AMD Adrenalin Driver Has Issues With Older DX9 Games

I'm not really sure how AMD could screw up something like this, seeing as their development should have nothing to do with DX9 several years ago (and therefore what could they possibly change that would cause a breakage). I'm a little curious if this affects all GPUs or just certain models. Though this is obviously their fault and something they should fix, I do understand why they don't care to.

Though I personally am not happy about the way they're handling this, it isn't going to deter me from getting their products. In Windows, I only play DX11 or DX12 games, and their Linux drivers are almost reaching a point where they're better than the Windows drivers while being maybe 5% the size (likely less). Not all of their employees are idiots, it just seems like only some of the Windows driver devs, a handful of their GPU architecture engineers, and their marketing team.

@warlord
Are you bipolar? Whenever AMD does something right, you're like "this is great" and come to their defense whenever someone talks crap, but whenever they screw up something relatively unimportant you go on a tirade like they're going to go bankrupt at any moment. AMD/ATI (with Windows, anyway) has maintained a pretty consistent track record of their driver support and customer service for well over a decade. Despite how predictable their behavior is, you bought into them anyway and you treat your situation as though it's the most important and affects everyone. I get it - this crap is annoying, but you are blowing this way out of proportion.

 

As a programmer myself, I would never push software into public if it breaks something. And you saw their answer and bad attitude. Firstly old gpus cause bugs like UVD and inability for VSR, now old games and API. Who is AMD to decide what old and new is anyway?

 

Way to go AMD way to go. Break the most important thing that some gamers want being able to do. Play older titles. Heck not only break older titles but break a popular title like Starcraft 2. The only workaround for this is not to update the Drivers. AMD needs to fix this.

 

I can confirm that Witcher EE, even downloaded and installed through GOG Galaxy, will not run under the Adrenalins. However, Ray_M, the person who commented in the thread, is really a PR person--more than an active engineering person with AMD--so I would take his comment there tongue in cheek, at least for the moment. He simply put his foot in his mouth, more than likely. I've got games that are 30 years old I still play and which are still important to me. Game runs fine under the 17.11.4's and earlier--no problems. A ten year old game is not an old game at all--especially considering how often and frequently CDPr has updated the game since that time.

My take is that it's the Radeon overlay in the Adrenalins that is the problem with some software. I looked at it--wasn't impressed--and would prefer the drivers not overlay *anything* on top of my software. Backwards compatibility is extremely important--even Microsoft proves it--it's what keeps Windows relevant today. AMD cannot adopt a cavalier attitude about that. If it's a choice between game compatibility and the overlay, I'll take the game, any day. I feel certain this will be fixed.

 

I understand what you're saying, but GPU drivers are some of the most complex software out there. It is really difficult to not cause regressions. Neither Nvidia nor Intel are immune to this, they just handle it differently. From what I noticed, each company is terrible when it comes to regressions. AMD causes the most problems and uses "legacy" for every chance they can get as an excuse to not prioritize it, but the issues they cause are merely annoying or easily avoidable. When it comes to Intel, they do a fantastic job at updating their drivers, until a new generation product comes out, at which point their implied response is "if you want this fixed, buy the new CPU". Since Intel releases multiple generations per year, that gives a very short support window. As for Nvidia, they'r pretty good about not causing problems, they are known for being quick to fix problems, and they're usually good about legacy support. But, the problems that occur on their end are sometimes severe, ranging from damaged hardware to corrupt system files.

All that being said, you might argue "AMD sounds like overall the worst choice" but that's really only true for Windows users. AMD uses different devs for Mac and Linux, and though there is some shared code, these people do a better job at quality checking. Meanwhile, Intel's behavior is the same on all OSes, and for Nvidia the tables have turned - they behave more like AMD does in Windows.


I guess what I'm getting at is brand loyalty is a stupid idea, because none of them are flawless at anything. Buy what fits your needs. In your case, AMD is a bad option. For me personally, Nvidia is a bad option while Intel and AMD work great. To clarify though, I generally would recommend Nvidia for Windows gamers.

 

I wonder if dropping some legacy code in the drivers is what got them the performance boosts?

 

I don't see the same way. Im with AMD on this one or Nvidia if they do the same as i'm fairly certain dropping some legacy code is what is getting the nice performance boosts. You like to play a 10 year old game, cool then use an old driver. Not like you can't run the old drivers and its not like the new drivers are optimizing for anything in the games you listed as that was done 5+ years ago. Im not sure why people get so bent, obsolescence happens with all software including OS'es.

 

People panicking here is really sort of hilarious... This will be fixed, rest assured. It would make little sense for AMD to simply stop supporting certain games that worked fine prior to the Adrenalins, would it? My experience is sort of the opposite--I won't buy nVidia because of these exact kinds of problems--up until the recent Adrenalins I don't have any games that don't run under AMD drivers (or Win10x64)--and I have ~350 games *installed*, actually, many of them 20-30 years old. But that's neither here nor there. People trying to turn this into some sort of brand repudiation are being ridiculous--today is New Year's day--most everyone is off today. Meanwhile, the solution is roll back to the 17.11.4's as I did, make a driver-bug report, and await the fix. Simple.

 

Starcraft II and Starcraft Remastered are working with latest drivers, I've tested them minutes ago. This game should not be on the list.

 

This must mean that not all GPUs have regressed, at least not equally. I'm guessing the GCN 1.2 GPUs and newer are probably the most affected, since that's what Adrenaline seems to be the most focused on.

 

@schmidtbag Well, old games, opengl games, old dx games, 3dfxglide games etc whatever is aged performs better and more stable with Nvidia.

Newer DX ones (except tessellated ones) and vulkan are better with AMD.

It is tiring for us to force an option depending on game we play.

The only game from the list I can confirmed broken is witcher EE. C&Q I am gonna check them later. Skyrim SE is playing smoothly, perhaps old skyrim is broken but i cannot find any reason to play it anymore to be honest.

 

Well if thats the case then the R9 290/X based cards are saved from this monstrosity of a mistake by AMD since they are GCN 1.1.

 

I just checked Witcher 1. It's definitely broken on my 290X.

 

Very interesting. Then who knows what cards are effected by this since it can be any of the GCN cards.

 

AMD broke compatibility with multiple DirectX 1-7 games (off the top of my head Jedi Knight + Mots, X-Wing, Tie Fighter, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter +BOP and Incoming, I'm sure there are more) with Catalyst 13.2 and never bothered to fix it ever since despite tons of people reporting it. According to someone who created a proxy dll to work around that issue it was just a matter of the driver reporting 16 and 24 bit zbuffer support instead of 16 and 32 bit, so it should probably have been solvable by AMD with minimal effort.

 

And this is why i left my old Core 2 Duo rig completely intact. I put my old 670 there with older revision drivers so i am able to play some older titles if necessary. Still Running Windows 7 there as well.

 

Are there still people using and buying Radeon cards nowadays?

 

I would wait for an offical response from amd, this so called "amd rep" doesn't seem to understand the implications of his statement, seems like he just gave a lazy answer so people stop asking questions about it, probably gonna be fired for this lol.

I bet if the game was halo 1 his response would have been much different, unless hes out to lunch .

 

Bad news: I bought C&C Red Alert 3 just now from steam with 75% discount.
Good news: I bought GTX 1080Ti instead of R290X I had recently, so I'm peachy. Guess it's good Nvidia somehow supports "outdated APIs".

Some of the games in that list are outright iconic, Red Alert 3 for example is something I wanted to play a long time and Witcher 1 is self-explanatory.

Honestly, I like(ed) AMD, but they seem just to not be able to stop screwing up with DoA GPUs and now this... one thing if it was just a bug, but official "FU" to people over huge classics? Heck, I'd say ok if it were some ancient games, but these are not THAT old - it's not bloody Quake 2 there kk.

 

I've considered buying AMD gpus in the past, but I always tell myself their driver support is awful. This just re-enforces that opinion. I'd love for there to be competition, but this is just bad PR and bad support period for their customers. Shame on AMD!