];

3. FreeSync configuration

You then need to navigate to the "Display" tab inside of "Gaming" to enable FreeSync. It should work on any monitor that supports adaptive sync including Nvidia GSync monitors.

Now enable the FreeSync option as shown in the image below; The setup is mostly complete.

Conclusion

Once you are done configuring everything, you can now be at rest and enjoy a superior gaming experience. I hope you enjoyed reading this article and consider subscribing to our newsletter. Don't forget to reboot your computer.

If your friends are fans of NVidia and refuse to buy an AMD graphics card, you can always send them this article.

Have a nice gaming day!