PC Drivers & Software

[rawintellect]

I was having over 20 FPS loss in a few games (most notably in Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo). Each time I installed the drivers mentioned in the title and tried the play these games I immediately experienced stuttering and at LEAST a 20 fps loss in performance.

Installing these SAME drivers using the setup.exe on Windows 11 21H2 worked flawlessly. No loss in FPS.

Frustrated I was about to give up running beta when Holy cow!!!! I figured it out!!!!

It seems to be an issue with the INSTALLER. Not the driver per se.

Here's how I determined this.

(1) I went home and did just as I said. I disabled "full screen optimizations" and enabled the DPI to be controlled by the application.

(2) I then installed 22.8.2 via the installer and retested. Result? Over 20 fps loss again.

(3) So feeling defeated I grasped at straws and removed 22.8.2 and realized I had one more driver I DIDN'T test. The driver from WINDOWS UPDATE!!!

(4) Since I had drivers turned off via group policy I went back into group policy and turned it on.

(5) I then rebooted and clicked windows update. Immediately it installed that driver plus the control console from the windows store. I knew it was NOT the one from AMD's site because there was no option to upgrade on the home page of the control app.

(6) So seeing that I'm all set to test I fired up Planet Zoo...and what do you know!?!?!? The 20 FPS was back!!! No stuttering! Smooth as glass!!!

(7) Now at first I was content to just run with this driver since it was released on 8/19/22. But then I knew that had to be 22.8.1. I wanted 22.8.2 and I had a theory to test to get it.

(8) I downloaded 22.8.2 and did NOT run the installer. I just ran the extract part of the installer. Not the actual setup.exe that DOES the install.

(9) Instead I went to device manager and figured I'd MANUALLY update the driver, even if that meant living with the control console from Windows Store.

(10) I tree'd open Display adapters and right clicked on my 6900XT. I chose "update driver" > Browse my computer for drivers > let me pick from a list of drivers on my computer > have disk > browse.

(11) I navigated to where the AMD extract part of the install stored the driver which was: C:\AMD\AMD-Software-Adrenalin-Edition-22.8.2-Win10-Win11-Aug22\Packages\Drivers\Display\WT6A_INF\U0382768.inf

(12) I clicked open and it installed not only the driver but the UPDATED CONTROL CONSOLE VIA windows installer. NOT AMD.

(13) I then rebooted and retested and YAY!!!!!!! No FPS loss!!!! No stutter!!!! I retested Planet Coaster too! Same thing!!!

ALL IS WELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is NOT a windows 11 beta 22622.598 issue. This is an issue with AMDs installer executable! Not even an issue with the driver per se!

I did this LONG write-up partly for you but also so I can copy paste this in AMDs subreddit as well as their user forums and ANYONE else that will listen to me.

PROBLEM SOLVED. This was my process to get there!

33+ years in IT/Tech support finally comes in handy for problem solving.

[rawintellect · Accepted solution]

*********EDIT/UPDATE 09/15/22***********

After further testing and trying to break this again, I succeeded. It seems that it's how the AMD driver survives the upgrade process in Windows from 22000 (21H2) to 22622 (22H2). Not the installer (setup.exe) per se.

It seems in order to break this I have to start out on Windows 22000 (21H2) with the optional driver 22.8.2/22.8.1/22.7.1 and then simply upgrade via Windows Insider (beta). Nothing else. That breaks it.

However, in order to survive the upgrade process and NOT break the driver I installed the driver provided by Windows update (AMD Radeon Software v31.0.12027.2005) AND the control console from the Microsoft Store (AMD Radeon Software) and THEN upgraded. It works! Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo experience NO stuttering and no FPS loss.

Now once upgraded I was then able to further test the setup.exe by removing AMD Radeon Software v31.0.12027.2005 and the control console from the Microsoft Store (AMD Radeon Software) and installing with a "factory reset" like normal.

FPS remains solid in both games and I'm running 22.8.2 as I type this with no issues.

Something is getting broken during the upgrade process in Windows between 21H2 and 22H2 with the optional releases of the AMD driver. Whatever is allowing the Windows update version (AMD Radeon Software v31.0.12027.2005) to survive the upgrade process seems to be the answer. A compile compatibility issue perhaps? I'm just guessing. But I was able to reproduce this 3 times over prior to posting this update.

[Anonymous]

Windows and vulkan and other things will have different display settings for HDR or 10bit or for using fullscreen.. using borderless or dynamic or whatever.. which enabling HDR or whatever can drop fps by about 20 or so.. or ray tracing or whatever. So often theres retard game and app devs who instead of using the OS or the vulkan standards or the hardware makers defaults.. they reinvent the wheel 50 times over and 10x worse.. then theres the OS people never turning anything on by default in case of conflicts or instability.. then the graphics card people or hardware vendors.. giving separate driver software that dont enable the hardware you need to do that in the OS.. and turning the feature on almost always does the entire operating system every application, your antivirus being antialiased for example.. each build of the OS and the drivers tries to fix issues where things that shouldnt be enabled are from one of the others of the 3.. its a massive free for all rock paper scissors war that everybody everywhere always loses and never wins. you can only trial and error cycle through fullscreenmode exclusive mode and borderless and hdr on or off or whatever with enhanced sync on or off with each driver update.. not to mention the OS will often update with what they pretend is security which will massively cripple performance as every hacker and rootkit and trojan already in your system will try to do what they've always done and it wont work so it will constantly attack the system trying to force it causing massive slow downs.

but yes often an hour after installing new drivers its slow and nasty and been swapped out or quality set lower somehow so you need to browse to the installer directory and reinstall them. I have no clue who does this or causes this or why.. but you just have to! 

VULKAN titles in particular though, or many certain game developers develop the games with an intended different to everybody elses frame output to the display using their own buffering/caching or streaming system.. they think is better than the hardware makers and the OS.. but maybe isnt? but it will require you to match it to how they developed the game to capped 120fps or try toggling unlimited or variable FPS or typing them in manually in registry or a config.ini text file to see what works best with each game title and if it needs enhanced sync or not or if freesync works or not? fullscreen or not.. you literally have to go through each thing as they've often turned stuff on or set it for their computer and then nobody has any clue how to do things.. because why have global standards and a standardized operating system when you can cheap open source everybody ruin everything together all at once with random stuff you just stuck there.