Older AMD Radeon GPUs are getting some love in the form of unofficial drivers from the NimeZ group. The driver’s aim is to give users with now-unsupported AMD graphics cards a chance to utilise AMD’s Noise Suppression tool (opens in new tab) over Discord, or whatever app you use to chat to your teammates.
Just to be clear, the driver isn’t officially out yet, but evidence of it was posted by rysresolvext (opens in new tab) (via TechPowerUp (opens in new tab)) a couple of days ago on the the AMD subreddit.
NimeZ has been making drivers for older Radeon cards for some time, giving users with ageing cards a chance to enjoy support for newer games. The group’s latest exploit is pretty darn impressive, and gives anyone packing a GPU that predates the RX 5000-series access to the Noise Suppression tool.
The driver is a rehash of AMD’s 22.7.1 Adrenalin update, that’s been swung around to support these older GPUs.
If you’re wondering what the big deal is here, AMD Noise Suppression takes your mic input—or the output from whoever you’re chatting to on coms—and uses a machine learning algorithm to remove background noise. It tries to keep as much clarity in the voices as possible, while getting rid of any unwanted commotion that might be happening elsewhere.
We found it did a great job even in extreme cases, though Jacob does kind of sound like he’s inside a bubble (opens in new tab), or talking over a radio.
Unlocking this feature for older AMD GPUs is an fantastic win, but it’s important to note that if you do grab the drivers (opens in new tab) when they come out, you’re not going to be covered under warrantee any longer.
As TechPowerUp points out, however, if you’re packing AMD’s Polaris, Vega, or even older previous-gen Graphics Core Next (GCN) cards, you’re unlikely to still be within your warrantee anyway… so go ham!
Or more accurately, go make yourself sound like you’re talking through a ham radio, while your Mom hoovers around you.