Best AMD Adrenalin Settings for Gaming
Adrenalin has more features enabled by default than NVIDIA's panel, and a couple of them are worth turning off.
The short answer
AMD Adrenalin's most impactful settings are Anti-Lag for reducing input latency, Radeon Chill which should generally be disabled for competitive play, and Enhanced Sync as an alternative to traditional vertical sync. Radeon Super Resolution provides driver-level upscaling for titles lacking their own implementation. Image Sharpening is worth enabling at a modest value when using upscaling, since it counteracts the softness upscaling introduces.
Verified and last updated August 12, 2026.
- Time needed
- 12 min
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Read time
- 3 min
Adrenalin does more by default than NVIDIA's control panel, which is mostly good and occasionally means something is enabled that you would not have chosen.
Radeon Chill in particular causes confusing behaviour when people do not know it is on.
Check whether Chill is enabled
It lowers frame rate when input activity drops, then raises it again. The transitions produce inconsistent pacing right as you start moving, which reads as stutter with no obvious cause.
The settings worth attention
Anti-Lag
Anti-Lag limits how far the processor runs ahead of the graphics card, cutting the queued frame count and the delay between input and display.
It helps most when the graphics card is fully loaded with no frame cap in place. If you already cap frame rate below your refresh rate, the queue is short and the additional benefit is modest.
Enable it regardless; the cost is nothing. The input lag guide covers the other contributors, several of which are larger.
The FreeSync configuration
Same logic as the NVIDIA side, and equally easy to get wrong:
- FreeSync enabled on both the display and in Adrenalin
- Wait for Vertical Refresh set to always on in Adrenalin
- In-game V-Sync off
- Frame rate capped three to five below your refresh rate
The cap is what keeps frames inside the variable refresh window. Without it, frames above the window fall back to tearing or V-Sync behaviour, which defeats the point.
Enhanced Sync is the alternative when you are not using FreeSync, allowing frames above the refresh rate without tearing and without the latency of traditional V-Sync.
Radeon Super Resolution and sharpening
RSR applies upscaling at driver level, which means it works with essentially any game including older titles that have no upscaling of their own.
Where a game includes a modern upscaler, use that instead. In-game implementations have access to motion vectors and temporal data the driver does not, and the result is meaningfully better.
Pair either with Image Sharpening at around thirty to fifty percent. Upscaled images are softer and sharpening addresses it directly. At native resolution, sharpening is a matter of taste and high values produce halos.
The upscaling guide covers how these technologies differ and why frame generation behaves differently from upscaling with respect to latency.
What to leave alone
Texture filtering overrides, tessellation limits and most of the advanced quality options. Games manage these better, and forcing them causes visual problems in some titles.
The NVIDIA guide covers the equivalent decisions on the other platform, and the reasoning is largely the same.
What works
What doesn't
Key takeaways
Frequently asked questions
Should I use Radeon Chill?
Not for competitive play, because it reduces frame rate when it detects low input activity, and the transitions produce inconsistent frame pacing exactly when you resume moving. It is genuinely useful for reducing heat and power in slower single-player games. The problem is that it is sometimes enabled by default and causes confusing performance behaviour.
What does Anti-Lag actually do?
It limits how far the processor can run ahead of the graphics card, reducing the number of queued frames and therefore the delay between input and display. The effect is most noticeable when the graphics card is fully loaded and there is no frame cap. With a frame cap already limiting the queue, the additional benefit is smaller.
Is Radeon Super Resolution worth using?
It is valuable for titles that lack their own upscaling implementation, since it applies at driver level to essentially anything. Where a game includes its own modern upscaler, that will generally look better because it has access to motion vectors and other information the driver does not. Use the in-game option when available.
Should Image Sharpening be on?
At a modest value when using any form of upscaling, because upscaled images are softer and sharpening counteracts that effectively. At native resolution it is a matter of taste and high values produce obvious artefacts. Around thirty to fifty percent is a reasonable range when paired with upscaling.
About the author
PC Hardware & Performance Editor
Marcus has been building, breaking and repairing gaming PCs since 2011, first as a weekend favour for friends and then for eight years as a bench technician at an independent repair shop in Portland, where roughly a third of the job was diagnosing machines that "ran fine yesterday".
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