AMD releases Adrenalin 25.12.1 driver with FSR Redstone support for Radeon RX 9000 series

AMD has released a major update for its graphics card software with the Adrenalin 25.12.1 driver. The most important component of this driver is the official support of FSR “Redstone”, an ML-supported upscaling technology that will be made available on Radeon graphics cards of the RX 9000 family. At the same time, AMD addresses various bugs and brings support for new products.

New features: FSR Redstone

With the release of the driver, AMD is officially delivering support for FidelityFX Super Resolution “Redstone” for the first time. This technology is an ML-based upscaling solution that aims to better balance image quality and performance by upscaling lower render resolutions to a higher resolution using AI models. In contrast to classic upscaling methods such as FSR 1 or 2, Redstone uses machine learning models, which should potentially lead to higher visual quality with a minimal drop in performance.

The focus is clearly on the Radeon RX 9000 series, i.e. the current RDNA 4 graphics cards. These new models particularly benefit from the extended FSR capabilities because they have dedicated hardware acceleration for the corresponding ML workloads.

New product support

In addition to Redstone support, the driver also brings official support for other AMD products:

• Radeon AI PRO R9600D
• Radeon AI PRO R9700S

Both models are part of AMD’s AI-oriented graphics cards, which are specifically designed for professional workloads and AI-accelerated applications. With the updated driver, these cards should run more stable, efficient and compatible with current software stacks.

Resolved issues

AMD lists several fixed bugs in the driver’s changelog. These include:

• The Radeon Anti-Lag 2 option could not be displayed in some cases in games like Counter-Strike 2 (DX11) even though it was enabled, especially on cards like the Radeon RX 9070 XT.
• System crashes occasionally occurred in standby mode when using certain HDMI 2.1 displays.
• The internal Radeon overlay led to application freezes in individual cases.
• ARC Raiders on the Blue Gate map occasionally crashed on RX 9000 cards.

These fixes are primarily aimed at stability and everyday usability, not spectacular new features.

Known problems

Despite the fixed bugs, several known issues remain, which AMD documents in the changelog:

• Crashes or driver timeouts may occur when loading a saved game in Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing enabled. AMD is working with the developer on this.
• A sporadic crash or timeout was also observed in Battlefield 6 on systems with Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.
• When playing Roblox Player (especially Car Zone Racing & Drifting), crashes may occur during task switching on Radeon RX 7000 cards.
• Visible texture flickering or corruption occurs in Battlefield 6 when AMD’s “Record and Stream” is enabled.
• In Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, shadows are not displayed correctly on some AMD graphics products; AMD is also working on a solution for this.

These known issues show that while the driver is a step forward, it is not yet fully stable in several real-world gaming scenarios, especially when new rendering techniques or AI-based features are in play.

Classification

With the introduction of FSR Redstone, AMD is trying to further extend its technological lead over classic upscaling methods while remaining competitive with NVIDIA’s DLSS solutions. The ML-based approach can be particularly advantageous for demanding games, but also requires correspondingly powerful hardware, which AMD provides with the RX 9000 series.

At the same time, the list of known problems underlines the fact that modern graphics software stacks are extremely complex: Drivers not only have to integrate new functions, but also cope with a huge variety of games, APIs and hardware configurations. The current shortcomings in popular titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 6 show that improvements are still needed in practice.

Conclusion

The Adrenalin 25.12.1 driver is a technically relevant step for AMD and brings the long-awaited FSR Redstone support to the RDNA 4 platform. The download is worthwhile for users of the RX 9000 series, especially if they want to try out new ML upscaling functions. However, users should be aware of possible stability issues in some games until AMD has addressed the outstanding bugs in upcoming driver updates.

Source: AMD