Question Why does the overall gaming GPU market treat AMD like they have AIDS?

[VirtualLarry]

I guess I get the (sub-liminal) "The way it's meant to be played" ads from NVidia, along with the recurring FUD tropes about "AMD drivers", but I honestly don't get the sales disparity, especially for the price.

I've owned both NVidia-powered as well as AMD powered GPUs, and IMHO, AMD is (generally) just as good. Maybe 99% as good.

Edit: And I think that there's something to be said about the viability of AMD technologies, when they're in both major console brands.

 

[MrPickins]

My own RX 580 had some really rocky drivers, not to mention that like half of AMD's control panel features are only semi-functional if not permanently broken.

Funny, my RX580 has been rock solid for 4 years or so. You sure you don't have a different issue with your system?

This is why anecdotes are anecdotes.

 

[The red spirit]

If @The red spirit says they experienced all those issues, I believe them. Do I think it is generally the case? Heck no. The 5700XT was a hot mess for me, but Polaris, Vega, just about every generation of APU going back to like 2013 and RDNA2 have been solid for me. Little issues, but same goes for my Nvidia cards.

I also have RX 560. Spent more time with RX 580. AMD drivers haven't been all that great. I never had problems with nVidia, FX 5200 always worked right (minus the fact that it was e-waste since launch), GTX 650 Ti was rock solid minus one driver version, where it had glitchy desktop issue, which was very promptly resolved week later. For AMD, it's way too common to have random small issues and some never fixed issues from driver to driver. Wattman randomly resetting hasn't been fixed in years. Chill is broken for years. RIS is semi broken for years. FRTC has been broken for years. I have zero idea how RIS isn't functional even nowadays, when any nV card can sharpen any game. RIS only works in Genshin Impact and Cyberpunk 2077, no other game I tested with I saw it functioning as intended. APUs have been even worse poo. Not only you have to deal with janky GPU drivers + software now they occasionaly conflict with chipset drivers which are also from AMD and also aren't great. But that was with FM2+ APUs, not the modern ones.

Funny, my RX580 has been rock solid for 4 years or so. You sure you don't have a different issue with your system?

Multiple AMD cards in multiple systems, same crap in all of them.

 

[MrPickins]

Multiple AMD cards in multiple systems, same crap in all of them.

Sorry to hear that. I've had AMD video cards exclusively since 2012 or so, solely due to bang for the buck at the time of purchase, and I can count the number of issues I've had on one hand. Also, that includes using Windows Vista at launch (where Nvidia failed miserably).

 

[Tup3x]

I have very annoying issue on my work laptop (Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U) where cursor turns white in Chrome and Edge. Windows 11 UI feels laggy too and it obviously can't keep up with 144hz refresh rate at 2560x1440. Also for some reason drawing in Paint is absolute lag fest. Those two issues are probably connected...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Multiple AMD cards in multiple systems, same crap in all of them.

Are you installing 3rd-party "codec packs" or using "automatic driver-updater helper" tools on your system? Because what you experience, is not the norm, from my own experience as well as reading online.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I've gone back and forth between AMD/NV generation to generation: (Current) 6800XT -> 980Ti -> HD7950 -> GTX460 -> HD4850 -> 7900GT -> x800 -> 9800pro -> 4600Ti -> MX200 -> 3dLabs Permedia -> Trident Something or Another??? (Past)

Never really had major issues from either vendor that could be pinned on drivers. I really do wonder how much stuff we hear about is general system instability or bad physical parts that turn into "driver" complaints.

GTX460 Died on me (after 3 years outside warranty, so it was an OK run)
Killed HD4850 while attempting to repaste card (not sure how, worked before heatsink came off, didn't work when i put everything back together, never gouged the card with the screwdriver or anything...)
7900GT Shadowengine was busted and had to turn off shadows in games.
Killed 9800Pro when I took out a couple capacitors while trying to upgrade the dinky heatsink

and that's really it.

Granted I tend to skip generations and more recently I've been waiting closer to the end of a gen to pick up a used part (or new part on firesale) so there is less of a surprise in terms of what I am getting, but that's that.

 

[Furious_Styles]

I've gone back and forth between AMD/NV generation to generation: (Current) 6800XT -> 980Ti -> HD7950 -> GTX460 -> HD4850 -> 7900GT -> x800 -> 9800pro -> 4600Ti -> MX200 -> 3dLabs Permedia -> Trident Something or Another??? (Past)

Never really had major issues from either vendor that could be pinned on drivers. I really do wonder how much stuff we hear about is general system instability or bad physical parts that turn into "driver" complaints.

GTX460 Died on me (after 3 years outside warranty, so it was an OK run)
Killed HD4850 while attempting to repaste card (not sure how, worked before heatsink came off, didn't work when i put everything back together, never gouged the card with the screwdriver or anything...)
7900GT Shadowengine was busted and had to turn off shadows in games.
Killed 9800Pro when I took out a couple capacitors while trying to upgrade the dinky heatsink

and that's really it.

Granted I tend to skip generations and more recently I've been waiting closer to the end of a gen to pick up a used part (or new part on firesale) so there is less of a surprise in terms of what I am getting, but that's that.

The AMD driver issues stopped a long time ago. Now both companies have had their small issues here and there. For example Gsync was broke for a while years ago. Drivers don't factor into my decision on what card to buy now, unless of course it's Intel, which we know had/has major issues.

 

[The red spirit]

Are you installing 3rd-party "codec packs" or using "automatic driver-updater helper" tools on your system? Because what you experience, is not the norm, from my own experience as well as reading online.

No codec packs, apart from Windows standard ones and only AMD drivers with reset every time.

 

[Leeea]

They are still quite poor. So bad that they ruined RX 5700 XT with black screen issues. RX 6000 series have various issues too like glitched out HW acceleration in browsers. My own RX 580 had some really rocky drivers, not to mention that like half of AMD's control panel features are only semi-functional if not permanently broken. I also had Terascale pro cards and their drivers have been a cruel joke. Wanna load a website with YT embedded video? BSOD! Wanna force AA to games? BSOD! Wanna get just consistent performance from driver to driver, nope, there is as much as 15% of performance delta between nearly every driver release. BTW AMD still haven't made RX card compatible with VP9 decoding, despite that being promised in like 2015. The only good AMD cards I had were ATi X800 series, but ever since then drivers have been utter shitshow. It's about time AMD finally treated their software AIDS.

um, no.

So I purchased an rx6900xt shortly after launch off of AMDs website, reference version. No issues with Hardware acceleration in web browsers for my entire ownership experience. Started with chrome and using firefox now.

Owned both a 4g and 8g rx580. Beat the 4g up, used it as a daily driver, overclocked it farther then it should go. It is still running good in a grand kids computer. The drivers were pretty good, not sure what issues you had.

Never dealt with anything terascale.

Never had a BSOD from a youtube embedded video. Same thing with "forced" AA, which by the way does not actually do that. I already pointed that out more then once in this thread.

Massive performance differences between drivers? I never actually noticed. I just use the stable version and the world seems fine. No real issues, and never noticed wild performance swings. Granted, I only update when the thing nags me to.

My computer plays back vp9 just fine, never had a problem.


I have had:
rx380 - went to grandsons friend, still running
rx580 4g - went to grandson, still running
rx580 8g - still good, sitting in a box* at the moment
Vega 56 - in a friends computer, still running
rx6900xt - using right now, it is just peachy
5600g - went to another friend, who is very happy with it

Never had any of the problems your complaining about. -shrug-

The only BSODs I have had in the past few years were quickly traced to memory sticks failing XMP speeds on a friends computer. Easy fix, and unrelated to AMD.

 

[Captante]

No codec packs, apart from Windows standard ones and only AMD drivers with reset every time.

Not to attack you personally but it seems to me there's one common factor in all those unstable AMD/Windows installs you've experienced.



The last serious issue I had with ANY AMD GPU was with a Radeon 9800 Pro nearly 20 years ago and I've worked with literally 100's since then. The last serious driver-issues were mostly cleared up not too much later as well for home-users.

AMD drivers are NOT as refined and stable as Nvidia especially when it comes to issues resulting from upgrading drivers, but it's been a long, long time since the problems you're reporting have been common.

SOMETHING you're doing (or not doing) is almost certainly causing your problems not AMD.

 

[Thunder 57]

I also have RX 560. Spent more time with RX 580. AMD drivers haven't been all that great. I never had problems with nVidia, FX 5200 always worked right (minus the fact that it was e-waste since launch), GTX 650 Ti was rock solid minus one driver version, where it had glitchy desktop issue, which was very promptly resolved week later. For AMD, it's way too common to have random small issues and some never fixed issues from driver to driver. Wattman randomly resetting hasn't been fixed in years. Chill is broken for years. RIS is semi broken for years. FRTC has been broken for years. I have zero idea how RIS isn't functional even nowadays, when any nV card can sharpen any game. RIS only works in Genshin Impact and Cyberpunk 2077, no other game I tested with I saw it functioning as intended. APUs have been even worse poo. Not only you have to deal with janky GPU drivers + software now they occasionaly conflict with chipset drivers which are also from AMD and also aren't great. But that was with FM2+ APUs, not the modern ones.

Multiple AMD cards in multiple systems, same crap in all of them.

You must be incredibly unlucky. Or something else is going on. I have had almost no issues over the years. The only thing I can recall is one of their drivers broke the old Dooms and the enemies were invisible in OpenGL. I reported that issue and they actually fixed it.

 

[desrever]

Random drivers from stuff like USB/PCI devices can mess with other drivers on Windows and cause them to crash. Sometimes the issue isn't AMD's drivers but third parties never testing their devices with AMD GPUs in the system to fix their shitty drivers. If you have an old sound card or something else like that, it could totally be that that is breaking everything.

 

[Captante]

No codec packs, apart from Windows standard ones and only AMD drivers with reset every time.

Does this mean that what you've been doing is "resetting" Windows 10/11 instead of wiping the OS drive and doing a clean-install after major hardware/software changes?

If so we MAY have hit on at least part of the problem. (also see @desrever 's related post above)

New versions of Windows ARE much better in terms of staying stable after big changes but just because you can make the OS boot doesn't mean all is well.

 

[The red spirit]

Massive performance differences between drivers? I never actually noticed. I just use the stable version and the world seems fine. No real issues, and never noticed wild performance swings. Granted, I only update when the thing nags me to.

There are Phoronix published benches, differences are interesting with FirePro V8800, which I have.

My computer plays back vp9 just fine, never had a problem.

That's not a point of HW acceleration, the point is to render it on GPU without CPU, making it more power efficient, as well as faster. Particularly obvious if you want to watch high res YT videos and your CPU isn't fast. Something like 4k60 is a bit too much for 10400F. 8k60 is complete no go, but YT then uses AV1, which is just becoming HW accelerated. 16k is probably beyond what CPUs can handle today.

Never had any of the problems your complaining about. -shrug-

So is RIS working for you in every game? Is Chill not having stutters? Does FRTC even work somewhere? Does memory undervoltign actually applies lower voltages? Can you actually undervolt GPU bellow certain voltage limit (my RX 580 has soft lock of 850 mV)?

 

[The red spirit]

Not to attack you personally but it seems to me there's one common factor in all those unstable AMD/Windows installs you've experienced.



The last serious issue I had with ANY AMD GPU was with a Radeon 9800 Pro nearly 20 years ago and I've worked with literally 100's since then. The last serious driver-issues were mostly cleared up not too much later as well for home-users.

AMD drivers are NOT as refined and stable as Nvidia especially when it comes to issues resulting from upgrading drivers, but it's been a long, long time since the problems you're reporting have been common.

SOMETHING you're doing (or not doing) is almost certainly causing your problems not AMD.

Forza Horizon 5 with glitched textures was very common problem that wasn't solved on Radeons for many months, that's one recent example. Or just the fact that recommended driver version is old AF and is no longer recognized as modern enough in certain games like Horizon 5, despite the fact that enterprise driver is somehow more modern.

 

[VirtualLarry]

despite the fact that enterprise driver is somehow more modern.

Whoa now, do you have the "enterprise" driver installed? Maybe you're not running the same drivers as the rest of us?

 

[Captante]

Something like 4k60 is a bit too much for 10400F

Yeah I think we can stop right there since 4k/60 is NOT "too much" for my FX-8350/GTX-1650 backup PC which can run 4k Youtube videos smoothly AND do other things too @ 60hz on Win 10 Pro.

In fact that same PC with a GTX-980 instead can run older games like Skyrim Remastered at 1440p/120hz smoothly as well. (although 165hz will bring it to its knees!)

You're doing something very wrong.


EDIT: Never answered my "resetting Windows" question.

 

[Leeea]

So is RIS working for you in every game? Is Chill not having stutters? Does FRTC even work somewhere?

No idea what RIS even is.

Never used chill. Lots of people seem to like it though. Flipping v-sync on to cap the frame rate was always my first choice.

FRTC I have used, long ago. It did work, but I found I preferred v-sync on a 144 Hz monitor.

--------------------------------------------

Does memory undervoltign actually applies lower voltages? Can you actually undervolt GPU bellow certain voltage limit (my RX 580 has soft lock of 850 mV)?

You do realize blaming AMD for instability after overclocking is just nonsensical?

 

[Captante]

I think it's safe to say we're looking at a configuration problem here the only question is if it's hardware of software. (more likely both lol)

It's 100% ALSO safe to say that a properly set up 10400f with ANY half decent AMD GPU should absolutely destroy my old/slow FX/1650 system in 4k video playback. (and pretty much ANYTHING else too!)

 

[kognak]

That's not a point of HW acceleration, the point is to render it on GPU without CPU, making it more power efficient, as well as faster. Particularly obvious if you want to watch high res YT videos and your CPU isn't fast. Something like 4k60 is a bit too much for 10400F. 8k60 is complete no go, but YT then uses AV1, which is just becoming HW accelerated. 16k is probably beyond what CPUs can handle today.

RX 580 doesn't have proper hardware to decode VP9(or AV1). No drivers will fix that. You need minimum RDNA1 dGPU or Ryzen APU(VCN 1.0) for VP9 HW decoding. RDNA2(VCN 3.0) is minimum for AV1 HW decoding.
My RX 6800 decodes completely fine 4K VP9 and AV1. I tested even two 4K@60fps YT videos simultaneously, not a problem, very low CPU usage. But decoder is not powerful enough for 8K@60fps AV1, 30fps is pretty much at the limit. RDNA3 comes with upgraded video engine, it likely won't struggle with 8K. If some one actually cares about 8K videos, I don't.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

AFAIK, AMD does implement "Hybrid" VP9 decoding on RX cards.At least, it seemed like there was SOME hardware offload when I was watching 4K YT on my RX 570, and later, my 5700XT cards.

5700(XT) should have a complete HW VP9 decoder. My 5600XT certainly does.

Sorry to hear that. I've had AMD video cards exclusively since 2012 or so, solely due to bang for the buck at the time of purchase, and I can count the number of issues I've had on one hand. Also, that includes using Windows Vista at launch (where Nvidia failed miserably).

You have my sympathy, sir. Been there, done that. If it wasn't for the x64 support, I'd have dropped it faster then you can type format c: into a command prompt...

Vista only became really "good" after SP2. SP3 (Win7) was amazing.

 

[The red spirit]

Yeah I think we can stop right there since 4k/60 is NOT "too much" for my FX-8350/GTX-1650 backup PC which can run 4k Youtube videos smoothly AND do other things too @ 60hz on Win 10 Pro.

In fact that same PC with a GTX-980 instead can run older games like Skyrim Remastered at 1440p/120hz smoothly as well. (although 165hz will bring it to its knees!)

You're doing something very wrong.

I hope you realize that your 1650 has HW VP9 decoder. Of course it won't have any problem with playing VP9 videos.

No idea what RIS even is.

Never used chill. Lots of people seem to like it though. Flipping v-sync on to cap the frame rate was always my first choice.

FRTC I have used, long ago. It did work, but I found I preferred v-sync on a 144 Hz monitor.

explains why everythign seems a lot better to you than it really is. BTW RIS is Radeon image sharpening.

You do realize blaming AMD for instability after overclocking is just nonsensical?

I never said anything wasn't stable. I'm saying that I can enter let's say 800 mV value and AMD software will apply nothing lower than 850mV. It's probably not a broken feature, but annoying limitation that wasn't disclosed anywhere. And my card most likely can go bellow that limit in lower power states.

I think it's safe to say we're looking at a configuration problem here the only question is if it's hardware of software. (more likely both lol)

It's 100% ALSO safe to say that a properly set up 10400f with ANY half decent AMD GPU should absolutely destroy my old/slow FX/1650 system in 4k video playback. (and pretty much ANYTHING else too!)

First of all, I have no particular problems with configuration and no your FX system will do better job at video playback, because 1650 has better HW video decode capabilities. Seriously, read what HW decode is.

RX 580 doesn't have proper hardware to decode VP9(or AV1). No drivers will fix that. You need minimum RDNA1 dGPU or Ryzen APU(VCN 1.0) for VP9 HW decoding. RDNA2(VCN 3.0) is minimum for AV1 HW decoding.

Well yes, but also no. On launch AMD said that they will make some partial acceleration feature functional, so that GPU helps CPU to decode VP9. That hardly happened. Fun thing is that forcing VP9 decoding through DXVA actually works, but power usage sucks. It was just typical Raja bullshit from that time to massively overstate HW capabilities and then sell stuff based on hope.

My RX 6800 decodes completely fine 4K VP9 and AV1. I tested even two 4K@60fps YT videos simultaneously, not a problem, very low CPU usage. But decoder is not powerful enough for 8K@60fps AV1, 30fps is pretty much at the limit. RDNA3 comes with upgraded video engine, it likely won't struggle with 8K. If some one actually cares about 8K videos, I don't.

Well, that's really disappointing. 8k at only 30 fps. It should matter more for you, because if you have 4k monitor or even 1440p monitor, YT's bitrate for 60 fps videos is bad and forcing 4k or 8k videos gives you a lot more bitrate, therefore better video output quality, especially in motion. YT is very skimpy with bitrate, meanwhile GPUs still seemingly can't handle high res (8K or 16K) decoding very well. Not to mention that YT is super heavy to run for no good reason. My other PC can decode BD quality 4k60 video with Athlon X4 870K in SW mode only, yet in YT it can barely handle 1080p60 by itself.

 

[VirtualLarry]

differences are interesting with FirePro V8800, which I have.

I missed that. So you do have a "Pro" card, and that's why your using the enterprise drivers.

 

[The red spirit]

I missed that. So you do have a "Pro" card, and that's why your using the enterprise drivers.

AMD releases Pro drivers for RX 580 regularly, more precisely enterprise drivers rather than pro ones. Basically it's their older drivers, which hopefully are more tested and certified. Other than that they are the same stuff as recommended ones. You get real pro drivers with pro cards and then there are some meaningful differences between them like improved 3D depth rendering, a bit less compression (more VRAM used, but only by 5-10%). Sometimes depth rendering improvements are very hard to spot, other times they are gamechanging. With V8800 card, I saw a massive improvement in 3D depth rendering in Far Cry 2, Juiced. Meanwhile games like Colin McRae Rally 2005 or Unreal Tournament 2004 only have minor improvements. It's not just Terascale only feature, nVidia's hardware also seemingly has that same effect. RTX A series have a tad better 3D rendering in Cyberpunk 2077. So it seems that AMD and nV still properly respect their pro card rendering quality and just didn't remove that functionality in some sneaky way. Which makes pro cards the ultimate gaming cards too, just not affordable to mere mortals or at least not in same decade as they are launched. That 3D rendering quality improvement is also existent on low end hardware like FirePro V3750 and even if you play at crappy resolution and lowest settings. Not to mention that pro cards also seemingly have higher quality 2D rendering and maybe bitmap upscaling, but I can't confirm that. Anyway, all those nice extras don't exist in RX 580 "pro" drivers and it still renders like typical Radeon. Not even when you disable surface format optimization (although it might improve texture quality a bit).

 

[Captante]

If you put half the effort into optimising your system you did into writing that last post I'm pretty sure you would have figured out your PC issues months ago.

Fortunately it's not my problem.... best of luck.




EDIT: Btw a buddy of mine is still daily-driving a 7700k/RX-470 based system and HE streams 4k/60hz YT videos to his TV CONSTANTLY with zero issues. (AND no "hardware" acceleration)

I'm sure you'll have a handy "explanation" for this that makes your issue somebody else's fault though.... I'm done.