Drivers & Software

[ardankyaosen]

I just reported this via AMD's Bug Report Tool, but thought I'd put it here in case anyone else is running into the same issue. 

Recent versions of Adrenalin (or just the drivers associated with them) are causing some programs to not appear to launch.  But, looking in Task Manager will show its process there using a bit more than 10% of the CPU. I've seen this most often with Calibre ebook manager (both the main program and (usually) its editor), but I'm pretty sure I saw it once with Yubico Authenticator.

The issue happened across three installs of Windows (Windows 11 and now Windows 10) on this machine.  But, doesn't happen on a similar machine with an NVidia GPU. I just finished uninstalling Adrenalin from this computer (leaving no Adrenalin software, and Device Manager says it's using driver version 31.0.12027.7000 released on 10/20/2022) and the problem goes away. Doing a Factory Install of Adrenalin 22.12.2 back to this machine and leaving everything at default causes the problem to re-appear. I first noticed this with the previous Adrenalin version (22.11.1), but it's possible it happened earlier.

The easiest way to reproduce this is to load up Calibre ( https://calibre-ebook.com/download ) and edit any epub (the About Calibre epub it comes with by default will work). You can quickly do this until the failure happens by simply highlighting the epub in the main Calibre program, hitting "T" to ediT it and then hitting ALT-F4 (assuming it loads) to quit the editor. Repeat until the editor doesn't appear (usually half a dozen times or so). Look at Task Manager sorted by CPU use and see the calibre thread using a bit more than 10% of the CPU. Close Calibre and a single calibre process will remain in Task Manager using about 10% of the CPU. Kill that task. Usually, restarting the editor will work fine for a while.

Computer: GIGABYTE B550 VISION D-P
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X (Vermeer, VMR-B0)
3700 MHz (37.00x100.0) @ 3593 MHz (36.00x99.8)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE B550 VISION D-P
BIOS: F15d, 07/20/2022
Chipset: AMD B550 (Promontory PROM19 C)
Memory: 16384 MBytes @ 1597 MHz, 14-14-14-34
- 8192 MB PC25600 DDR4 SDRAM - G.Skill F4-3200C14-8GFX
- 8192 MB PC25600 DDR4 SDRAM - G.Skill F4-3200C14-8GFX
Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, 16384 MB GDDR6 SDRAM
Drive: KINGSTON SKC3000D2048G, 2000.4 GB, NVMe
Sound: ATI/AMD Navi2x - High Definition Audio Controller
Sound: AMD Family 17h/19h - HD Audio Controller
Network: RealTek Semiconductor RTL8125 Gaming 2.5GbE Family Ethernet Controller
Network: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional (x64) Build 19045.2364

[ardankyaosen]

The really interesting (though not in a good way) thing about this is that it's very possible this problem is caused by (in the case of my most common program) Calibre's use of QT which uses QTWebEngine to render things in, essentially, a chromium browser using hardware (i.e., gpu) acceleration.  Yet, I'm pretty sure the recent AMD graphics drivers had fixes specifically for hardware accelerated browser problems.

[generic_gen]

Thank Thank Thank you for posting this. Same issue with XnViewMP 1.4.0 (and some other programs that use Qt I don't want to name) It's been bothering me for months and I couldn't find any info until now. No one talks about the crash even on XnView's own support forum, so I thought it was only me.

If I look into the problematic program I can see a thread of atio6axx.dll consuming CPU. I'm no expert, don't know what that is, but by the dll I guess it's the same OpenGL related issue like it was mentioned in other posts here.

Now I'm using Radeon Pro Software 22.Q4 everything seems to be ok.

[ardankyaosen]

If this is an issue with OpenGL and QT, it's even more head-scratching.  From what I've read, Adrenalin, itself, uses QT.

Oh, well. Regardless, since I can reproduce the issue in Calibre, I'll keep checking any new drivers and use Adrenalin's Report Bug Tool to formally report it.  If enough people do that, maybe they'll be able to track it down.

[ardankyaosen]

Knock on wood, but it LOOKS like the latest AMD graphics drivers (Adrenalin 23.2.1 (WHQL) dated 2/14/2023) have fixed this issue. I downloaded and installed them (w/ the factory reset option selected) and tested in Calibre (where I had my problem with earlier drivers) by repeatedly editing a book and then closing the editor ("T" | ALT-F4). I did that a couple of dozen time without problem. I also did the same with the Viewer ("V" | ALT-F4). Similarly, no problem. Here's hoping that continues.

My assumption was AMD's handing of the OpenGL stuff that QT WebEngine uses (that Calibre uses that lay in the house that Jack built ) was not up-to-snuff. There's nothing in AMD's Release Notes specifically about OpenGL fixes. But, regardless, I'll take whatever the fix was.