Are AMD drivers really still terrible?

Corporate Thug

Weaksauce
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So I've been on team green for years now. This time around, I got a 6800XT. Started playing AC Valhalla. About 10 hours in, the game crashes (on the river raid mission). It crashed 5 times in a row at the same point. Suffice it to say, the game is unplayable. Has AMD made any progress on their drivers or is this to be expected in all games? Really disappointed, especially considering the premium I paid.
 
Well common sense would say if it was a widespread problem, you’d have heard about by now. Especially on these forums. GPU’s are worth their weight in gold currently, and if the ol’ razzle dazzle “AMD drivers are pure garbage” were true, every tech person on the planet would be talking about it.

But you don’t see that. It may be specific to that game in that one spot, or it may be specific to your hardware configuration. It may be software or driver related. But it’s not 2001, AMD has their driver game together.
 
Well common sense would say if it was a widespread problem, you’d have heard about by now. Especially on these forums. GPU’s are worth their weight in gold currently, and if the ol’ razzle dazzle “AMD drivers are pure garbage” were true, every tech person on the planet would be talking about it.

But you don’t see that. It may be specific to that game in that one spot, or it may be specific to your hardware configuration. It may be software or driver related. But it’s not 2001, AMD has their driver game together.

Judging by the reddit posts, it's appears to be a widespread AMD issue. I threw in a 3060ti and no issues at all. Hopefully its a coincidence - just happened to be the first game I ran and bam - non stop crashing.
 
No, AMD drivers are fine from my experience. I use an old RX 580 8GB from time to time and I like the feature set & UI alot better than Nvidia's. I also like their overclocking tools in the driver something Nvidia does not have. I have to use MSI Afterburner with my Nvidia card for overclocking & it sometimes has conflicts with other software, which the AMD driver based OC does not, or at least I haven't ran into issues with it.

The "AMD/ATI Drivers are bad" is a decades old trope that people like to throw around for fun or to make people think they know what the hell they are talking about.
 
Judging by the reddit posts, it's appears to be a widespread AMD issue. I threw in a 3060ti and no issues at all. Hopefully its a coincidence - just happened to be the first game I ran and bam - non stop crashing.
I saw a lot of those posts and decided at the time not to get an AMD card.
 
So apparently it had to do with the 6/10 update. I violated rule #1: blame ubisoft if anything goes wrong. Just in case anyone is having the same issue, I took someone's recommendation to change the priority to "low" in the task manager. The seemed to fix it (so far).
 
Nvidia control panel randomnly won't open for me (RTX 2060), for like two years now, across three different CPUs and motherboards, two different sets of ram, 3 different monitors, and 3 different power supplies. (several re installs of windows).

When it does this, I have to kill the process for it through task manager, and then I can open it.

Everybody has some problems.
 
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No, AMD drivers are fine from my experience. I use an old RX 580 8GB from time to time and I like the feature set & UI alot better than Nvidia's. I also like their overclocking tools in the driver something Nvidia does not have. I have to use MSI Afterburner with my Nvidia card for overclocking & it sometimes has conflicts with other software, which the AMD driver based OC does not, or at least I haven't ran into issues with it.

The "AMD/ATI Drivers are bad" is a decades old trope that people like to throw around for fun or to make people think they know what the hell they are talking about.
Nvidia GeForce Experience has OC, Performance Tuning plus performance Overlay that looks very similar to AMD's :LOL: by hitting Alt+R. The performance tuning Nvidia has so far is not that useful, No manual GPU OC, just an automatic scan OC plus no Memory OC. has Power Maximum, Voltage Maximum, Temperature Target and Fan Speed Target which is automatic or manual fan speed (no custom curves). A joke in other words.
 
The previous AMD card I had was a 5700 XT and it gave me nothing but trouble, half of the time it would produce a solid green screen and I would need to reboot my entire PC.

Right now I have a 6900 XT and it works fine, I haven't had any issues with it.
 
As someone who uses both Nvidia and AMD cards, I honestly haven’t seen a major difference between the two since the catalyst was released by ATI back in the day. Both have issues with their drivers, and I haven’t had a markedly better or worse driver experience with either. Most people parrot the “AMD drivers suck” line because it’s what the cool kids, who haven’t owned an AMD card since the ATI RAGE 128 they had in the 90s, like to say.
 
I've had slightly better results with Nvidia drivers over the years than AMD, but slightly. Both have bad releases. Both have bugs. I had EXTREMELY bad luck with Polaris cards (RX480/5XX), but perfect luck with Little Navi and Big Navi.
 
Amd had pretty substantial difficulty with the 5700xt generation of cards, and virtually any hardware configuration it was dropped into. I used one in 3 different cpu based rigs, and got 3 completely different results. One was constant black screens, crashes, reboots, virtually no stability, while when it was put into a ryzen machine. . .not a single issue, other than some random blips here and there you come to accept with amd cards and drivers. I don't have any experience with the 68xx series drivers or stability.

I ended up going back to Nvidia this gen, and doubled down for my sons pc, I think he'd rather be playing games than playing with drivers trying to figure out the magic combination that lets him use the hardware we payed for. I however somehow enjoy the browbeating of a bad driver/hardware combination and tend to find joy in the suffering and futility of trying to suss out the problems of driver based garbage, and then berating the company through constructive feedback to improve their shitty drivers.

Regardless, If The next AMD gpu gives me double performance of my 3090, or more, I'd happily go back to amd. They stole my soul with the 9700 pro and I will never quite get over it. Just buying an Nvidia card because 'AMD drivers are garbage' may have been a safe bet for certain generations, but honestly when AMD comes through, they really deliver, and if we didn't have the RDNA2 cards right now, we'd all be paying $5000 for our gpus.
 
no. they had three bad driver releases last feb/mar. theyre fine now.
Just to add to that they were only an issue on the new(at the time) navi cards, I used those drivers on the rx480 I was running then without any issues. It was enough to keep me away from the 5000 series cards at the time though.
 
As someone who uses both Nvidia and AMD cards, I honestly haven’t seen a major difference between the two since the catalyst was released by ATI back in the day. Both have issues with their drivers, and I haven’t had a markedly better or worse driver experience with either. Most people parrot the “AMD drivers suck” line because it’s what the cool kids, who haven’t owned an AMD card since the ATI RAGE 128 they had in the 90s, like to say.
This has also been my experience. Some people hang on to ideas in the tech world forever. Companies do evolve. I sit and think about the people defending the 11th gen 14nm+++++++++++ from Intel. Same story or concept.
 
I am on 21 .3 .2 with x470 board and RX 5700 and 21 .4 .2 with B550 board and RX 570 .. I only have some mouse issues on the B550 for now in Windows but not gaming issues .. I had to step back from 21. 5 .2 because of Windows issues.
 
I have had a 6900 XT in my main box since launch day. Got lucky and got one on AMD.com. I have only seen one issue and that was in RDR2. The game would crash during a cut scene.....EVERY TIME. Well known issue, not even sure if it was AMD only, but I think it was.

Other than that, the drivers have been rock solid.

I also mine on this card while I am using it during the day. I have seen a couple of driver crashes before I got the profile dialed in for mining, but then the driver crashed, and then picked back up. It is pretty awesome what AMD has done with its driver set in the last couple of years. I like the AMD drivers better than my NVIDIA drivers overall.

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FrgMstr Really appreciate your comments. Rock solid is what I want from my next (overpriced) GPU. If I can also get an AMD card, that gives me more choice.
 
FrgMstr Really appreciate your comments. Rock solid is what I want from my next (overpriced) GPU. If I can also get an AMD card, that gives me more choice.
I have had an AMD 6900 XT, a Sapphire Nitro, and have the Red Devil in my box right now. All have been extremely solid. The Nitro is on a mining rig 24/7. The AMD ref card is in my son's box, so it has been seeing a lot of different games with no issues.

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So I've been on team green for years now. This time around, I got a 6800XT. Started playing AC Valhalla. About 10 hours in, the game crashes (on the river raid mission). It crashed 5 times in a row at the same point. Suffice it to say, the game is unplayable. Has AMD made any progress on their drivers or is this to be expected in all games? Really disappointed, especially considering the premium I paid.
Nope, drivers have been fine for 15 years, possibly best in the industry.
Did you properly and completely uninstall Nvidia drivers before installing new gpu? Clean install?
 
Just to add to that they were only an issue on the new(at the time) navi cards, I used those drivers on the rx480 I was running then without any issues. It was enough to keep me away from the 5000 series cards at the time though.
true and that is what i saw too. had 2 months of issues on my 5700 but my 580 with the same drivers was fine.
 
AMD has bad GPU drivers just like Linux is hard to install

cargo cult is a hell of a drug :p

...sometimes you just come across a game that likes to crash. I've had worse luck with nvidia over the years, but n=1 and all.
 
When I used AMD (ATI cards at the time), I used Omega drivers and those drivers were awesome. Haven't used a newer AMD card in quite some time, but haven't seen too many complaints about their drivers.
 
Most of the AMD issues I've had in games were games that were later patched to fix the issues (5700XT at launch in particular).
 
I been using AMD video cards since HD 4890 XT and ran Eyefinity in IRacing Sims on X58 with HD 5850 CX .. they make some wicket stuff with 3 panels
 
Well common sense would say if it was a widespread problem, you’d have heard about by now. Especially on these forums. GPU’s are worth their weight in gold currently, and if the ol’ razzle dazzle “AMD drivers are pure garbage” were true, every tech person on the planet would be talking about it.

But you don’t see that. It may be specific to that game in that one spot, or it may be specific to your hardware configuration. It may be software or driver related. But it’s not 2001, AMD has their driver game together.
It is a widespread problem, especially after the last DLC. thismhappened to me, the NVMe drive was overheating. Put a heat sink on it and it fixed it.
 
I ended up going back to Nvidia this gen, and doubled down for my sons pc, I think he'd rather be playing games than playing with drivers trying to figure out the magic combination that lets him use the hardware we payed for. I however somehow enjoy the browbeating of a bad driver/hardware combination and tend to find joy in the suffering and futility of trying to suss out the problems of driver based garbage, and then berating the company through constructive feedback to improve their shitty drivers.
Hey, I like that game, gives me the feels for fiddling with config.sys and autoexec.bat :D
 
I've not had any problem with my AMD reference 6900XT , while my buddy has had lots of problems with his 6800XT, and my friend's 3090 FE crashes in Division 2 all the time (pre TU12 too). I do crank the fan speed up a bit because really, it's pretty quiet anyway (I come from the Delta 7000rpm days REEEEE) and the defaults are happy to let the junction temp go to 90C, which I am not particularly fond of.

It's doesn't seem like it's 2002 where there's literally no text in Battlefield 1942 on your 9700 Pro, which then smokes itself in a couple of years anyway.
 
Well, the solution was short lived. 10+ crashes today. The game is entertaining enough that I considered switching to console but I don't want to give ubi any more $
 
Well, the solution was short lived. 10+ crashes today. The game is entertaining enough that I considered switching to console but I don't want to give ubi any more $
I played about a day of AC Valhalla on my 6900XT without any issue.
 
I agree the old trope from decades ago about crappy ATI/AMD drivers is just that, old. That said, I don't think their driver team is completely out of the woods. As recently as the 5700XT last gen, there were significant driver issues faces by a multitude of people that took ages to get fixed.

Its not what it was when people threw that trope around, but they still have some work to do. I think they've definitely improved since the 5700XT thing.
 
That said, I don't think their driver team is completely out of the woods. As recently as the 5700XT last gen, there were significant driver issues faces by a multitude of people that took ages to get fixed.
There have been a HUGE amount of changes in AMD's driver department in terms of personnel and how things operate since the 5700 black screen issues. That did not go over well with more than a few of the execs.
 
it was three releases in a row and then that ^^^

I agree the old trope from decades ago about crappy ATI/AMD drivers is just that, old. That said, I don't think their driver team is completely out of the woods. As recently as the 5700XT last gen, there were significant driver issues faces by a multitude of people that took ages to get fixed.

Its not what it was when people threw that trope around, but they still have some work to do. I think they've definitely improved since the 5700XT thing.
 
It is a widespread problem, especially after the last DLC. thismhappened to me, the NVMe drive was overheating. Put a heat sink on it and it fixed it.
So that’s hardware related and has zero to do with AMD drivers. I would t call that a widespread problem. That’s your hardware problem.
 
I've had no issues with my 480 nitro, and that's saying something considering I've done some ghetto cooling mods to it.
 
I had a crashing issue with my launch 5700XT and AC: Odyssey. No issue with an Nvidia card. Turns out the game was patched by Ubisoft later, and then it worked fine with the 5700 series. So I have a hard time blaming everything on AMD driver developers when you have a whole slew of game developers making sure that games work fine on certain cards and not others.
 
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