What's the latest on AMD's driver issues for the RX 5600 XT and similar models?

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A few months ago, I rebuilt my desktop with an ASUS ROG Strix-E, 3900X CPU, and 32 GB of CL 3600 RAM plus an NMVe SSD. I was planning to also get an RX 5600XT (with three fans for quiet operation), but I was really put off by all the posts about driver issues, black screens, etc. By the way, I'm not a gamer, but I need decent graphics performance for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. After an initial issue with bad RAM, my system is rock-stable and fast.

So just now I tried to research this question, but I really can't find any recent threads about driver issues. Have they all been fixed? Again, I'm not a gamer, so game-specific issues won't affect me. Is it now time to spring for one of the AMD cards? I really would rather have an all-AMD system.
 
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I would stay away from all rx5xxx cards as AMD really has done a terrible job on the driver side of things. I have a Sapphire 5700xt pulse model and on both my systems, i7 8700(non k) 16gb gskill ram 850w corsair psu and i7 10700k 32gb gskill ram 1000w corsair psu, I have had random black screens and hard crashes with the only solution being a system reboot. I tried everything from updating drivers, removing the adrenaline software, setting the pci link speed to gen 3, fresh windows install and nothing worked.

My friend also has Sapphire 5700xt nitro+ and has the same problem instead he is using an AMD cpu. You are going to get people here who are going to tell you they haven't had any problems and that's great for them but the fact is that the rx5xxx cards still have problems and you will be rolling the dice picking one up. The only reason I haven't switched yet is because the new Nvidia and AMD cards are just around the corner so I see no point in buying any of the current gen cards at the current prices.

If you have to have a card now put the extra few bucks in and get a Nvidia card. The evga rtx2060 KO is pretty close to the price of a rx5600xt.
 
I would stay away from all rx5xxx cards as AMD really has done a terrible job on the driver side of things. I have a Sapphire 5700xt pulse model and on both my systems, i7 8700(non k) 16gb gskill ram 850w corsair psu and i7 10700k 32gb gskill ram 1000w corsair psu, I have had random black screens and hard crashes with the only solution being a system reboot. I tried everything from updating drivers, removing the adrenaline software, setting the pci link speed to gen 3, fresh windows install and nothing worked.

My friend also has Sapphire 5700xt nitro+ and has the same problem instead he is using an AMD cpu. You are going to get people here who are going to tell you they haven't had any problems and that's great for them but the fact is that the rx5xxx cards still have problems and you will be rolling the dice picking one up. The only reason I haven't switched yet is because the new Nvidia and AMD cards are just around the corner so I see no point in buying any of the current gen cards at the current prices.

If you have to have a card now put the extra few bucks in and get a Nvidia card. The evga rtx2060 KO is pretty close to the price of a rx5600xt.
redhaze1er When these problems occur, what software or games are you running? Do you know what software or game is running when your friend's system crashes?
 
For Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, do yourself a favor and get a 2060KO, use the Nvidia plugins that may help you. If going with AMD, skip the 5600 and get a 5700, more ram, wider bus, more cores . . .

As for drivers, some owners have long standing issues, I've had relatively good success and don't have any problems now, for a long while actually. AMD did drop the ball not only for RNDA, which was the worst but Vega as well on a few drivers. I have basically a reference model 5700XT AE, love it and so far a great card.
 
redhaze1er When these problems occur, what software or games are you running? Do you know what software or game is running when your friend's system crashes?
It's random, when I'm playing games, browsing the web etc. Sometimes it happens when I'm doing absolutely nothing, no windows or apps open and just black screen. I know it's my rx5700xt well not the card itself but the drivers because I also have rx570 and a gtx1050 and never had any of these problems with them. As for my friend it would happen at random too, when playing games, browsing the web etc., I have 2 systems one current gen and one 2 gens behind and it happens on both.
 
Seems very hit or miss (I haven't had any issues with AMD, thought I did once, but ended up being a flaking DDR4 module and one other time with random black screens that ended up being an HDMI cable that was on the fritz). From what I've seen, there isn't a huge difference in most tasks and lightroom still doesnt' use the GPU for many things (this may have changed, but I can't find any great benchmarks that are GPU dependant to a large degree outside of a single plugin). What GPU do you have in your system right now (you say it's rock stable and fast, so I'm assuming you've got a GPU of some sort in it). Seems like a pretty high end desktop build. Any other apps you use besides those 2? Any blender or other modelling/cad software or plans for any video transcoding or mostly just photo editing? Photoshop tends to run slightly better on NVidia hardware, so if you have any worries of AMD driver issues, it may serve you better to just look at nvidia hardware as it'll most likely do a slightly better job for you intended use.
 
The only driver issue I had with my 5700XT was after a new driver release, my Rift had "double vision" while reading text. A new driver patch was released within a week that corrected the issue. Other than that, I have been extremely happy with the performance and stability of my 5700XT.
 
It's random, when I'm playing games, browsing the web etc. Sometimes it happens when I'm doing absolutely nothing, no windows or apps open and just black screen. I know it's my rx5700xt well not the card itself but the drivers because I also have rx570 and a gtx1050 and never had any of these problems with them. As for my friend it would happen at random too, when playing games, browsing the web etc., I have 2 systems one current gen and one 2 gens behind and it happens on both.
Have you RMA'd the card yet? If not, why?
 
Have you RMA'd the card yet? If not, why?
I don't believe it's the hardware with the problems but the software. There is some bug in AMD driver software which they can't quite pin point. If it was a hardware problem wouldn't the crashes be more consistent?
 
It's random, when I'm playing games, browsing the web etc. Sometimes it happens when I'm doing absolutely nothing, no windows or apps open and just black screen. I know it's my rx5700xt well not the card itself but the drivers because I also have rx570 and a gtx1050 and never had any of these problems with them. As for my friend it would happen at random too, when playing games, browsing the web etc., I have 2 systems one current gen and one 2 gens behind and it happens on both.

Have you tried under-clocking the card just to rule that out? Sounds exactly like what my X1900XT back in the day.. I modified the bios to up the idle/load voltage a bit and that fixed the issue.
 
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I don't believe it's the hardware with the problems but the software. There is some bug in AMD driver software which they can't quite pin point. If it was a hardware problem wouldn't the crashes be more consistent?
Had crashes like that from PSUs and undervolting too much, both are hardware related.. you may have a chip that barely scraped qualification or some sort of critical voltage not quite at spec. RMA it so you can at least eliminate that.
 
Anecdotal, but things haven't improved much over the last year on my 5700XT and Radeon VII systems. The display driver still periodically resets in games, which crashes the game and occasionally BSOD's the PC. Many people aren't having issues, but I'm 2 for 2 on completely stock CPU/GPU systems with fresh Windows installs crashing. I've spent dozens of hours troubleshooting the hardware and perusing dump reports; my conclusion is some combination of optimistic hardware binning, mediocre driver stability, and poor interoperability with peripherals is responsible for these issues. I'm tired of this BS and will be going green once the new cards launch.
 
My Radeon VII is temperamental. It was fine most of 2019, then had major issues with Warzone across multiple drivers that I eventually gave up on and stopped trying to play the game. It also had the black screen issue from time to time at the start of 2020 which went away but came back recently with a vengeance. I thought I had it solved as it was fine for a few weeks but then it started happening again last night even just in the desktop. Hopefully the July driver fixes it as I haven't tried that yet. Sometimes the system goes black and hard locks, other times it just resets the driver.

I also know a 5700 XT owner that had issues with Warzone as well, and another that might suffer from micro-stutter as he always complains about things not being 'smooth' but I haven't seen his problem with my own eyes.
 
My experience in a nutshell: what issues?
^ this

I've had a steady flow of AMD GPUs through the various PCs in my house and a 5700 in my kids right now and haven't had a single issue. I'm sure some people have problems with AMD drivers just like some have them with Nvidia, but honestly across both ecosystems I've had next to no problems. I forgot what youtuber I was watching, one of the bigger ones and even they said other than forum reports of driver issues they never once ran into any problems testing all their AMD 5xxx cards across dozens of tests and such. So I think it's just AMD Red headed step child syndrome for the most part.
 
^ this

I've had a steady flow of AMD GPUs through the various PCs in my house and a 5700 in my kids right now and haven't had a single issue. I'm sure some people have problems with AMD drivers just like some have them with Nvidia, but honestly across both ecosystems I've had next to no problems. I forgot what youtuber I was watching, one of the bigger ones and even they said other than forum reports of driver issues they never once ran into any problems testing all their AMD 5xxx cards across dozens of tests and such. So I think it's just AMD Red headed step child syndrome for the most part.

Pretty sure that was Hardware Unboxed.

I haven't had any major issues. Once in a while a driver crash or something, but I had that with Nvidia also. That being said, I virtually never use any of the overlays which seems to be a cause of problems for some.
 
My Radeon VII is temperamental. It was fine most of 2019, then had major issues with Warzone across multiple drivers that I eventually gave up on and stopped trying to play the game. It also had the black screen issue from time to time at the start of 2020 which went away but came back recently with a vengeance. I thought I had it solved as it was fine for a few weeks but then it started happening again last night even just in the desktop. Hopefully the July driver fixes it as I haven't tried that yet. Sometimes the system goes black and hard locks, other times it just resets the driver.

I also know a 5700 XT owner that had issues with Warzone as well, and another that might suffer from micro-stutter as he always complains about things not being 'smooth' but I haven't seen his problem with my own eyes.
Track your temps on your Radeon VII. For me, I found that the paste dried out and that was the reason for instability.
Washer mod + thermal grizzly fixed my problems. Insufficient mounting pressure was essentially the other problem.
 
Track your temps on your Radeon VII. For me, I found that the paste dried out and that was the reason for instability.
Washer mod + thermal grizzly fixed my problems. Insufficient mounting pressure was essentially the other problem.

I did a couple of weeks ago, it's definitely hitting the throttle limit and backing down a bit but I was able to run Unigene heaven for 4+ hours after believing I had found the problem last time. Then last night it started crashing in desktop before I even launched anything. I've had this cycle a couple times now where it will crash multiple times in a night, then I will be able to plays hours at a time for multiple weeks/months without issue before it starts acting up again.

The washer mod is on my list to try, but if it were heat related I think it would be more repeatable and have crashed more often during my longer sessions.
 
I did a couple of weeks ago, it's definitely hitting the throttle limit and backing down a bit but I was able to run Unigene heaven for 4+ hours after believing I had found the problem last time. Then last night it started crashing in desktop before I even launched anything. I've had this cycle a couple times now where it will crash multiple times in a night, then I will be able to plays hours at a time for multiple weeks/months without issue before it starts acting up again.

The washer mod is on my list to try, but if it were heat related I think it would be more repeatable and have crashed more often during my longer sessions.
It all comes down to what parts of the GPU are getting used, and instability is a hard thing to track down in general. Which is why edge temperture was such a useful feature as opposed to just general GPU temperature. Because basically you're tracking down outliers.

Washer mod is 30 minutes of buying (assuming you can make it to a hardware store, buy and be back home in that time), <$3, and maybe 15 minutes of installation (since it doesn't require removal of the entire heatsink). It's worth it to do just to see if it will remove all these headaches you've been dealing with for a while.

I did the mod in Janurary. I have had no issues since. I had weird instability and crashes to desktop before. Including GPU dependant programs that had weird behaviors. Like renders that would have 'glitches' baked in (without hard crashes to desktop). No problems after doing the mod. 9 months or so strong.
 
Seems very hit or miss (I haven't had any issues with AMD, thought I did once, but ended up being a flaking DDR4 module and one other time with random black screens that ended up being an HDMI cable that was on the fritz). From what I've seen, there isn't a huge difference in most tasks and lightroom still doesnt' use the GPU for many things (this may have changed, but I can't find any great benchmarks that are GPU dependant to a large degree outside of a single plugin). What GPU do you have in your system right now (you say it's rock stable and fast, so I'm assuming you've got a GPU of some sort in it). Seems like a pretty high end desktop build. Any other apps you use besides those 2? Any blender or other modelling/cad software or plans for any video transcoding or mostly just photo editing? Photoshop tends to run slightly better on NVidia hardware, so if you have any worries of AMD driver issues, it may serve you better to just look at nvidia hardware as it'll most likely do a slightly better job for you intended use.
My current GPU is an ancient GTX 660.

Actually recent releases of Lightroom have been using the GPU a lot more. A new feature called Enhanced Details (probably AI-based) really wants a fast GPU for decent performance.

Aside from Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, I run Adobe Acrobat, most of the programs in Microsoft Office, Quicken, Skype, and lots of different utilities. My security software is Norton Internet Software (provided free by Comcast) plus MalwareBytes Premium, all of which ran pretty OK on my old rig. Lightroom and Photoshop are definitely faster on my new rig.

I hear you about how Photoshop tends to run better on nVidia hardware and I may yet spring for one of the next-generation 3000 series cards. But I know that AMD give better price-performance, and I'd rather spend my money with AMD.
 
Yeah, I tend to buy AMD as well, but depending on what you're doing it doesn't always make sense and I do know their driver issues have gotten a few people, not me yet, but I had enough stories from people that I believe it's not nothing. I did have don't issue with my r9 nano and blender, but it seems the new release of blender has cured it. I just picked up a Vega 64 for a good price from a [H] member and it does pretty good in compute tasks. That went into my son's PC to replace his rx570. If your not against used you may find some good deals to hold you over. I think (as of latest rumors) rdna2 is looking like November time frame, and ampere will be sooner than that.
 
I would stay away from all rx5xxx cards as AMD really has done a terrible job on the driver side of things. I have a Sapphire 5700xt pulse model and on both my systems, i7 8700(non k) 16gb gskill ram 850w corsair psu and i7 10700k 32gb gskill ram 1000w corsair psu, I have had random black screens and hard crashes with the only solution being a system reboot. I tried everything from updating drivers, removing the adrenaline software, setting the pci link speed to gen 3, fresh windows install and nothing worked.

My friend also has Sapphire 5700xt nitro+ and has the same problem instead he is using an AMD cpu. You are going to get people here who are going to tell you they haven't had any problems and that's great for them but the fact is that the rx5xxx cards still have problems and you will be rolling the dice picking one up. The only reason I haven't switched yet is because the new Nvidia and AMD cards are just around the corner so I see no point in buying any of the current gen cards at the current prices.

If you have to have a card now put the extra few bucks in and get a Nvidia card. The evga rtx2060 KO is pretty close to the price of a rx5600xt.
Never run V - Sync
 
Have you tried under-clocking the card just to rule that out? Sounds exactly like what my X1900XT back in the day.. I modified the bios to up the idle/load voltage a bit and that fixed the issue.
I just run my card stock. Also my friend is having the same problems with his rx5700xt which is a different model.
Had crashes like that from PSUs and undervolting too much, both are hardware related.. you may have a chip that barely scraped qualification or some sort of critical voltage not quite at spec. RMA it so you can at least eliminate that.
Definitely not my psu with the problems and I never mess with overclocks and voltage etc., with my gpus. like I posted before I have been having these problems on 2 different systems using the same card. As for a RMA, I'm pretty much done with this card and the entire rx5xxx series and just waiting for the next gen gpus which are right around the corner.
Never run V - Sync
What does v-sync have to do with anything? Also I always turn v-sync off anyways.

One thing I can say for certain is that when I had the adrenaline software installed the crashes were more frequent.
 
I have been having these problems on 2 different systems using the same card. As for a RMA, I'm pretty much done with this card
I understood what you wrote - the card very likely has an issue but you won't RMA it, yet bitch about drivers instead? Are you just a hardware karen? Will you then sell your karen card to another sucker?
Just go to nvidia, hopefully you have another hardware issue and will blame their drivers too when it fails on two rigs as well..
 
I understood what you wrote - the card very likely has an issue but you won't RMA it, yet bitch about drivers instead? Are you just a hardware karen? Will you then sell your karen card to another sucker?
Just go to nvidia, hopefully you have another hardware issue and will blame their drivers too when it fails on two rigs as well..
It's definitely a driver issue. If it's a hardware issue then that's even more reason to not recommend these cards as a lot of people are still having these same problems which would mean a pretty high hardware failure rate wouldn't it? Also these same problems existed when the cards was first released over a year ago, was everyone at that time having hardware problems? Did an RMA fix everyone that was experiencing black screens and hard crashes problems?

Driver updates have fixed the problem for some but not all which is understandable as not everyone is running the same hardware config. Sure AMD will eventually iron out all the kinks and get their drivers straight but by that time I will most likely already moved on to either rtx3xxx series card or big navi. I see no reason to go through hassle of RMAing the card when I'm going to boxed it up and store it away soon anyways. If anything I can just use my rx570 to hold me over till the new cards are released as the drivers for that card are rock solid.
 
So my 5700 XT machine was running for a while with no issues. Just got bit though.

I replaced my monitor (still 1080p, but 165Hz) and for some reason I was stuck at 60Hz. Even though I selected 165Hz in Windows settings, and everything including AMD driver and MSI Afterburner said I was getting 165 fps, I could visually see it was choppy.

At first I thought the monitor was broken and tried to return it (glad Newegg denied, or else I wouldn't have spent more time fixing it). So I did an AMD driver update (though the AMD control panel) and that fixed it. Back to 165Hz...

Except, now all games were crashing after about 5 - 10 minutes of gameplay. I tried multiple games, performance/temperature/etc. looked fine, but the games work fail and Windows said it was a GPU crash.

So I did DDU safe mode uninstall, installed latest AMD driver. Great no more crashing. But now I got black flashes every 10 seconds all around. Turned out if you have a custom fan curve in MSI Afterburner, it causes a black screen I guess every time the fan update happens.

So I disabled fan curve in MSI AB, created a curve in AMD drivers (which actually does have a nice interface) and now all my problems are solved. Been going about 2 days of testing and no crashes or anything wrong.

That said, it wasn't a great experience, and some people may give up and just blame AMD. I have a lot of patience and like fixing things, so it's okay, but still. AMD has to get it together.
 
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So my 5700 XT machine was running for a while with no issues. Just got bit though.

I replaced my monitor (still 1080p, but 165Hz) and for some reason I was stuck at 60Hz. Even though I selected 165Hz in Windows settings, and everything including AMD driver and MSI Afterburner said I was getting 165 fps, I could visually see it was choppy.

At first I thought the monitor was broken and tried to return it (glad Newegg denied, or else I wouldn't have spent more time fixing it). So I did an AMD driver update (though the AMD control panel) and that fixed it. Back to 165Hz...

Except, now all games were crashing after about 5 - 10 minutes of gameplay. I tried multiple games, performance/temperature/etc. looked fine, but the games work fail and Windows said it was a GPU crash.

So I did DDU safe mode uninstall, installed latest AMD driver. Great no more crashing. But now I got black flashes every 10 seconds all around. Turned out if you have a custom fan curve in MSI Afterburner, it causes a black screen I guess every time the fan update happens.

So I disabled fan curve in MSI AB, created a curve in AMD drivers (which actually does have a nice interface) and now all my problems are solved. Been going about 2 days of testing and no crashes or anything wrong.

That said, it wasn't a great experience, and some people may give up and just blame AMD. I have a lot of patience and like fixing things, so it's okay, but still. AMD has to get it together.

AMD deserve their fair share of blame for the driver problems. But, I don't see how a problem with MSI Afterburner is a problem with AMD. Afterburner and other third party overclocking tools cause issues with Nvidia drivers too. It's usually one of the first steps that I do when troubleshooting random crashes after a driver update.
 
Blower style 5700xt .. only issue I had was an auto negotiating issue with motherboard .. had to set to Gen2 until BIOS update let me select Gen3 because it didn't know how to handle something that could do Gen4.. then got an x570 motherboard shortly after that and traded my x470 .. so not really a video card issue. But it's been rock solid .. I only play a handful of games though . .Hunt:Showdown pretty much all the time except for Fortnite/Destiny2/Gears 5 with my daughter on occasion.

..and a little Metro Exodus and Hellblade to check them out

My experience in a nutshell: what issues?
my sentiments exactly
 
Funny how people pretend this problems is not real...because they havn't experienced it:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-20-7-1

AMD will continue to monitor and investigate any new reports of black screen or system hang issues during extended periods of gameplay closely. Users are encouraged to use the new Bug Reporting Tool for any issues they may encounter.

I still see people post like this is a made up problem...despite AMD acknowledging that it is a real problem:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...ng-black-screen-driver-issues-on-radeon-cards

But go to any AMD sub-forum and "Noooo...I have never seen that...what problems do you talk about?"
 
Funny how people pretend this problems is not real...because they havn't experienced it:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-20-7-1



I still see people post like this is a made up problem...despite AMD acknowledging that it is a real problem:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...ng-black-screen-driver-issues-on-radeon-cards

But go to any AMD sub-forum and "Noooo...I have never seen that...what problems do you talk about?"
soooo ...you're complaining about people that don't have any complaints? o_O

...I don't have cancer either .. is that going to be a problem?
 
no ..it's permanent :cautious:

Thought so.
That would explain why you act like AMD's "Black screen" issue is a unknow entity...while it has been know and talked about for months.
And that is a shitty foundation to use for an reply to a user specifically asking about AMD driver issues.

Pat you brand loyality all you want...it won't make the driver issues go away.

AMD fans...not very helpful to each others:
1596019723853.png
 
Only if you think that you not having cancer means no one else is having cancer...are you playing stupid on purpose now...or is it a permanent condition?
He was making a point that just because he said he didn't have an issue doesn't mean nobody else may. (Aka, him saying he doesn't have cancer doesn't mean nobody does, just that he doesn't). You just want to complain and call people out over your own projected thoughts. He literally said HIS experience, he didn't claim all. If you read it that way, maybe it's not "everyone else" that's the issue, there's one common denominator.

People arent pretending it doesn't exist (in this thread at least)... If your proof is links from another thread in another forum, it's a pretty weak argument. What your saying is only people who have had issues should post and all the ones without issue should not share their experience. That's stupid, you need both to have an idea on how widespread an issue is.

There are issues that some users experience(d). AMD tends to be slow to fix issues... Not everyone has these issues and while it's not possible to be very accurate, it seems the people with issues are in a minority, but your luck may vary.
 
Thought so.

nice try .. but your just being a buttocks trying to create conflict when there is none to be had .. you can cheer your problems .. I'm going to cheer my lack of said problems. That's not ignoring anything.. stop being such a delicate little flower Tommy...it's ok to have something that works correctly and works well... AMD/Nvidia/Intel .. don't matter
 
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My current GPU is an ancient GTX 660.

Actually recent releases of Lightroom have been using the GPU a lot more. A new feature called Enhanced Details (probably AI-based) really wants a fast GPU for decent performance.

Aside from Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, I run Adobe Acrobat, most of the programs in Microsoft Office, Quicken, Skype, and lots of different utilities. My security software is Norton Internet Software (provided free by Comcast) plus MalwareBytes Premium, all of which ran pretty OK on my old rig. Lightroom and Photoshop are definitely faster on my new rig.

I hear you about how Photoshop tends to run better on nVidia hardware and I may yet spring for one of the next-generation 3000 series cards. But I know that AMD give better price-performance, and I'd rather spend my money with AMD.
Fair enough, I just picked up a used Vega 64 like 2 weeks ago for my son's PC. Good compute performance, although not as good as a VII, but for the money it is much better than his 570 in games and in blender (can't comment on Adobe or anything as we don't currently use those). I figured he can use that for now then I can see what comes out in the winter if I want to upgrade from my R9 nano.
 
nice try .. but your just being a buttocks trying to create conflict when there is none to be had .. you can cheer your problems .. I'm going to cheer my lack of said problems. That's not ignoring anything.. stop being such a delicate little flower Tommy...it's ok to have something that works correctly and works well... AMD/Nvidia/Intel .. don't matter

Lets not forget the fact that he has no real world experience on the topic..
 
Drivers are much improved. I haven't black screen issues myself. And I haven't really seen any recent report of them. I usually see them on reddit but haven't for a while.
 

Defelctions will not answer the OP's question...but sure everything is fine, no one has issue and AMD states no current issues in their drivers /s
 
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