There’s a running joke amongst PC building enthusiasts that to get the best out of an AMD Radeon graphics card, you need to wait a few months or even years. This has invited comparisons to ageing like fine wine. This light-hearted sentiment continues to have a basis in truth, as new benchmarks prove.

Some users, analysts, and tech bloggers have noticed an increase in performance for the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT when using the latest drivers compared to the figures obtained when using the launch drivers. Some outlets have even updated their performance graphs based on these updates.

One of the outlets who have posted direct comparisons is the German publication PC Games Hardware, which repeated all its performance benchmarks using updated drivers to get the latest and most accurate information.

When examining the figures for Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, the improvements were startling. At 1080p, the launch drivers could display an average framerate of 104.9. This was already a respectable number, but the current drivers push that up to 121.6. At 1440p, launch drivers could manage 77 FPS, which is again a decent number. Updated drivers provide another eleven FPS for a framerate of 88 FPS.

When Ray tracing is added to the mix, the results are even more stark. On Forza Motorsport at 1080p, RX 9070 XT launch drivers displayed 95.3 FPS. With the latest drivers, this goes up to 102 FPS. For 1440p, the figure goes from 64 at launch right up to 80 FPS with current drivers.

Not all games benefit as obviously from the driver updates. The improvements in Baldur’s Gate 3, for example, remain fairly minimal. However, titles that rely heavily on ray tracing and path tracing have seen a considerable boost in performance.

If you are an AMD Radeon user, you may take this as a reminder to update your drivers. You can thank us (and PCGH) later.

About the Author

Rebecca Hills-Duty

Writing and journalism experience at VRFocus, UploadVR, The Escapist, HTC, PC Gamer, Tech Radar+ and Dexerto. Can sometimes be found playing with retro tech.