Gamers are ditching Radeon graphics cards over driver issues

LOL, you did exactly what he said you'd do. Look up. The article you're posting about says 48% of people with AMD cards reported driver problems among all cards still in use. Not a thing about "Just since the 2020 update". The problems clearly existed well before that and were SUPPOSED to have been FIXED by the 2020 update. They weren't.

Try being a little more objective and a little less fanboy.

How many of those people have used DDU utility to remove driver remnants from the OS that are quite possibly causing these recurrent issues in the first place?
AMD brought out numerous major driver updates before 2020 update but people apparently expect these driver versions to 'seamlessly' update themselves and function without problems.

Wrong.
Many driver problems stem from outdated drivers and their remnants in the OS.
The recommended course of action is that if you are changing GPU's, you NEED to run DDU to remove old drivers from the OS completely, and then clean install latest ones for the GPU you have in the system.
Similar thing applies when installing major driver updates.
For smaller updates between drivers, DDU removal and clean install is not needed, but for MAJOR driver iterations, it is common sense to run DDU to remove old drivers and their remnants followed by clean installing LATEST drivers.

Also, it doesn't hurt to have latest chipset drivers, and sometimes even that the BIOS is updated (sometimes if you install really new hw on an older mobo without BIOS updates, it can actually cause problems down the line - not always of course).

People were suggesting use of DDU for a LONG time now... whether its for NV or AMD.
I've been using AMD drivers for a long time now like this without problems... and the people for whom I've set up their PC's with AMD gpu's and drivers, they also haven't had problems.

 
Hi Steve,
I am one of the users who bought a new Sapphire RX 5700XT Nitro+ in november 2019.
I can confirm that I encountered a lot of drivers problems.
My comp specs are:
Ryzen 3900X, 64GB GSkill Trident Z Neo F4-3600C16Q-64GTZNC, Asus Crosshair VIII, Samsung C32HG70 FreeSync 2 HDR Monitor and up-to-date a Dell S3220DGF monitor.
I tested a lot of AMD configurations, I also had Ryzen 2700X, Ryzen 3800X, Sapphire RX 580, Vega 64 and Radeon VII.
When I update Radeon drivers I restart in safe mode and use DDU uninstaler every time. After that I reinstall also drivers for both monitors.
I can summarize these kinds of issues to help you replicate them if you want for Sapphire RX 5700XT Nitro+.
1. With Windows 10 fresh install - and drivers prior to 10 Dec 2019 not so many problems. With new AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver the issues just flourished.
2. With Windows 10 with all drivers and more programs installed, especially more than 3 or 4 games from different platform - like steam, origin, blizzard, epic the issues also begin to manifest often.
So I think that drm games can cause a lot of problems but is not entirely from them.
3. Freesync and HDR can multiply the issues. If you have an HDR monitor - most of the black screen issues. If you disable HDR from Windows 10 and monitor settings the issues are present but not so often.
4. If you have dual monitor setup in extended configuration - the issues occur so often (almost every day with adrenalin 2020 drivers) especially with Freesync 2 and HDR enabled.
In extended configuration if you switch (or glide the mouse) from the game monitor to second monitor where you have an YouTube or twitch window - color issues, game crushes and more problems may appear.
5. With new AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver - all of them until the last from February 2020 - I had the most issues. So I reverted to Adrenalin-2019-Edition-19.12.1-Dec2 drivers. Even with Dec2 2019 drivers I still have some issue but less than with Adrenalin 2020 drivers.
6. With AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver those new Overlay and Relive options just screwed all the experience. A workaround solution is to delete (disable) all shortcuts from Relive. The issues are less but still present.
7. Games with DirectX 12 enabled - more issues than playing with DirectX 11. I tested with Deus Ex Mankind Divided.
8. Most game crushes I had was with Overwatch and Deus Ex Mankind Divided - with Overwatch it's like 10 times more.
In Overwatch, when you leave a game, even it's not your fault you are penalized. So I stopped playing Overwatch, because the game crushed so often.
9. I noticed (and also one of my friend noticed) like a low flicker on Dell S3220DGF HDR monitor even this monitor is flicker-free by its specs. My friend noticed in PUBG. Prior to, he had a GTX 1080TI and Acer XB27HU monitor. Now he has Dell S3220DGF and Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+.
9. Playing games from GOG platform and Guild Wars 2 from Arena Net - no issue with them or too few to bother. All games from GOG are DRM free.
10. An interesting fact - Radeon VII was the most stable video card, I had the least driver issues from all cards - like 1 issue to 20 issues from RX 5700XT.
This article and also your YouTube video "Can We Still Recommend Radeon GPUs? AMD Driver Issues Discussed" came right on time because I am at the point where I am very annoyed by these issues and was asking my self what is going on.
Hope to be helpful and if you have time, I'll be glad to hear your response or your thoughts and maybe, together from this forum, to urge AMD to FIX the DRIVERS!
Best regards.
 
Last edited:
in the latest 20.2.1 release notes they still acknowledge the random black screen issue with the disabled hardware acceleration workaround.

They're going to pull a big class action lawsuit, 50 thousand easily extrapolates to 500 thousand. Seven months of a half-million broken windshields is to much. I'm fed up with this hot garbage.

"A black screen may occur when performing a mode change with a limited number of displays on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products." In other words, several months after launch, AMD is still working on fixing the black screen bug

It WILL OCCUR.
I've seen it with my own two eyes on five of seven brand new, retail boxed AMD cards. They're far from the recommended list, AMD could have pulled the distorted - missed the mark - builds from AIB partners and coded drivers properly instead of 'souping up' 98 other Adrenaline apps.
 
LOL, you did exactly what he said you'd do. Look up. The article you're posting about says 48% of people with AMD cards reported driver problems among all cards still in use. Not a thing about "Just since the 2020 update". The problems clearly existed well before that and were SUPPOSED to have been FIXED by the 2020 update. They weren't.

Try being a little more objective and a little less fanboy.

Given that the poll was taken now and the 2020 update was done approx 2 months ago, it's safe to say most people are running that driver version or newer. You don't seem to realize that people aren't experiencing the issues on older drivers. Perhaps not jump to conclusions and insults next time?

Just to clarify, I'm certainly not saying driver issues didn't exist before the 2020 update. Just that the 2020 update introduced many of the issues user are complaining about today.
 
Last edited:
Hi Steve, I am one of the users who bought a new Sapphire RX 5700XT Nitro+ in november 2019.
I can confirm that I encountered a lot of drivers problems.
My comp specs are:
Ryzen 3900X, 64GB GSkill Trident Z Neo F4-3600C16Q-64GTZNC, Asus Crosshair VIII, Samsung C32HG70 FreeSync 2 HDR Monitor and up-to-date a Dell S3220DGF monitor.
I tested a lot of AMD configurations, I also had Ryzen 2700X, Ryzen 3800X, Sapphire RX 580, Vega 64 and Radeon VII.
When I update Radeon drivers I restart in safe mode and use DDU uninstaler every time. After that I reinstall also drivers for both monitors.
I can summarize these kinds of issues to help you replicate them if you want for Sapphire RX 5700XT Nitro+.
1. With Windows 10 fresh install - and drivers prior to 10 Dec 2019 not so many problems. With new AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver the issues just flourished.
2. With Windows 10 with all drivers and more programs installed, especially more than 3 or 4 games from different platform - like steam, origin, blizzard, epic the issues also begin to manifest often.
So I think that drm games can cause a lot of problems but is not entirely from them.
3. Freesync and HDR can multiply the issues. If you have an HDR monitor - most of the black screen issues. If you disable HDR from Windows 10 and monitor settings the issues are present but not so often.
4. If you have dual monitor setup in extended configuration - the issues occur so often (almost every day with adrenalin 2020 drivers) especially with Freesync 2 and HDR enabled.
In extended configuration if you switch (or glide the mouse) from the game monitor to second monitor where you have an YouTube or twitch window - color issues, game crushes and more problems may appear.
5. With new AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver - all of them until the last from February 2020 - I had the most issues. So I reverted to Adrenalin-2019-Edition-19.12.1-Dec2 drivers. Even with Dec2 2019 drivers I still have some issue but less than with Adrenalin 2020 drivers.
6. With AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver those new Overlay and Relive options just screwed all the experience. A workaround solution is to delete (disable) all shortcuts from Relive. The issues are less but still present.
7. Games with DirectX 12 enabled - more issues than playing with DirectX 11. I tested with Deus Ex Mankind Divided.
8. Most game crushes I had was with Overwatch and Deus Ex Mankind Divided - with Overwatch it's like 10 times more.
In Overwatch, when you leave a game, even it's not your fault you are penalized. So I stopped playing Overwatch, because the game crushed so often.
9. I noticed (and also one of my friend noticed) like a low flicker on Dell S3220DGF HDR monitor even this monitor is flicker-free by its specs. My friend noticed in PUBG. Prior to, he had a GTX 1080TI and Acer XB27HU monitor. Now he has Dell S3220DGF and Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+.
9. Playing games from GOG platform and Guild Wars from Arena Net - no issue with them or too few to bother. All games from GOG are DRM free.
10. An interesting fact - Radeon VII was the most stable video card, I had the least driver issues from all cards - like 1 issue to 20 issues from RX 5700XT.
This article and also your YouTube video "Can We Still Recommend Radeon GPUs? AMD Driver Issues Discussed" came right on time because I am at the point where I am very annoyed by these issues and was asking my self what is going on.
Hope to be helpful and if you have time, I'll be glad to hear your response or your thoughts and maybe, together from this forum, to urge AMD to FIX the DRIVERS!
Best regards.

So in brief - you literally have to do nothing for AMD drivers to wreck.
Thanks for the post, that was a lot of effort.
 
I've identified the black screen intermittent issue (also includes pauses and freezes without a black screen) to be related to having a second monitor/screen connected via HDMI and having it off.

I have the same issue, I think. I have had some black screen issues on my laptop.
I started using a second monitor with my laptop a couple of days ago, but I also use the second monitor with my old desktop PC, so the monitor is currently connected to my laptop with a HDMI cable but is being used by my desktop PC, not by my laptop. So the monitor is not exactly turned off, but its switched away from the HDMI input to another input source. I was going to try changing my Windows settings to make it unable to see the second monitor, to see if this stops the black screen issues, when I saw your comment.

My laptop has no graphics card, its using a AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 2500U with integrated Vega 8 graphics.

The "black screen" and related symptoms that I saw are like this.
1. When viewing using a Youtube video the video turned green. Fixed by clicking the Chrome Reload Page button. I only saw this once.
2. When I reload a page in Chrome, for some websites only it does a brief black screen.
3. When I left my laptop for about an hour, with Chrome open, I came back to my laptop and saw a black screen, that stayed there. The laptop status lights were on and I could hear the fan, so the laptop is on. I had to turn it off and on again, to fix it.

These problems happened a couple of days after I did a Radeon graphics card driver update, I don't know if this is relevant to these black screen issues. But I bet the second monitor is relevant.
 
So in brief - you literally have to do nothing for AMD drivers to wreck.
Thanks for the post, that was a lot of effort.
Let's be optimistic, indeed it was some effort and I allocated time because I couldn't play or enjoy the games I wanted to play.
 
These problems happened a couple of days after I did a Radeon graphics card driver update, I don't know if this is relevant to these black screen issues. But I bet the second monitor is relevant.

I highly recommend for those with issues to use a older driver version for now (pre 2020). Many people are reporting newer drivers as the culprit of a good chunk of the issues.
 
I purchased a 5700xt , and have nothing but issues and shut downs for 2 weeks. I finally gave up and switched back to Nvidia. I really wanted to give AMD a chance but it was one it the most frustrating experiences I have had since I started building computers myself 20 years ago.
 
I question some of these issues, and lot of it is probably just user error.

While there is no doubt issues, and have experienced them myself. I've never had a bad experience from either camp.

I've been using the gtx1080 for years now, but before that I pretty much used AMD as a daily driver for a decade. 4870 >went nvidia gtx470 sli>7950>290>Now gtx1080. And Yes have had to disable ULPS a few times because of a buggy driver (or set of drivers) that I wanted to use for use with newer games. Nearly always a work around, and the problem is nearly always solved after a few drivers. Also sometimes hardware defect can be mistaken as driver issue. I fell Stock AMD cards can sometimes be pushed a little harder than they should, especially the cards using cheaper parts.

I've never had more issues than I did running a SLI rig, having to keep up with every single driver to get any decent performance on new games. Sometimes having to wait week if not months after a game launched for a driver that would allow for a decent SLI experience. Luckily SLI is pretty much dead now, so not a huge issue.

My 290 was a tank, and up to this point only had a select few issues that didnt last long. Even with the 7950 before the drivers that actually were designed for GCN, Never had much of an issue. I got the 290 when it launched and used it well after the gtx1080 launched. I only picked up the gtx1080 after the fact used. My 290 did just fine at 1440p, but when I switched to ultrawide 3440x1440. The frame dip on some games with little more than I wanted.

But my GTX1080 has pretty much be error free, but at the same time. It is the first Graphic card that I never really overclock (not a auto overclock on boot, more like I OC if I feel the need). Only problem I had was it didn't like a display port cable that worked fine on the AMD card I had before. But newer higher quality cabled solved it. Also have had issues with HDMI and getting proper sound with Nvidia in the past. Plugging directly into a receiver. Where I've never had such issues with AMD.


For me AMD Cards have always had the better game experience compared to the equivalent Nvidia card. Physx was for awhile people's goto excuse to go Nvidia, and now RTX seems to be that. But Nvidia's Raytracing hardware is a joke in the current lineup. I'll wait till RTX3000 cards.

I just know the AMD R9 290 series is one of the best cards ever, Can't name a lot of GPU hardware that stayed relevant for so long. Sadly the Mining craze make it really hard to buy and many had to go with Nvidia as finding a higher end AMD card in stock was not easy or overpriced. Seems like this always happens when AMD releases a killer product onto the market.
 
Funny thing: I replied under the survey regarding the GPU stability issues without even realizing that the black screen thing is the famous one AND related to GPU.

I bought a second hand RX580 8GB about 15 months ago. Was using it with an old Intel platform until 2nd gen Ryzens (and Navi) appeared. Then I made a cheap sidegrade to Ryzen 1700 - motherboard, CPU, all but RAM second hand. Had a fresh system install.

And right after that all the issues with black-screens of death, stuttering when second monitor was off, etc. started. I was so sure it is somehow related to the new parts that I never suspected the GPU drivers. "Maybe my B450M Pro4 has some issues", "Maybe my PSU is too old for Ryzen", etc., but as I had no issues with GPU prior to that, I had not suspected it. But I wasn't able to diagnose the problem at all, couldn't reproduce it by stress testing with Prime95 and Furmark running at the same time either.

Funny thing: no random black screens happened in 2020 to me... yet? Sure, I wasn't able to play one game for about a month (Nioh, now fixed), but it seems like with one of the updates things got better overall. Hopefully.
 
Based on what was said in the article and by some posts, the issues are very similar to Windohs 10 updates - they work for some while others have problems.
 
I've stuck to Nvidia cards mostly, but I did have Radeon several years ago and had no issues. Still for the money these high ends cards are priced at, no way I'm risking having to put up with the sort of crap afflicting the Navi cards. I know Nvidia are far from perfect, but I think they are a safer bet. However, I love AMD's cpu's and Intel is dead to me for the foreseeable future.
 
Why aren't people using DDU to clean install their drivers?

Shouldn't have to use DDU unless you're switching camps.

AMD did recently add a clean install option in their driver, but it's hidden and unchecked by default. The issues mentioned here are ongoing for a reason. The black screen issue is rampant and hasn't even been put on a known issues list at AMD.
 
Why aren't people using DDU to clean install their drivers?
When I used RX 580 and Vega 56, I haven't had any of those issues even upgrading the drivers to latest version was relatively painless.
The only problem I encountered with Vega 56 was that my system would wake up from sleep mode by displaying Static noise on the display which could only be remedied with an OS restart (and this issue started appearing on drivers after version 19.5.2 - but nothing in regards to flickering, black screens, pink or green screens, or driver crashes - and the static noise on display is relatively easily remedied by using Hybernate as opposed to sleep, though I'd prefer AMD fixed that problem).

With major changes to drivers, yes, you'd be expected to use DDU to clean up any residuals from before (as there are too many changes in between drivers to expect a 'clean transition') and do a clean install of latest drivers instead.

Its standard practice.
If you had an NV gpu in your PC and then decided to change for AMD, how the freaking heck do you expect your GPU to function if you have REMNANTS in your OS from the previous GPU you used?
Those are NOTORIOUS for causing problems and people were recommending clean driver installs (and removing remnants of old drivers) before installing a new GPU in your system.

Not saying that AMD doesn't have driver problems, but I also do think people are exacerbating this issue with their own lack of competence by not using any logic or reason for that matter.
People ARE using DDU, and are still having problems, because AMD's drivers are bullshit. I say this as a long time AMD GPU user, their driver installer/uninstaller is a mess. The nvidia cards I had in the past, and currently have in my laptop? Work flawlessly, no need to use safe mode of DDU or any other tools, they Just Work (tm). I've even gone so far as to test this by removing the drive from my AMD PC and putting it into my intel/nvidia PC. Windows 10 successfully installed the new drivers and everything worked fine. Try it the other way, get ready for the pain train; next stop, your derriere.

ATi's drivers were always a mess, and AMD apparently never purged the team of their old employees. AMD's GPU drivers have been a mess for 15 years now, with the only exception begin the fluke that was polaris/vega, whose drivers were relatively stable. Until Navi came out, that is, and the whole thing went to pot. Again.

Their drivers were a mess with the HD2000 series, the HD 3000, the HD 4000, the HD 5000, the HD 6000 (and thats why fermi sold so well despite AMD's massive hardware advantage and low price), the HD 7000, the RX 200, the RX 300, ALL had junk drivers with major performance issues, black screen and hardware acceleration issues, ece. Dont forget old bugs like OpenGL performance in general, 16 bit open GL being broken from 13.7 to somewhere in the 18.xx line, freesync issues of all kinds recently, the aggressive down-clocking making old games unplayable that AMD refused to acknowledge was an issue for 8 months, and black screen issues galore, especially in multi monitor situations.

MY HD 2600xt was great, when it worked. Installing the drivers for the AGP version in XP was a royal pain, since they could only be installed on XP SP2 for the longest time. My 9800 pro was great, except for the driver trying to load the PCI INF instead of the AGP INF every time you booted. The 480 was a fantastic card for its entire run, My HD 6650m was great when the drivers would let it work and AMD wasnt breaking the switchable graphics, and I love my vega 64, but the 20.xx series drivers have made it an unstable mess. My next card, no question, will be a Nvidia card. When I had my 550ti SLI setup, and my 770 SLI setup, outside of the infamous chrome crash issue that nvidia sat on, there wasnt a single noticeable issue despite multiple motherboard/CPU combos, dirty driver installs, and OS drives being moved without re-installations. AMD has once again fallen asleep at the wheel of driver support, and it will crater their attempts at regaining trust from the market, just like the last 15 years.
 
Have you tried using DDU to remove old drivers and clean install the new ones?
Sometimes even if you used older drivers and updated to new ones, there are massive changes in the drivers that can cause problems for people.
Every few iterations (or if there's a major driver release), I just use DDU to remove older drivers and then clean install latest ones.
This method tends to solve most problems.
I’ve always used DDU, although I don’t think it’s acceptable for it to be necessary to use it. However these issues are not caused by previous installs as far as I can see. I’ve now seen issues occurring on fresh installs of windows on more than one occasion. In fact on my very own system I even tried a different, older AMD graphics card and still encountered almost identical issues. I thought it was my monitor at first, however an old Nvidia 970 I have knocking about disproved that.

My only sort of fix was to underclock the graphics card quite significantly and you can mitigate most of the flickers. However the performance hit is rather enormous and not acceptable. I’ve also seemed to notice a trend in that the only people affected that I have seen are those with multi monitor setups, particularly using hdmi. My laptop is Ryzen, using AMD display drivers and have not noticed any of the same issues (aside from the other Radeon based bugs that never seem to disappear).

For me I believe it’s the duty of the tech community to be advising against purchasing these components until it’s provably patched out. We need to send a message to AMD that they have an existential crisis if this isn’t addressed. New users to the gaming community risk being alienated if they are faced with some of the infuriating issues that Radeon display drivers appear to be throwing at users.
 
Shouldn't have to use DDU unless you're switching camps.

AMD did recently add a clean install option in their driver, but it's hidden and unchecked by default. The issues mentioned here are ongoing for a reason. The black screen issue is rampant and hasn't even been put on a known issues list at AMD.

Ever since I built my 1080Ti rig nearly 3 years ago I've been running the same install of windows 10, updated the nvidia drivers every couple months and I've not once had to run DDU or a clean install of the said drivers. Not had a single problem. If it's recommended that AMD drivers need DDU then there's something intrinsically wrong with their software. I can understand a clean sweep for the switch from catalyst to adrenalin but even then surely that upgrade should have sorted out the so-called driver mess.

I really wish AMD would step up their game in the GPU sector but they just seem to be playing catchup with nvidia the whole time. Their next part will be on par or a little faster than a 2080Ti? That card is a year old with nvidia's next gen looming. We need AMD to remain competitive and I'm sure many are hoping they will outclass nvidia the way they've destroyed intel over the last year. I don't think this will happen any time soon as even if they churn out the best top-end GPU, it will no doubt be hampered by driver problems.
 
"Gamers are ditching Radeon graphics cards over driver issues"?? Gamers shouldn't be using AMD cards unless they have the equivalent to the 2060 SUPER (5700XT). Which in turn is only capable of 1080p gaming or 1440p on low settings which isn't worth the attwmpt. Even then the 2060 SUPER is more stable and has more features for the same price.

I Love AMD but I won't buy an AMD video card. I didn't like ATi's performance and issues gaming and that transfers to AMD cards too.
 
Its all a load of nonsense formulated my nvidia users pretending they use AMD.
I been using this vega card now and I have only experienced one crash wile using bbc iplayer.
Its pretty clear its user error.
 
Its a common theme to trash talk AMD I see it all the time,
For years now its trash talk AMD without basis , Nvidia drivers are far more buggy but everyone keeps their mouths shut about it.
Let the BS continue and misinform users
 
My experience is:

If you want good hardware first, go AMD.
If you want good software first, go Nvidia.

Which, I personally go Nvidia (if only because their drivers are good and efficient).
 
I've had poor experiences with several AMD products over the years, from drivers to cards failing prematurely, crossfire problems, loud hot running cars. Really not interested in any of that anymore when you can just as easily purchase a product which just works.

And this naturally makes me a Nvidia fanboy if I'm not mistaken...

And for me, I never had any significant issue and I am being building PC for the last 20 years.

On the contrary, My BFG 8800 GTX died in a year and my EVGA 1080 FTW died twice in 10 months. Not a single of my AMD cards died. My 9800 Pro is still working.
 
Why aren't people using DDU to clean install their drivers?
When I used RX 580 and Vega 56, I haven't had any of those issues even upgrading the drivers to latest version was relatively painless.
The only problem I encountered with Vega 56 was that my system would wake up from sleep mode by displaying Static noise on the display which could only be remedied with an OS restart (and this issue started appearing on drivers after version 19.5.2 - but nothing in regards to flickering, black screens, pink or green screens, or driver crashes - and the static noise on display is relatively easily remedied by using Hybernate as opposed to sleep, though I'd prefer AMD fixed that problem).

With major changes to drivers, yes, you'd be expected to use DDU to clean up any residuals from before (as there are too many changes in between drivers to expect a 'clean transition') and do a clean install of latest drivers instead.

Its standard practice.
If you had an NV gpu in your PC and then decided to change for AMD, how the freaking heck do you expect your GPU to function if you have REMNANTS in your OS from the previous GPU you used?
Those are NOTORIOUS for causing problems and people were recommending clean driver installs (and removing remnants of old drivers) before installing a new GPU in your system.

Not saying that AMD doesn't have driver problems, but I also do think people are exacerbating this issue with their own lack of competence by not using any logic or reason for that matter.

Why on should consumers be forced to do this? Keeping drivers up to date shouldn't require this kind of work.

Imagine if a windows update required an entire factory reset.
 
Been using Radeon cards for 18 years. Always completely uninstall old drivers before installing new ones with no issues. Most people don't want to take the time to do that. On one level it's understandable and you should be able to do that. But if you're an enthusiast, it's not that big of a deal so why not just do that uninstall? You won't have to complain about it later.
 
Last edited:
Back