PC Drivers & Software

[heart_of_the_tiger]

So, I guess the reason we didn't see any driver updates for the last generations of GPUs is, that AMD is having their driver team somehow make RDNA 3 work. I kinda get that. But they could at least communicate this. There are already lots of conspiracies out there claiming that AMD is dropping support for anything that is not an RDNA 3 card. Not a good look.

This is, of course, nonsense. First of all RDNA 2 cards are still being sold by AMD. They can't just drop software support. Also, if they really dropped support for RDNA 2 and lower, no one would ever buy an AMD gpu again, dropping support after one generation would be suicide. But again, they really should make a statement. I just feel it's not a good time to own an AMD graphics card.

[murkar]

Sharing this frustration. Lots of issues with flicking on new features in Unreal Engine 5.1 and yet no driver update, and not one but two updates for RNDA3 that have bypassed the 6000 series...and not a word on why or when we can expect support on 6000 series cards. It has slowed productivity for long enough that we are considering ditching the AMD cards and moving back to NVIDIA for game development only a few weeks after getting new hardware.

If they're trying to incentivize people to switch from NVIDIA, they're doing a great job of showing everyone that it's worth the overpriced hardware to get timely driver support from team green instead. It's not just about cost. When you pay >$700 for a piece of hardware you expect it to work.

Communication costs nothing and having a timeline on driver updates would go a long way towards showing new customers that sticking with AMD for productivity isn't as bad as an idea as they're making it look right now.

[macxd]

I said this in other posts, all of us 6000 gpu owners need to be ready for quarterly driver updates if we are lucky. AMD has neither the resources or qualified staff to support two separate architectures. The article even states they hope in two weeks, buts not guaranteed that we will see new drivers. 

I agree with you 100%, and anyone who has the financial ability to sell off their 6000 card should and buy intel or nvidia, and no one new should buy a 6000 series card.  Because 6000 cards will always struggle with the newest games because driver support will lag so far behind or not exist at all. 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-has-not-forgotten-radeon-rx-6000-gpus-new-drivers-incoming 

[murkar]

The 6000 series cards are being talked about as if they're a decode old. What? Only the flagship cards have been released for the 7000 series, so for the majority of their lineup what we're seeing is a failure to support *current* series hardware.

And if a multi-billion dollar company does not have the resources or staff to support that then...like what's really going on here.

It's nice that there's a commitment that's still weeks away somehow?! for drivers on current-gen cards but you are 100% right that the real answer here is to ditch team red if you can afford to until they get their act together on ongoing driver support if you depend on hardware at all for productivity.

[untouchable2k]

I just hope FRS3 brings back AMD fluid motion. 

[heart_of_the_tiger]

A couple of months ago Nvidia released drivers that increased performance by a substancial degree on RTX 3000 cards. We probably can't expect something like this from AMD in the future, at least not for RDNA2. This makes even a 4070 Ti look like its not that bad of a deal, and I HATE saying that.

@untouchable2k do you seriously believe AMD will make FSR3 available on RDNA2? I seriously doubt it. They'll fight that tooth and nail, claiming its not possible.

[johnnyenglish]

I'm sorry but I cannot agree with you.

When I bought RX480 never have I thought that I would game Cyberpunk thanks to FSR.
Since FSR is open source and I already seen some people using FSR2.0 on Polaris cards, It is most likely that FSR3.0 will appear on the RDNA2.

I had this tool which enabled me FSR in so many games.

[macxd]

who cares if its supports fsr, at any level if you don't have optimized game ready drivers.  example, dev puts out new triple a game, game has fsr support. amd doesn't have any supporting drivers, for months after release, so have poor performance, game crashes, or worse yet it fails to work at all. 

[johnnyenglish]

And that is your opinion.

I stand with mine. I don't care about getting new drivers every month.

I was happy with the 22.5.1 WHQL and now I'm happy on the 22.11.1 WHQL super stable and nice.

Non-WHQL doesn't do any good to me, Davinci Resolve does not like them.

[uncyler825]

Apparently you think AMD doesn't need to maintain their products.

I can't agree with you too.

[johnnyenglish]

If you are trying to guess what I think, then you are wrong. That is not what I think nor is it the reality.

Have a look by yourself or open Adrenalin instead.
Last released driver was in December and they shifted focus to RDNA3 during January for obvious reasons.

We are just entering February, Relax with the updates. The product is still alive and its far better to release a good package than to rush for the sake of user pressure.

It reminds me of "Cyberpunk" all over again.

[jsk68]

Not everyone is having problems, im struggling to find a game my new 6700xt "struggles" with.

Go take a peak at team greens support site, they are having tons of issues, many of the same ones as Amd.

[wdcossey]

Going to be selling my RX 6800 XT and moving back to team green. 

I cannot deal with another driver crash, I get 10-20 crashes a day and it's beyond annoying now.
Regardless if I am playing a game, just browsing the internet or in Visual Studio doing some dev work.

The state of the drivers... they are "shaaaaaite"... I want to support AMD but I can't any longer, they can't support the product I bought. I am done!

[untouchable2k]

I use these drivers and find that pro drivers are better than Adrenalin ones. On another note, all i use are Workstation GPU's for gaming, etc, i stop using consumer Gpus. But anyways, try these out. 

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-pro-win-21-q4

Using them on my RX 570(BACKUP atm for secondary computer) and my main Radeon Pro W6600 and i never have any problems playing games or anything.   

I have use both Nvidia and AMD, the problem isn't really with the Card itself, unless your card is dying. But the main problem are the drivers, meaning you have to find "the right driver" for that card. I have notice notice, every card works with a certain or two driver.  Like for my Radeon Pro W5500, the only driver that works well with it is Adrenalin 20.9.1 or 20.8.1. For my W6600 its the 21.q4.

[murkar]

Mhm. Already done on my end, this is wild. Now I know why nobody has AMD cards. The savings are actually not worth it when they can't even abip timely support for their current mainline hardware.

[jsk68]

Just curious, why are you still coming here if you switched?

Tons of people could use your help over at nvidia support, it's WAY worse over there.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/geforce-graphics-cards/5/

[CGC]

I have never had any problems with amd drivers, but I am concerned about the fact that there is no new driver for the 6000 series. Moreover, I have three cards of this series RX 6600/6700 XT/6800

[heart_of_the_tiger]

I'm really concerned for the future of Radeon. Not because I love AMD, screw them, they're as greedy as Nvidia, and they are arguably worse because now they are trying to sell a subpar and probably broken GPU architecture for 999 dollars msrp, which means 1200 - 1300 euros in my country. AMD has taken no steps to curbstomp this and it's disgusting. The 7900 XTX should have been 699, and not msrp, IN STORES.

I'm concerned because many people will not tolerate driver updates every 3 months, and they shouldn't. This is a no go if it countinues. Meaning AMDs market share is going to shrink even more and when they fall below 10%, developers are eventually going to stop optimizing for AMD cards. 

The RTX 5090 is going to be 2000 dollars msrp, and the RTX 5080 1500 dollars, mark my words. And honestly, a lot of this will be on AMD.

[untouchable2k]

Speaking for myself i only use Workstation GPUs, i stop using Consumer cards as a main GPU about 11 years ago. but i do have a backup RX 570, and my other cards are Radeon Pro 5000/6000 cards, for us workstation cards we have to wait 3 months for a new driver "now", but I'm using 2021 drivers for my cards even my RX 570 and i have no problems with anything.

New drivers are cool, but it doesn't mean they're going to resolved your problems. But that's just my opinion. I don't use any of the newer adrenalin or enterprise drivers because xemu has performance issues with the new opengl code. 

I'm hoping the next set of drivers do have FSR3 and fluid motion is back, and opengl has been updated, that's all i care about. If not, guess I'll stay using 2021 drivers.

[heart_of_the_tiger]

The longer it takes for drivers to be released, the longer it will take for hotfixes. We went from 1-3 driver updates every month (though mostly 1 or 2) to not seeing one since the beginning of december IIRC. Nah... it's only a matter of time until some things just stop working. If that wasn't the case they would have had no reason to have drivers come out that frequently in the past.

I sincerely hope what we have now is not the future.

[hrpuffnstuff]

Two years ago this month I was hard pressed to find a current gen GPU and the only one that I could find at BB was a XFX speedster merc 319 rx 6900 xt black so I bought it.  It has been a frustrating two years with that card as driver updates broke as much as they fixed leaving me frustrated.  

Today that card is back in its original box on a shelf collecting dust right beside its predecessor a gtx 1080 amp.  My rtx 4090 has both bios and driver support from the manufacturer.  Sure the experience interface pales in comparison to adrenaline but I'd rather have good support and working drivers.  Nobody is perfect but some try harder than others to make things right.

Same can be said for my x570 motherboard with its usb and ftpm issues that plagued it almost the entire 3 years I ran it.  I'm so much happier since I went back to Intel as the support is there.  For the sake of people who still depend on AMD hardware I hope they get their act together and give you proper support and drivers.

I've tried to support AMD since the '90's as they've always provided a great value for the money but their support mechanism is just horrible.  I don't expect to be using them again for the foreseeable future.

[MADZyren]

AMD's GPU drivers have sometimes weird issues, like problems with video playback in my case, but I've never really had issues with games (had 5700XT, not 6000 nor 7000 series and video issues was with 7000 iGFX)

Also I didn't really have any issues with X570 at any point. I do you Asus motherboards in my own builds only, as... While they are a bit expensive and don't have the best feature set (except at outrageously priced top models), they just kind of... work.

[MADZyren]

I think someone should remind AMD how things were a couple of years a go. Just because they were ahead for a short while, does not mean they will be in the future too. Intel already won back the consumer CPU performance leadership and over after a gen or two, they will likely do the same in server sector.

I wanted a 7900XTX, waited a long time and wondered why there are non available. Then AMD publicly admitted "undershipping" on purpose to increase prices. https://www.pcworld.com/article/1499957/amd-is-undershipping-chips-to-keep-cpu-gpu-prices-elevated.h... so I got a GPU from competitor whose products are widely available. I wonder if some CEOs have not realized yet, that crypto era is over and now you have to actually offer reasonably priced products if you want to sell something.

[goodplay]

[wdcossey]

Too little too late...

I got my new card (from a competitor) delivered today after struggling with crashes since December.

I cannot state how many times a day I had a driver crash, so many that it was affecting my work output. Couldn't take it any longer and bought a new card last night [will flog the old one on eBay].

Hopefully AMD turn things around [and just hire a few more people for their driver development], perhaps I will come back in the future.

So long and thanks for all the fish...

[jsk68]

Just a FWIW, I found a YT vid the guy switched his pci setting in bios from auto to gen 3 and cured all his issues, the comment section was filled with people verifying it also cured their issues.

Give it a shot.

[jonomono]

I can't use anything newer than 22.5.1 without issues and i'm on PCI-E Gen 3 on a RX 5700 XT. 

[Matt_AMD · Accepted solution]

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.2.1 is now available for download.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-23-2-1

[murkar]

That is a great news, thanks unfortunately already sold our cards and shifting all team hardware back to NVIDIA, three months of interrupted productivity was not acceptable.

[Bernek]

There still is a limitation for 100Mbps enconding ... I'm waiting for a good driver for months ! I've bought my Q2 and its been utter garbage with any driverr above 22.2.3 ... How is this possible ? I dont understand if it works with older drivers why the issue can be fixed in newer drivers ? Why Amermine Zone drivers can fix it and official drivers can't ?? 

[Matt_AMD]

This is listed as a current Known Issue and is under investigation in the release notes. 

Known Issues

• Maximum encode bitrate is limited to 100Mbps for certain applications.

Feel free to start a new post if you would like to discuss that issue with the community. 

[juvuk]

Many years ago i had a ATI card but the drivers were shocking so i changed to Nvidia, a week ago i came back and bought a 7900 XT 310 Nero, so far the drivers are still shocking, there is a problem with the 7900 using high refresh rates and a display port where it would freeze up randomly while browsing (fine in games ) so turn off freesync and the system becomes stable, new drivers came out yesterday which i hoped would fix the problem, but nope no fix, not only no fix but now the PC won't go past the login screen without locking up :D. 20 years on and the drivers are still really bad. Never had this sort of problem with the Nvidia stuff. I hope they sort this soon before i have to send my card back and switch back to nvidia

[Bernek]

Don't waste anymore time if you can afford a new card. AMD made me a street dog because I can't upgrade now ... so I wait like a dog for them to fix their drivers so I can use my Quest 2 with latest drivers.