AMD has updated its OpenGL driver in order to improve performances in OpenGL games and applications. Let’s see some of the changes compared to previous Adrenalin 22.6.1.
The OpenGL DLL atioglxx.dll is can be found here:
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\u0381283.inf_amd64_49e777606ed7f517\B381690\atioglxx.dll
and its size is 49.3MB (compared to the 37.1MB of previous adrenalin 22.6.1).
In Adrenalin 22.7.1, more or less 60 OpenGL extensions have been removed:
– Adrenalin 22.7.1: 273 extensions (GL=253 and WGL=20)
– Adrenalin 22.6.1: 331 extensions (GL=306 and WGL=25)
Usually, OpenGL extensions are properly sorted in alphabetical order, but in v22.7.1, it’s a mess! Many GL_AMD extensions have been removed as well as some extensions like GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc or GL_ARB_spirv_extensions to quote few ones.
Basic OpenGL information:
Adrenalin 22.6.1
- GL_VENDOR: ATI Technologies Inc. - GL_RENDERER: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT - GL_VERSION: 4.6.14800 Compatibility Profile/Debug Context 22.6.1 30.0.21023.1015 - GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION: 4.60 - OpenGL Extensions: 331 extensions (GL=306 and WGL=25)
Adrenalin 22.7.1 (both core compatibility profiles)
- GL_VENDOR: ATI Technologies Inc. - GL_RENDERER: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT - GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION: 4.60 - GL_VERSION: 4.6.0 Compatibility Profile Context 22.7.1.220725 - OpenGL Extensions: 267 extensions (GL=247 and WGL=20) - GL_VERSION: 4.6.0 Core Profile Context 22.7.1.220725 - OpenGL Extensions: 273 extensions (GL=253 and WGL=20)
AMD has simplified the its GL_VERSION (4.6.0 … 22.7.1.220725): there’s the release date which is more intuitive. Now a question: why GL_VENDOR is still ATI ??? It would nice to see something like AMD Inc. or Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. But ATI is cool too, because it’s the history!
I noticed changes in the GLSL compiler and I spent few hours to update some of my GPU tools (like Kombustor) because some OpenGL 3 vertex shaders no longer worked (no compiler error, the vertex shader didn’t work because of the order, presence and use of vertex attributes). I also updated some OpenGL 4 tessellation shader because the patch keyword was not placed correctly:
Ok for Adrenalin 22.6.1 (and NVIDIA / Intel drivers too):
out patch TessPatch outPatch;
Adrenalin 22.7.1 (compiler error: ERROR: 0:24: '' : Auxiliary qualifiers(centroid, patch,and sample) must appear before storage and precision qualifiers):
patch out TessPatch outPatch;
Looks like that all changes made by AMD have improved the performances of the OpenGL driver. Here are some quick tests.
Unigine Superposition P1080 Extreme
– Adrenalin 22.6.1: 8237 points (61.6 FPS)
– Adrenalin 22.7.1: 10667 points (79.7 FPS): +31%
MSI Kombustor
I tested with latest Kombustor 4.1.17.
MSI-01 benchmark (HDR + tessellation + shadows) P1080:
– Adrenalin 22.6.1: 3470 points (57 FPS)
– Adrenalin 22.7.1: 4021 points (67 FPS): +17%
TessMark X32 benchmark (tessellation) P1080:
– Adrenalin 22.6.1: 16484 points (274 FPS)
– Adrenalin 22.7.1: 21269 points (354 FPS): +29%
FurMark
P1080 benchmark:
– Adrenalin 22.6.1: 17500 points (292 FPS)
– Adrenalin 22.7.1: 18035 points (301 FPS): +3%
I also tested some heavy pixel shaders benchmark and the boost in performance was small (more or less 2%).
It’s nice to see that OpenGL is not dead and that there is still room for performance improvement! OpenGL is a great API and even if Vulkan is there, OpenGL has still its place in the graphics programming realm!