How are radeon drivers these days ?

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by cucaulay malkin, Dec 13, 2020.

  1. cucaulay malkin

    cucaulay malkin Ancient Guru

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    I'm considering a 6800XT card cause I really like it despite I realize in some areas it comes short of ampere and the price is imo a tiny little too much compared to the 3080 I ordered and still waiting for.

    But since amd drivers were the reason I ditched my r9 290 trix in favor of gtx980 in 2015 I'm not gonna fly head first into buying one.

    How is the driver situation ?

    How stable are they ? I know Navi was very troublesome,and diagnosing problems and looking for workarounds is something I just have no time nor interest in dealing with at this point in my life.
    When I buy a game it has to work as desired,no matter the api or who sponsors it.Not interested in explanations why.I've had a pretty effortless experience with GF cards and drivers,no major problems I can recall during 5 years of owning them.I do remember dpc latency problems with gtx 1080 on early drivers and some audio crackling in yt videos that was eventually resolved.

    How good are they for dual monitor setups ?

    What are the extra features - like freestyle or photo mode on GF cards,like huge performance gains with cuda acceleration in programs like davinci,or rtx voice.

    Have they already added adaptive v-sync to their drivers ? If not I'mma get very cricital in a moment :cool:
     
  2. A2Razor

    A2Razor Guest

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    6800 XT (XFX Merc319) owner here.

    Very stable. I've gone through over 100 hours playing a variety of games on my card so far, tested quite a few multi-monitor configurations, and I've yet to experience any problems whatsoever.

    -- No system crashes, blackscreens, clock-drops, odd stuttering, idle-issues {sitting idle on the desktop}, or other power management issues {from disconnecting displays}, no driver-crashes, and importantly no game crashes that I've seen [on 20.11.xx through 20.12.1] .

    I'm using the card in low load JRPG's, software development, and also high-use cases such as shooters {Control, Crysis, Battlefield, etc}. It gets a good mixture of loads put on it, including the clocks bouncing around at idle.

    -- Zero problems here with dual 4K, triple 1440p, and freesync / non freesync mixture.

    Seems the prior generation issues, such as corruption (Fiji, Vega) and locking up the system on disconnecting monitors in low-power state (Vega), are solved.


    I had a terrible time with FIJI and Vega, and used my coded tools (ClockBlocker / YAP), combined with other workarounds (Soft PowerPlay Tables) constantly {till now}. This time around everything has just-worked.

    - Streaming / Broadcasting tools, image capture
    - Video Recording (similar to ShadowPlay -- gif, replay capture, direct record, etc)
    - Radeon Chill (adaptive framerate limit, power-saving when not actively playing)
    - FRTC (framerate limit)
    - Radeon Anti-Lag (input latency reduction, similar to NVidia's)
    - Radeon Image Sharpening (it's just an equal to the sharpness control on the Geforce side, not the full freestyle)
    - Radeon Enhanced Sync (equal to NVidia FastSync)
    - MLAA (compared to NVidia's FXAA implementation)

    - Performance Overlay {similar to Geforce Experience Overlay}
    - Built in fan-tuning / clock control {per game, or global}

    - Additionally the CP can manually import and export all settings, hotkeys, etc. {which on the NVidia side would generally be done with NVidia Inspector}


    You won't have access to any tools that rely on CUDA sadly, if that's needed. Though any general productivity applications using OpenCL will work great.
     
  3. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    Still quite a lot of DX9 stuff broken on current drivers (RDNA+)

    Destiny 2 has really low fps for some reason (RDNA2 specific)

    DGVoodoo encounters an issue with the DX11 for some reason (Theres a DX12 version in development which Dege recommends for Radeon users)

    Weak DX11 performance as always (use DXVK)
    Weak OpenGL performance (no workaround)
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2020
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  4. itpro

    itpro Maha Guru

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    You're savage and ill-mannered! :p:D
     

  5. Undying

    Undying Ancient Guru

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    He dont even have amd card but thats no issue when you are a smartass.
     
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  6. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    how would you know?
     
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  7. Undying

    Undying Ancient Guru

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    Im i wrong?
     
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  8. itpro

    itpro Maha Guru

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    Even if he had, he is really biased towards nvidia. As if green drivers are perfect, only game devs are to blame and such. Well, if this is what he believes, who are we to criticize. Personally, all those above issues do not affect my real gaming life.

    All those games I play, with my limited time, single parent family, job, university studies, I cannot play twelve hours a day like most of rtx owners here, who justify everything nvidia does, asks and offers.
     
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  9. SpajdrEX

    SpajdrEX Ancient Guru

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    @Astyanax while he don't have AMD card, he is not wrong and all he wrote is true.
    As for DX9 issues (not including slowdowns or bad performance) with missing stuff/wrong textures this should be fixed soon or later.
    For the rest, I'm not sure.
    Anyway compared to RDNA1 cards it's so much better in terms of stability (no crazy low GPU clocks, no blackscreen).
     
  10. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    Perfection doesn't exist, also like Spaj (except for different reasons) i get issues passed on to me from various sources, I just don't have a direct line to an AMD rep to pass them along (and I'm not interested in joining a reddit run discord for either vendor XD)

    As for "owning" a Radeon, only until the machine leaves me for the customer (of a day) and otherwise via friends who let me RDP/Remote desktop in for diagnostics of applications, games and tools that I need to collect dumps for. As i've said previously, we don't know when local stock for RDNA2 will be available and 5700(xt) wasn't often asked for in builds, quite a few we did ended up returns because of the months of issues.

    I don't think as many of the crashes that either vendor gets are honest to god driver issues as people think, real driver regressions typically have a pattern emerge very quickly and don't discriminate against configuration differences so much fitting a particular combination and usually across the entire range of an architecture (exceptions apply though, like when nvidia regressed on certain am2/3 gigabyte boards, or when having memory amount higher than 24GB would error state the driver)

    I'm honestly curious to see where the GSODs happening on 1080ti form a pattern since not everyone is affected even even having a mix of users on real gsync and compatible units.

    but i digress, this thread was about how radeon drivers are these days, not about Geforce drivers and i can only say what i am aware of at the present time.


    Definitely is, I haven't seen 1/10 of the issues that 5700 had, even video decoding seems to be working properly.
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2020

  11. cucaulay malkin

    cucaulay malkin Ancient Guru

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    thanks
    great response
     
  12. Undying

    Undying Ancient Guru

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    Very well written, constructive and useful post no cringry one liner from you is something we are not used to ;)
     
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  13. cucaulay malkin

    cucaulay malkin Ancient Guru

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    tell you what,any of 3080/6800xt cards become available I'm getting one anyway.
     
  14. Jackalito

    Jackalito Master Guru

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    I've had a Radeon RX 5700 XT since launch and the few first months were really problematic with all sorts of issues: black screens, BSOD, sudden reboots, crashes, poor performance, stutters, etc.

    I had already read about the fact that AMD improved the drivers for the launch of RDNA2. Which was key to persuade me into getting one if I managed to find any in stock. That happened a few weeks ago. My new XFX Merc 319 RX 6800 XT should arrive this week, so reading your post gives me a lot of hope about having a mostly smooth experience once I install it in my system.

    Also, very grateful of your top-notch tools, mate. I especially remember using ClockBlocker with older AMD graphics cards with excellent results.

    I'll update my system specs soon, hopefully :D
     
  15. I've had 5 different Polaris GPUs (4 RX 580s from XFX and SAPPHIRE, 1 RX 560), and every one of them had instability at 4K@60Hz over HDMI (macOS, Windows, Linux, different PSUs, different mobos, Intel and AMD, a dozen 4K@60Hz HDR certified cables), and I'm still dealing with this today. Looking around a bit, apparently Polaris has a broken HDMI implementation that AMD nor vendors want to talk about or fix. Tried a GTX 1060, and it worked flawlessly.

    My main annoyance currently is that Oculus Link has been broken for the past 4 driver releases from AMD. Wasn't even noted as a known issue until the last 2 drivers, and according to AMD, it only affects 2 older GPU architectures that should be more than stable by now. I had expected this to be fixed with the Cyberpunk driver, but nope. Drivers aside, AMD's GPU encoders up until their newest GPUs aren't that great either, which particularly affects how well Oculus Link works (my Rift CV1 has better graphics clarity than a Quest 2 because of this); NVIDIA seems to ship better encoders on their GPUs from what I've heard.

    Another annoyance I've had is with HDR on my display. NVIDIA allows you to report content to the display as either desktop/general, or movies. AMD doesn't let you choose. My display's HDR is washed-out with general content, but seemingly fine with movies. Fixing this on NVIDIA is as easy as reporting all content as movies, whereas AMD has no solution to this.

    I'm going NVIDIA for my next GPU.
     

  16. Agonist

    Agonist Ancient Guru

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    Drivers work fine for me. For a while I had the cpu usuage bug but that was about it. Sometimes wattman would reset but not once I have ever seen or had DX9 issues. Other then a stint of 6 months with 670 sli and 970 sli been on amd gpus since 2014.
    HD 7850 crossfire, HD 7950 crossfire, R9 290x crossfire, R9 Fury X, R9 Fury, RX 480 crossfire, Vega 56, and now 5700xt.

    Ive had as many issues with my nvidia rigs as as I have AMD.

    And I can not stand how slow and archaic nvida drivers are and feel.
     
  17. A2Razor

    A2Razor Guest

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    -- Making me feel glad that I effectively skipped early Navi after my Vega woes.

    I don't want to Jinx it of course ... yet I seem to be a problem magnet with AMD hardware up till now {run into every show stopping bug / issue} -- so here's hoping my experience is indicative of what others can expect, and for you.

    On a positive note: all my friends that bought into RX 6000 seem smooth sailing though, nobody complaining to me yet at least. It does seem the launch driver state is pretty good, all things considered.
     
  18. KyleStilkey

    KyleStilkey Master Guru

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    Is that why I get random games that just go all weird white/black textures and screens with DGVoodoo? Would make a lot of sense.

    As for me 5700XT and 6800XT things seem to be pretty stable but definitely agree with what was posted here in this quote.
     
  19. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    dgVoodoo wrapping to D3D12 should work, DXVK's what I tend to use for anything D3D9 to D3D11 if performance improves and there's no compatibility or stability issues it sticks. :D

    https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=74667

    EDIT: Stability has gotten better overall in my own case and testing a number of titles though D3D9's about anything goes performance and stability wise although the GPU itself usually doesn't call it quits at least so that's improved.

    D3D11's better but not perfect, some titles still see unusually large gains with DXVK to Vulkan wrapping and the way the driver operates clock speeds and fan settings also improves but at least it's no longer outright required to maintain system stability.

    Various changes in the driver code as well so re-testing undervolt and such checking the fan curve is still applying and all that is also recommended, working reasonably well though the VRAM clock speed is a bit below the given value and is more prone to instability at higher values even with error correction so in a few titles there's no room at all to modify it over the default or that'll be a driver crash in a few minutes.


    Guessing the 6000 series has a single GDDR6 model so it's a bit more reliable or at least less random how well it maintains changes plus there's this new timing tweak setting as well if that does anything much.
    Hearing that D3D9 performance is still a bit so-so but the clock speeds are less whatever is going on in the hardware causing fluctuating performance at anything below 98% or so GPU load and a good amount of CPU available.

    Something to test if I pick up a 6000 series depending on how pricing holds up and what's available either these or the 3000 from NVIDIA ha ha.

    Sounds like some good hardware improvements and other tweaks and changes also but with some of the driver issues still dragging although that's still a step up from the 5000 series.
    (Bit less so but a bit similar to some of the changes and fixes AMD added to the 5000 series CPU's over the 3000 series or how to describe it.)
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2020
  20. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    Yep, Dege says to use 2.7-wip with the Dx12 backend if you're using recent AMD drivers.
     

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