AMD finally brings Windows Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling to RX 7900, 7800, 7000 series

AMD RDNA 3 RX 7000 launch

Earlier today, AMD introduced its latest WHQL-certified driver, version 23.12.1. The driver brings support for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and also brings several new features related to HYPR-RX. First, there is a new power-saving mode dubbed "HYPR-RX Eco." Second, AMD has made a bit of a UI redesign to make enabling the various HYPR-RX profiles easier.

Aside from those, the company also finally brings Windows' Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling to its latest and greatest RX 7000 series GPUs with this new driver, though there is no mention of RX 7600 at the moment. The release note says:

Additional OS Feature Support

Support for Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling for Radeon RX 7900/7800/7700 series GPUs.

If you are not familiar with it, Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS), as the name suggests, offloads the GPU scheduling job to the graphics processor itself instead of being handled by a processor/CPU thread. The feature was first introduced in the Windows 10 May 2020 update (version 2004).

The Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) GPU scheduler was designed to efficiently manage graphics-based tasks and workloads in Windows. And as over time, Microsoft's OS became more and more graphically heavy, subsequent improvements also needed to be made to the GPU scheduler to ensure a smooth UI.

It's not hard to understand what Microsoft's intention here was as the upgrade in the GUI (graphical user interface) is quite evident going from Windows XP to Windows Vista/Windows 7, and so on.

In terms of performance improvements with HAGS, Microsoft explains that the feature could improve system latency as a consequence of the reduction in buffering, a technique that was used previously to mitigate scheduling overheads.

However, it will certainly depend a lot on the system you have too; and if you are already having a good experience on Windows, HAGS may not do much or could even make the experience worse. You can check this guide out on how to enable HAGS on your system.

You can read more about the new Adrenalin 23.12.1 driver in our dedicated article.