Gears 5 touts 8 percent boost with AMD Radeon Adrenalin 19.9.1 driver

What you need to know

  • AMD has released its Radeon Adrenalin 19.9.1 driver for AMD GPUs.
  • Adrenalin 19.9.1 claims up to an 8 percent performance benefit for Gears 5.

Microsoft has dropped Gears 5, delivering the latest of its flagship shooter series on Xbox One and PC. While an acclaimed story campaign dives deeper into newly-appointed lead Kait Diaz, a rich lineup of multiplayer modes poses a high-value bundle for genre fans. Gears 5 Ultimate Edition and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate grants four-day early access across platforms, though standard copies wait until September 10.

Gears 5's launch demonstrates heightened PC investments from Microsoft, doubling down on Steam, Win32, and its Xbox Game Pass PC offshoot. Coinciding with the release, AMD has dropped the Radeon Adrenalin 19.9.1 driver, optimizing its GPUs for Gears 5. AMD's independent testing frames 19.9.1 as delivering up to an 8 percent performance increase, when paired with DirectX 12.

Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of August 30th, 2019 on Gears of War 5 (DirectX® 12 at Ultra Presets) at 4K resolution, measured on the Radeon™ RX 5700 XT running Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.8.2 and 19.9.1 drivers. Results on 19.9.1 showed up to 8% performance gain over the previous driver. Performance may vary based on resolution and settings.

AMD has released Radeon Adrenalin 19.9.1 alongside full patch notes detailing Vulkan improvements, alongside known issues. The drive totals around 500 MB for Windows PCs, now available to download via the AMD website.

In the meantime, Gears 5 is available for PC on Steam and Windows 10's Microsoft Store, as well as a part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, currently discounted to $2.

Matt Brown

Matt Brown was formerly a Windows Central's Senior Editor, Xbox & PC, at Future. Following over seven years of professional consumer technology and gaming coverage, he’s focused on the world of Microsoft's gaming efforts. You can follow him on Twitter @mattjbrown.