PC Drivers & Software

[railrunner]

UPDATE:

The following issues seem to be fixed with the recently released 19.2.3 Adrenalin drivers.

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Greetings,

I just installed the latest 19.1.1 beta driver and noticed a weird and even gamebreaking issue in World of Warcraft, running with DirectX 12 API setting. Flying around in busy Stormwind causes heavy stuttering in shorter periods, the screen freezes for a second or two, goes back to normal, stays like that for a few more seconds, before it freezes again. The game eventually crashes, with Windows 10 showing an error notofication:

"Access to graphics hardware has been blocked for wow.exe."

I noticed within Wattman, every freeze causes a massive clock spike in a negative way: The clocks reset to lowest P-State, before stabilizing for a short time, just to spike down again. I know it's not much, but here is a screenshot showing the issue:

Bild: 19-1-16xfcy.jpg - abload.de

As you can see, there is a spike quite soon after I started the game, which is when the picture froze for the first time. Got back to normal, moved around a bit, the next three spikes caused freezes in short periods, again before going back to normal. The last spike crashed the game, giving me the error notification stated above.

Now I reinstalled the 18.12.3 drivers, and everything works fine as usual. I again decided to try the 19.1.1 Beta, this time however I went for a clean, "new installation". The issues appeared again, regardless of the Wattman settings by the way, doesn't matter whether "Balanced", "Turbo", "Energy Saving" or "Custom" is set.

Again I reinstalled the previous 18.12.3 drivers and the game works just fine.

My system:

Mainboard: Asrock X370 Gaming Professional (5.10 BIOS)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

RAM: 32 GB G.Skill RGB optimized for Ryzen, running at 3200MHz

GPU: Sapphire Radeon Vega 64 Nitro

OS: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit (latest official version)

SSDs: Samsung 960 Evo NVME, SanDisk Ultra II SATA, Crucial MX500 SATA

HDDs: Samsung 500 GB SATA, WD Blue 1 TB SATA

GPU drivers: Radeon Adrenaline 19.1.1 / 18.12.3

Chipset drivers: 18.10.1810

[sckhar]

I have just updated to the 19.1.2 drivers for the resident evil 2 game ready driver, however wow issues are back exactly as with 19.1.1 (which by the way are not listed in the 'known issues' in the release notes for either version of the driver).

do not update to 19.1.2 from 18 version if you play wow.

[pr0metheus]

Thx for letting us know, i'm kinda surprised of the whole situation, everything was good untill 19.1.1 and now it seems to take very long time for amd to address the issue. :/

[xtion]

NO MATTER WHAT, I CAN NOT GET RIDE OF THIS ISSUE.

Hello everyone and thanks for the reports you did, so far i had random blue screen error(especially when i over clock CPU and ram and adding extra memory to my 2400G GPU from bios)

now I've issues with wow on Dx12(seems the issue persists even in Dx11) display graphic driver will block the wow.exe and not only that! even windows microsoft! so have to reset or waiting for a blue screen crash! happened with the new driver update! 19.1.1.

also before that, free sync didn't work on wow Dx12, although free sync works only on Dx11 and blizzard developers and supports said: this is something related to AMD support, not the game support.

and something weird? why GPU has 100% usage? when i do alto tab i have spike lags drop frame rate while browsing in windows and desktop! the 100% usage wasn't like that before the new update! until recently when i updated to 19.1.1.

I can fix this only by downgrading to the previous version, but still have the free sync issues with that old driver also, this is my first exp with AMD hardware and sadly i can say its not worth it even with the price, so much issues, so much crashes, especially when you look for answers and somehow you see in Youtube that people has many different issues also, streamers viewers etc etc.

[dustraider8]

I've had my R9 380X for 3 years now and this is the first time I have problems with a driver.

[xtion]

Anyone's paying attention to this?

[railrunner]

Yes, they are investigating this issue. For me, I never had any problems when using Freesync with my Vega 64 with any of the 18.x.x driver libraries, have been running DX12 exclusively since the 8.0 patch was available.

[somet]

Update:

- I noticed DX 11 is being suggested here as a fix, for me setting to DX 11 and even the lowest graphics settings in wow does not fix anything.

- I emailed AMD support, about this issue as advised, they got back to me today saying this forum link displays 404 as well as all the information I provided them on WoW, which it does not so it is most likely AMD is using that as an excuse possibly to not update the drivers to work for WoW.

- I think I am going to rip my graphics cards out my PC and burn them and cancel my WoW subscription lol.

[Matt_AMD]

You can try a pre 19.1.1 driver which some users have reported resolves the issue. 

Earlier in the thread i acknolwedged the issue and engineering are looking at it.

Once i have a further update i will update the thread. 

[brenton]

Any updates? 19.2.1 doesn't fix the WoW crash according to bwyazel‌

[railrunner]

somet schrieb:

Update:

- I noticed DX 11 is being suggested here as a fix, for me setting to DX 11 and even the lowest graphics settings in wow does not fix anything.

- I emailed AMD support, about this issue as advised, they got back to me today saying this forum link displays 404 as well as all the information I provided them on WoW, which it does not so it is most likely AMD is using that as an excuse possibly to not update the drivers to work for WoW.

- I think I am going to rip my graphics cards out my PC and burn them and cancel my WoW subscription lol.

Please just use a previous Radeon Adrenalin driver, for me, 18.12.3 is working just fine, actually all 18.x.x drivers have been working just fine. 

Download these either via AMDs own website by selecting the small "Previous drivers" link or go to an external site, like Techpowerup:

Download AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 | TechPowerUp 

I am pretty sure they are going to fix this issue, however it might take some time. When I mailed them, they replied (just as amdmatt stated), they have received multpiple reports already and are investigating the problems.

[surferslayapkr]

I wanted to chime in an say that I am experiencing the same issues as above with the GPU crashing while World of Warcraft is running in DX12. This is on a brand new RX 590 card I received yesterday on the newest drivers. The crashing would happen randomly and would receive a message stating in event viewer:

Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

This is the message I recieve every time I try to play WoW in DX12. I have tested multiple other games with no such problem which seems to be isololated to WoW. I have tested DX11 which has been successful with no crashes. I decided to roll-back my driver to 18.12.3 and have been playing on DX12 with no issues thus far (DX12 is MUCH better performance wise when it's not crashing). This has to be related to the most current drivers. I'm glad I found this post as I was thinking it this new gpu that was faulty, which from reading this post seems less likely. 

[xtion]

selling my amd, buying a nvidia gpu again, biggest mistake in my gaming life i did to change to amd

[dustraider8]

What's so hard about downgrading to 18.12.3 and waiting for a fix? There will always be bugs in any software from any company ever.

[xtion]

you didn't read my post, did you? i mean the first one. just one tip that can helps you in your entire life, don't RUSH.

[railrunner]

Actually just a few weeks ago nVidia broke WoW with a driver release, which was indeed "optimized" for 8.1 DX12 support.

And regarding your Freesync issue with earlier drivers:
I have been testing BfA since late Alpha and have more or less exclusively used DX12 (which was a real pain up until mid beta) during that time, Freesync was always working for me.

[somet]

This entire topic needs to be updated to take into account it is effecting DX11 on wow not just DX12.

Can anyone confirm as such, WoW is now working on the latest driver update or not please?: Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.2.1 Release Notes | AMD 

[bwyazel]

I bit the bullet and installed 19.2.1 to try it out, and nope, the bug is still present. No change from 19.1.x

Also, there is a separate issue floating around which is a AMD shader cache bug with WoW. Even on 18.12.3 this shader cache bug can cause crashes to desktop, but this should not be confused with the bug reported in this issue. This bug results in a full driver crash, whereas the shader cache bug results in the game crashing to desktop without the driver crashing.

[kingfish]

I wonder if he did a clean install? I wonder if he knew there were options with DDU?

https://community.amd.com/thread/236470 

[bwyazel]

No I didn't DDU it before testing. Would this help? I did DDU it a month ago right when the 19.1.1 drivers first came out and it didn't help, but also I don't remember DDU a month ago having that AMDKMPFD option.

[pr0metheus]

Really? Is the issue still present in 19.2.1 drivers? AND this is still not listed as a known issue.. What the heck AMD :/ 

[railrunner]

pr0metheus schrieb:

Really? Is the issue still present in 19.2.1 drivers? AND this is still not listed as a known issue.. What the heck AMD :/ 

I didn't even bother with the new driver because the issue wasn't under the "fixed" list, up until no I didn't even realize it's not under the "known" list either. :/

[kingfish]

Have you reported it to AMD? Have you suggested anyone with the issue to report it to AMD?

AMD Issue Reporting Form 

[surferslayapkr]

I thought the problem was reported as above? Admin named amdmatt. Why is this not put as a known issue if it's been reported a week ago? 

[pokester]

The moderators are not driver development. These are user to user forums only not for reporting to AMD. The moderators may or may not pass it along. When they do, it is the exception not the rule. It's great to let your fellow users know but you still need to report the issues to AMD for them to know to fix them. Online Service Request | AMD 

[railrunner]

Yes, a number of people, myself included, reported the issue to AMD and they replied to me, they already got a few reports and have passed them to the development team. So the issue is reported, yes.

[pokester]

I would also send them a ticket for every driver the release that does not fix it and/or does not acknowledge it as an existing issue.

[sckhar]

kingfish ‌I have. they sent me an email telling me to revert back to 18.x.x and wait til they find a solution.

[somet]

Hopefully this is fixed soon :’(

[railrunner]

So, time for an update. My Radeon VII got delivered yesterday, which was great. What is not great? Playing World of Warcraft with this card. Rolling back to older drivers doesn't work for obvious reasons - they simply don't support the new card. DirectX 12 shows the mentioned behaviour with the 19.2.1 release drivers for the new VII, having Radeon Overlay enabled it often shows dips to single digit if not even 0% GPU usage including complete clock drops to lowest possible values.

Switching to DirectX 11 is the only possible workaround at the moment, but even DX11 seems to be a mess:

There too are (rare) spikes of drops in terms of clocks and GPU usage to an incredibly low level, also the game often feels choppy, although reported fps seems to be ok.

It's odd because some people with various Radeon cards reporting no issues with DX12 WoW at all running the 19.x.x series of drivers.

I have reported this issue again with AMD, this time specific for the new Radeon VII.

My system:

Mainboard: Asrock X370 Gaming Professional (5.10 BIOS)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

RAM: 32 GB G.Skill RGB optimized for Ryzen, running at 3200MHz

GPU: MSI Radeon VII

OS: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit (latest official version)

SSDs: Samsung 960 Evo NVME, SanDisk Ultra II SATA, Crucial MX500 SATA

HDDs: Samsung 500 GB SATA, WD Blue 1 TB SATA

GPU drivers: Radeon Adrenaline 19.2.1 for Radeon VII

Chipset drivers: 18.10.1810

[pokester]

The WoW issues are nothing new. A bit of research before buying a card is a good idea. For what you paid for the at card if I were you I personally would have gone with the green team. WoW as well as several of the popular e-sports games just seem to optimize their engines for nVidia. This isn't AMD's fault, just a fact it happens. There are games that are better optimized for AMD too, embarrassingly enough is that BFV this time around is a Green Team sponsored game, after having been an AMD sponsored title, it still runs better on AMD vs. equivalent nVidia cards.

You really need to buy a card based on what you will run what you want to play the most well. Please realized that the folks with the green cards complain about the WoW engine a lot too.

I hope AMD gets a working driver out soon, but I know I have been seeing many complaints for going on a year now.

[railrunner]

I have been a loyal AMD customer since many years now, for both CPU and GPU I always choose AMD. I am absolutely aware WoW has always been running better with an Intel/nVidia combo, however running "better" doesn't mean for AMD users to be either unplayable or being faced with serious issues. At least for me the game has been running well using DX12 since the mid beta of BfA, using the 18.x.x driver range. It was actually running well using 18.12.3 drivers, using 19.x.x causes problems, reverting back = problems gone.

I just want to see this game being playable again, especially since AMD just recently advertised the Ryzen performance increases using DirectX 12, while users of their own Radeon cards are facing heavy stuttering and stability issues.

[mittwaffen]

Nvidia has the same issues, theres a 300+ page thread on Nvidias forums about stuttering they're suffering aswell. 

[mittwaffen]

Also theres new drivers 19.2.2 go try them and report back.

[ashernixis]

I have this same issue and have had it since I built my pc back on May. I’ve had it with an AMD 7970, RX 560, and now RX 580.  I have had crashes with WoW, Smite, Apex, Cities Skylines. The only game that hasn’t crashed yet, is Borderlands. I’ve let Microsoft pick drivers and it crashes and I believe when I started having these issues I was using 18 series drivers. I have reinstalled windows about 4 times. I don’t know what to do at this point 

[mittwaffen]

18.12.3 is perfectly fine, use DDU to clean install. 
19 series are crash fests.

[somet]

I think the point is that WoW does not work going forwards, for example update to series 19 to play a later game like RE:2 (probably a bad example but there will be other games in the future that require more updated driver versions!) the less and less AMD acknowledge trying to fix it in the later drivers the worse its going to get, imagine in 5 years when version 18 is not so easily attainable and its the only way you can play WoW.

[mittwaffen]

Its the drivers; amd dropped the ball with some major aspect in 19 series; its ALOT of games that crash.
18.12.3 at the best version to run currently for 500 series. 

AMD just needs to do a better job testing before releasing broken drivers. 
Nvidia does it too, but just not this careless. 

Their working on the problem, just hope they fix it soon.

This stuff happens all the time, AMD will take care of us

[pokester]

To be honest your reasoning for why AMD needs more updated driver version is not a reflection on AMD not doing their job. Them finding work arounds to get games working is something they do to help us because the game developers didn't do there job correctly.

You see 1 of 2 things or both combined happens. There job is to make the engine fully comply with standards. The 1st issue is the developers don't follow the standards. The 2nd issue is that the optimize for say nvidia only, unlike AMD, nVidia uses lots of proprietary api information. They love this as they get the developers to just optimize for them. This is the Crap in this industry today. It isn't AMD isn't doing there job. In fact I truly believe they have most compliant drivers on the planet. It's just unfortunate that a handful of the most popular games are not following standards and are highly optimized to work only on nvidia.

Or in cases like PUBG, it is horribly optimized period, for anything. So people should be complaining to the developers for their games not working. AMD is fixing a huge amount of bad code in their drivers for them.

[mittwaffen]

When a driver is working, then a rushed update that isnt going through proper Q&A breaks many popular titles; causes instability or even BSOD that ive read on here is not something that a developer is responsible for. 

Quality assurance in software is essential before pushing drivers that take two steps back isnt acceptable. 

[pokester]

 I get that you are unhappy that a fix that AMD had already done to get a title working in no longer working. I wouldn't be happy about that either. My point is that they shouldn't have had to make a work around in the driver to begin with if the game developers followed standards and or don't code to one gpu maker over another. AMD has always set the bar for open standards, where NVidia takes the proprietary path every time, fragmenting the gaming community. So make sure you send your complaints to the game maker too. Everyone rants on AMD, when overall they do a heck of a job getting the games working. My biggest gripe today is that AMD has so many issues controlling their hardware and feature sets in their own drivers and that is completely on AMD. When it comes to game drivers the are hands down better than the green team in my book. I can rattle off the same handful of games a few of which you also know to not be working on AMD well, most of those have issue on the green team too. I however can play tons of games especially older ones that play great still on AMD but don't work on my current NVidia cards. Also if you don't like the rushed drivers then don't load the beta drivers. Only load the WHQL drivers. NVidias beta drivers break crap all the time too, but they make you go to a separate page to get there betas and make it very clear they are betas. AMD sticks their beta drivers right next to their WHQL Recommended driver. Both ways of doing this are good and bad, depending on how you look at it. Bottom line is nobody makes you load a new driver. New beta drivers are going to have bugs, AMD has reporting tools for these bug, this forum not being among them as it is a USER TO USER forum only. When it comes to drivers, unless you are having an issue, don't upgrade the driver. If it isn't broken don't fix it. If you need to use the later driver as it supports another new game now but breaks another in the process then please keep letting AMD know for every driver they release that doesn't help you situation. Maybe they will have enough people complain and once again find a work around to make a game that likely didn't follow standards work again. 

Let AMD know what isn't working for you, they won't do it from posts in this forum, no driver development team here:

Online Service Request | AMD 

I have seen the AMD driver guys  talk on the AMD reddit page.