AMD Updates Ryzen Drivers With Release Of Driver 17.10 WHQL

A new chipset driver update by AMD, driver 17.10 WHQL, was released on Wednesday. It is part of AMD’s plan to improve the gaming performance for new processors of AMD. The new drivers come with the AMD Balanced Power Plan.

The plan was available as early as April, but it was a separate download. However, the new drivers that came with driver AMD 17.10 WHQL update, are only for 64-bit Windows 10, AMD says. Rather than rely on Windows, the new power profile included in the new update gives more power management responsibilities to Ryzen, PCWorld reports.

Driver 17.10 WHQL of Ryzen has a built-in feature. It is SenseMI which manages voltage and frequency dynamically to improve performance. For the driver to take advantage of the built-in feature, its processor needs more control of power management instead of the operating system.

Rather than park some of the Ryzen Balanced Power Plan, it keeps all of the physical cores of the processor awake to allow for better response time, particularly in gaming, according to AMD. The plan would show up in the Control Panel. When the tech website tested the driver 17.10 WHQL update, there was a 21.6 percent improvement in “Crysis 3” performance and 16.5 percent in “Gears of War 4.”

Extreme Tech explains that with the driver AMD 17.10 WHQL, there is no need for reviewers to test the power plan of Windows 10 by setting it to “High Performance” versus “Balanced” recommendation. It was what AMD recommended when it launched Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 in early 2017.

Digital Trend adds that by default, Windows 10 is configured for its “Balanced” power profile, even on desktops, versus the “High Performance” power plan which had demonstrated significant performance benefits. With driver AMD 17.10 WHQL update, it gets around the Windows 10 default by installing the new AMD Ryzen Balanced power plan. The 30-millisecond delay in switching power states under the Windows 10 power plan is reduced to 1-millisecond delay when the Ryzen chip is in control.