AMD releases Adrenalin 20.2.2 - attempt at bug squashing and faith restoring

[Humbug]

It's been an interesting few months for the Radeon Technologies group. Their performance midrange Navi graphics cards have been selling well (source) helped by AMD's resurgent brand name thanks to the CPU division.

 

However the last couple of months has also seen the reputation of AMD's driver team go up in flames with many users complaining of black screen issues particularly when using multi-monitor setups. This downturn in their driver quality comes at a time when the company is making good profits, expanding R&D and software teams and has more resources at it's disposal than recent memory. Ironically in the last 8 years during much of which AMD was in a dicey financial situation they had developed a good reputation for the quality of their drivers both in terms of stability and long term support. The situation came to a head with major tech outlets like Gamer's Nexus complaining about persistent bugs, and even Hardware Unboxed hesitating to recommend some mainstream AMD GPUs despite them having better performance than Nvidia. AMD now realizes that this situation could ruin RTG's reputation undoing years of hard work on the driver side and hurting their sales for years to come. Nvidia will be hoping this storm continues as it has the potential to ruin the upcoming launch of big Navi.

 

The Adrenalin Edition 20.2.2 release is packed to the brim with bug fixes, rather than performance or feature improvements. This is AMD's attempt to get on top of things.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-20-2-2

 

 

Quote

Fixed Issues

• Performing a task switch with some Radeon Software features enabled or some third-party applications with hardware acceleration running in the background may cause a system hang or black screen.
• Improvements have been made that allow for more responsive fan ramp up or fan ramp down times on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products.
• Performance Metrics Overlay and Radeon WattMan incorrectly report lower than expected clock speeds on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products during gaming workloads.
• When Instant Replay is enabled, a TDR or black screen may occur when launching games or applications.
• A black screen may occur when toggling HDR on in the game settings of Battlefield™ V.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt™ may experience an application hang or black screen during certain parts of the game or intermittently during gameplay.
• Some video content in Chrome™ may appear as a black screen or be unresponsive on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics products when hardware acceleration is enabled.
• Metro Exodus™ may experience an application hang or TDR when choosing some specific dialogue prompts in the Sam’s Story DLC.
• Grand Theft Auto™ V may experience an application crash when invoking Radeon Software’s overlay with third party OSD applications running.
• Monster Hunter World™: Iceborne may experience intermittent crashes while idle or on the character creation screen.
• Some games colors may appear washed out when HDR mode has been enabled in game and Windows® on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products
• After a Factory Reset installation with the ‘Keep My Settings’ option chosen, Instant Replay could fail to function if it was enabled in the previous Radeon Software installation.
• When invoking Radeon Software’s overlay while a game is open users may observe flickering in the game or in the Radeon Software interface.
• Radeon Software may experience a crash and error message when locking Windows® or performing a sleep or hibernate with the Radeon Software Streaming tab open.
• A loss of display with working audio may be experienced on a limited number of displays when performing a mode change on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics products.
• Radeon Software may fail to launch if Radeon Software’s overlay is disabled and a game is running in the background.
• Battlefield™ V may experience an application hang or TDR after extended periods of play.
• Some Origin™ games may fail to be detected or may detect the incorrect game title in Radeon Software.
• Some productivity applications are being detected and listed in the Radeon Software games tab.
• The Radeon Chill hotkey could sometimes continue to remain enabled once the user has removed or disabled the hotkey.
• Red Dead Redemption™ 2 may exhibit blocky textures on snow covered terrain.
• After resuming from sleep, Chrome™ may experience an application crash if video content was previously playing on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products.
• Radeon FreeSync status in Radeon Software may sometimes fail to update when enabling or disabling the feature through the display itself.
• Fortnite™ may experience an application crash on Radeon RX 500 series Hybrid Graphics system configurations.

Known Issues

• Enhanced Sync may cause a black screen to occur when enabled on some games and system configurations. Enhanced Sync has been temporarily disabled from the gaming profile and any users who may be experiencing issues with Enhanced Sync enabled should disable it as a temporary workaround.
• Performance Metrics Overlay and Radeon WattMan incorrectly report higher than expected idle clock speeds on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products. Performance and power consumption are not impacted by this incorrect reporting.
• DOOM™ may experience an intermittent system hang or application crash during gameplay.
• Desktop cursor may intermittently remain visible after toggling Radeon Software’s overlay in some games. A workaround is to bring up the game menu or task switch to refresh the cursor.
• A system crash or hang may occur when running the Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers™ benchmark.
• The Gaming tab in Radeon Software may display some folder locations appearing as games.
• Radeon Software may open with an inconsistent window size or may not keep its previously set size when opened.
• Modifying the HDMI Scaling slider may cause FPS to become locked to 30.
• Some games may exhibit stutter intermittently during gameplay on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics products.
• Some games may experience stutter while using Instant Replay or third-party applications that stream or perform screen capture. A potential workaround is to disable these features or applications while gaming.
• Although Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.2.2 resolves many black screen issues, AMD is aware that some users may still experience black screen or system hang issues during extended periods of gameplay. AMD will continue to monitor and investigate reports of these issues closely.

Important Notes

• This optional release of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition is targeted towards resolving recent important issues identified by our community. We will be closely monitoring feedback on the release, and encourage users to submit issues they encounter at www.amd.com/report.
• AMD Ryzen™ Mobile Processors with Radeon™ Vega Graphics FAQ for Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition can be found here.

 

Personally I have not faced any of the recent issues on my R9 290. Either by luck, due to my specific windows environment, or because my GPU is 6 years old with very mature support. Please share your experiences below of recent months with Radeon GPUs as well as this newest driver.

 

[GrockleTD]

It’s sad how long this list is... but I imagine @Zando would be relieved to hear about it

[DrMacintosh]

I'll say it again, my RX 5700 does not suffer from any of the issues on the fixed lists or the known issues list. 

[Humbug]

3 minutes ago, GrockleTD said:

It’s sad how long this list is... but I imagine @Zando would be relieved to hear about it

Looks like they pulled everyone on the software team away from performance and feature work for a few weeks and said just focus on bugs.

[justpoet]

I applaud companies any time they do a "bug fix only" release.  They are unfortunately fewer and further between now, often way behind the timing they should've been done, and only when things go completely wrong, but it is still good to see that response from ANY company.  Glad they're doing this.

[lafrente]

I feel like they are introducing more bugs as they fix at this point. Why did they have to add that stupid streaming stuff and bunch of unnecessary features like replay, advisor etc? People who are serious about streaming or recording won't use that software anyway. Just do what you are supposed to do and do it well. A software that can set proper fan curves, voltages, that does not forget/reset anything by itself, and doesn't bug out every second. 

[Master Disaster]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I'll say it again, my RX 5700 does not suffer from any of the issues on the fixed lists or the known issues list. 

Mine didn't until I updated to 20.1 then RDR2 started black screening at launch. The fix is to alt enter and it comes back but it's annoying non the less. What's more concerning is it doesn't seem to be addressed in the list of changes.

 

Also bringing up any kind of overlay in any game causes a black screen too but this seems to be addressed.

[Humbug]

10 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

What's more concerning is it doesn't seem to be addressed in the list of changes.

Give it a shot though, it may still be fixed if it shares a common root cause with one of the other similar use cases they fixed.

[GrockleTD]

14 minutes ago, Humbug said:

Looks like they pulled everyone on the software team away from performance and feature work for a few weeks and said just focus on bugs.

A couple more of these and AMD drivers might be decent

[cj09beira]

53 minutes ago, lafrente said:

I feel like they are introducing more bugs as they fix at this point. Why did they have to add that stupid streaming stuff and bunch of unnecessary features like replay, advisor etc? People who are serious about streaming or recording won't use that software anyway. Just do what you are supposed to do and do it well. A software that can set proper fan curves, voltages, that does not forget/reset anything by itself, and doesn't bug out every second. 

Some are more feature creep than anything but recording is super useful, being able to quickly save that 360 no scope you just pulled is great, its much harder to setup other programs to do it, and its much less taxing as well, 

[exetras]

I've had no issue with the drivers for my 5700 XT.

 

Physically though I've done the following:

• tighten one loose screw on the cooler bracket. it was quite loose.
• recently removed the piece of metal in between the 2 slots needed for the 5700 XT. It was in the way of one of the exhaust.

This has dropped the temps to normal levels and the fans are quite less noisy.

[Unixsystem]

1 hour ago, justpoet said:

I applaud companies any time they do a "bug fix only" release.  They are unfortunately fewer and further between now, often way behind the timing they should've been done, and only when things go completely wrong, but it is still good to see that response from ANY company.  Glad they're doing this.

It feels like the Early Access mentality has crept its way into traditional software, where you just keep cramming features and content to make it look like you're adding value while never polishing or refining anything to get it up to acceptable standards. I'd always rather have a simple, fully functional single purpose piece of software rather than one that does everything but does so with varying degrees of jank. 

[lemmel]

I had until recently only used the first driver that was labeled "Adrenalin 2020" for my 5700XT. I don't remember the exakt driver version.

 

It was perfectly stable and performed well. It was even more stable than my previous nVidia rig with an 1060 6gig.

 

However, the other week i had set a ridicilously unstable RAM oc and played PUBG with some mates. The game kept bouncing me to the desktop and all of a sudden Windows stated something about .Net 3.5. Then my whole system locked and i got a bluescreen. It turns out that Windows-"whip.my.bum.so.hard.it.turns.red.and.warm"-update was crashing over and over in the background. After that i had quite the problem to post and even more so to boot into Windows. After some fiddling I was up and running again but from here on out my 5700XT driver have been scetchy. First of all after I got my system to behave somewhat normal after the crash during Windows update i had some pinkish/purpleish/greyish screens or no image at all. I got into safe mode, removed the video driver and installed the, at the time, newest approved driver. From then on out I am having issues with my PC sometimes starting in a very low resolution, Radeon software refusing to start etc. A few days later when all seamed fine, my youngest kid smashed every keyboard key at once on the desktop and guess what: black screen. Until i pulled the powerchord for a few minutes and reinserted it I wasn't getting any image output at all.

 

It seems to me like amds videodrivers are very sensitive so all I can recommend is to NOT change driver unless you really need to and that they seem very fragile. This is my first ever amd graphics card and I have allways heard and read that their drivers are aweful. At first I had the complete opposite experience but now I know what ppl are talking about.

 

I will try this new 20.2.2 driver shortly and hopefully it will resolve some of my recent issues.

 

 

[Brooksie359]

21 minutes ago, lemmel said:

I had until recently only used the first driver that was labeled "Adrenalin 2020" for my 5700XT. I don't remember the exakt driver version.

 

It was perfectly stable and performed well. It was even more stable than my previous nVidia rig with an 1060 6gig.

 

However, the other week i had set a ridicilously unstable RAM oc and played PUBG with some mates. The game kept bouncing me to the desktop and all of a sudden Windows stated something about .Net 3.5. Then my whole system locked and i got a bluescreen. It turns out that Windows-"whip.my.bum.so.hard.it.turns.red.and.warm"-update was crashing over and over in the background. After that i had quite the problem to post and even more so to boot into Windows. After some fiddling I was up and running again but from here on out my 5700XT driver have been scetchy. First of all after I got my system to behave somewhat normal after the crash during Windows update i had some pinkish/purpleish/greyish screens or no image at all. I got into safe mode, removed the video driver and installed the, at the time, newest approved driver. From then on out I am having issues with my PC sometimes starting in a very low resolution, Radeon software refusing to start etc. A few days later when all seamed fine, my youngest kid smashed every keyboard key at once on the desktop and guess what: black screen. Until i pulled the powerchord for a few minutes and reinserted it I wasn't getting any image output at all.

 

It seems to me like amds videodrivers are very sensitive so all I can recommend is to NOT change driver unless you really need to and that they seem very fragile. This is my first ever amd graphics card and I have allways heard and read that their drivers are aweful. At first I had the complete opposite experience but now I know what ppl are talking about.

 

I will try this new 20.2.2 driver shortly and hopefully it will resolve some of my recent issues.

 

 

Honestly I generally dont update my drivers unless I have issues even using an nvidia card because there is no reason to update if there isn't an issue why updating can surely cause issues like it has in the past for me. I think nvidia is pretty good about having good stable drivers but there are still a couple times in the past where I have gotten a bad driver from nvidia and had to switch to an older version. 

[Deli]

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Mine didn't until I updated to 20.1 then RDR2 started black screening at launch. The fix is to alt enter and it comes back but it's annoying non the less. What's more concerning is it doesn't seem to be addressed in the list of changes.

 

Also bringing up any kind of overlay in any game causes a black screen too but this seems to be addressed.

My PC has been stable up to 20.1.3. No black screen or any issue. When I try the 20.2.1 a couple of weeks ago. I experienced a few black screens and lock up. DDU it and roll back to 20.1.3.

 

I suppose if mine is working fine. I should just stick with it for a while.

[GDRRiley]

1 hour ago, exetras said:

tighten one loose screw on the cooler bracket. it was quite loose.

that is a know issues with early boards. according to asus AMD recommended too little mounting pressure for coolers.

Spoiler

Many buyers of ASUS’ ROG Strix RX 5700 XT have been reporting runaway temperatures with the card. 

It seems that the culprit was a poorly tightened back plate, via some miscommunications between AMD and its partners. ASUS seems to suggest that AMD’s guidelines are to blame. 

“Initial batches of ROG Strix RX 5700-series graphics cards were torqued to 30-40 PSI based on AMD’s baseline recommendations. While those guidelines provided leeway to apply more torque, we took a cautious approach because were dealing with a new 7nm GPU and didn’t want to risk damage to the die. After receiving user reports regarding temperature issues, we performed extended R&D testing to find the optimal PSI range for our graphics cards without compromising GPU reliability,” says ASUS. 

ASUS went on to say that it found the optimal torque range for the backplate screws is 50 and 70 PSI, (per PCWorld) and that future cards would ship with new screws torqued to 50-60 PSI. ASUS is also telling its customers to get in touch with the company to receive the upgrade for free, starting next month. 

Users were reporting that tightening the screws and/or adding washers seemed to correct the issue, so here’s hoping that ASUS has a handle on the problem. 

 

8 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly I generally dont update my drivers unless I have issues even using an nvidia card because there is no reason to update if there isn't an issue why updating can surely cause issues like it has in the past for me. I think nvidia is pretty good about having good stable drivers but there are still a couple times in the past where I have gotten a bad driver from nvidia and had to switch to an older version. 

about once a year they fuck up badly.

[Bombastinator]

Will my dual-link dviD monitor run on a 580 again? It did for a while then it died.  I don’t know if it was AMD or win10 that killed the thing but I’m still mad about it.

[CephDigital]

It's strange. The last time I had an AMD GPU was the RX 480 and that thing ran really smoothly with very few crashes. Compared to my last 2 GPUs (laptops with GTX 1070 and RTX 2070), these crash ALOT more than the 480.

[Doobeedoo]

I had no issues though, but yeah quite a big list of fixes, which is great. Really, games them selves always posed more problems than drivers for me. 

[Humbug]

1 hour ago, TheUberMedic said:

It's strange. The last time I had an AMD GPU was the RX 480 and that thing ran really smoothly with very few crashes. Compared to my last 2 GPUs (laptops with GTX 1070 and RTX 2070), these crash ALOT more than the 480.

Ya in my experience too AMD has been a bit better than Nvidia for reliability, but judging by reports from others it seems like the last couple months have had an uptick in issues.

[Master Disaster]

14 minutes ago, Humbug said:

Ya in my experience too AMD has been a bit better than Nvidia for reliability, but judging by reports from others it seems like the last couple months have had an uptick in issues.

I can attest to that. When Adrenaline first released I had no issues, as soon as I updated to 20.1 things went bad. I'm gonna upgrade to the new version today and try out a few of the offending titles, see if things are better now.

[lemmel]

16 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly I generally dont update my drivers unless I have issues even using an nvidia card because there is no reason to update if there isn't an issue why updating can surely cause issues like it has in the past for me. I think nvidia is pretty good about having good stable drivers but there are still a couple times in the past where I have gotten a bad driver from nvidia and had to switch to an older version. 

You and me both, then. 

 

Yeah nVidia have had their share of unstable drivers to but in all my years of PC-gaming I have never encountered such severe issues as the one i mentioned.

However, in my case it is not only the Radeon drivers fault since the crash originated from Windows update and my, at the time, unstable RAM oc. But i sure worries me that the video driver failed so hard and time after time since. It's almost as if the Radeon drivers need a safe enviroment to function in, like an incubator of sorts. 

 

The good thing here though is that AMD seems to have listened to their audience and addressed severeal of the worst bugs. The sad side of things is that were seven months after release and these types of problems still exists. Hopefully they can rekindle some trust in their drivers by keep on releasing this type of fixes.

[Humbug]

wow seems like lots of positive feedback so far on this release

 

reddit link 

[BigDamn]

Were these issues exclusive to Navi cards? My 290x hasn't given me any issues since Catalyst Control Center, and back then I heard about how great Nvidia's drivers were. After owning a 1080 for over a year I can safely say I prefer AMD's drivers to Nvidia's, but both have been rock solid in terms of stability.

[Tenelia]

Meanwhile Vega gets no love...