Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.1

Interesting days! Zero problems to my system. Especially freesync problems with old API, extremely old games are fixed now.

Best driver ever for my me. No flickering, no crashes, nothing. I dare say, I have none of the bugs I did encounter with 19.12.3.

 

Also, that dual, two times cleanup, first DDU safe mode, with disabled network, then amd clean install factory reset new setup function, is the holy grail!

You can clearly distinguish the better, more stable driver plus monitor or multimedia playback bugs.

I am happy. That situation, helps us to understand when a game or windows update are to blame.

 

Weird.
I don't use SpeedFan, but, I do use AB and, no such problem.

SpeedFan is kinda old at this point, so, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the program the problem and not the drivers themselves.

 

Anyone else than me that got unusual high CPU powerusage after installing these?
I have changed the thermalpaste on both the cpu and on the gfx-card after I installed these drivers, and I had to lower the cpu max power in the energysettings to be back at normal.
Setup is Ryzen 1600x/ASUS PRIME B350-PLUS/Sapphire R9 390 Nitro+ /w backplate, and 2 sticks G-skill 3200/14/14/14, Noctua Cooler, and it has worked flawless a very long time....
?
Oh, and I don't overclock any longer, stopped with that around thunderbird CPU's

 

Do you have the game profile in AMD Settings for Modern Warfare @ default? I'd try playing around with different settings - Texture Filtering Quality and Surface Format Optimization. I'd also try forcing Tessellation to different levels. Even though it says it only affects DX9 games, I'd also try forcing Anistropic Filtering to 16x in AMD Settings(if someone can confirm this to be useless, chime in).

 

Thankfully, it does seem to be rock solid with it off. RIS helps)

EDIT: Re-installed driver and slightly loosened my RAM timings. Played The Forest for over an hour with Chill on - no crash...might just be random, somehow.

 

ok I haven't upgraded yet. I just got use to my wattman profile remaining the same after rebooting. lol

 

Triple screens freesync doesn't work. Can be selected but obviously doesn't work. Can not use anything over 100hz in eyefinity or it black screens locked.
Can not arrange displays in eyefinity or it black screen locks.
Same results on both Vega systems I have and my new system with 5700XT.
Come on AMD this is BS, the last working eyefinity driver for 144hz triples was in 2008. 18.11, Damn sick of this already.

 

Have you tried disabling all GPU monitoring inside SpeedFan?

 

Still have Radeonsoftware:Host Application using 23% if I launch it, Even after quitting it. Firing yet another driver report off. And this is spead over all 6 cores of my 8600k.

 

So far the clock speeds are somewhat fluctuating but it does look like the screen stability I was having problems with was primarily caused by a inferior Display Port cable.
Testing so far is kinda simple but it works, old cable in one connection and the new one in a different port and just turning the display on and off.

It works 100% on the new cable, it causes a display driver crash on the old one almost every time so at least it made it easy to test. (Thankfully it's more with DWM and not a black screen unrecoverable one with the entire display stack.)

Still doesn't happen on the earlier drivers though but eh I'll never figure out exactly why that is and it's somewhat resolved now whatever 19.7.1 to 19.7.5 actually does different wherein this isn't a problem.


Found one other confirmation about a similar issue so far also which is interesting and I certainly learned something although it's a curious little behavior as well but that resolves one thing.
It doesn't however resolve the state with current driver fluctuations, power spikes and unstable D3D11 support where some games can crash or completely black screen shortly after starting on any of the current Adrenaline 2020 drivers and others will simply not start at all.

GPU-Z also shows the same fluctuating core and memory clocks even without GPU acceleration and memory voltage remaining on idle levels even when the clocks boost from that to the mid state which could be a concern.
Spikes on load I simply worked around by reducing the clock so with the fluctuating values I should be around 1850 Mhz (-50 from the 1900 specified.) but in some games it hovers around 1900 - 1950 which if undervolted would be unstable if I hadn't lowered it.

An extra 50mv might also be a means around the issue but benchmarking is pretty clear I don't really lose much at all for how the GPU performs while when it doesn't bounce around it keeps the temps at a nice low 60-ish junction and voltage and overall power draw at a lower level.
(Even with that though just dropping the power slider even a small amount makes a big impact on performance so that's a interesting thing too even when it shouldn't pull anywhere near the power limit.)
(Fan speed is also behaving as it does with these drivers frequently spiking up to near max and then lowering down to "kinda but not really." for what's defined in the actual fan curve which is also a issue though more for the noise really.)


Wrapping D3D9 to Vulkan via DXVK also works around the lower fluctuating clock speeds and wrapping D3D11 to Vulkan via DXVK also works around the crash issues there's a small performance hit in some cases and in some cases the driver nonsense means there is no performance hit at all and in other cases something is *very* wrong and performance increases not just for D3D9 but also D3D11 which would never the case normally. (We're adding a translation layer between D3D11 to Vulkan and additional overhead and CPU work it should be a 15 - 20% performance hit or thereabouts so yeah if performance improves there's something going wrong with the D3D11 driver code somewhere and that's kinda a bad thing.)


EDIT: The way the new fans enforce a near idle or minimum (Depending on controller sometimes also full on zeroed.) fan speed now also makes it kinda easy to test because just scrolling up and down in the browser or viewing some media or playing a video (Again, HW acceleration being off.) and the GPU should shift into P1 or low clocks instead of idle also revving up the fan and initializing the fan curve (Kinda, it's sorta inaccurate in these drivers.) which yeah it gets kinda loud so that's a clear tell.

60 something junction would mean 40% fan speed if the curve was actually followed being a somewhat higher value but good airflow but instead the GPU likes to hop around 60 - 80% and rev it down to a bit lower and then up and back it's kinda obvious it's messy even more than the quirks from 19.7.2 and how the fan curve is more of a fan ladder or staircase.

Same on Vega and earlier so AMD kinda needs to get that resolved and...more but it's showing also that there is a mix of interesting/weird/curious hardware quirks too although it doesn't explain the early driver stability unless well the clock speeds are completely different in the new drivers versus the old ones so maybe some hard coded voltage or other states could be something.
(SOC voltage? Nah seems unlikely but I wouldn't have the tech knowledge to really say for sure though it's a interesting couple of changes but it's usually a thing over several driver revisions, Vega had it's Wattman settings and values tinkered with four to six times I believe over the course I used the card.)


EDIT: Oh and the fan revving down and going high first is a bit of a controller hardware thing at least on Sapphire GPU's though the curve was actually respected in earlier drivers much as it could be a bit funny in how it followed it instead of however this is being managed.

It's also funny how zero fan isn't a thing on this card but if I go Swedish Winter and open the door or window and cool the card down below 30c idle it actually does stop the fans but that's happened even with older drivers so there is some min value there in the software at least.

Probably a max value too although the bios one and how that gets targeted is kinda ignored or something as that should be 74 degrees plus some other stop and start states and things I believe, not 100% on how it all works or well how the driver decides it works?


GPU is cool but kinda loud overall though it works but gives the impression the card is pushing into the threshold (100 - 110 Celsius.) when the fan suddenly hits 80% or higher speeds not to mention the noise ha ha.
(Plus it's kinda ineffective as cooling is already very good around 30 - 40% keeping well below 80 junction temps and with the undervolt and somewhat lower clocks lower still and with similar performance anyway.)

 

Sigh so yeah there is some interesting hardware possibilities and potential stability conditions possibly affected by different drivers but I wouldn't have the best knowledge or idea as to why.
Driver quirks of Adrenaline 2020 is still a thing and that affects regressions like HW acceleration, some games not working or crashing or even the system stability overall.

Wattman continues to be WattTFMan and that's basically unchanged though whoever tampered with fan behavior needs a bit of a reboot I think, to the ass that is.
(It's not breaking anything but they've had this step ladder thing since Vega and Adrenaline 2019 and it really is kinda pointed out for well over a year now and the Navi issues for like half a year though a mix of user, hardware and software/driver issues making it a bit of a mess.)

What else? Well probably the usual and yeah the driver can work but it certainly has it's quirks although AMD is aware of it however that's going to matter and for now 20.1.1 is resolving some issues but more exists and this D3D11 state at least needs to be resolved and I'd like some clarity on the D3D9 and downclocking behavior but who knows how that's going if it's CPU starved or some reason or a behavior with savings or efficiency and just metrics for GPU sense idle and goes sleepy-sleep.
(Framerate and frametime goes EKG shock paddle time! - Not exactly ideal that.)


EDIT: Former Vega user though so 1.5 years with Watt(TF)Man and Overdrive and software inconsistencies getting kinda used to it acting a bit funny. (Would spell that CK not NN but yeah.)

Interesting little conflict there of sorts acting with hard coded software limits and changing stuff up and then somewhat respecting somewhat ignoring bios though well there are hardware differences as well with the fan controller and profiles for non-reference models though I believe it can be improved.

Well yeah it worked in the earliest drivers got a bit wonky after 19.7.2 and then Adrenaline 2020 here gets even weirder and that's not just the fan states much as those are a thing but fluctuations to the clocks and voltages and not respecting the max values possibly even spiking without Wattman being used which can be a problem.

There's the power draw spikes as well which also happened before but a good PSU capable of handling 300W or higher of GPU should only mean it's a problem for the splitter cables and their less than ideal condition though the number of posts I've seen where these in fact in use is kinda high.

But if the GPU is supposed to draw 100 - 150w plus another 20 - 30 or so for the total including what the PCI slot can handle of course it would look like it should be feasible and then it just spikes to over double the amount and yeah of course it won't hold then.
(Just a thing to be aware of even if it's not 100% but it can and will spike even when it doesn't hit full clock speeds or also when undervolting or under clocking the card same as Vega and probably Polaris and the others but those also had a bit higher total power draw.)


EDIT: Well still have more to learn and read up on for how it all kinda works of sorts but yeah driver fun times!

And some user errors on my end too so that was a interesting little learning experience too but eh got something out of it though I wonder how much of a thing that might be and what else there is that's not purely just the software or display driver directly even if it's seemingly a factor too.
(What do I know, learning a bit but it's not very much and it's kinda complex subject so yeah it's going a bit so and so but also getting some results.)




EDIT: Phew six months of discussing the driver situation well again I don't dislike the hardware it's just that the software side well it's getting there but it needs a bit more work.

I am also interested in the curiosity with the overall system and other hardware sensitivity but that's not strictly on the drivers although I am glad that seemingly helped a bit for my own problems with the system idle signal stability and problems although yeah still no closer to figuring out the exact behavior as caused and why but eh it helped and from there I might eventually learn more or I might not.

 

There is no bloatware. Clean your system. Update VISUAL C++.

DDU + Update Visual c++ libraries.

 

Freesync still doesn't look or feel as smooth as it did with older drivers (ingame menus that animate and slide in are noticeably not smooth) and I still get crashes if I'm playing a game in windowed mode and watching youtube... On an rx580.

Fans are ramping up more like they should, I leave them alone, but on the 19.12.x drivers the fans were very quiet and barely going.

Mech Warrior 5 performance seems better, Alpha effects still kill fps. Even though I've already finished it and probably not going to play it much anymore.

 

Freesync works as it should, atleast for me and games i tried, having the same card. Also disable hw acceleration inbrowser and crashes will be gone.

 

Something surprising for me with this driver is that at 120Hz, the memory clock speed stays at 200MHz at idle. Previously only 144Hz and 100Hz and below refresh rates worked at 200MHz at idle and at 120Hz it would run at full speed at idle.
So far no BlackSOD.

 

If it were a setting issue then it would affect the 19.12.1 driver which works perfectly with either default settings or using a custom profile.

The 19.12.2, 19.12.3 and the 20.1.1 all have the same problem using default settings or a custom setting set the same as the 19.12.1, it's definitely a driver problem. No driver should cause textures to disappear and reappear as you change view, especially on the RX 5700 xt.