Drivers & Software

[radosuaf]

I'm choosing between the 6650 XT and 7600, which are roughly the same price/performance. I can get a cheaper, matured product that performs more or less the same or get the 7600, which, as I can see in these forums, has still driver issues.

There is only one driver set for the 7600, the initial release, which is solely for the 7600. Although other cards got a 23.5.2, 7600 did not. The 7600 release seemed to be a bit rushed, so maybe the drivers are not fully ready for it. Is AMD working on something special and can we expect some boost when the "final" drivers show up? When can that happen?

I need to buy the card within a week, so not much time to wait and see how the situation develops and the 6650 XT stock will soon be over.

[BMJ11789]

if they're similarly priced, I don't think it makes sense to go for the previous gen unless every extra tick of stability makes a difference to your use case. But I need to tell you that I got the RX 7600 and I and several other people are having an issue where the card is only recognized as a generic AMD card and not as RX 7600. this prevents the product verification tool from recognizing it for AMD rewards' code redeeming.

[radosuaf]

7600 is roughly 13% more expensive while offering around 7% more performance, so it's a so-so upgrade over the 6650 XT...

[BMJ11789]

Yes but you always have the fine wine BS to go with it. If that's a true thing then the gain in performance should widen with time, I doubt there's much left to squeeze out of the RX 6650.

[radosuaf]

Probably true, but I just checked how first 7900 vs latest driver look like and it does not look well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0zpewOQ1EE

[BMJ11789]

I think the difference is much more pronounced at the lower end, 3-8 frames are 10% improvement or more. It's a close call definitely but my rule with tech is never buy an older gen unless the flaws are glaring in the new one, but again, it's my own preference.

[radosuaf]

But if you're gaming at, say 60 FPS, will 6 FPS make a significant difference? Rather not. Seems there's an inherent flaw in the RDNA3 architecture that would explain why we have separate drivers for the 7600 + the hotfixes like the one for F1 2023, no updates for over a month and so on...

And things like "High idle power has situationally been observed when using select high-resolution and high refresh rate displays on Radeon™ RX 7000 series GPUs." are still not resolved since Adrenalin 22.12.1 that was released over half a year ago...

I'll change my card again before all the issues with 7000 series are resolved :).

[BMJ11789]

I think the difference is much more pronounced at the lower end, 3-8 frames are 10% improvement or more. It's a close call definitely but my rule with tech is never buy an older gen unless the flaws are glaring in the new one, but again, it's my own preference.

[JaconKin]

I'm hoping that they release a new driver update soon for the 7600, right now the driver will crash if  you are using ray tracing. I have seen this happen with both Cyberpunk and Witcher 3, haven't tested ray tracing in other games like Control. Though perhaps with a budget card like the 7600 ray tracing really isn't much of an option at times unless you lock game at 30 fps. 

[radosuaf]

6650 XT is playable with RT Low in CP2077 for sure, Medium struggles a bit. So if RT is light, 7600 should be perfectly fine. If it works that is ;).

[JaconKin]

I'm saying that the driver crashes right now if RT is enabled. 

[radosuaf]

Yes, I get it - hence my reluctancy to get the 7600...

[radosuaf]

But wait... There are LOTS of 7600 reviews with RT tested all over the Web and no info about any issues. Maybe something's wrong at your end?

[JaconKin]

Lot's of people test Cyberpunk with just the Benchmark, I had no issues running the benchmark with RT on. My game crashed at the point when a van attack Jackie and V after the first mission to rescue the women. You go to Witcher 3 forums and some one running a 7900 XTX is having crashing issues with Witcher 3, I was having same issues until I turned off RT on. Nothing wrong on my end, those are the only two games I have tested with RT right now I've been playing more Diablo 4 at the moment, but I wanted to test card my self and see how far I could push RT and what options I could use to run it smoothly with all RT on in both game, except for path tracing in Cyberpunk. I could crank up the RT and run at 30 FPS if I wanted, my choice, but right now can't do it in either game as drivers crash with RT On in both games. 

Also do you believe all testers sit there and play the game for 15 minute for a benchmark and their numbers? 

[JaconKin · Accepted solution]

New preview drivers for RX 7600 also after a 15-20 minute test with Witcher 3, seemed to fix my issue with RT being on in Witcher 3 with no crashes taking place. Also solves the issue of 7600 being listed as generic AMD GPU. 

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-23-10-01-41-vlk-extn

[BMJ11789]

Horaaay!!! dude you should post these as a thread or if you don't want to you could reply to my thread and I'll tag it as a solution. Cheers friend

[JaconKin]

Somebody already posted a thread about them, which is how I came about them, but figured it would be helpful to post it in this thread as well since so many people were talking about 7600 drivers so they could get the notification. 

One of the other things I'm happy about MSI Afterburner is working properly with the card now.