As more independent reviews of the RX 9070 XT came out, it appears that the new AMD Adrenalin drivers do not necessarily bring any noticeable improvements over the launch drivers.
HW Gives Clarification After Testing Games and Tech Yes City Investigations Reveal Little to No Improvements in Performance With New AMD GPU Drivers
The latest AMD Adrenalin 25.6.3 supposedly placed the RX 9070 XT at an advantageous position over NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti by offering generous performance uplifts. The new testing conducted by Hardware Unboxed showed that the new AMD GPU driver brought roughly 9% improvements over the launch drivers but it appears that the driver alone isn't responsible for this performance boost.
Tech Yes City and Testing Games investigated this by comparing the launch driver Adrenalin 25.3.1 to the latest Adrenalin driver version 25.6.3 and found little to no improvements in the majority of the games tested by Hardware Unboxed, including games like Spider-Man, CS2, Delta Force, and others. Some games did show noticeable uplifts, but overall, the results with the latest driver are similar to the ones with the older version.
Since this conflict has raised questions about Hardware Unboxed's investigations, it has issued a statement regarding the differences found by analysis conducted by different tech reviewers:
It should be kept in mind that HUB isn't alone who saw improvements with the latest drivers but Computerbase and Acient Gameplays also had simlar findings. However, there are too many factors that are affecting the final results of the new reviews. Factors like Windows updates, Smart Access Memory, and game updates also contribute to different results. Simply put, it can be almost impossible to replicate the results after a few months, even with the same drivers.
HUB says that it should have stated this as a "Review Data vs Latest Data" instead of "Review Drivers vs Latest Drivers", which we find more appropriate due to the complexity of these tests. Anyways, we should always be curious and skeptical when we see such a drastic performance difference with the same hardware. Cross testing is one of the best ways to confirm the new results, and while the HUB's data might not be very accurate, it's not entirely flawed. Some games did a noticeable performance boost, but I guess the 9% average boost was too good to be true.
About the author: Sarfraz Khan is a hardware reporter with a focus on PC components and the builder community. With years of experience writing about PC hardware and laptops, his work has been featured on several reputable technology publications. Sarfraz's hands-on experience is demonstrated through his first-person accounts of using and comparing different hardware configurations, providing practical and relatable insights for everyday users. His technical analysis is respected by peers in the enthusiast community and has been cited by specialized hardware sites such as Germany's Igor's Lab.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
