PC Graphics

[tobiasf]

Hi,

I built a new PC in January with a 7800X3D and a XFX 7900 XTX and have had a lot of trouble with it since.  First Enshrouded had completely broken shadows and bad stuttering when moving the camera, but a lot of people reported the camera problem.  Next was Helldivers 2 which has an issue that apparently specifically affects some multi-monitor setups with this graphics card, and still hasn't been fixed almost 2 months later.  You can either undervolt the GPU or disable enough graphics options and get around that crash at least.

But now it's Dragon's Dogma 2 and I'm getting fed up.  I have trouble with the performance in the main city where there are lots of NPCs like everyone else does, but I'm also having a gamebreaking issue where if I point the camera in certain directions the FPS drops into single digits, the GPU utilization shoots up to 100% and stays there, but the CPU utilization drops to single digits.  It stays like this until I move the camera away from whatever it is in the scene.

Normally running around the first city I'm getting anywhere from 40-90 FPS depending on how many NPCs are in the scene, weather, time of day, etc.  GPU utilization runs between 70-80% and temps around 65C or so.  CPU 40-50% usage and around 75C peak that I've seen.

I've tried the latest driver that is supposed to have support for the game, 24.3.1.  I was using 23.12.1 at first because that driver seemed to help with the Helldivers 2 crashing for me.  I also tried 23.11.1 after seeing some offhand comments online from people using it still with Dragon's Dogma 2.  24.3.1 seemed to help a lot with the problem described above, at least in the areas I've noticed it, but introduced a new issue with severe stuttering when I went into the noble quarter.

I don't want to just try to deal with it because there can be enemy attacks on the city and trying to fight with performance drops like this is ridiculous.  It's really ruining my ability to enjoy the game because I find I'm worrying there will be more areas with issues like this later.

Does anyone have any suggestions for things I might try to troubleshoot this some more?  I've already spent a lot of time doing clean driver reinstalls and I'm not sure what else I can do.

[tobiasf]

I went back to the latest driver 24.3.1 and made some changes, mainly disabling FSR and set the profile to default in Adrenalin, and the performance got a lot better.  I haven't noticed any of those really severe frame drops to single digits either now that I think of it.  Outside the city it ran well but I didn't think to open a performance monitor.

However, just now, I had just closed the game after playing quite a few hours, and was watching a video with a couple chrome tabs open only, and suddenly both displays flickered off and back on.  I looked and the Adrenalin software wasn't in the system tray anymore and if I try to relaunch it I get a warning saying the version of AMD Software I have launched is not compatible with my currently installed AMD graphics driver.

I looked and apparently Windows 11 just automatically installed "Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. - Display - 31.0.22044.1"

So despite having the latest driver available from AMD, Windows 11 just overwrote it with a driver that prevents Adrenalin from even running?

[Yekul]

We got the same setup, except my GPU is a MSI instead of a XFX.

I have EXACTLY the same experience as you do, except that I am staying with the 23.12.1 driver as I also play Helldivers 2 and it is unplayable with this year's drivers, it's constant crashing.

Sadly I really have no idea what to do as well, I also want to add that lately the game has also been crashing when on the vocation menu buying new skills. I think this is also an AMD GPU issue, as my friends all have green cards and they didn't experience this specific crash.

Anyways, I am going to vent a little bit now...
I am most likely moving to the competition next time I need to change my GPU and lets see if I don't go full blue and green... I am literally having crashes or problems with 3 games I expected this year, Helldivers 2, Ex Astris and Dragon's Dogma 2, all driver related. When I tried this year's drivers I had problems with my mouse and keyboard on Windows startup, to the point I reinstalled Windows before I realized the problem. AMD can't really expect to keep a loyal clientele with this issues, the only advantage I have seen so far is the price and it comes with constant headaches...

Hope we have a good resolution soon, for the best of all of us.

[bhasadmuller]

I just want to highlight here that this driver issues are now with Steam VR also , its crashing while playing games with Virtual desktop

I am never gonna buy an AMD again

[tobiasf]

New headache to add to this.  Windows 11 is now overwriting my AMD driver every day.  I can't seem to do anything to prevent it.  I searched online and first tried applying registry edits because I'm on Windows 11 Home.  That didn't work, the driver got overwritten again.  Then I learned you can enable Group Policy Editor on 11 Home via console commands.  That worked right away, and the policies for Windows Updates and driver installation weren't disabled so the registry edits weren't correct apparently.  However after changing the policies with gpedit, Windows 11 Home STILL OVERWRITES THE DRIVER.

I can't believe this kind of nonsense is going on.  The operating system has been developed such that the people who made it think they know better than the user when they don't have any idea what the hardware setup might be.

When I was troubleshooting Helldivers 2 last month I installed and removed multiple driver versions over a period of days and Windows never once installed a different one automatically, despite the driver version it is installing now being one dated January 30th.  

So why is it happening now?  Why does disabling automatic driver installation and Windows Update drivers with gpedit literally do nothing?

If I switch to 11 Pro will I actually be able to stop my drivers being overwritten?

[Yekul]

No idea about this one, I am using Windows 11 Pro and I don't have this issue however I have a pending update, 2024-03.