Radeon driver experience - two years later

Really surprised how good the drivers have become since I last owned the 6800 ~two years ago. Some things still aren't ideal, but general experience is good on 23.3.1 driver.

Positive:
+super good frame times in various D3D12 titles vs. Nvidia
+good performance in Fortnite, beats Arc A770 by 50-60% with TSR (as performance is bugged on it, but still)
+lots of bugs fixed since the last time, disgusting vsync + hw-cursor stutter bug is gone, even manual fan curve in Wattman works well with Asus 6700 XT Dual
+no crashes so far
+~no visual corruption issues so far
+playback in mpv is without stutter and power consumption very low
+also low power consumption in Edge with YT 4k 60fps VP9 video
+efficient and fluid dynamic clocking behavior, desktop is way smoother than with RTX 3060
+MPO seems to work well, VRR in Prime video app even works with 10 bit display output
+no annoying display re-initializations when starting or alt + tabbing in various games, which was really annoying on Nvidia with fullscreen in some games
+looks like no VRR screw-ups
+good D3D11 performance in titles that once caused issues, such as Assassin's Creed games etc.
+Anti-Lag works well in a variety of D3D12 titles
+display calibration works well via this tool: https://github.com/dantmnf/AMDColorTweaks

Negative:
-vsync with Vulkan is still generally broken/stuttery when GPU utilization is at 100%, even with VRR enabled, RTSS graph shows spikes which are well perceivable
-Vulkan driver shader cache still seems to have Alzheimer and think it sometimes needs to re-compile all shaders for a game with duplicate file names like "7CFD_1.parc"
-still anisotropic filtering can't be driver-forced for D3D12, which works on Nvidia and Intel for apps that unnecessarily apply stupid AF performance "optimizations" like Witcher 3 Remastered
-Chill still temporarily turns itself off when GPU load gets very low, which sucks when you just want to use it as a regular fps limiter
-still same shader compile visual corruption issues with DXVK in some games like Trine 4, looks like "won't fix" for DXVK issues
-D3D9 driver still seems to be bad, lots of stutter e.g. in Mirror's Edge
-Adrenalin control panel still isn't exactly free of bugs, occasionally likes to crash on open while games are running or to create game profile duplicates
-deactivated/missing HDR support from custom EDID isn't parsed until GPU scaling has been toggled once after every reboot (turning it off in my display for whatever reason doesn't make Windows stop advertising support)


If anyone would want to forward the Vulkan vsync issue to the driver devs, I'd glady provide further descriptions/screenshots etc. (Well, I probably shouldn't get my hopes up for this.)

 

Buying hardware when it's mature but still relevant is always a good idea.

 

Indeed that likely was a factor why I found Polaris cards a mostly pleasant experience back in the days.
Though some issues date back further, which why I really hope they finally have sorted most of their affairs for good. RDNA3 apparently has been another setback, but looks like the hardware is just bad-ish in this case.

There now even is a D3D12 driver shader cache, hallelujah.

 

What is the problem with vsync with vulkan games? Im just playing Doom Eternal with feesync+vsync gpu is limited to 99% as im using raytracing but it runs fine.

With 3070 i could not use raytracing in this game even with dlss.

 

I've had a similar experience when I bought the 6800XT a few months ago. I'll just add a few things.

I only tried Sniper Elite in Vulkan and it worked fine. I don't remember issues with shader cache. But I think DX12 ran a couple of fps better.
The control panel is much better than NVidia's. It even has a search function to find settings. Brilliant.
I remember having some games crashing with the 2070S, when alt+tabing. Especially UE4 games. Almost no crashes when doing it with the 6800XT.

 

I also had some crashing with 3070 in EU4 games and even Spiderman MM but i though it was my uv+oc. Now 6700xt at 2800/2150 didnt had a single crash yet. GPU and hotspot temps are also much better with this massive Devil cooler while gaming oc was hiting mid 90's on the hotspots.

 

I'm not sure if it's fixed yet as I don't have AMD card anymore, but if AF was set for a given DX12 game profile and the change didn't show up, it helped to set AF globally.

 

Thanks for the heads-up!
Unfortunately, it still shows no effect in Witcher 3 D3D12.

 

Too bad, it could have been some older DX9 game(s) like original Crysis, can't remember :-(

 

Never had a single driver issue when I was on AMD (6800XT) other than the CCC crashing a few times but they kinda fixed that and it happened a lot less after a few updates.

On the 7900XTX I had a few driver bugs such as the high idle usage but I really think this is a hardware issue and that I believe AMD will issue a firmware/BIOS update in the near future to help fix this issue as its still the top issue in their drivers since launch.

I sadly had a reference 7900XTX and had the issue with super high junction temps so I returned it and just splashed out the extra cash for a 4090. And trust me, the grass is most definitely not greener on the other side.

 

The AMD driver (and Nvidia's for that matter) will stutter for ~5 minutes on any new DX9-10-11 game, because the GPU is doing driver side shader compilation. It goes away.

Vsync and AF not working being forced in DX12/Vulkan is unfortunate. Luckily there are few games without AF or Vsync tweaks in these APIs.

The Vsync situation can be worked around with Enhanced Sync, when running above fps above monitor's refresh rate. On ALL APIs. Or FreeSync.

ALL Unreal Engine 4 games get tremendous CPU performance boosts when running in DX12 via launch command or in-game DX12 switch.

A huge number of DX9-10-11 games also get great performance boosts or just better frametimes when running DXVK.

Overall, yeah, AMD GPUs are running great nowadays.

 

Thank you! Finally someone else admit this. I see so many Nvidia fanbots talking about how Nvidia has no stutter and that AMD is a stutterfest. I just went from a 7900XTX to a 4090 and the stutter found in many games is virtually the exact same on either side even when the 4090 is 30-40% faster.

What command? I am intrigued

DXVK is exceptional especially for older games. I think Valve should enable their Proton layer for Windows too not just Linux. Would be excellent to have the option to enable DXVK for games within Steam. Would massively help to prolong and preserve older games.

 

@CPC_RedDawn
ALL Unreal Engine 4 games get tremendous CPU performance boosts when running in DX12 via launch command or in-game DX12 switch.

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/performance-boost-on-ue4-games-for-radeon-users.445906/

 

That thread is not about using DX12 in UE4. It's about an alternative occlusion culling system on UE4.

To force DirectX 12 on UE4 games, all it takes is adding -DX12 to the game's properties.

 

-dx12 launch command works for all UE4 games 4.9+

Bonus: For games lacking FSR2 native or moddable:
4.19+ games can enable in ini: TAAU + rez scaling (67% is FSR2 Quality equivalent). It's looks great.
4.26+ games can enable in ini: TSR + rez scaling. TSR is a better looking TAAU, thought a slightly heavier algorithm.

I'm currently using DX12 and TAAU to play Darksiders 3 and Genesis at a locked 120 fps on 5700 XT + R5 3600.