Drivers & Software

[akeeller]

Do you like the new interface of Adrenalin 2020 Edition?
Personally yes, but not too much. I like the idea and the single elements of the interface, but overall it’s quite a mess. Everything should be reorganized a little bit.

[pokester]

No cards support Crossfire in DX12 only Multi GPU is possible in DX12 and yes very few games support this. 

[colesdav]

Yes I see the same thing.
Not only that though.
I have Three RX Vega GPUs connected to my PC.
Two RX Vega 64 Liquids on PCIE3.0x8, PCIe 3.0x4 and an RX Vega 56 on PCIe2.0x4. 

In andrenalin 2019 19.12.1 I can select which GPUs I want to Crossfire.
On this I have no Choice.

I can only turn CrossFire on or off.

So I turn it on.

And guess what.

It Crossfires the RX Vega 64 Liquid on PCIe 3.0x8 with the Vega 56 on PCIe2.0x4.

I have 5 AMD GPUs connected at the moment.

The Radeon Pro DUO is counted as 2 cards.

[colesdav]

The System Information for the cards is showing the correct Bus Speeds (i.e PCIe 3.0 or 2.0 but it is showing the wrong bus widths.
I get no choice which GPUs I put in Crossfire in the menu, just on or off.
When I turn it on, it is Crossfire the Primary RX Vega 64 Liquid on PCIe 3.0x8 with a PowerColor Red Dragon running at PCIe 2.0x4.

I do not get the choose to Crossfire the Secondary RX Vega 64 Liquid which is connected via PCIe3.0x4.

Clearly whoever wrote this thing thinks it is beyond silly that anyone should ever buy more than one RX Vega GPU for their PC. 
I will put it in Crossfire anyhow, and check what menus are available.

[pokester]

It's been pretty obvious that AMD has given up on Crossfire in general for the past few years. 

[colesdav]

And the rest - Linux, Windows 8.1 Drivers, you name it.

[colesdav]

Here is CrossFire on:

Oh no! Anti-Lag is not supported with CrossFire how will I survive without it?

You can see that GPU3 (The RX Vega 64 Liquid on PCIE3.0x4, is shown as Discrete:

And just to show you it is the Vega 64 Liquid:

Sorry I need to produce another screenshot because I CANT FIT IT IN ONE 4K 32" SCREEN! Sorry not shouting at you. I am loosing my patience about this Adrenalin 2020 20.1.3 driver. Everything I look at is broken. It should not be out of Beta testing, never mind released.


Moving on. I want to point anout yet another little error with this Driver.
Back to the Global Graphics Settings.GPU 5 is the Radeon Pro DUO.

But according to the System Menu GPU 5 is an RX Vega 56.


Who knows what to believe - it says GPU 5 is Linked/Discrete.

[colesdav]

Now if I go to a game Profile that should support DX11 Crossfire - BF1 for example:

Scrolling down again...

But wait. If this thing is anything like what happend with the "Game Graphics" button, it possibly behaves differently before you launch the game than after you launch it. I will launch the game now. I do not expect great Crossfire performance by running an RX Vega 64 Liquid on PCIe3.0x8 with an RX Vega 56 on PCIe2.0x4 but here goes...

[colesdav]

Oh well - no Crossfire X Logo. Crossfire Disabled. Total load of rubbish. I forgot to mention it is flickering.

[colesdav]

Since I managed to get Crossfire to enable in Adrenalin 2020 20.1.4 with exactly the same setup I DDUed. Reinstalled Adrenalin 2020 20.1.3 with Factory Reset and tested the above BF1 with the same settings again. This time it worked and I got the CrossFire Logo to appear. I see activity on both GPUs. There is texture corruption and flickering. I tired ALT+ Enter to go quickly go to windowed and back to fullscreen in attempt to get rid of the flicker and texture corruption. That "Trick" frequently works, but it doesn't on this setup.

I cannot explain why DX11 CrossFire failed last time on Adrenalin 2020 20.1.3 but now works following another DDU + reinstall  with Factory ReSet after I tested and proved it works on Adrenalin 2020 20.1.4.

The Adrenalin Driver does not not let me select which RX Vegas to CrossFire it has Crossfired an XFX RX Vega 64 Liquid on PCIe3.0x8 with a PowerColor RX Vega 56 Red Dragon on PCIe2.0x4. Those are two different GPUs (Vega 64 + Vega 56)  on very different PCIe Bandwidths so perhaps that is the reason CrossFire Logo did not turn on and DX11 CrossFire did not enable the first time around.

Or maybe there is some bug in the GUI because the only choice shown is AMD Crossfire Mode disabled. I did click on that button the first time I tested Adrenalin 2020 20.1.3. I did not touch it the second time around then I tested DX11 CrossFire on Adrenalin 2020 20.1.3. 

The following DX11 CrossFire X  are missing in Adrenalin 2020 20.1.3 and Adrenalin 2020 20.1.4.

So it looks like anyone who has DX11 CrossFire cards or more than 2 cards of the same type that can be Crossfired or set in DX12 MultiGPU can forget using these new Adrenalin 2020 drivers completely. There is no proper legacy support for older CrossFire capable GPUs in these drivers.

[pokester]

Out of curiosity have you seen it mentioned anywhere that they have officially dropped support? Do we know if this is an oversight or a bug?

[hardcoregames_]

I believe CFX was dropped back around September for AMD but nVidia still supports it 

I am expecting AMD to surface with some big Navi cards soon, this way Vega 56 and Vega 64 prices will fall closer to where I like it

[colesdav]

I have not seen anything saying that new Adrenalin 2020 Drivers do not support DX11 CrossFire and clearly there is a CrossFire Button in the GUI.
I do know that AMD were making statements about not supporting Vega 64 and Vega 56 CrossFire initially but it was implemented eventually, for 2 Vega cards maximum, I do not think the RX5700XT supports DX11 CrossFire at all.

I tried Tri and QuadFire R9 Fury X on the Adrenalin 2019 Drivers last year in an attempt to hit top 3DMark Scores for AMD GPU System.
They showed negative scaling even at 4K benchmarks.
I had to go back to specific drivers from years ago (pre-Vega launch) for the R9 Fury X which did not have the HBM overclocking locked down by the AMD Drivers to get good DX11 Crossfire Performance with Tri+QuadFire. 
I managed to get top scores for every 3DMark test apart from FireStrike although that competing score shows up as invalid on 3DMark Database.

In other words 4 R9 Fury X with HBM Overclocking enabled beat everything else hands down.
That's AMDs best solution to compete with Nvidia in 3DMark right now.

Some games with DX12 MultiGPU support require that the "CrossFire" button is turned on in the AMD Driver. 
Other games with DX12 MultiGPU support - Ashes of the Singularity / Escalation for example. require that the "CrossFire" button in the AMD Driver is turned off.
It is all a bit of a "confusing" situation w.r.t. enabling DX12 MultiGPU.

I have given that feedback on this forum about that before.

Dropping the following options:

Default

AFR Friendly
Optimise1x1
AFR Compatible
Use AMD pre-defined Profile

Tends to indicate to me that they are completely dropping DX11 CrossFire Support for legacy GPUs.

Inability to detect which GPUs that can be DX11 Crossfired on the system and allow the user to decide which ones should be put into CrossFire if there are more than two of must be an oversight or an "only two cards maximum" mindset.

This is especially strange given AMD X570 and Navi GPUs support PCIe4.0 and AMD keep pushing the fact they have many more PCIe lanes at higher bandwidth on their Motherboards and their GPUs.

I am bewildered by what is being done in this Adrenalin Driver.

[hardcoregames_]

All I know is that with recent drivers I have experienced several BSOD problems of late

DDU has been working overtime as well

[pokester]

I believe that Vega II officially does not do Crossfire too.  I agree that for Multi GPU having to have Crossfire enabled or disabled is confusing. I had thought it was always off but found out a few months ago that not to be true. So yes confusing. Plus in cases where a card does not support Crossfire but the game wants it enabled, I wonder how that works out?

[hardcoregames_]

pokester wrote:

I believe that Vega II officially does not do Crossfire too.  I agree that for Multi GPU having to have Crossfire enabled or disabled is confusing. I had thought it was always off but found out a few months ago that not to be true. So yes confusing. Plus in cases where a card does not support Crossfire but the game wants it enabled, I wonder how that works out?

When I grabbed my RX 480 I could have bought 2 of them as they were very affordable. The reason I do not do that is that I was aware at the time that CFX and SLI were already dying.

Like I said earlier, DX12 is way different than earlier APIs. My RX 480 can play any DX1-DX11 game easily even with max graphics.

Modern DX12 games are more demanding but the 8GB of VRAM seem to be capable which is why I selected the version. Looking at my GTX 1060 with a measly 3GB of VRAM show that the card is seriously hampered by the lack of memory.

[colesdav]

A pair of 4GB HBM R9 Fury X in DX12 MultiGPU still run BF1 4K Ultra very well indeed.
Memory Bandwidth and how good the memory compression is and how fast you can get data from memory onto the PCIE Bus and onto the GPU is key.  
Slow PCIe is definitely a problem. In that case having lots of VRAM is very important so the game can load vast majority of data onto the GPU.
My big surprise some time ago was how well my Sapphire HD7970OC6GB could run Doom at the very highest possible settings at high resolutions over a PCIe2.0x4 - USB 3.0 mining adapter. The game load times were long though.

[Anonymous]

The FuryX is by far the best GPU AMD have ever created, such a sexy GPU.

I miss my FuryX, god bless you.

[colesdav]

Say hi to one of my many R9 Fury X...

[hardcoregames_]

john007 wrote:

The FuryX is by far the best GPU AMD have ever created, such a sexy GPU.

I miss my FuryX, god bless you.

My previous Radeon card was the HD 7870 which is still supported but compared to my RX 480 it is not viable by comparison

Fury was more costly than I wanted to spend funds on. Back then I was not earning as much as I do now.

[pokester]

I ran the Doom remake on my 7950 with my Phenom II x6 at over 60fps in Vulkan. What a testimony to how an optimized engine on a low level api can work. However the same setup fell on it's face in BF1. That is when I went to a RX 580 and still could not get over 30fps consistently. So I got a new CPU to fix that. Oddly enough though I later paired that Phenom II with a 1050Ti and it would get me not quite 60 but over 50 on low settings. It must not be quite as CPU dependent as the RX 580 was. 

[bobpi]

And I am using 6 monitors on 3 cards two of them alike. Every time I install a new driver, crossfire is on by default.

[hardcoregames_]

bobpi wrote:

And I am using 6 monitors on 3 cards two of them alike. Every time I install a new driver, crossfire is on by default.

what cards are you using?

[hardcoregames_]

do you have anything besides Vega 64 liquid cards?

[colesdav]

Hi, since you have been lookign at it - do you see this very "low level" problem?

Starting at Global Graphics. Note it is a Standard Profile. 

Click on Anti-Lag. That is defined as a Custom Profile.

Now click on Anti-Lag again to turn it off.

Erm - it is still a Custom Profile.

How did this pass QA Testing? It is pretty obvious isn't it?

Also for some unknown reason, Turning Chill on is not a custom profile. Neither is changing waiting for veritical refresh or changing most of the Advanced options.

I still cannot work that one out.

[colesdav]

OK I am just back into Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1

Oh look at this - What do i see before me?
Wow a choice of which RX Vega GPUs I can Crossfire with the Primary RX Vega 64 Liquid.

[colesdav]

Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1 is able to run DX11 multiGPU on the RX Vega 64 Liquid and the RX Vega 56 or Two RX Vega 64 Liquid cards.
There is some texture corruption on DX11 Crossfire in both cases. I think  might just be the settings I used.
Turning on the Radeon performance overlay absolutely kills FPS in DX11 Crossfire.
DX12 MultiGPU is running well for both card combinations. 

I DDUed Adrenalin 2019.12.1 in Safe mode. disconnected from the internet and installed 2020 20.1.4
I am still unable to select whch RX Vega to Crossfire with and it still picks the Primary RX Vega 64 Liquid and the RX Vega 56.
However this time when I launch ...

BF1 DX12 MultiGPU 4K Maxed out settings - Both GPUs are active. 

And if I turn off DX12 (hence DX11) exit and relaunch the game I see this:


Turning off the Radeon Overlay I see about 30 FPS.

The ability to select which GPUs you want to DX11 Crossfire or DX12 MultiGPU should still be in the Driver for cases where you have more than one GPU.
Uninstalling Adrenalin 2020 20.1.4. now.

Bye.

[colesdav]

Had to save the above before completed edit.

The ability to select which GPUs you want to DX11 Crossfire or DX12 MultiGPU should still be in the Driver for cases where you have more than one GPU Crossfire or MultiGPU combination available. Ie if you have 3 RX Vega 64s then you get to select 2 of them for DX11 Crossfire or MultiGPU and not rely on total random choice by the driver.

[hardcoregames_]

I remember back when I was using GTX 260 SLI which was barely able to handle 1920x1080. Discussing the matter on the nVidia forum at length was the idea of diminishing returns as a third card was not able to be leveraged with the alternate frame rendering technique.

Today with DX12 cards work together on one frame. This is a complete change in architecture to DX11 and previous which are built in alternate frame rendering.

[colesdav]

Yes sure - Could be a long discussion on a separate thread about DX12 MultiGPU promises versus the reality.
Right now i just want to point out a few problems with the Adrenalin 2020 Driver because AMD have dropped many things.
I have PCs with multiple AMD GPUs of the same type and AMD view seems to be that no one would be stupid enough to buy more than 2 of their GPUs of the same type and fit them on 1 PC.
Therefore they are randomly Crossfiring comaptible cards without giving the user a choice or considering which PCIe interface is best.
The Adrenalin 2020 Driver does not seem to have an accurate view of PCIe Speeds or Bus Widths that the GPUs are connected to based on what it is reporting.

[hardcoregames_]

All I know is that in this era of DX12 that the old ways have to give way to a new development model.

My RX 480 is dramatically more powerful than the old GTX 260.

The GTX 260 with 216 cores at 55nm was 476 GFLOPS.

My overclocked RX 480 at 14nm is slightly over 6 TFLOPS which is more than 10x more powerful.

The Fury is more or less on par with my overclocked RX 480 8GB.

So any old title will be playable across the board with my RX 480. DX12 titles work fine and even at 3840x2160 by RX 480 is still standing.

The Vega 8 graphics with the R3 2200 is about the same as the GTX 260. The Vega 11 with my R5 2400G is closer to the GT 1030.

[colesdav]

Now turning off Crossfire button and ... yes it disengaged Crossfire (often this requres another reboot immediately after turning the Crossfire switch Off).Third GPU shows up.

[colesdav]

Where is Global FRTC?

I only see

If I turn on Chill:

I see this:

First Question.
Why is that Radeon Chill Setting called "Max FPS"?

I really hope that AMD have not combined Global FRTC with Chill_Max in one slider.
They have very likely made Chill Keyboard only input performance so poor to the point where it will be completely crippled and limited to 40 FPS if I want to have a max Global FRTC of 60 FPS, with Chill_Min set to 30.

You need Global FRTC to limit max FPS in games where rapid mouse movement is not limited to Chill_Min.
You need Chill_Min to set minimum frame rate for max power saving with no user keyboard or mouse input.

You need Chill_Max - which you could call "Chill performance level" - I do not care. to adjust Chill keyboard only input FPS performance.

Is it really that difficult to have three sliders to do that? 

[colesdav]

RE: I really hope that AMD have not combined Global FRTC with Chill_Max in one slider.

Yes , that is exactly what has been done.

I just tested Radeon Chill on BFV 4K Ultra in DX11 and DX12, Chill_Min = 30 Chill_Max = 59, and Chill_Min = 30, Chill_Max = 300.
RX Vega 64 Liquid.

First of all, Rapid mouse movement is supposed to clamp FPS to Chill_Min.
That is broken in both DX11 and DX12.
The FPS is only limited by GPU performance of the Chill_Max value.
Therefore the GPU is burning too much power if the user is moving mouse rapidly, they cannot see anything but a blur anyhow - so it should limit FPS to Chill_Min.

If I need reasonable keyboard only input FPS of about 55 FPS and I save enough power to prevent the GPU overheating then my Frame Rate Target is set to 300 FPS. 
On the other hand if I want to limit FPS to 59, and save max power with Chill_Min = 30 - I have to put up with  an in game keyboard only input FPS of 40.

40 FPS is lower than the FreeSync Range on most monitors.
300 FPS is above the top end FreeSync range for most monitors.

Congratulations on breaking Chill.

[colesdav]

Still not clever enough to find Origin games on D: Drive.
I had to manually add BFV.
Edit on 27 Jan: Note it is unable to pick up game Icons either.
Then not clever enough to list BFV in alphabetical order:

[hardcoregames_]

no scroll bar on compatibility for 20.1.3 that is present on other displays

[guily6669]

I'm getting pretty tired of all this crap and why AMD support team doesn't even care, do they even come to the forum?

Almost nothing works on this new drivers for me, also I still have the bug where I open a game or do other stuff and the anti-cheat, the game engine, the windows explorer and many other stuff goes into the gaming tab.

The OC doesn't work 4 me, I change something to a game profile and apply, I open the game and it's always using stock settings, doesnt apply OC on clocks, ram, fan speed, nothing at all for the game...

Also, after exiting a lot of games I can't open AMD software anymore it just opens a gray window...

I'm currently using 20.1.1 and didnt bothered updating to 20.1.3 as the changelogs never mention any fix at all for any of those bugs just other random crap which I don't care...

Also I wanted the god damn custom installer and chose not to install game adviser, game performance analyser which is killing my old CPU performance much more than the older AMD style drivers without that crap and I also don't want to install the streaming crap because I don't stream and I hope they fix it and make everything optional for people like me who don't care to see a GPU driver with more crapware and random stuff than many apps out there when I don't even plan to use them and just eat more ram and CPU power for something I didnt asked for or want...

I WANT OPTIONS not being obligated to install all the crapware AMD wants that I don't...

[hardcoregames_]

My RX 480 is factory overclocked so I am happy enough as the card is stable which is more important that anything.

I do feed it more power so that the card can take what it needs.

I have an HX1000i as I have indulged in power pig video cards a lot. If you have power, AMD will perk up the performance.

[colesdav]

The "AMD representatives" people I spoke to on the Red Team Forum on Discord all told me they like the new Adrenalin 2020 interface.

[colesdav]

Reason why the "Always On" Game Advisor is reporting nonsense performance metrics.
RX Vega 64 Liquid running BFV at 4K Ultra DX12 can barely sustain 55 FPS keyboard only input with Radeon Chill on with Chill_Min = 30, Chill_Max = 300. Global FRTC=59 in Adrenalin 2019.12.1. I have to use those settings to stop the GPU from overheating.

Now in Adrenalin 2020 20.1.3 where rapid mouse movement does not lock to Chill_Min and is only limited to the new "Chill_Max = Global FRTC" =300 setting. Rapid mouse movement FPS is only limited to 300 FPS in that case.  The RX Vega 64 Liquid now overheats very quickly.

Now lets see what performance numbers the new "Always On" Game Advisor is reporting.

It reports an Average FPS of 135 - why? because it counts the FPS that is seen when you are in the in game menus.

It gets even better when I exit the game it reports 147.3 FPS for BFV 4K Ultra on an RX Vega 64 Liquid.
That is probably better performance than an RTX2080Ti.
Wow!

And look at the Gaming Menu for BFV - it also has that useful information about my last game session;Average FPS 147.3

Excellent

Except it is not excellent.
It is nonsense.

The "Always on Game Advisor" cannot tell the difference between sitting in a game menu running at very high FPS and the FPS actually achieved when running the game. So it is reporting nonsense.

Please go back to the situation in Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1 where the user has the choice if and when to start and stop the Game Advisor.
That was actually useful.

[colesdav]

Regarding Stability of Adrenalin 20.1.3. I had 5 PC crashes just using Firefox with RX Vega 64 Liquid driving the display after DDU + Install.