AMD Unveils Navi RDNA Architecture: Under The Hood Of Radeon RX 5700

There are a wide array of software updates arriving alongside the Radeon RX 5700 series, though not all of them are exclusive to AMD’s newest cards – most of the new software-related features are coming to previous-gen GCN-based Radeons as well.

There are new versions of AMD Radeon Relive the AMD Link app coming to Apple TV and Android TV devices that will allow users to stream their content to their televisions through one of these set-top boxes. The latest version of AMD’s Radeon Adrenaline software for 2019 will also allow GPUs to automatically set compatible TVs to their low-latency “game” modes to reduce lag, and the software will also allow users to save settings snapshot files, which can be used to easily restore settings should the system be refreshed with a clean OS install, etc. A new power meter has also been added to the Wattman menu as well, along with a summary readout with changes made when auto-overclocking. The Radeon Chill feature gets an update too. The latest version of Radeon Chill is display-aware and sets the frame rate limits and caps to better match the monitor’s refresh rate.


The biggest new features coming to the Radeon Adrenalin software suite, however, are AMD Radeon Anti-Lag and AMD Radeon Image Sharpening, or RIS.

AMD Radeon Anti-Lag is designed to improve input-to-display response times, commonly referred to as input latency or input lag. It essentially decouples keyboard and mouse input from the framerate, to achieve effective lower response times similar to what would be realized with a higher frame rate.


AMD built an Arduino-based sensor system and overlay that rapidly sends keyboard inputs to a system and precisely measures the latency. In a side by side demo with a GeForce RTX 2070 and Radeon RX 5700 XT running World War Z, the GeForce’s input lag was measured at about 55ms, while the Radeon 5700 XT with Anti-Lag enabled came in at about 40ms, despite both cards offering up a similar frame rate in the game. AMD Radeon Anti-Lag can typically reduce lag by about 31% and is compatible with DX9 and DX11 games on Navi, and DX11 games on GCN-based Radeons, though support may come to other APIs in time.


AMD Radeon Image Sharpening is a new contrast adaptive sharpening algorithm designed to draw out details in low contrast areas of a scene, without negatively impacting high contrast areas. It is basically a post-processing compute shader that evaluates a 3x3 pixel neighborhood and applies the sharpening algorithm where applicable.


RIS had an immediately apparent impact on image quality in the demos we saw. The feature is also design to be combined with GPU upscaling to produce higher fidelity images, when upscaling from lower resolutions. By applying the sharpening algorithm before the upscaling, the end result is a crisper image that retains more detail.


RIS has a negligible impact on performance (in the 1 – 2% range) according to AMD and is essentially “free” to enable. The feature will be available only on Navi at first, but Contrast Adaptive Sharpening is also being incorporated into AMD Fidelity FX tool suite which will be made available on GPU open, should game developers want to incorporate the sharpening algorithm into their games. Fidelity FX is GPU agnostic and can technically run on other GPUs as well.