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r/OptimizedGaming on Reddit: AMD - Optimized Adrenaline settings for smooth gameplay

April 12, 2025 -

Hey, recently got a 9070 XT (upgraded from my 3070) and I've been testing amd stuff and It's amazing how well adrenaline have everything you ever need.

This guide is to make sure your games have the best balance between frametimes, input lag and NO MICROSTUTTERS as much as possible. This is a general applied setting for all games but in case a specific game reacts badly you can edit per game profile too.

Overall screenshot of how the settings should look like, explanation below:

Step 3 - In case you have a RDNA4 card you can enable FSR4 on a driver level, any game with fsr 3.1 will automatically load fsr4 instead. This is also controled by amd with driver updates.

Step 4 - Anti-lag reduces input lag overall specially in situations your GPU is maxed out at 100%. Some games might react bad to this but I have yet to find any.

Step 5 and 6 - This is purely subjective but I found image sharpening at 70% in games with TAA to be a workaround of having a sharper image.

Step 7 - This is the equivalent of nvidia fastsync. It reduces tearing\eliminates it without causing input lag. It's not as effective as vsync but if you care about input lag this should be on, otherwise just turn on vsync (and off in games always).

Step 8 - Framelimit directly at a driver level by amd. You should always cap your fps 4 fps BELOW YOUR MONITOR REFRESH RATE. In my Case its 116 since my monitor is 120hz. Why? So it stays inside the freesync range and vsync doesn't get triggered, preventing inputlag and frametime spikes.

FAQ

- Why not use AMD CHILL to cap fps?
AMD CHILL only applies correctly if you do per-game individually. A lot of games won't detected if enabled globally. Acording to research it seems amd chill does some kind of game-injection that some engines reject. Frame-rate Target-Control seems to work more consistently in my experience.

- What should I disable first when a game behaves weirdly?
DIsable anti-lag then enhanced Sync

- What if a game has a built-in framerate limiter?
Some games, while rare, have problematic built in limiters but when it's well done it works better than the global setting. So this should be the priority: IN-GAME FPS LIMITER - AMD FRAMELIMITER \ RTSS. Some games only lets you choose pre-determined values like 30-60-100-120-200+ FPS and not a specific value. In this case put it off \ unlimited and use the amd one, since they wont be optimized to use the -4 fps rule.

- Is RTSS safe to use if I don't want to use Adrenaline?
Yes its safe and it seems to be the more consistent in terms of applying the limit\async. Practically works on every game, you just have to set it up correctly and have it run on the background (Disable Enhanced Sync \ forced vsync in adrenaline or else you will get frametime issues)

Enjoy and comment your experience bellow. In case you have more tips let me know too :), this was purely me testing as I am extremely sensitive to motion smoothness.

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## Special thanks to Elliove and Dat_Boi_John for some additional information, crucial to this guide. Will update accordingly.

Top answer

1 of 5

This is a decent guide. However, I have some things to add and to ask. Enhanced Sync and Fast Sync are in fact VSync as well, as in - they prevent visible tearing by not letting the front buffer (containing the current image) change, when monitor is displaying an image already. The difference is that typical VSync uses first-in-first-out queue for frame buffers, and Enhanced Sync uses last-in-first-out. That means that the frames that didn't meet the timing between refreshes get discarded instead of waiting in line to be shown, and that's why it doesn't limit FPS, and why input latency can be lower than VSync with triple buffering, as Enhanced Sync is equivalent to OpenGL's type of triple buffering. Anti-Lag works exaclty like you said, but you're still left with at least one frame of input lag. And to reduce input lag there, you have to use smart frame rate limiting - which means your FPS should never be limited by maxed out GPU. So not letting GPU max out in the first place is always better than fixing it with Anti-Lag. The popular recommendations like -3 and -4 FPS below refresh rate can be misleading because of diminishing returns. You're talking flat numbers, but frame times relative to FPS change exponentially. Say, difference between 116 FPS and 120 FPS is 0.28ms, while difference between 236 FPS and 240 FPS is 0.07ms - it's 4 times easier to miss the frame time VRR window then! And what matters to keeping VRR enanged at all times is not FPS, but frame times, so each single frame manages to get into the time window. So ideally, one should always take into account the refresh rate as well. A really good formula, used by Special K, is refresh-(refresh*refresh/3600), so, say for 240Hz screen a good number to limit at will be 224. You said you tried RTSS extensively, but you didn't mention what specific limiting you've tried. RTSS has front edge sync (prioritizes frame time stability), back edge sync (prioritizes input latency), and async (a balanced mode, leaning towards back edge sync). Secondly, disabling passive waiting significantly increases the precision of RTSS limiters. And last, but not least - never let FPS limiters fight over a game; ideally use one limiter or another, but two at the same time can lead to all sorts of issues. Since you mentioned FSR - you can also change DLSS/XeSS/FSR 3 to FSR 4 via OptiScaler. And for people on cards without FSR 4 support - XeSS is the next best thing, definitely better than FSR 3. Have you tried Special K? They say, its FPS limiter is unbeatable, ie. not that long ago, Digital Foundry said that SK's limiter was the only one being able to properly pace in Lossless Scaling FrameGen scenario. Plus, SK has AutoVRR mode, that configures things automatically for VRR users, including calculation of optimal FPS limit via the formula I mentioned earlier. And for non-VRR users like myself, it's got Latent Sync - it removes tearing without VSync's input latency, while also properly pacing frames, and allows reducing latency even further. I use it in Touhou (simple game, has to be locked to 60 FPS because game speed is tied to FPS) to get the same input latency as with 1000 FPS. Additional info on in-game vs external limiters. Modern games run input/simulation on a separate thread, while any external limiter can only alter the rendering thread. This is why, when the in-game limiter is made well, it can reduce latency further than any external limiter. But, as you said yourself, in-game ones tend to suck in more ways than one. The weirdest thing about them is when they limit to wrong FPS. Imagine me trying to enjoy AC: Odyssey on RX 480 with decent graphics - had to limit to 30 FPS, but ingame limiter limited to 31 instead, and external limiters had much more input latency. Had to OC my monitor to 62Hz for that single game shm.

2 of 5

I wouldn't use frame rate target control (FRTC) as it has worse latency than chill. Chill's developer commented on the comparison between the two and said Chill has both lower latency and more stable frametimes. FRTC is essentially a legacy features. RTSS frame limiting works fine on my 7800xt. If you set both AMD Chill limits to the same value, then it provides the exact same latency and frame time smoothness as RTSS. Obviously it's still always better to cap using the game's own limiter if available, but otherwise RTSS and AMD Chill are functionally equivalent and are strictly better than FRTC. The strength of Radeon Image Sharpening is subjective but I personally like 40% at 1440p. Anything more and I start to see over sharpening artifacts on most games. As a last note, I'd suggest looking up the Optiscaler mod and installing it on every singleplayer game to replace DLSS upscaling and frame generation with FSR (3 or 4 depending on your card).

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