Releasing stable Navi Radeon Adrenalin drivers still seems to be an uphill task for AMD

[Redaktion]

Nearly eight months on since launch, many AMD Navi GPU owners are complaining about random black screens and other driver inconsistencies even with the latest Radeon Adrenalin drivers. This puts prospective GPU owners in a conundrum as while AMD offers better value for money hardware, NVIDIA's drivers seem to be comparatively more stable.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Releasing-stable-Navi-Radeon-Adrenalin-drivers-still-seems-to-be-an-uphill-task-for-AMD.453884.0.html

[deksman2]

I can't say I experienced the black screen, crashes BSOD's, performance or any other problems some Reddit forums people seem to be experiencing.

As a previous owner of RX 580 and now Vega 56, the drivers for both GPU's have been rock solid for the most part.
The only issue I encountered on Vega 56 was the display on Acer PH517-61 (desktop replacement laptop with Ryzen 2700 and Vega 56) showing static noise after its been brought out of sleep mode.
The drivers up until and including version 19.5.2 work fine, but any other driver AFTER that causes the static noise on display to appear coming out of sleep mode (which can only be remedied with a OS restart).

This issue is persistent on all Acer PH517-61, and we circumvented the problem by switching Windows to Hybernate instead of sleep.
We also reported the issue to AMD which they said they will look into (and should have been solved) but it persists to this day.

However, I should point out that I think Acer is responsible in large part for this problem because they stopped supporting the laptop merely 6 months after its release. We submitted this problem to Acer's technical support and the best they could do is to tell us that we should only use manufacturer (aka Acer) drivers for full stability (which are also anciet/outdated).

Acer hadn't released any relevant BIOS updates that could fix the problem, nor have they bothered to create NEW drivers based on AMD's latest ones (they still have outdated drivers on their website which were released when the laptop first launched - this is largely negligence on Acer's part - not sure how much of a blame AMD can take on this one).

However (and I shall repeat), NONE of us experienced driver crashes, BSOD's, black screens or problematic performance like some Reddit users... all in all (apart from the static noise appearing after sleep), the drivers have been quite solid.

The desktop users are largely comprised of people who have wildly mixed systems and configurations with questionable/unknown Windows installations.

One should hope they have adequate PSU's to drive the hw, updated Windows, BIOS, chipset drivers and would run DDU to remove remnants of any previous drivers from the OS (in addition to preventing Windows from automatically updating) before clean installing latest drivers (some users ended up having NV gpu's previously and never removed NV drivers from the OS before/after installing the AMD gpu).

Yes, for some, the issues will persist even after doing everything they could (and AMD needs to hammer down on those problems I agree), however, for many others, if they exercised common sense and tried to do what is suggested, their problems end up being SOLVED, or minimise the chances of occurring in the first place.

No drivers are perfect. As a previous owner of NV gpu I can attest to that (they have been plagued with driver crashes, BSOD's, black screens etc.).
In fact, my own issue with the static noise problem is actually minuscule and a nuisance compared to multitude of driver crashes I had with an NV gpu - however, as I said, this basically comes with the territory of owning a PC (the possibility of problems cropping up regardless of the hw you may have at one point or another is there because we don't live in a system where proper quality control is implemented for one thing, and because PC's are highly modular systems with mixed components, some incompatibilities could occur - in which case, I DO think the industry should be using AI to automatically analyse the OS/system and adapt the drivers so they work best on that particular system).

I would also be wary of Internet replies stating how 'bad' AMD drivers are.
We have no way of verifying who might be lying, or who has genuine issues.
The problems are further compounded by some users preferring to 'bash' AMD rather to provide information that would help solve the problems they have.

User error is very common in these situations and we need to be mindful of that... and while AMD definitely has driver problems which they HAVE to solve (so does NV), I also do not think they are necessarily as widespread as some seem to claim.

The internet does have a way of exaggerating and blowing things out of proportion.
Plus with an ever increasing amount of fake news and information in the wild, we need to be extremely careful and NOT jump to conclusions.

[Vaidyanathan]

Agreed it's a combination of many factors. For most laptops I've tested, I use the common AMD or NVIDIA drivers as OEMs hardly keep pace with the latest versions. It should not, at least theoretically, affect laptop GPU performance unless there is something to do with the BIOS.

It is not uncommon to find exaggerations of how bad the drivers are as only those having issues tend to report them and they get amplified via media coverage. The same goes for NVIDIA or Intel drivers, or basically any piece of code ever written.

However, there is something about recurrence of issues that AMD needs to focus on. With Intel also hopping on to the dGPU bandwagon, people will now have more choices irrespective of how good or bad Xe performs. AMD simply cannot afford to let the opportunity slip, especially when it is all about better QC.

[ArcCat]

I don't know, I am using 5700 xt with 20.1.4 and the black screen problem isn't a thing right now. However, both 20.1.3 and 20.2.1 made my pc going black screen after a while.
My problem is some video, sound, and mouse stuttering occuring randomly, and lasting for half a second. Maybe is it related to gpu clock?

[James Warner]

As a new pc games who has just moved from a ps4 pro with a 2 tb hhsd to a ryzen 5 2600, rx 5600 xt, 16 gb of 3000 Mhz ram all crammed in on a aorus b450 pro wifi and a 2 tb ssd. I can only say WOW. Compared to the pro or my son's one x, this is so much better. I can see this spoiling me and I only have mine set to auto and I'm pulling over 100 fps on everything un-overclocked. But this was just a couple days ago and aside from some Smokey lookin rocks in the hunter call oye it's all good, and at under 1000$ us for everything and hand building i can't complain

[Vaidyanathan]

As a new pc games who has just moved from a ps4 pro with a 2 tb hhsd to a ryzen 5 2600, rx 5600 xt, 16 gb of 3000 Mhz ram all crammed in on a aorus b450 pro wifi and a 2 tb ssd. I can only say WOW. Compared to the pro or my son's one x, this is so much better. I can see this spoiling me and I only have mine set to auto and I'm pulling over 100 fps on everything un-overclocked. But this was just a couple days ago and aside from some Smokey lookin rocks in the hunter call oye it's all good, and at under 1000$ us for everything and hand building i can't complain

Haha yeah. Welcome to the PC Master Race and enjoy your new found addiction ;)

[Spunjji]

Their poll is weird, but it's currently at 19% of respondents claiming to have an AMD GPU with driver issues and 13% claiming to have an Nvidia GPU with driver issues.

Nvidia with no driver issues dominates, which is kind of what you'd expect - they have the most popular GPUs and most users don't have big driver problems. I'm wary of these polls, though - they're wide-open to manipulation.

[Vaidyanathan]

Their poll is weird, but it's currently at 19% of respondents claiming to have an AMD GPU with driver issues and 13% claiming to have an Nvidia GPU with driver issues.

Nvidia with no driver issues dominates, which is kind of what you'd expect - they have the most popular GPUs and most users don't have big driver problems. I'm wary of these polls, though - they're wide-open to manipulation.

Personally though, I would take that poll as a general indicator of stuff than anything scientific. Fanboys could just as well try to manipulate it but if it does fall on AMD's radar, there could be some positive outcome after all.