Gamers are ditching Radeon graphics cards over driver issues

Status
Not open for further replies.
I'm a web developer and I have to fix bugs all of the time. I recently started playing Borderlands 3 because it came free with my 3800X. My 290X is old though almost all games are solid.

I was encountering issues with the game crashing whenever I did an Alt+Tab which was infuriating. I change the display type (some fullscreen mode) and the problem stopped.

I did have another issue with the game though it seems to have stopped.

If you want to provide truly useful information you must know things like what keys you're pressing, when does the issue occur, etc. Is it when the game starts? Is it just Radeon or is it a game-specific issue? If you find the right wording people will usually say which GPU they're using. You can't fault Radeon for game-specific issues.

That being said the developers need good information to follow up. If you do encounter a crash you need to figure out what is going on. What are your temps? Is your GPU memory full before launching and it's not finding enough memory leading to a crash? Are you using 18GB of memory when you only have 16GB installed because you never ever close your browser and absolutely every tab is open? Are you using the latest drivers?

My issues have all been game-related, not driver related. I'm not saying the drivers don't suck and yes my GPU is a bit old though most of the threads I come across for the issues I do encounter are absolute trash. "Hey, try A and let us know what happens!" "Fixed, won't say what I did and just say fixed!" useless garbage threads.

Yeah, as an IT technician, I always hated that. I can resolve quite a few issues without seeking an answer online but, when I am stumped and need help, those answers stink. Basically, seeing someone do the Hey, I solved my problem, thanks, bye! is incredibly inconsiderate. Because of that, if I ask for help and end up resolving my problem, I will post the solution, as long as I remember too. :)
 
How does any of that apply to me? I call out Nvidia's shitty decisions all the time. And I also recommend the Navi cards, even with their driver issues. However, I make sure anyone I recommend one of the cards to knows about the complaints so that they're informed going in. You are falling into the typical trap of thinking "because I don't have problems it must mean it's perfect and no one should ever have problems". Its a gross misunderstanding of the nature of computer hardware and the interaction of hardware and software in people's systems.

Yeah, that last part is the go to argument when someone is losing the argument they initiated.
 
The badges mean the PSU's meet efficiency standards, nothing more and nothing less.

Most PSUs these days put all of their PCI-E on a single rail, a lot only have a single rail period. It's been that way for a long time.

None of your links tell people to use two separate cables. I have NEVER seen a video card that tells users to use two separate cables.

And yet, by using two separate cables, you are eliminated one possible issue. (Basic troubleshooting steps 101.) Also, I am basing this also in part from experience and also someone on reddit solving their issue by doing exactly that.
 
There is no way that's normal to have a temperature of over 100C.

To add, while it wouldn't be normal for what is commonly understood as a 'core' temperature, remember that temperature is an energy density measurement. For something other than a processor core, over 100c could be fine. 100c only seems (to me) to be an important 'max' temperature because it's the boiling point of water, but there's no water in a processor core, thus nothing to boil.

Other than the fluid used in heatpipes, temperature measurements may easily exceed 100c without issue.
 
And yet, by using two separate cables, you are eliminated one possible issue. (Basic troubleshooting steps 101.) Also, I am basing this also in part from experience and also someone on reddit solving their issue by doing exactly that.

This really, really depends on the PSU in question, which regardless of make and model, could itself be defective in some way.

I'll say that you're right, though -- using separate cables is certainly worth trying where available when issues are encountered.

[I have PSUs from before, during, and after the 'multi-rail' power supply hysteria, and I assume that a broad-spectrum of users could have power supplies designed with either philosophy in mind...]
 
The polaris cards are solid. This is mostly navi related.

While it's not related to the issues being outlined in this thread I have this interesting issue with my RX470. It works great in my i7-7700k system and it works in my old i7-870 system UNTIL I install the driver which for whatever reason kills all USB input until the drivers are uninstalled through safe mode . That's with a fresh W10 install. The funny thing is that I can take it out and then install my 2080ti and it will work perfectly (other than the 870 being a huge bottleneck of course); I don't even need to uninstall the Radeon drivers and the NV card is perfectly happy.

On topic, my 14yo son has been saving money for a 5700; I've been sending him some of this info for the last couple of days. I'll let him make the decision on what he buys but I might throw him a hundo to go NV just so I don't have to deal with any possible issues that could pop up. :ROFLMAO:
 
Last edited:
Article said:
Reading though your feedback on the poll (1,700 comments and counting), the main issue appears to be the "black screen bug." This issue sees the display randomly turn black, as if the monitor had turned off, and there is no way to recover the system without a hard reboot.

Has anyone tried Ctrl+Shift+Win+B ? That restarts the video driver. (Everyone give it a try it now to see how it works)

Seeing as so many aren't having issues, I doubt it's silicon...

If the driver restart keys above work, I would agree it is the drivers. If it does not work, and a hard reboot is required as the article points out, that would point to the silicon/board I would think. At work these desktops have onboard AMD video. About 2 years back, they had buggy drivers and would boot up to a blank screen with nothing but a mouse pointer. ctrl-alt-del did nothing visible, but the ctrl-shift-win-B worked and the screen would come back. Later the pc guys fixed it with a driver update.
 
While it's not related to the issues being outlined in this thread I have this interesting issue with my RX470. It works great in my i7-7700k system and it works in my old i7-870 system UNTIL I install the driver which for whatever reason kills all USB input until the drivers are uninstalled through safe mode . That's with a fresh W10 install. The funny thing is that I can take it out and then install my 2080ti and it will work perfectly (other than the 870 being a huge bottleneck of course); I don't even need to uninstall the Radeon drivers and the NV card is perfectly happy.

On topic, my 14yo son has been saving money for a 5700; I've been sending him some of this info for the last couple of days. I'll let him make the decision on what he buys but I might throw him a hundo to go NV just so I don't have to deal with any possible issues that could pop up. :ROFLMAO:

This is important when making purchasing decisions for either kids or non-enthusiast gamers.
 
It does when you cant fix it with drivers. Your average consumer has no idea how to bios flash a card and you run a chance of bricking your card.

The BIOS thing won't be an issue beyond the launch window. As soon as launch cards cycle through the retail chain no one will have to update the BIOS.
 
This has been the problem since the beginning of time. AMD drivers have always been unreliable. I've been PC gaming for over 20 years and only once have I ever bought a AMD card for a main rig which I brag about to this day because until recently it was still powering my HTPC. Drivers have always been the problem for AMD and I don't understand why. They are the only competitor to Nvidia, and regardless of all the news I have heard of the next great AMD cards i've never once even considered AMD cards because when I am spending $500+ on a GPU I don't want to worry about whether I will be able to play my games or not. Nvidia has always been the safer bet for me, and I don't know what will ever convince me to switch sides but I guess time will tell.
 
I've had generally consistent experiences from NVIDIA cards. However, AMD's been anything but consistent for me. There are times where I've had absolutely flawless experiences with ATi/AMD hardware. Other times, my experiences are among the worst imaginable.
 
Joel Hruska of Extremetech encountered issues with both 5700 & 5600 series cards, while doing 5600 review

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...ng-black-screen-driver-issues-on-radeon-cards

After the review ran, I worked with AMD to troubleshoot the issue. I had missed a UEFI update from Asus released between November and January, and AMD recommended setting the motherboard to specifically use PCIe 3.0 on its x16 slots rather than “Auto” for link speed detection. The combination of the new UEFI and the PCIe 3.0 setting fixed my problem, though I didn’t test which of the two changes were responsible.

Interesting. I had wondered if the switch to PCIe 4.0 might have contributed some of the issues. This is is the first mention I have seen of it.
 
I
This is important when making purchasing decisions for either kids or non-enthusiast gamers.
yeah when kids ask me about building their first gaming computer I generally recommend 2 things, an AiO cooler, and an nVidia card, while I am now on-board with the AMD CPU’s that is only a recent addition as their BIOS’s have finally reached a happy state.
 
This has been the problem since the beginning of time. AMD drivers have always been unreliable. I've been PC gaming for over 20 years and only once have I ever bought a AMD card for a main rig which I brag about to this day because until recently it was still powering my HTPC. Drivers have always been the problem for AMD and I don't understand why. They are the only competitor to Nvidia, and regardless of all the news I have heard of the next great AMD cards i've never once even considered AMD cards because when I am spending $500+ on a GPU I don't want to worry about whether I will be able to play my games or not. Nvidia has always been the safer bet for me, and I don't know what will ever convince me to switch sides but I guess time will tell.

So you've only ever had a single AMD card yet claim to know what the drivers have always been like?

No, their drivers have not "always been" unreliable. The whole "AMD drivers suck" stuff was only recent, from a time when their drivers were terrible. Then they got things working for a couple years, until they did a massive overhaul. Now they're back trying to figure out what went wrong.

As for why, it's pretty simple. AMD doesn't have a ton of money and manpower to throw at their driver team like Nvidia does.
 
So you've only ever had a single AMD card yet claim to know what the drivers have always been like?

I don't need to have a lifetime of AMD cards to know the history of AMD drivers. I've been reading these forums for years as well, online retailer reviews, and countless others over the years to know that yes AMD has had some success, but drivers have always been hit or miss with games. Less consistency than Nvidia.

As for why, it's pretty simple. AMD doesn't have a ton of money and manpower to throw at their driver team like Nvidia does.

I don't buy that for a second. AMD may not have as high of a market value than Nvidia, but revenue is close between the two. There is nothing holding back AMD to pump a little more money into their driver teams. My theory is that AMD is too concerned with expanding business elsewhere like powering almost all current and future Playstation and Xboxs as well as their CPUs but who knows...

I honestly have always associated AMD products including their CPUs and GPUs as budget-gamer choices, but that is just me and is likely only a ill-informed long-time held prejudice of mine .
 
Did you read the article?

I did and it is complete BS.

I've known about issues with the 5700 series since launch and I don't run a hardware review site.

What does that make me? A magical wizard? No, just someone that knows the review section of Amazon/Newegg/Memory Express is less biased than most tech review sites. Even with Amazon buyers getting free crap and straight up lying, you can find some truth nuggets.

Also, Reddit is a thing.


Why did it take them over 5 months to report this? Compared that to 2080 Ti issues being reported in less than 30 days of launch.

Tech review sites and influencers are afraid of losing free future Ryzens, so they have been pushing Radeons while keeping their mouth shut about issues.

Meanwhile, the gamers that don't get smoothered in free hardware and ad revenue get screwed out of their paycheck with lies.
 
As for why, it's pretty simple. AMD doesn't have a ton of money and manpower to throw at their driver team like Nvidia does.

Nvidia didn't always have the money either; they just chose to throw people at their drivers years ago when 3dfx and Matrox were still around. IMO that's when NV really laid the foundation for where they are today. Back then EVERYONE had trash drivers and/or GL wrappers. NV released the Detonator drivers and while they didn't immediately acquire the title of "Best Drivers" they definitely got people to notice that they were doing much more with drivers than their competitors which just eventually spilled over into "NV drivers good; other drivers bad".
 
Last edited:
While it's not related to the issues being outlined in this thread I have this interesting issue with my RX470. It works great in my i7-7700k system and it works in my old i7-870 system UNTIL I install the driver which for whatever reason kills all USB input until the drivers are uninstalled through safe mode . That's with a fresh W10 install. The funny thing is that I can take it out and then install my 2080ti and it will work perfectly (other than the 870 being a huge bottleneck of course); I don't even need to uninstall the Radeon drivers and the NV card is perfectly happy.

Your problem is likely the old mobo and uefi bios preferring rx570. I've had chronic instability on an older amd 2011 mobo using old bios model and/or power draw issues. R9 290 and rx480 cards did not work well for me in that board. The rx480 cards being randomly unstable with all errors tracking back to video drivers. RX 570 4GB in it now has been stable for a year, likely because it uses less power and perhaps asrock/amd improved compatibility with older bios based mobos.


I've had few drivers issues with Polaris cards besides the compatibility ones with older mobos but its obvious they've had issues for several months. I've usually had more bugs with the radeon software than anything such that I laughed when they released the 2020 drivers before Christmas. Still running Dec. 2nd drivers on the AMD rx570 system with win7.

AdoredTv weighs in, as have several tech reviewers now:

 
I did and it is complete BS.

I've known about issues with the 5700 series since launch and I don't run a hardware review site.

What does that make me? A magical wizard? No, just someone that knows the review section of Amazon/Newegg/Memory Express is less biased than most tech review sites. Even with Amazon buyers getting free crap and straight up lying, you can find some truth nuggets.

Also, Reddit is a thing.


Why did it take them over 5 months to report this? Compared that to 2080 Ti issues being reported in less than 30 days of launch.

Tech review sites and influencers are afraid of losing free future Ryzens, so they have been pushing Radeons while keeping their mouth shut about issues.

Meanwhile, the gamers that don't get smoothered in free hardware and ad revenue get screwed out of their paycheck with lies.
AMD has no track record in regards to what you are describing (punishing reviewers by not supplying reviewers). Whereas Nvidia literally issues hush paperwork to sign, or you don't get anything. Kyle and [H] were very vocal about this.

*I bought my RTX2060 used, so as not to support Nvidia in this. And the only reason I got Nvidia at all, is that I have interest in emulators. And most emulators cater to Nvidia.

The article doesn't say they weren't aware of issues. It says multiple times that they didn't experience anything noteworthy, themselves. And until recently, assumed that the problems being talked about 'round the internet, were maybe overblown (as the internet tends to do with everything). But after posting a poll and also asking resellers for comment, they found merit.
 
Last edited:
[
AMD has no track record in regards to what you are describing (punishing reviewers by not supplying reviewers). Whereas Nvidia literally issued paperwork to sign or you don't get anything. Kyle and [H] were very vocal about this.

*I bought my RTX2060 used, so as not to support Nvidia in this. And the only reason I got Nvidia at all, is that I have interest in emulators. And most emulators cater to Nvidia.

The article doesn't say they weren't aware of issues. It says multiple times that they didn't experience anything noteworthy, themselves. And until recently, assumed that the problems being talked about 'round the internet, were maybe overblown (as the internet tends to do with everything). But after posting a poll and also asking resellers for comment, they found merit.
Based on personal experiences with their WX cards their paperwork always recommends a PSU that is too small. In house I doubt they are using the recommended size PSU and reviewers probably aren’t either. Their test benches probably have a 1200w Seasonic and it’s blasting through it. When we updated our drafting lab the WX cards recommended a 550w, they weren’t stable till nw put 650’s in bare minimum.
 
On a side note. Using the same hardware on MacOS.. RX470, RX480, RX580, 5700XT, R9 Fury Nano on an X58 Mac Pro, there are no issues with black screens, etc. I doubt this is a power supply issue, as this truly looks like a quality issues with AMD's windows drivers. The issues are too widespread.

IMO the switch in driver platform from AMD Catalyst after driver versions 15.11 has been a rolling disaster.
 
Tech review sites and influencers are afraid of losing free future Ryzens, so they have been pushing Radeons while keeping their mouth shut about issues.
This is the second time you've posted this type of statement in this thread. Got any proof?
 
Amd is not dumb...they will fix BigNavi before its released. Yall act like nVidia is flawless. They included a free copy of space invaders with thier $1200 cards, have you forgotten already?
 
Amd is not dumb...they will fix BigNavi before its released. Yall act like nVidia is flawless. They included a free copy of space invaders with thier $1200 cards, have you forgotten already?

Hopefully they can get it fixed before BigNavi. That would be a big dark cloud hanging over their heads if that comes out and the issues are still present. At the very least, they need to deal with the black screen issue.
 
Hopefully they can get it fixed before BigNavi. That would be a big dark cloud hanging over their heads if that comes out and the issues are still present. At the very least, they need to deal with the black screen issue.

Don't count on a drop in sales if the price is low enough. People buy chinese tires from Walmart and happily drive around too. Cheap is cheap.
 
Well... they are going to be sorely disappointed once they find out that nVidia drivers are probably worse.

I recently started having a lockup issue with Destiny 2 with my RTX 2080. Tried a bunch of different things and then went looking. Apparently Geforce Experience is a big part of the problem and it has been well known for over 1.5 years. I removed it and I can actually play again, but the GPU still locks up randomly after a while. With Geforce Experience installed, it would lock up every single time I tried to start certain activities.

Not sure if it is the newer drivers causing it for me... very rarely happened with my 1080, but with the 2080 and newer drivers it is a constant problem.
 
Amd is not dumb...they will fix BigNavi before its released. Yall act like nVidia is flawless. They included a free copy of space invaders with thier $1200 cards, have you forgotten already?

It could also mean Big Navi may see a delay as well.
 
On a side note. Using the same hardware on MacOS.. RX470, RX480, RX580, 5700XT, R9 Fury Nano on an X58 Mac Pro, there are no issues with black screens, etc. I doubt this is a power supply issue, as this truly looks like a quality issues with AMD's windows drivers. The issues are too widespread.

IMO the switch in driver platform from AMD Catalyst after driver versions 15.11 has been a rolling disaster.

Maybe the windows has got corrupted

Did you retry by doing a clean re-install of Windows & then installing the drivers 😉
 
sounds about right. A guy i work with built a new AMD system and kept getting WHEA uncorrectables. Went through support, got another card. Same issue. Asked if he could borrow my riser cable to eliminate his from being the issue and it didnt. Ended up buying a 2080Super and all of his problems went away and hes happy now.
 
If a poll on Reddit doesn't convince you then you're just too closed-minded. Now if you'll excuse me I must finish that news article on Facebook about the army of illegal alien hobos coming to take away my guns.
 
AMD has no track record in regards to what you are describing (punishing reviewers by not supplying reviewers). Whereas Nvidia literally issued hush paperwork to sign, or you don't get anything. Kyle and [H] were very vocal about this.

*I bought my RTX2060 used, so as not to support Nvidia in this. And the only reason I got Nvidia at all, is that I have interest in emulators. And most emulators cater to Nvidia.

The article doesn't say they weren't aware of issues. It says multiple times that they didn't experience anything noteworthy, themselves. And until recently, assumed that the problems being talked about 'round the internet, were maybe overblown (as the internet tends to do with everything). But after posting a poll and also asking resellers for comment, they found merit.

Shoppers on Amazon knew how bad the RMAs were. Even very positive reviews mention how bad the drivers are and its been that way for many months.

So either reviewers are afraid of bad mouthing AMD or they are incompetent idiots that should NEVER recommend how I spend my effing hard earned money. Because no fool skips customer reviews on sale sites.
 
Shoppers on Amazon knew how bad the RMAs were. Even very positive reviews mention how bad the drivers are and its been that way for many months.

So either reviewers are afraid of bad mouthing AMD or they are incompetent idiots that should NEVER recommend how I spend my effing hard earned money. Because no fool skips customer reviews on sale sites.
I am thinking it is less of a specific driver issue and more a driver API issue. reviewers are going to be testing on completely clean systems, stripped down with just the OS and necessary drivers and the suite they are testing. Once you start adding uPlay, Steam, Discord, Overwolf and all that other stuff that calls the API's for video acceleration you get into a mixed bag of WTF is going on here and I would hazard to guess that is where they are going to find their issues that are doing this. It makes far more sense that it is something that interacts with the GPU drivers in a specific way than the drivers themselves.
 
AMDs biggest mistake is not offering all their overlay stuff.... as an optional download. Provide a ultra basic driver... and avoid all the bad reviews. People complaining about AMD drivers are more often then not simply annoyed by the overlay stuff. Its also possibly the main source of bugs. I have no doubt its a combination of heat / power install issues with a general dislike of AMDs overlay... with the normal small amount of actual real issues. AMD does themselves no favors in trying to track down the real issue as well if everyone is complaining about things they dislike more then have real bug/issues with.
 
Under what system? The one with Windows 8?

My computer at my studio. It's an i5 8400 and a Radeon RX 580. I started with the latest drivers and kept downloading the next oldest ones until DaVinci Resolve would finally recognize I had a card that supports OpenCL.
 
Based on personal experiences with their WX cards their paperwork always recommends a PSU that is too small. In house I doubt they are using the recommended size PSU and reviewers probably aren’t either. Their test benches probably have a 1200w Seasonic and it’s blasting through it. When we updated our drafting lab the WX cards recommended a 550w, they weren’t stable till nw put 650’s in bare minimum.

So here's the fun part: PSU total wattage isn't what matters. It's how well it can supply what the system needs -- on the interconnects needed, and so on.

A system with a ~125W CPU and 225W GPU shouldn't be consuming more than 550W at the wall, for example, yet significantly larger PSUs are usually recommended simply to account for the lowest common denominator of PSUs used by consumers.

I'm betting that there's some disconnect between the power drawn by AMD GPUs (reference and partner), and the PSUs people are using.
 
So here's the fun part: PSU total wattage isn't what matters. It's how well it can supply what the system needs -- on the interconnects needed, and so on.

A system with a ~125W CPU and 225W GPU shouldn't be consuming more than 550W at the wall, for example, yet significantly larger PSUs are usually recommended simply to account for the lowest common denominator of PSUs used by consumers.

I'm betting that there's some disconnect between the power drawn by AMD GPUs (reference and partner), and the PSUs people are using.
Probably but what I find interesting and indicative of AMD's budget mindset is if I compare one of their GPU's and nVidia's based only on their power draw while their draw may be virtually identical AMD will recommend a 550, while nVidia will recommend a 750, so while this likely isn't so much the issue as the "quality" of budget PSU's it certainly doesn't help any in this case because while it meets the requirements unless you get in there with a line tester it may not be doing the job and you have no way of knowing. In our case we had a line tester and we could tell that the Dell PSU's were fluctuating too much on the units that shipped with a 550 but they were rock solid on the ones with a 650, so in our case it was a pretty easy fix, but a nightmare of a thing to troubleshoot.
 
I was against over-spec'ing PSUs on builds for the longest time, but generally speaking whether it's 650w or 850w rated, your average load is going to be in the efficient 'zone', and the upfront cost ranges from say US$0 - US$50 depending on the model line.

Then again, I ran CFX and then two iterations of SLI with an overclocked CPU on a 650W Corsair...
 
  • Like
Reactions: JMCB
like this
I was against over-spec'ing PSUs on builds for the longest time, but generally speaking whether it's 650w or 850w rated, your average load is going to be in the efficient 'zone', and the upfront cost ranges from say US$0 - US$50 depending on the model line.

Then again, I ran CFX and then two iterations of SLI with an overclocked CPU on a 650W Corsair...
I've always used the formula:
PSUwatt X efficiency X .75, so a 750w Platinum rated PSU has a usable max in my book of 450w, I mean sure you can draw more than that but this way you have a bit of a buffer and things should be well with in the max efficiency zone and plenty safe if the PSU has a bad capacitor or 2 that are running slightly below spec. Does that mean I have to spend an extra $20 on a PSU sure, but it also means I have lots of head room if things change and nothing is running too hot.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top