With the new Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition update, AMD is bringing PC-to-PC streaming to AMD Link. This means that if you have a Radeon graphics card, you can lend your PC to a buddy, play local co-op games together, or even get help troubleshooting your PC through the power of the Internet.

If you don't remember AMD Link, it is a streaming app built into the Radeon software and available for any AMD graphics card. It was first introduced in 2018 as a way to wirelessly beaming PC games to mobile devices and has received several quality-of-life improvements in subsequent AMD Adrenalin overhauls.

Today's update, 21.4.1, introduces PC-to-PC streaming, which is great news for PC gamers, allowing them to share their desktop and gaming sessions locally or remotely between two Radeon PCs.

Note: Radeon PC. you and your streaming partner, or vice versa, both need to have Radeon GPUs running in their rigs. And that is not as easy an entry requirement as it once was, given the current chip shortage.

There is no standalone AMD Link PC client like there is on Google, iOS, or Amazon, which means there is no way to get the app without installing Radeon drivers, even if you are not hosting the session. It is not entirely clear why AMD Link is enclosed in AMD Link on the PC, but ultimately, it is a feature of limited usefulness to the majority of PC gamers.

This feature allows you to share a view of your entire PC, hand over control to a fellow player in a single player game, or play a local co-op game remotely. AMD also states that it is a useful tool that allows you to troubleshoot your PC as if you were there. Just trust the person on the other end of the connection with your life.

If you and your friend meet the hardware requirements, you can jump into the Radeon settings and enable the AMD Link server. From there, you can provide a game code for a one-time connection to your friend's PC or manually set up a more permanent link. You can also quickly find a compatible PC running AMD Link on your local network.

Once the connection is established, everything from your desktop to your gaming session will be shared to the remote PC.

Certainly not the smoothest interface. There are multiple menus for receiving or sending connections, the mobile and Windows menus are different, and the AMD link is stored within a tab in the settings menu.

We also had trouble setting up a remote gaming session; Link would get as far as getting the name of the remote PC, but from there it was unable to complete the connection, eventually displaying a "unable to connect" error. This happened on my PC and two of my colleagues' PCs, despite running the Windows firewall settings in the app.

It is unfortunate that we were not able to try the remote game mode. Especially since our benevolent leader, Dave James, has been asking for a way to play FIFA remotely co-operatively without lag since the beginning of the global blockade, whether it be Nvidia's GeForce Now, PC-to-PC services like Parsec, or Steam's I'd like to see how it compares to Remote Play Together. These are all free alternatives and do not require proprietary hardware.

However, the local connection worked fine. It is certainly possible to pack an inexpensive APU into a compact machine, put it by the TV, and beaming a PC with a powerful Radeon GPU to enjoy high-end gaming in the living room. Without having to deal with a graphics card ...... which is not so easy to come by nowadays.

In our experience, a more fully featured software package for Radeon GPU owners, although a bit more complicated, is certainly not a bad idea. And if you don't mind such things, AMD now offers a minimal driver-only installation option for Radeon software that provides only the basics.