Hey everybody, I'm one of the unlucky users who've had some issues with the 5700 XT, it's a shame as this card is truly a beast but it seems it chokes itself when it shouldn't. I wanted to shed some more light into these issues as I've never seen this tried or suggested before and my findings point to AMD's faulty Windows drivers. Before we get into what I found was a "solution", let's talk specs and the solutions I tried before, there's a TL;DR at the bottom too:
Ryzen 1600 @3.6 GHz XFX 5700 XT Thicc II Pro
Corsair LPX (2X8GB) @ 3000 MHz XMP Profile 2
Tomahawk Arctic B350
Thermaltake Smart 700W 80+ White Certified PSU
LG 29" 21:9 75hz 1080p
I think I tried anything and everything I could find on reddit and different forums. I started with this card on Windows 1909 and AMD drivers 20.4.2. There I had performance issues with The Witcher 3 (low usage), GTA V (low usage), Subnautica (low usage), Mirror's Edge Catalyst (stuttering), Kingdom Come: Deliverance (15FPS), ARK: Survival Evolved (15FPS), Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (45FPS) and The Division 2 (Stuttering).
That's where my quest for fixing this whole thing started. I reinstalled my drivers, disabled/enabled XMP, BIOS updates, Chipset Drivers, disabled/enabled OC, undervolted, overclocked, DDU, minimum GPU clock from 1500-1800MHz, uninstalled any overlay (Riva, Afterburner, even AMDs), using VSR, even reinstalled (Clean) Windows when the 2004 version became available to me.
After this whole ordeal and doing some steps multiple times I could only fix: The Division (Stuttering almost gone), Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Better performance, don't know if intended but get form 45-75 on Very High), Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (Fixed), ARK (Fixed, but not great performance although that's expected in ARK).
I decided to try something else, so I installed Linux and see if running the games in their Windows version through Steam Proton would deliver the same performance issues. Here are my results, keep in mind I always play with V-Sync on:
| Game | Windows | Linux |
|---|
| The Witcher 3 | 50 FPS | 75 FPS |
| GTA V | 50 FPS | 75 FPS |
| Mirror's Edge Catalyst | 75 stutter to 60 every couple of seconds | 75 FPS |
| Kingdom Come: Deliverance | 40-75 FPS | 40-75 FPS |
I couldn't get Subnautica because the latest update to the Epic Games Store messed up game installation, but I really wanted to know the results with this game as I've really enjoyed it even with performance issues.
It seems that the issue (this is for the naysayers), is completely on AMD's drivers on Windows. I just wanted to share this because honestly, I was worried my card just had issues, but alas, I can prove it's not. Is it simple to install and run Linux? No, it's a whole thing too, and it took me hours to sort through some issues to get both Windows and Linux on the same drive and all that. Is it worth it? I don't know, it would a case by case thing, I know I'm happy now that I can finally get those pesky games to run well. This is not to say Linux or Windows is better, but to shed some light on AMD's drivers, I still will use Windows as I still play online games like R6 Siege and Apex, although Rocket League runs perfectly online.
I hope this helps some people, and if in need of some help setting up Linux I can help out a little.
TL;DR Installed Linux to try Windows games with issues, issues gone.
