Tuning your performance settings in AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ can be rewarding as it’s a software feature that provides simplified controls and automatic presets to customize GPU performance based on your preferences.
Advanced tuning controls are available for users looking for more granular control over GPU and CPU performance, acoustics, and thermals.
In this article, we’ll run through some of the settings you can optimize in the Performance tab within Adrenalin and how they can benefit you. Like gaming settings, GPU performance tuning can be configured globally or customized for individual games using created profiles.
If you’re new to Adrenalin, check out our “Adrenalin basics” article first.
You can customize your GPU performance tuning settings globally within the Performance tab in Adrenalin. From here, select the Tuning sub-tab.
- Note: Global Tuning settings are applied on a per GPU basis. For multi-GPU configurations select the desired GPU before proceeding.
The tuning controls at your disposal are as follows:
System
Automatic Tuning:
- Default – Applies default profile settings for the CPU and GPU.
- Auto Overclock – Uses a pre-defined overclocking algorithm to improve CPU/GPU performance.
Manual Tuning:
- Custom –Allows for personal customization of CPU/GPU settings.
CPU
Automatic Tuning:
- Default – Applies default profile settings for the CPU.
- Overclock CPU – Uses a pre-defined overclocking algorithm to improve CPU performance.
It’s important to know that the System and CPU Tuning options are only available on AMD Radeon™ RX 5000 and newer GPUs. Additionally, for select AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 and later GPUs with integrated RGB lighting, the AMD Radeon RGB Lighting Tool option will be displayed. This tool will allow you to customize the RGB lighting on the graphics card.
GPU
Automatic Tuning:
- Default - Applies default profile settings.
- Undervolt GPU - Reduces voltage and maintains clock speeds to improve performance/watt.
- Overclock GPU - Uses a predefined overclocking algorithm to improve GPU performance.
- Overclock VRAM - Uses a predefined overclocking algorithm to improve video memory performance.
Tuning Preset:
- Quiet - Enables quiet operation with lower power and fan settings.
- Balanced - Offers all-round performance with a balance of power, clocks, and fan settings.
- Rage - Sets a higher power limit to allow more headroom for performance.
Manual Tuning:
- Custom – Allows granular control over GPU settings as shown in this image and described below.
It’s important to know that only one GPU Tuning Control option can be selected at a time, so if you want to experiment with these options, keep that in mind.
If you choose the Custom option here, you’ll see a few more options populate in the settings. Let's run through these options.
- GPU Tuning - When enabled, GPU clock speed and voltage can be adjusted by the Min Frequency (%), Max Frequency (%), and Voltage (%) sliders.
- Note: Some GPUs may offer a Max Frequency slider only.
- Note: Some GPUs may offer a Max Frequency slider only.
- VRAM Tuning - When enabled, VRAM (video memory) clock speed can be adjusted using the Max Frequency (%) slider, and memory timings can be selected from the options available.
Next, we have the AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM) option. SAM is a feature that may improve performance in certain situations. SAM is automatically enabled on compatible systems during driver installation. Toggling SAM on/off will automatically restart AMD Software and the screen may go black temporarily.
It’s recommended to exit any games before making changes to this feature.
- Fan Tuning – When enabled, fan settings can be adjusted using the Zero RPM option and Max Fan Speed (%) slider or Min Acoustic Limit (MHz) slider. Zero RPM allows for quiet operation when the GPU is under light load and should spin up the fans when the GPU load and temperature increase. Zero RPM is enabled by default and can be disabled if preferred.
- Note: Min Acoustic Limit (MHz) slider is available on Radeon RX 500 Series and RX 400 Series Graphics.
- Note: Min Acoustic Limit (MHz) slider is available on Radeon RX 500 Series and RX 400 Series Graphics.
- Power Tuning - When enabled, the GPU power setting can be adjusted by the Power Limit (%) slider. A higher power limit may allow more performance headroom.
Remember, like with many settings within Adrenalin, any changes to settings in Global Tuning will be immediate and applied globally. You can click “Apply Changes” to save new settings and click “Discard Changes” to undo changes. To restore default settings at any time, click the Reset (Arrow) icon.
Now that we’ve gone through most options in the Tuning tab, let’s go over how you can customize GPU performance tuning for individual games.
- Click Add Game Profile to bring up a list of detected game profiles.
- Scroll through the list or use Search to find the desired game, then select the game profile and click Add.
- You can customize the game performance settings and changes made within the game profile will take effect immediately.
- To switch game profiles or return to Global Tuning, click on the Tuning drop-menu, and select the desired option. To remove a game profile select it from the Tuning drop menu, then click on Delete Profile.
Adding onto the idea of tuning game profiles, any customization you make in a game profile can be saved as a tuning profile. This allows you to create custom tuning profiles for different uses. Switching profiles is easy, simply load the preferred profile when needed.
To save and load a custom tuning profile, follow these steps:
- Click on Export Profile.
- Give the tuning profile a name and click Save.
- To load a saved tuning profile, click on Import Profile.
- Navigate to the folder where tuning profiles are saved. Select the desired profile and click Open.
Stress Testing
Last but not least, you can also run a stress test to see if any of the GPU settings you’ve applied are stable and functional.
To run the Stress Test, follow these steps:
- Load an existing tuning profile or make changes to the current Global tuning settings.
- If more than one supported GPU is installed, select the desired GPU (default is primary) from the drop menu. Adjust the Duration slider to the preferred setting (default is 60 seconds) and click Start Testing.
- The test will run for the duration specified and the following readouts will be displayed in real-time. To stop, click Stop Testing.
- Once the test has been completed, click Finish.
If you’d like to run another stress test, select Run Another Test.
- Note: If the Stress Test fails resulting in a system crash or reboot, Adrenalin will reset the GPU performance tuning settings to default values.
Like our other Adrenalin articles, the settings that work best for your system will vary on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, it’s just easier to run everything by default settings. But for those who enjoy squeezing all the power and performance they can out of their rigs, experiment, experiment, experiment!
A big “Thank you” to
@blazek @mengelag @BigAl01 @cpurpe91 and Moonwalk Contest Runner-up @Sam_AMD for helping to keep articles like these coming!
