Whats up with so many people seemingly having issues with AMD drivers?

[xFluing]

So many people seem to have problems with AMD drivers that are just not there and I am beginning to think it's the same regurgitated bullshit by nvidia fanboys who either:

 

1. Never even touched AMD but pretend they did to create an argument for themselves

 

2. Have only half assed their AMD attempts without proper driver cleanup so of course they have issues

 

Oh also it's crazy how seemingly the same crowd was ok with intel's driver issues and had patience for fixes

[matt0725]

deceptive title is deceptive.

 

AMD for years had shit drivers, full stop. They are supposed to be better for quite a while now, but ive had multiple issues across 3 or 4 AMD builds between both hardware and software, and have decided that intel and nvidia get my money for at least another few generations. These were new builds, so no driver cleanup issues.

 

As for intel driver issues, i assume youre talking about the new GPU's and not their CPUs, only bc i never saw anything about CPU issues. Intel gets a pass for driver issues for many people because these gpus are literally brand new. AMD, who purchased ATI way back in the day, has been making GPU's since the 90's so they dont get the same leeway.

 

Sure, some people jump on a hate bandwagon because they can, but pretending like AMD has never had/still never has issues more so than other brands is just fanboying or lying to yourself.

[SorryBella]

24 minutes ago, matt0725 said:

Sure, some people jump on a hate bandwagon because they can, but pretending like AMD has never had/still never has issues more so than other brands is just fanboying or lying to yourself.

Pretty much. Post polaris its been far better with the redesign but it still crashes a lot and updates are still carried about as well as xsplit updates as in that it doesnt work at all and you should just reinstall.

[Hachi_Roku256563]

I mean its also a bit of a mixed bag

Ive had endless problems with NVIDIA on my 1060 but not a single issue on any amd gpu Vega 8 580 6700

I think it depends a bit on uscase

amd drivers are great after catalyst

 

[CompletelyNormalHumanGuy]

Bait post is Bait.

 

I've had a few of the HD7000 series GPU's. (I've had a few HD7970's and a few HD7870's and a HD7950). I went Nvidia since (660ti, 960ti, 1060, 2060 mobile etc etc). I've honestly never found any actual differences in terms of stability.

 

My tolerance for stutter was probably a lot higher back in the day to be fair.

 

I'm running a 7900xtx and apart from having to reinstall the latest driver once the cards been rock solid. The reference model is loud but whatever 

[WereCat]

I'll bet that at least 50% of those people have bad display cable. Unfortunately on AMD it tends to crash the driver during dropouts while on nvidia you may just get occasional flicker. 

[Eigenvektor]

I've so far owned an R9 290, RX 480 and currently own an RX 6600. No driver issues to report.

[Donut417]

12 hours ago, xFluing said:

So many people seem to have problems with AMD drivers that are just not there and I am beginning to think it's the same regurgitated bullshit by nvidia fanboys who either:

Actually historically their drivers have been an issue. ATI whom AMD bought in 2006 when they decided to get in to GPU's had crappy drivers. When AMD bought them the drivers were just as crappy. That being said, Ive owned quite a few Radeon cards in my day and the drivers have become much better then back in the day. I dont think I have ever had driver issues with my RX5700, the slight driver issues I had with my HD7950 were not game breaking, just a minor annoyance. 

[Levent]

I used AMD graphics for over 10 years. AMD's drivers got significantly worse with the release of HD7XXX series cards in late 2011 and early 2012. It took them over 2 years to get the drivers to a state where users wouldnt experience driver related issues daily. At the same time, Nvidia introduced ShadowPlay, GFE and couple other features that I dont remember. AMD decided to be competitive started introducing many shitty features with their driver packages and broke even more things. At one point their drivers gotten so shit that they even had to rename their driver packages twice get rid all the smell that came with it.

 

I also deal with 50 or so AMD APU devices at work and situation is still absolutely disgraceful even with basic production applications like teams (though teams itself a piece of shit, it works just fine on intel iGPU drivers and on devices with nvidia dGPUs.)

[WallacEngineering]

13 hours ago, xFluing said:

So many people seem to have problems with AMD drivers that are just not there and I am beginning to think it's the same regurgitated bullshit by nvidia fanboys who either:

 

1. Never even touched AMD but pretend they did to create an argument for themselves

 

2. Have only half assed their AMD attempts without proper driver cleanup so of course they have issues

 

Oh also it's crazy how seemingly the same crowd was ok with intel's driver issues and had patience for fixes

 

To an extent, people DO make up BS to support their own argument but I don't really think its that bad.

 

Also, as a 7900-XTX owner and previously a 5700-XT, I can tell you that AMD has certainly improved SIGNIFICANTLY over the years. Additionally, AMDs software User Interface experience is VASTLY SUPERIOR to Nvidia with fan control, overclocking, and the equivalent of "GeForce Experience" all baked into the base Driver.

 

However, this does NOT mean that AMD is perfect. Each company has its strengths and weaknesses. And for AMD, while driver stability is pretty good these days, it still doesn't match Nvidia. I DO have driver crashes and issues with games once in a blue moon. Its not a big deal, the driver recovers about 60 seconds after the game closes, just open the game back up and continue where you left off. It does NOT happen often, maybe once a month. However, Nvidia drivers basically NEVER crash, or if they do its often user error or something broken - Basically, its ALMOST NEVER Nvidia's fault.

 

Nvidia also still holds better RT performance over AMDs head although in some games now the RX 7000 series can match its Nvidia counterparts. But in most RT situations, AMD still loses by a decent 10-15%. AMD also can't match Nvidia's Prowess on the professional market. Anyone using a GPU for any reason that makes money, basically chooses Nvidia and thats the end of that.

 

So really, what AMD is superior at is what it has always been superior at:

 

Simple, RAW Graphical Horsepower for gaming, while being more generous with VRAM, at a lower price. So ya, anyone just playing games should probably be buying AMD cards right now, they are the better value and there is no arguing that. Plus as I said the AMD experience these days is pretty fantastic and I do believe these issues are exaggerated by most.

 

But if you need Cuda Acceleration, if you need 110% bullet-proof drivers for professional work - Nvidia. Or if you care about RT performance enough to pay 20-50% more for a card that is only about 10% faster on average in RT and 5-15% slower in Raster with mediocre amounts of VRAM, then you can't really argue with an Nvidia purchase.

 

Also there is the RTX 4090, a true engineering marvel, a GPU so powerful that you can't even call it "flagship" because the RX 7900-XTX and RTX 4080 are both more than capable at 3840x2160p resolution and are definitely flagships themselves. The RTX 4090 has surpassed the "SuperCard" level and become the world's first "HyperCard" if you understand the reference.

 

Sure, is the RTX 4090 completely unnecessary for basically anyone? Yes, it is. Is it way too expensive and just not worth it for almost anyone? Yes, its not worth it. But is it also an engineering masterpiece that you can't help but respect like the world's first HyperCar? Yes, it is also that.

 

So again, both companies have their strengths and weaknessess. As for Intel, well they are just too new. Am I curious and would like to experience an ARC card? Absolutely. Am I willing to risk literally not being able to play half my games at all because its their first generation and they have serious issues? Nope, afraid not. The solution? Let Intel release a few more generations of GPUs, fix the problems, and release higher end cards that can drive higher resolutions. THEN, consider an Intel ARC card.

[Xiee]

It's mixed at best. I have the same video card with a friend (Sapphire Pulse 5700XT). I've had almost no issues with mine, but for my friend, he's had a lot of weird issues and hiccups (black screens, game crashes, etc). We both play the same games. The only difference is that he's on Windows 10 and I'm on Linux.

[Gork]

 As a public service announcement  I suspect if AMD's drivers were inherently as terrible as this thread implies,  gamers nexus would rip into them on a drivers issue. And we might even have a LTT video or 20 about Linus trying to game, just for him to play: lets fix AMD's problems!

I remember back in the day the "fun" of the  GTX experience, actually being god awful. It's popup is bad is now.  But it's gone from: will my computer BSOD (or just crash if on Apple) to: borg levels of annoying.

AMD drivers aren't optimal by any stretch.  Of the GPU's I've had with them the drivers proper weren't any more quirky than Nvidias. FWIW.

Also consider this: If AMD's drivers went' from wonky to getting crushing blows levels of bad. That would be all over the real news, CNN, and CSPAN much?

Purely for DX11 and DX12 they're just as bad and good as nvidia, give or take.

 

I have had my display driver from nvidia crash several times FWIW.  The last Radeon  I had did the samething as well. I don't recall it having catastrophically, spectacularly, how did this get to production? kinds of bad though. And I ran emulators and World of Warcraft on that computer. That was up to WoW legion as well. If it makes a difference I was even tank 25mans, and once stepped in just to be a 'soak tank' for one Zuljins top 15 guilds (The fallen protectors  they needed a self healing tank to take the rediculous number debfufs.) .

 

Now I wonder what the hell people are doing to cause nightmare  levels of issues.

[PriitM]

Interesting thread. 2012-2018 drivers were hit or miss, but usually there was one that was stable. Has been the case ever since. Had me R9 390X for 7 years, tried many drivers. But among them were only 4 stable versions. I used 19.9 driver from 2019-2023. Was quite stable. Now I run 23.1.2 pure drivers (still dont trust the UI elements) on my 7900XTX Nitro+. Other than regular fresh hardware peculiarities, no issues. Games ranging from 2005 to 2023, different engines etc.

 

Arm chair analysis is arm chair

[Montana One-Six]

Last dGPU I had from AMD was the Radeon HD6870 which I didn't have any issues with.

 

The present day experience with AMD drivers I have isn't as good. Granted I don't have any current day dGPU experience but I have an AMD Laptop (R7 3700U with RX Vega 10 Graphics) in my household and the amount of issues I experienced with that thing especially related to the iGPU is almost ridiculous. I mean I probably spent more time fixing this one Laptop than all my current and previous PCs combined.

[hollyh88]

On 5/29/2023 at 6:08 AM, Caroline said:

And I say this with 4 AMD cards on my computer. Hardware is fine, but the drivers... pain. The control panel is unstable af, you get random crashes that somehow revert every tuning done to defaults.

I have had this happen from time to time but only when i have shut down the pc and started it again the next day. and it doesnt always happen. but fixing this is just 4 mouse clicks and a few seconds for me if you saved your oc profile. So i hardly call that pain. Thats the only thing that i have had so far. 

[DoctorNick]

On 5/29/2023 at 6:31 AM, WereCat said:

I'll bet that at least 50% of those people have bad display cable. Unfortunately on AMD it tends to crash the driver during dropouts while on nvidia you may just get occasional flicker. 

I will try this, because I get some weird driver crashes sometimes, only on HDMI though.  

[WallacEngineering]

11 hours ago, Montana One-Six said:

Last dGPU I had from AMD was the Radeon HD6870 which I didn't have any issues with.

 

The present day experience with AMD drivers I have isn't as good. Granted I don't have any current day dGPU experience but I have an AMD Laptop (R7 3700U with RX Vega 10 Graphics) in my household and the amount of issues I experienced with that thing especially related to the iGPU is almost ridiculous. I mean I probably spent more time fixing this one Laptop than all my current and previous PCs combined.

 

Tuning resets after crashes make perfect sense honestly. The Driver assumes your OC is a part of the problem, and killing OC is the obvious first step to troubleshooting anything hardware related.

 

Just save a profile, its what I do. Two clicks and my settings are restored, so it just doesn't matter.