This is both a rant and a cry for help as I recently bought an HP EliteBook 755 G5 with the Ryzen 7 PRO 2700U and have been dealing with endless issues that couldn't be fixed (yet) even after contacting AMD and HP. HP claims that they will be able to fix the issue by replacing some hardware components but I've been convinced that these are driver-related issues after a ridiculous amount of time wasted on driver installing and testing...
I don't really know how one could do this, but it's clear that letting OEMs distribute the drivers for Ryzen Mobile was a terrible idea as my testing has shown that AMD's drivers are significantly better (even though unstable) compared to those from HP, which are several months old and have terrible performance.
I also want to thank /u/brokemyacct for all his help over the past posts I've made and ultimately inspiring me to make this post which I will crosspost, post on different platforms and show AMD to hopefully grab their attention and get this issue sorted out one way or another. If you guys have issues as well (even if you're using a system from a different manufacturer) feel free to use this post and contact whoever you can so AMD can finally come back to their senses and give us the drivers directly instead of forcing the OEMs (who frankly have no idea) to "optimize" and distribute the drivers.
As I've only had this laptop for about 5 weeks and counting, I was only able to test 3 driver versions and here were my results:
17.7 (from HP):
- VLC crashes
- occassionally Windows Movies/Photos crashes
- Adobe programes don't properly detect HW
- GTA's resolution can't be changed to 1600x900 on both a 4K monitor and the laptop's monitor
- lackluster performance compared to 18.10.2
- reported clock speed is 201MHz
- GPU is reported as Radeon(TM) RX Vega 10 in both the Task Manager and AMD Radeon Settings
18.5.1 (from AMD):
- non-stop screen flickering
- couldn't test performance or check/change settings because the flickering was that bad
- GTA's resolution can't be changed to 1600x900 on both a 4K monitor and the laptop's monitor
18.10.2 (from AMD):
- occassional screen flickering
- random system freezing requiring a reboot and resulting in possible data loss
- GTA's resolution can't be changed to 1600x900 on both a 4K monitor and the laptop's monitor
- GPU is reported as RadeonT RX Vega 10
- reported clock speed is 1300MHz
- exceptional performance in games and regular workloads
- GPU is recognized correctly by all tested programs
If I think of anything more, I'll be sure to add it. Currently I'm using the 17.7 drivers because those seem to be most stable, but I really hate not being able to use VLC and lackluster performance I'm getting from a system with so much potential. I really would've loved to stick to the 18.10.2 drivers which except for the crashing are amazing... I hope this post, or someone else's post gets recognized by one of the companies and brings them to their senses, hopefully resulting in AMD distributing the drivers for Vega Mobile directly on their website instead of us getting outdated drivers from the OEMs.
This post will definetly land on AMD's support forums, LTT forums and anywhere else I can think of. Feel free to link this anywhere, it's not about the credits but us consumers actually getting decently stable systems and not this crap.
Link to original post on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/9ug1f5/hpamd_driver_support_for_ryzen_mobile_is_terrible/
