Are the AMD drivers really that bad?

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Yes, unfortunately. I've been going back between the two (Nvidia/AMD) for ~20 years or so and as much as the AMD drivers have gotten better, they are still not as polished as Nvidia's. I'm not basing my comment on old hardware either. My most recent experience is Vega R9 Nano, Vega 64, GTX 1080 and RTX 2080Ti. I do agree that Nvidia drivers don't look as good as AMD's but that is the only win imo. Nvidia just simply works where you usually have to 'make it work' w/AMD.

Another thought, people usually just look at benchmark numbers and that does NOT tell the whole story. AMD has had and still has micro studdering that I personally cannot stand.

I have not experienced Micro stuttering with single card configurations.
 
I was an early tester for B350 and Ryzen 3600 as to run the AGESA updates and everything learned was to help others in there builds . I been on RX 5700 since Sep as I own two different models and they both need a different power supply as this MSI RX 5700 Mech OC only has one 8 pin connection and it likes my Corsair TX 650 over my CX 650M because the TX has a more powerful 52 amp 12v single rail and can deliverer a stable system .

Driver 20 . 1 . 3



52A at 12V is 624 watts. How old is the CX 650M? I know it is more of an entry-level Corsair unit but there is no way you should be getting instability under these loads unless you are getting some voltage drop or ripple under load. I went through this with an HX 850 Platium recently. I thought everything was great, then I installed an R9 Fury and noticed my FPS would vary wildly under load. I swapped in a new EVGA SuperNova G2 and the problem went away. It was wild.
 
The one and only bug i have currently is about once a month the Radeon Software will stop responding when i try to bring it up....Super easy work around with restarting the driver with CRU and all back to normal. I dont mess with under volting or overclocking (except for the display hz)...ive said it before but i truly believe reference models are way less likely to have mysterious bugs (ones that only seem to effect some of the cards) Why is it some of the cards are not effected? every once in a while i look thru guru3d forums and i dont really see a million threads of 5700 driver problems
 
The one and only bug i have currently is about once a month the Radeon Software will stop responding when i try to bring it up....Super easy work around with restarting the driver with CRU and all back to normal. I dont mess with under volting or overclocking (except for the display hz)...ive said it before but i truly believe reference models are way less likely to have mysterious bugs (ones that only seem to effect some of the cards) Why is it some of the cards are not effected? every once in a while i look thru guru3d forums and i dont really see a million threads of 5700 driver problems

There are about 1 billion different configurations you could have these cards in. I think it's more to do with some incompatibility than the actual cards
 
I can tell you my experiences with my current amd setup.

3700x 4.3, 32gb 3600, x470, red devil 5700x, 27 144hz, 24 144hz (dp both)

I’ve had three “black screens” since I got the gpu (September). When I had the black screens the system was still up, just one screen went to power save mode. Two of the three times was after rdping into the pc. It never happened while I was actively using the system. Only after it was idle overnight. That hasn’t happened in well over a month. For the most part I update my drivers within a day or two of them being released.
I really don’t play a verity of games. Mostly just fortnite and cod, but I usually play for 1.5-2 hours a day.
 
I can tell you my experiences with my current amd setup.

3700x 4.3, 32gb 3600, x470, red devil 5700x, 27 144hz, 24 144hz (dp both)

I’ve had three “black screens” since I got the gpu (September). When I had the black screens the system was still up, just one screen went to power save mode. Two of the three times was after rdping into the pc. It never happened while I was actively using the system. Only after it was idle overnight. That hasn’t happened in well over a month. For the most part I update my drivers within a day or two of them being released.
I really don’t play a verity of games. Mostly just fortnite and cod, but I usually play for 1.5-2 hours a day.

It doesn't matter if 80% of the people have no issues at all.

I won't risk being in the 20% who do, just to save a few bucks.

I see almost daily reports on reddit of yet another person bailing on Navi, after too many issues. I think there were 2 or 3 people just today that I read about. It's a never ending stream.
 
52A at 12V is 624 watts. How old is the CX 650M? I know it is more of an entry-level Corsair unit but there is no way you should be getting instability under these loads unless you are getting some voltage drop or ripple under load. I went through this with an HX 850 Platium recently. I thought everything was great, then I installed an R9 Fury and noticed my FPS would vary wildly under load. I swapped in a new EVGA SuperNova G2 and the problem went away. It was wild.

This is what I know about the CX 650M as I bought 2 on sale , My ref RX 5700 was from Sep and it's been flashed to an XT which it has one 8 pin and one 6 pin and I found out quick that the video card wants a different 12v rail for each connection and the CX 650M does have two 12 v rails and both have to be used at once to power the card and it been 100% stable for me .

Now the design of my other MSI RX 5700 Mech OC only has one 8 pin connection and really a bad design to me as I see the card pulls 150 watts easy from PCI Express and that one 8 pin so it needs big 12 v rail to deliver IMO to make a stable system .. the TX series was about top line for anyone needing to power a 375 watt 290x and never have issues .

I been running 2 different Ryzen rigs = 3700x/ RX 5700 flashed and the 3600/ RX 5700 Mech , both systems have evolved from Aug and Nov with every AGESA update for bios and all Windows/ AMD drivers .. so both are very current on different chipsets = x370/470 and both are very sound .
 
Which 5700XT do you have? Did you try doing the washer mod because it sounds like it is overheating? Are the fans running properly on their own?

Xfx thicc 2 with the extra plastic removed and new gpu paste. I haven't done the washer mod. The fans seem to work properly, but it seems like that either the fans kick in to late or it doesn't come out of silent mode.
 
Xfx thicc 2 with the extra plastic removed and new gpu paste. I haven't done the washer mod. The fans seem to work properly, but it seems like that either the fans kick in to late or it doesn't come out of silent mode.

Check with XFX, because I think they may offer a hardware fix for your specific card, if I read things correctly.
 
vlc still crashing on the regular (hard computer reset), and all web browsers (fire fox, chrome ect) crashing randomly to hard boot on most current drivers. Seems worse than the November drivers I had installed. Disabling hardware accelleration and other work around has had no effect. No i don't use discord.

I'm stable in games now though, so theres that.

5700xt

Xfx thicc 2 with the extra plastic removed and new gpu paste. I haven't done the washer mod. The fans seem to work properly, but it seems like that either the fans kick in to late or it doesn't come out of silent mode.

I have the same 5700xt in my media box living room. At default, the fan doesn't kick in until the card hits 99c, there's something shit with their bios / fan curve ect. I have it set to manually spin to 40% automatically on windows startup, and it's essentially quiet, and I've never seen it go over 73*c even after 8 hours of gpu pinned games like metro exo / crysis 3 / ME:A / fc5 ect.

Also at default settings, the fan takes a few minutes to deccelerate from max fan (leaf blower) down to like 40% (quiet). Whoever put this videocard bios/fans/settings together should be rewarded with an ice cold caronavirus.

Unfortunately the card gives me a constant 2ghz+ stable in games and only cost $349 at some best buy sale (I wonder why) so for the amount of performance it is delivering for the price, I can deal with some quirks as a media box card. If this was my main rig, I'd have returned / sold it long ago.
 
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Well, lets be honest. There have been issues in Windows that were beyond AMD to correct. Threadrippers as an example.
However, in the case of the video cards, and remembering a long questionable past with driver histories, I do think this is an AMD issue.
At the end of the day it’s AMD’s job to make sure it works. They should have people embedded at microsoft and/or working closely with them.
 
At the end of the day it’s AMD’s job to make sure it works. They should have people embedded at microsoft and/or working closely with them.

Agreed -- so let's take this in another direction: it's no secret how Intel and Nvidia regularly have 'better' integration for new products. They put in the work!

And I have no doubt that this isn't lost on AMD; their issue has been the feedback loop of not having enough resources to front-load the development and coordinate with their partners, and so they wind up troubleshooting after the fact, and then wind up selling less (for this reason among others, of course).

The good thing is that they seem to be getting better as their resources increase. That's a good sign that management is at least paying attention.
 
I went from a 1070 to Vega 64 for that 'all AMD rig' and had wildly inconsistent performance compared to the Geforce card. Yes the 64 was overall better but had to be squeezed to get the best out of it.

The Vega 64 was under custom water and really shined there but ultimately was too 'needy' for me. From there I moved to an EVGA 2060 super. Its not a huge upgrade perhaps but I can say to get the best out of the Vega it needed tweaked -- a lot-- like constantly dicked with and custom profiles for each game and so on. Now the driver suite from AMD is very nice and allows for that so huge plus there. Its fun and all but since going back to air cooling and Nividia it has been plug and play for me (no GFE just driver only) and most importantly smooth sailing. Pure fire and forget is worth a lot to me and others. The GPU performs as expected and needs no tweaking at all. The 5700xt was VERY tempting also but Vega left me wanting. I've read the reviews he 5700/ xt and they seem like great cards for the money but a few fps her or there means WAY less to me than potential headaches. Now if Big Navi turns out to be great I could be coming back but current needs are being met for what I was willing to pay and no issues. I like bang for the buck certainly and AMD does deliver there on occasion. Hopefully they keep getting better on the driver side of things to keep the competition fierce so we all win.
 
Have had one AMD card in my life, and that was for two weeks. A 5700xt by XFX. Horrendous drivers indeed. Black screens, dual monitor support issues, and terrible cooling software. At default settings, the fans literally didn't kick in until 100c. The hell?

Spent more time doing a clean driver reinstall, tweaking settings and more than actually using the damn thing.

In my experience, the AMD drivers are straight up garbage.

Nvidia however seems to be more simplified, far less issues in my experience and have had very few settings to adjust past plug n play.

AMD UI looks nice it's own way, but it's too many different screens/tabs for everything. I love Nvidia simplified control panel far more than AMDs too.

This of course is MY experience.
 
Been AMD for GPUs since 2009. Never had a driver issue with the four cards I've had in that time.

I would say however, their current control centre (?) is a huge confusing disjointed mess.
 
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Ouch.

Retailers saying they are seeing 5 times the return rate with Navi vs NVidia equivalents is particularly damning. This isn't some kind of internet poll subject to all kinds of self selection biases.

This is the end user getting so fed up, they return the product. As he says, this potentially burns bridges for AMD.
 
They certainly have more issues than nVidia. My primary gaming machine has a 1080Ti my second gaming machine has a Vega 56. Since COD Modern Warfare was released, I would get a long 10 second lockup with the Vega card. About 75% of the time it would come out of it and I can continue playing. 25% of the time the game would crash with a DX error. This would happen at least once per gaming session, but often times, more than once, and always during the first few seconds of a new map loading. Luckily this appears to have finally been fixed with the last driver update I did a couple weeks ago. I'm afraid of doing any further updates on this card since it's not my first AMD card, and in the past, I've run into scenarios where they finally fix a long standing issue, only to have it re-appear in a subsequent update.

In contrast, the 1080Ti/nVidia drivers have never given me issues.
 
Spoke today with one of the amd linux driver team (private conversation between private people), and at some point we got conversation about the differences in the windows driver - why they are crashing (black screens etc);
He stated that HBCC memory management on vega chips in windows have been broken for some time now after changes made for SSG cards, and in some cases the anti-lag and enhanced sync together with HBCC can cause even more issues mainly due to how the memory allocation, and read pipe is handled.

~ Since disabling HBCC, and anti-lag/enhanced sync i have had no more crashes/black screens on radeon vii.
 
Ouch.

Retailers saying they are seeing 5 times the return rate with Navi vs NVidia equivalents is particularly damning. This isn't some kind of internet poll subject to all kinds of self selection biases.

This is the end user getting so fed up, they return the product. As he says, this potentially burns bridges for AMD.
He also say he had pretty much zero issues with the 5 cards he owns?
 
He also say he had pretty much zero issues with the 5 cards he owns?

So?

It seems like some people think there is only a problem if everyone has a problem.

If 20% of people have a problem, that is still a massive shit storm.
 
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He also say he had pretty much zero issues with the 5 cards he owns?

Lots of folks with no problems out there, but obviously he still felt it was worth to air the troubles a lot of other folks are having.

Hopefully all this attention will result in a swift solution for those with issues.

I'd like to know if this is simply just software or if there's a problem with the Arch?
This is getting worse for AMD every day that goes by without a fix. Long term damage and all that..
 
Ouch.

Retailers saying they are seeing 5 times the return rate with Navi vs NVidia equivalents is particularly damning. This isn't some kind of internet poll subject to all kinds of self selection biases.

This is the end user getting so fed up, they return the product. As he says, this potentially burns bridges for AMD.

Not really, just so long as it is resolved. However, I am beginning to suspect that it is a hardware level bug that is causing the issue, and not a driver issue.
 
So?

It seems like some people think there is only a problem if everyone has a problem.

If 20% of people have a problem, that is still a massive shit storm.

That is not what the poster said and therefore.........
 
Not really, just so long as it is resolved. However, I am beginning to suspect that it is a hardware level bug that is causing the issue, and not a driver issue.

It doesn't help you with those customers who gave up in frustration and returned their cards for NVidias. Getting burned like this can sour people on a brand for the long term.
 
Can't be a problem with the architecture because Vega is also affected.
this is the crazy thing about that...My Vega card is the most reliable problem free card i think i ever owned...but its also the first pure reference one i have purchased....go figure right? Thats not to say they never had bugs Before i got mine, as im sure they did when it was new, as always.
 
this is the crazy thing about that...My Vega card is the most reliable problem free card i think i ever owned...but its also the first pure reference one i have purchased....go figure right? Thats not to say they never had bugs Before i got mine, as im sure they did when it was new, as always.

Yeah, other than the black screen idle issue with my 5700 Reference , which I only experienced on one driver revision, the only other issue is when I flashed my Asrock Fatality Gaming B450 mITX mainboard. The computer would reboot, I could get in the bios but, the monitor would only be a black screen. I have to shut it off the computer, back on and then it works without issue. (Only when I flash by bios, however.)

My Vega 56 Reference has had no issues. (Drivers do not save the wattman settings, however.) Also, my Asus Vega 64 has not yet had any problems. If I had the issues others had, I would be upset but thankfully, I have not.
 
this is the crazy thing about that...My Vega card is the most reliable problem free card i think i ever owned...but its also the first pure reference one i have purchased....go figure right? Thats not to say they never had bugs Before i got mine, as im sure they did when it was new, as always.

How many monitors are you using ? I read someone mentioned something about multiple monitors being a factor.
 
How many monitors are you using ? I read someone mentioned something about multiple monitors being a factor.

I know for me it is one 4k 43 inch tv, a 27 inch 1440p 144hz monitor on a second computer and a 27 inch 1080p 144 hz monitor on a third.
 
I know for me it is one 4k 43 inch tv, a 27 inch 1440p 144hz monitor on a second computer and a 27 inch 1080p 144 hz monitor on a third.

Thanks for the info, so 3 single monitor setups. I remember reading something about 2 monitors and up being an issue. I have 3, one on DP and the other two on HDMI. I've RMAed my card twice. Asus "repaired" it the first time and the second time they replaced it.

My wives red devil rx580 works fine on latest drivers. A 7870 I used while my vega was away worked flawlessly.

This has got to be the weirdest problem I've ever seen on any piece of hardware I've ever owned. I can't help but think that it's got the driver team at AMD confused too because they've been on the ball for the past two years practically
 
Not really, just so long as it is resolved. However, I am beginning to suspect that it is a hardware level bug that is causing the issue, and not a driver issue.

When you say “not really” what exactly are you disagreeing with???
 
How many monitors are you using ? I read someone mentioned something about multiple monitors being a factor.

To add, when running my RX460 next to my GTX1080Ti, I had it powering three monitors -- one 4k and two 1080p. I did run into issues, but nothing that I couldn't find a solution to, though I didn't game on it as that's what the 1080Ti and gaming monitor were for ;).
 
I alternate between AMD and NVidia cards. I will say that I've had much more trouble with AMD drivers on triple monitor setups. Its one of the reasons I switched to ultrawide--much less trouble. Never had an issue with multi monitor on Nvida drivers.

I still buy AMD when the performance ratio is good. Drivers are pretty stable now for Polaris (RX 4XX 5XX). It just takes AMD a while with each new architecture. I can live with occasional crashes if I get more performance per dollar by choosing AMD. But I lean NVIDIA if the price performance is the same due to more stable drivers.
 
To add, when running my RX460 next to my GTX1080Ti, I had it powering three monitors -- one 4k and two 1080p. I did run into issues, but nothing that I couldn't find a solution to, though I didn't game on it as that's what the 1080Ti and gaming monitor were for ;).

just the one listed in my sig thru hdmi. I cant commit on multiple display usage with this card

Thanks, I appreciate the information
 
5700 xt drivers seem pretty bad, yeah. Updating helped with the majority of the issues. But the weird thing is that *knock on wood* I've had 0 issues with it on Linux mint. Things are more stable now on Windows, but I'm still getting occasional black screens in the Witcher 3.
 
"Are they really that bad" --- in general, no. I had a 7870 from 2012 until last summer. And before that, a 3870. The only prevalent issue I had was the random mouse pointer corruption in windows 7, with the 7870. I have also had Nvidia cards in the past, such as 7900GTX, 6800 non ultra, Ti 4200.

However, there does seem to be some prevalent issues with AMD's new 56/57 series. But I do not have one. So, I cannot comment about it, directly.

This sort of idea bout zero tolerance for crashing or other problems, means you'd have to avoid computers altogether. I have an RTX2060 and can't exit Dark Souls 3 in 4K, without it hard freezing at the desktop or crashing with a log dump, at the desktop. Driver updates and/or rollbacks don't fix it. Lower resolutions for that game work fine. I'm too lazy right now to refresh my windows install. But, the current install is only about 5 months old and has only had this RTX2060.
Oh yeah, I also had to quit playing Subnautica about 3 months ago. Because everytime I would surface from a dive, the game would hang for about two seconds. And it even hard locked a couple of times, forcing me to hard reset the system. RTX2060.

But, I played it again about a month ago and it seemed to have been fixed with new drivers.
 
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