RadeonSoftware

RadeonSoftware.exe is AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, the control panel and companion suite that installs with a Radeon graphics driver unless you chose the driver-only option. It holds the driver settings, performance tuning (overclocking, Anti-Lag, Super Resolution), the Radeon overlay and metrics, and ReLive recording and streaming.

What running it does to your system: Adrenalin sets up scheduled tasks (StartCN and StartDVR) that launch the UI and overlay at logon, plus an always-on External Events service for display and FreeSync handling. The core display driver, amdkmdag.sys, loads at boot as any GPU driver does. AMD issues its own security bulletins for the suite: a local privilege-escalation in the profiling driver pdfwkrnl.sys (CVE-2023-20598, AMD-SB-6009, fixed in 23.9.2), an installer permissions issue (AMD-SB-6015), and an embedded Chromium component AMD ships disabled by default (AMD-SB-6025).

The one most relevant to competitive players is the Anti-Lag+ episode of October 2023: AMD's 23.10.1 driver implemented the feature by detouring game engine functions, Valve's VAC read that as cheating, and players were banned in Counter-Strike 2, with the feature also flagged by anti-cheats in Modern Warfare 2, Warzone, and Apex, as Tom's Hardware reported. AMD pulled the driver and shipped 23.10.2 with the feature disabled. The practical step: stay on a current driver, and if you want to trim the background footprint, the StartCN and StartDVR scheduled tasks can be disabled, which leaves display output and FreeSync untouched.