Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. Gaming
  4. News

Get a boost in 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' later this month with AMD's new driver

Add as a preferred source on Google

The latest driver for AMD’s Radeon-branded graphics cards is out, bringing the version number up to 17.3.2. It’s optimized for Mass Effect: Andromeda that is slated to arrive on Tuesday. AMD says customers will see up to 12 percent in performance gains on the Radeon RX 480 card than if the previous v17.3.1 driver is installed. The driver also provides an optimized Tessellation Profile for the upcoming game as well.

As for the resolved issues provided by this new driver, it only addresses two PC games:

Recommended Videos
The Division: Corrupted textures appeared on some surfaces when the game relied on DirectX 12.
For Honor: In a system with four Radeon GPUs, task switching or game menus presented flickering textures or a black screen.

That is it for fixes, which isn’t surprising given that AMD released v17.3.1 a week ago. As for the outstanding issues that still need to be addressed, there are seven specifically tied to PC games spanning Ghost Recon Wildlands, Battlefield 1, Sniper Elite 4, Shadow Warrior 2, and a few more. There are also three non-game-related issues including a problem with Radeon Settings, AMD CrossFire, and running Borderless Fullscreen with AMD FreeSync enabled.

Here are the eight game-specific problems to look out for:

Ghost Recon Wildlands: The game may fail to launch on systems with three or four Radeon GPUs installed.
Ghost Recon Wildlands: Players using multiple Radeon GPUs in one system may see flickering when changing the graphics settings or performing a task switch.
Battlefield 1: If the game has an enabled profile in the Radeon Settings Game Manager, it may not launch using Origin or Radeon Settings.
Sniper Elite 4: The game may not function with AMD FreeSync enabled.
Sniper Elite 4: Players may see image cropping with supersampling enabled.
Shadow Warrior 2: A missing application profile in Radeon Settings may prevent the game from using multiple Radeon GPUs at launch.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
and World of Warcraft:
Flickering or performance issues may be experienced in these games the first time they are launched with AMD FreeSync enabled.

That all said, AMD is still working on specific issues related to its new Radeon ReLive feature. This is AMD’s tool for capturing, streaming, and sharing gameplay footage that made its first appearance in Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 16.12.1 in December. That was slightly over three months ago, so it’s understandable that AMD still has bugs to iron out given the nearly infinite number of hardware configurations it needs to support.

A good chunk of AMD’s ReLive to-do list still includes a conflict with Xbox DVR, a failure to install on the company’s APU chips, problems when hot unplugging a second display, game hangs when Vulkan is in use, the inability to notify the user of low disk space, and more. AMD even notes that recordings may be corrupt when capturing Microsoft Office applications.

To grab the new driver, choose your operating system below:

Windows 10: 64-bit 32-bit
Windows 8.1: 64-bit N/A
Windows 7: 64-bit 32-bit
Kevin Parrish
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
AI companies may be gobbling up old books, and I really hope they aren’t destroying them
Booksellers are seeing mysterious bulk orders for old books, and some suspect AI companies
Book, Publication, Text

Secondhand booksellers have noticed a curious pattern over the past few months. Large orders are coming in for old books that often share no obvious subject, author, or genre, leaving sellers wondering who wants them and why.

According to The Guardian, booksellers in the U.K. and Ireland have received bulk orders covering everything from agricultural texts to racing biographies. Some buyers reportedly use opaque aliases, send orders to the same freight warehouses, and pay full price without negotiating bulk discounts. Similar activity has also surfaced in the U.S., Australia, and Europe.

Read more
Claude is getting ambitious with watermarking, and I can smell the problems from a mile away
Claude’s text watermark could flag AI involvement even when it only helped with translation or editing
Claude website open on laptop

Anthropic wants to make AI-generated text easier to identify, and on paper, I have very little reason to complain. The company is experimenting with an invisible watermark that can be baked directly into text generated by Claude.

It sounds like a sensible idea. AI-generated text is everywhere, and knowing where something came from could certainly help. Moreover, Anthropic isn't simply hiding a marker somewhere inside a document. Its approach changes how Claude selects words to create a statistical pattern that can later be detected.

Read more
I switched from Windows to Mac after 25 years, and it’s the trackpad that converted me.
Well, that rhymes.
Computer, Electronics, Laptop

I’ve been using Windows laptops for almost 25 years. In that time, I never once seriously thought of buying a MacBook. In fact, I can honestly say I had never used one at all until I bought my MacBook Air M5 six months ago. Never borrowed one for a weekend, spent an afternoon at an Apple Store, or even played with one at a friend's house. Macs, to me, were just expensive computers for those who edited videos, made logos, or liked drinking expensive coffee.

My change came completely by accident.

Read more