PC Drivers & Software

[VelcroSnake]

I am having an issue with Radeon Chill in all games that I am not sure if is related to drivers or my new 7900 XTX, as I don't remember having these issues with the 6800 I upgraded from.

Basically, what is happening is if I set the Min to 60, and the max to 120, it will drop to 60 fine when I'm not doing anything, but in games where it should boost past 120 if Chill is off it keeps the FPS lower than 120. In some games it hangs around 90 fps, some lower. If I toggle Chill off the FPS goes back to normal, boosting higher than the 120 max limit I have set with Chill.

For instance, in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk I generally get over 600 FPS with Chill off and no limiter, but with Chill on and capped at 120, it kinda stays at 80 fps with some spikes above that up to 120, but then back down to 80 most of the time, unless not moving in which it drops to the 60 min value. As soon as I toggle off Chill my FPS jumps into the 600+ range.

If I set the Min and Max on Chill to 120, it has that no problem and locks it in at 120 FPS, and there is no issue with Frame Rate Target control. So it seems to only be the Max on Chill that is causing it to not reach it's actual theoretical limit and the Min value is working correctly.

I've tried various older drivers than 24.2.1, running DDU each time I try installing and testing an older driver, but every time it's the same thing. The card runs perfectly outside of this Chill issue.

I've also shut down any outside programs aside from those needed to run the game and test, but no solution. V-Sync off obviously, with Freesync on, monitor at 144Hz. And this is a fresh Windows install, as I reinstalled Windows just in case there might be an issue buried somewhere in there.

PC Specs:

• 5800X3d
• PowerColor RX 7900 XTX
• 32gb DDR4-3600 RAM
• PCI-E 4 m.2 SSD

7900 XTX settings: (issue persists when run 'default' settings)

• Frequency Range: 2400 - 2500
• mV: 1100
• VRAM: 2612
• Power Limit: +15

Games I've seen this behavior in (all I've tried, every new game I checked has had the same issue):

• Helldivers 2
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Spider-Man Remastered
• Baldur's Gate 3
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
• Palworld

I did searching but wasn't able to find other people having the same issue with Chill aside from one post on the AMDHelp sub from 24 days back that had a similar problem. I remember it working fine with my 6800, so I'm kind of at a loss, not sure if it's just a bug with my 7900 XTX or something else. (not running any different software or hardware than I was before, aside from the GPU).

[VelcroSnake · Accepted solution]

I did a lot more searching, testing and reading in between the lines, and have determined that Chill on RDNA3 just works differently than it does on RDNA2.

On RDNA2 it will drop down to the Min with no inputs, but any input will cause it to go full bore up to the max value until there are no inputs and it will drop back to the Min.

It seems with RDNA3 it's smarter, in that with no input it will drop to the Min, but when there is input it won't automatically go to the Max, but determines the amount of movement in the input (or in the game?) and ramps up the FPS accordingly.

For instance, in Helldivers 2 I can run back and forth on the ship and the FPS only gets to around 80 or 90, but if I run around the ship while at the same time shaking my mouse back and forth quickly, it goes to 120 and locks in as long as I keep up that quick movement.

I am not sure I like it working the way it does with RDNA3 more or not, as I used Chill as more a break for the GPU when I wasn't doing anything or in menus, and wanted full go aside from that, but it definitely does save on energy while playing when don't NEED it to be full go as long as it does a good enough job with Freesync to not let me see the FPS fluctuations.

As is I just set the Min to 80 instead of 60 now, which gives it a more narrow band of operation and helps keep it higher in the FPS range even when not at the max 120 I set.

It'd be cool down the line if AMD let you choose how Chill operated with RDNA3, so I could change it back to how it worked with RDNA2 depending on the game.