Gamers are ditching Radeon graphics cards over driver issues

[Karl Hungus]

Timely, needed article, thanks. This is the biggest thing holding me back from buying a 5700XT (from a GTX 1070), the drivers. I've never had a single issue with my last 3 Nvidia cards. The other is the shoddy cards that are on offer. I know the MSI cards in particular have had all kinds of issues and needed a re-design. The Gigabyte cards also seem to have issues, as do the ASUS cards. No issues with the Nvidia cards by the same manufacturers.

Frustrating for me as a 5700XT in many benchmarks (at 1440p, my resolution) almost matches a 2070 Super, but for over $180(!) CDN less than the Super. If AMD can't fix their issues by this fall, I may have to just get a 2060 Super for probably a little more than the 5700XT.

 

[Furian]

I have a 4k gaming rig running a 5700xt and I have absolutely no issues with any game this is just propaganda to give AMD a bad name it's probably sponsored by nvidia and Intel so techspot get free cpus and gpus

 

[Chliso]

Nice - see you joined Techspot just to add your 2 cents on this issue and share your recent experience.

Quick side note: You do know that the ATI name was retired around nine years ago and it's probably been much longer since they stopped selling cards under their own name (I.e. your company would not have contacted ATI customer support but instead whatever company made the video cards or the PC. ). Since those are company PC, I would assume that those were OEM systems like Dell, HP or IBM.

Yes and I've been at this company for 10 years, they were ATI cards and no they weren't used in my company PCs they were used in our video slot machines. I find it amazing you know more about my job than I do.

 

[Irata]

Yes and I've been at this company for 10 years, they were ATI cards and no they weren't used in my company PCs they were used in our video slot machines. I find it amazing you know more about my job than I do.

Where did I comment about your job? Just pointed out the ATI to AMD name change many years ago and that video cards have been sold by third parties for an even longer time.

 

[Chliso]

Where did I comment about your job? Just pointed out the ATI to AMD name change many years ago and that video cards have been sold by third parties for an even longer time.

We always called them ATI even after the name change because that's what they were when we first started using them. And yes in your own words, you assumed they were for our PCs.

 

[John Galt]

A lot of strong opinions here. I've used both AMD/ATI and Radeon over the years, but don't own a 5700.

It almost sounds like the problem is not so much the drivers themselves (or at least not most of the time) but the installer - which, if they did it right, would always remove all old installations to an archive directory so they could not be a factor.

Time for AMD to "poach" some good NVidia installer coders...

 

[m3tavision]

Yet, there as many people claiming they are having issues with their nVidia gpu, too.

During the Superbowl weekend, we built 5 rigs, none of us are having issues with radeon. If you check reddit, it seems that only few dozen are actually having issues and for them, a new card solved the issues.

Is it drivers, or cards?

 

[Danny101]

After recommending 5700XT for so long, made review for each and every 5700XT model out there, yet HUB published this article knowing it would also damage HUB's reputation (since people were buying 5700XT following HUB recommendation). I would call this journalistic integrity.

I can only vouch for my own experience, which is good. I'll stay independent on this one. Whether that translates to somebody else's decision, to the buyer be aware.

 

[Shadowboxer]

If you happen to be an irrational die hard AMD fanboy then going around telling people that there is no cause for concern regarding AMD drivers isn’t going to do AMD any favours.

If a new user goes ahead and buys an AMD card right now and does get afflicted by these rather blatant issues it’s going to leave a bad taste in their mouth. They will either RMA, or they will move on to a different card or give up PC gaming altogether. Either way that user will be yet another that refuses to buy AMD in the future and will only serve to harm AMD in the long run. Look how many users are on here commenting saying that they had a driver issue with AMD x amount of years ago and now they don’t buy Radeon.

If you really love AMD you would be doing everything you can to discourage users from the experience they currently offer until its fixed.

That being said I seem to always end up back on Radeon after seeing how much cheaper it is. Not next time, as soon as the next gen Nvidia drops I’m buying, I couldn’t care less how much cheaper the AMD equivalents are this time, at this point it’s just not worth it.

Also, I didn’t vote in that poll but I would have voted in the group of people with issues on AMD cards. Hopefully that mitigates one of the fake accounts that the die hards are alleging were invented to “trash talk” their precious AMD. I would have RMA’d the 580’s I’m getting issues on immediately had they not been donated by a friend who bought them for a mining rig he never got around to assembling.

 

[Ludak021]

Someone wrote elsewhere something in the lines of: reviewers praise new 5 series from AMD then go back to their 2080Ti's.

 

[amstech]

I'm only trying to say that this thing with AMD and its drivers, is going viral on purpose and without any proof.

Are you from another galaxy?

 

[Danny101]

That cheap compute was nearly useless because most compute software requires CUDA. I couldn't run Tensorflow on Vega, despite trying hard with ROCm. Sold Vega, got 1080Ti and all my software works perfectly.

AMD GPU software have been trash.

So some things just are hardware dependent.

 

[m3tavision]

This is not some simple poll, Steve reached out to some retailers and that's what they said. Going through AMD reddit and people also mentioned that Microcenter employees were saying the same. This is a widespread issue.

Microcenter isn't reporting this. Stop lying.

If you follow the reddit complaints, most have bad cards. It is not the drivers, because than ALL people would be having issues. If you look at the survey, you will notice than nearly the same amount of nvidia people said they were having equal amounts of issues.

If you buy from a legit source, then you can get a new 5700...

 

[evolucion8]

I had been using AMD over a decade and I can count those issues with one hand. I was a first day buyer for the Radeon VII and had minor issues with black screens for the first three driver revisions launched within that month. After that, it had been solid for me for almost a year until December they revamped the drivers interface. After that, resuming from sleep would result a black screen that would get corrected by disabling and enabling Freesync from the monitor and sometimes it would just lock for no reason, couldn't even use the Wattman tool to tweak anything, it would be unstable even on stock. Even with the latest January it wouldn't work. Then I decided to uninstall the drivers, boot into safe mode, use DDU, then install those same December drivers and everything started to work like a champ. Even updated to the latest February ones and everything is solid.

 

[Danny101]

Microcenter isn't reporting this. Stop lying.

If you follow the reddit complaints, most have bad cards. It is not the drivers, because than ALL people would be having issues. If you look at the survey, you will notice than nearly the same amount of nvidia people said they were having equal amounts of issues.

If you buy from a legit source, then you can get a new 5700...

My suspicion is a hardware issue. AMD is having teething problems with this newer architecture. It would behoove them to be honest about it.

 

[m3tavision]

If you happen to be an irrational die hard AMD fanboy then going around telling people that there is no cause for concern regarding AMD drivers isn’t going to do AMD any favours.

If a new user goes ahead and buys an AMD card right now and does get afflicted by these rather blatant issues it’s going to leave a bad taste in their mouth. They will either RMA, or they will move on to a different card or give up PC gaming altogether. Either way that user will be yet another that refuses to buy AMD in the future and will only serve to harm AMD in the long run. Look how many users are on here commenting saying that they had a driver issue with AMD x amount of years ago and now they don’t buy Radeon.

If you really love AMD you would be doing everything you can to discourage users from the experience they currently offer until its fixed.

That being said I seem to always end up back on Radeon after seeing how much cheaper it is. Not next time, as soon as the next gen Nvidia drops I’m buying, I couldn’t care less how much cheaper the AMD equivalents are this time, at this point it’s just not worth it.

Also, I didn’t vote in that poll but I would have voted in the group of people with issues on AMD cards. Hopefully that mitigates one of the fake accounts that the die hards are alleging were invented to “trash talk” their precious AMD. I would have RMA’d the 580’s I’m getting issues on immediately had they not been donated by a friend who bought them for a mining rig he never got around to assembling.

So do tell us, what is broken ??

Your whole post is about the sky is falling, yet who is having these issues? How do you re-create them? Why can't they be recreated..?

If it is a driver, issue roll it back until another is released. Sounds to me like all those people complaining on reddit, seems to know everything, except when a video card is bad and to RMA.

As if nobody ever used a older driver...

 

[Danny101]

Once again, no minds has changed. It's an article of curiosity. Whatever action that solves your issue is the correct one because results matter and experiences vary. Everyone will return to their default position based upon their experience and honestly who can argue with that? No OEMs were harmed in the discussion of this matter. All is well in the world. Case closed.

 

[Boshum]

I recently started using an old R9 270 I had lying around (it never got much use to begin with). As I am going thru various driver updates with it, it seemed like fan was having issues (stuttering?), and I was getting some black screens. Well at some point, my connected flat screen went black and never came back on, even after I disconnected it. Connected another flat screen, went thru some more driver updates and now everything seems fine. Is it possible that the graphics card destroyed the first tv? Can GPU's do that to tv's/monitors?

 

[krizby]

Once again, no minds has changed. It's an article of curiosity. Whatever action that solves your issue is the correct one because results matter and experiences vary. Everyone will return to their default position based upon their experience and honestly who can argue with that? No OEMs were harmed in the discussion of this matter. All is well in the world. Case closed.

This article uncannily resemble the debate between critics vs audience score over at RottenTomatoes. On one side we have the critics (techtubers) and the audience (PC users). So far the critics were praising the 5700XT as the better product than 2060S and 2070S, yet the audience voted with their wallets that 2060S and 2070S are in fact better (people returning their 5700XT for 2060S/2070S). So the critics are left with 2 choices: either ignoring the audience or to re-adjust their previous verdict accordingly, HUB has chosen to do the later. Since RottenTomatoes was so far up their nostrils I believe they are a joke at this point.

 

[Evernessince]

Funny. I just "DITCHED" Nvidia after 10 years, and now happy with the 5700XT. It's the king of 1440p MAXED out at it's price, and can even play some games at 4K smoothly. Too bad many are facing difficulties with Radeons. I for once am happy with my (Sapphire Pulse) purchase. There must be other reasons for those who face problems with AMD cards. And "AMD GPU drivers suck" "meme" have long been over-abused from decades ago. Anyway, to each, his own.

Anyway, most of those who blame the AMD drivers might not be using these cards after all or even faced any issue. Just following the trends of the blame game. To fit into the flow. Otherwise they might feel left out. Afraid to be blamed as noobs.

(Awaiting with popcorn.... )

There are certainly people having issues but it's being blown way out of proportion. 6 new accounts (4 created yesterday and 2 today) just on this thread makes me extremely suspicious, especially since they are all claiming to have the EXACT issues being described with little variation between them.

Driver issue are mostly present on the new Navi cards. These GPUs are either full of bugs that needs hacks in FW and drivers or the new architecture is too much for the software guys at AMD. Nevertheless, while being a fine GPU, you pay the price for not paying the price with crappy drivers and instability.

The thing is, this wasn't a big issue a few months ago. Sure there were driver issues but nothing like being described and certainly not as common as described. If you look at the return numbers provided in prior posts, it doesn't match up to what the poll insinuates.

Your viewing audience is an inappropriate subset (uncontrolled, skew not mappable), self-selection bias also skews results.

Even at 50k fields, the underlying collection method is flawed enough to invalidate any analyses other than preference.

That said, my RTX 2070 works great, thanks. ?

Well said.

This article uncannily resemble the debate between critics vs audience score over at RottenTomatoes. On one side we have the critics (techtubers) and the audience (PC users). So far the critics were praising the 5700XT as the better product than 2060S and 2070S, yet the audience voted with their wallets that 2060S and 2070S are in fact better (people returning their 5700XT for 2060S/2070S). So the critics are left with 2 choices: either ignoring the audience or to re-adjust their previous verdict accordingly, HUB has chosen to do the later. Since RottenTomatoes was so far up their nostrils I believe they are a joke at this point.

The thing is, it's not just the reviewers not having issues. User reviews echo reviewer sentiment.

4% return rate is nowhere near what this article purports.

 

[Shadowboxer]

To the AMD defence league who are in full damage control mode at the moment *cough* evernessince, *cough* metavision.

If you are still struggling with the really very basic concept that your beloved AMD is letting the industry down.

Watch this;

Are you really going to continue to bury your heads in the sand? Or will you finally admit that there is quite obviously a problem. It’s becoming quite widely reported at this point. AMD themselves even appear to have acknowledged the problems.

 

[Evernessince]

To the AMD defence league who are in full damage control mode at the moment *cough* evernessince, *cough* metavision.

If you are still struggling with the really very basic concept that your beloved AMD is letting the industry down.

Watch this;

Are you really going to continue to bury your heads in the sand? Or will you finally admit that there is quite obviously a problem. It’s becoming quite widely reported at this point. AMD themselves even appear to have acknowledged the problems.

You have not read my comments have you? I acknowledge the issue multiple times.

I guess you struggle with the idea that someone can acknowledge the issue but be against the hyperbole that is 48% (as reported in the poll). My problem was never with whether or not this is an issue, it is. It was with the way this article presented it.

Had you actually read my comments till now, you would have seen that. Instead, you give us your canned troll response. This is the problem with forums, there are people like you that push people in the middle to the other side because you crap on them for no reason. God forbid anyone take a cautionary stance before jumping on the hyperbole wagon like those on the 1st page of this thread.

 

[maestro0428]

I’ve used cards from both camps for the last ten years. Both have had driver issues. Right now I’m running AMD cards and haven’t seen issues in quite a while. I’m in the market for a card upgrade and as much as I wanna go AMD again because of their value, I’ll probably go Nvidia this time.

 

[Shadowboxer]

You have not read my comments have you? I acknowledge the issue multiple times.

I guess you struggle with the idea that someone can acknowledge the issue but be against the hyperbole that is 48% (as reported in the poll). My problem was never with whether or not this is an issue, it is. It was with the way this article presented it.

Had you actually read my comments till now, you would have seen that. Instead, you give us your canned troll response. This is the problem with forums, there are people like you that push people in the middle to the other side because you crap on them for no reason. God forbid anyone take a cautionary stance before jumping on the hyperbole wagon like those on the 1st page of this thread.

You appear to be arguing with yourself. TS even say that their figures probably aren’t 100% accurate but the results are strong enough to show there is a problem. No one here is saying that definitely 48% of all users are having a problem. But almost everyone except for a predictable few is saying that there is a serious problem that needs to be resolved.

You are creating a straw man argument that people are asserting that the issue rate is 48%. Can you tell me who and where exactly state that it definitely is 48% of all users are having issues?

 

[Evernessince]

You appear to be arguing with yourself. TS even say that their figures probably aren’t 100% accurate but the results are strong enough to show there is a problem. No one here is saying that definitely 48% of all users are having a problem. But almost everyone except for a predictable few is saying that there is a serious problem that needs to be resolved.

You are creating a straw man argument that people are asserting that the issue rate is 48%. Can you tell me who and where exactly state that it definitely is 48% of all users are having issues?

From the article

"the poll suggests that 48% of all AMD users have suffered major issues, while we see less than half that figure for Nvidia users at 22%. "

The poll is the only thing I have a problem with. Everything else is fine and this is an issue that needs to be fixed ASAP. It does hurt AMD's reputation and should never have happened.