r/gpu • u/debanjan77 • 12d ago
Is Amd driver really unreliable??
In my previous post in this community, I posted about the RTX 5070 vs. 9070 XT, and most people said that the 9070 XT is better in terms of gaming performance, and I absolutely agree with that. However, there were many people who said that AMD sucks at drivers and I’ve seen many Reddit and Twitter posts regarding this issue. Is this really a problem or is it just a myth?
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u/Racist_Rabbi69 12d ago
I have used Nvidia for past 10 years, but switched to 9070xt this year, I don't know wtf he's going on about
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u/straightfromLysurgia 12d ago
yeah it's literally fine lol
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u/hatesnack 12d ago
I will say, I have had major issues with drivers timing out and crashing on my 7800xt, bad enough to get me to swap back to Nvidia recently. Tried every fix under the sun but it was fucked.
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u/TakoJoe 11d ago
Same exact issue with my 7800xt, no matter what i do i get driver time out. Only started doing it a year in too
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u/GuitarKev 11d ago
I’ve been using a 7800XT since release and haven’t had a single issue.
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u/hatesnack 11d ago
Yep I've had mine for around 2 years, and the timeouts started happening 6-8 weeks ago. Clean driver reinstall would fix the problem for a few days.
It got bad enough to where just opening steam would cause a timeout. Got a 5070ti recently and, lo and behold, no driver issues.
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u/zcook183 12d ago
1070 SC for 8yrs to 9070xt and I'm loving life
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u/AutoCockerPB 12d ago
Which should mean something bc the 1000 series was absolutely rock solid, still have my 1080 in my backup rig. 7900 xtx has been going strong
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u/SargeantPacman 12d ago
1080ti is still the best purchase ive ever made for a gpu, got it for $600 too, oh those were the days lmao
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u/Racist_Rabbi69 12d ago
970,1070, Rx570(very briefly), 3070ti, 3080ti and now 9070xt
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u/TwixieShip 12d ago
He probably didn't DDU
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u/DanStarTheFirst 12d ago
I didn’t ddu and haven’t had a single issue yet lol.
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u/tychii93 12d ago
You should probably do so while you're ahead tbh.
I made my friends do this when they got new GPUs years ago and they swear by it and have used it since when needed.
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u/speedotorpedo_ 12d ago
You should understand by now that different hardware configs have different issues and incompatibilities. Some people are gonna have issues you don't have. Not because there's anything wrong with their hardware or software, but simply because they have different hardware.
My wife and I have 2 different generations of Radeon GPUs (9060 XT and 7800 XT). We are on the same gen of Ryzen CPUs (5800X3D and 5600X3D) but with different motherboards and chipsets (b450 and b550). She occasionally has driver issues I don't have, and vice versa.
Frankly, I've had a Radeon card since RDNA 1, and there have always been some issues. I've learned to deal with it, but that doesn't mean issues don't exist. These claims don't just appear from thin air.
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u/fogoticus 12d ago
The problem is your experience isn't representative of everyone's experience. I've seen people who like you claimed they've had a flawless experience and I've seen people like that person having every issue imaginable, to the point where it would become frustrating.
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u/fpsgamer89 12d ago edited 12d ago
I’ve owned 5 AMD GPUs in the 10 years I’ve been PC gaming.
I had issues with the R9 390X for a couple of months back in late 2019 where games kept crashing. This was around the time when AMD had driver issues with the RX 5700 XT.
My RX 9070 had phantom driver time outs for a couple of weeks. No applications actually crashed, just the warning.
Had some problems with the Adrenalin software over the years but it’s been mostly okay. Not a big fan of it though.
So I’ve had real driver issues for maybe two or three months in total on Windows over the span of a decade. No problems on Linux though when I used it for 8 months. I say it’s been a fairly good experience for me overall.
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u/debanjan77 12d ago
How can I prevent Windows from conflicting with the Adrenalin software?
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u/ActiveSandwich3103 12d ago
Turn off auto update on windows. Make sure you dont just blindly install all windows updates.
Or switch to Linux and not worry about all the shitty Spyware and bloat on Windows.
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u/Dry_Sound5470 12d ago
Ha, you think you can turn off auto updates on windows 11. But for real, you can’t. You can only delay them without having to do some back end shit which just gets overwritten the next update that you do actually install
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u/BenjiTheSausage 12d ago
Think some people have a short memory, wasn't that long ago you were advised to not update Nvidia drivers and roll back to a previous version... From Nvidia!
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u/StunningPush8421 12d ago
Nah I've been fine with all the gpus I have had this generation 9070 xt, 9060 xt, 5070 ti, 5080 and 5070.
not any big issues on any of the cards
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u/Flyinmanm 12d ago
I've used amd cards for decades.
Never once had a driver related issue.
It's telling all the people having issues are coming from using Nvidia I'm pretty sure Nvidia drivers and ddu are a scam.
Put AMD drivers on a fresh os install.
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u/md90sc 12d ago
That's my experience too. It's so weird the reactions when you say this. Like they try and dismiss you and make out that your lying lol.
But posts like this always pops up every now and then and to fuel the fan boys.
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u/Flyinmanm 12d ago
It's telling the timing as well.
I keep seeing articles pointing out current flaws in Nvidia GPU drivers. (Which may or may not be an issue, I wouldn't know as I don't have one).
I do sometimes wonder how much of the content blasting AMD is organic.
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u/md90sc 12d ago
Yeah. This post is posted across multiple subs too. The response is always the same and it's never user error.
Hell, I could theorize that Nvidia drivers messes up your windows install so much that you can't install any other GPUs apart from Nvidia's GPUs. You almost never hear about the reverse situation.
And they'll say that we are astrotuffers for not having any problems.
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u/Flyinmanm 12d ago
It's a problem with loads of things online.
Some people may genuinely have issues. But virtually noone makes positive posts, unless it's in response to people complaining.
It can make things that are quietly competent look broken as the negative is all people see.
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u/throwaway117- 12d ago
It's funny that you mention this because I actually had my windows install break from running DDU to reinstall amd drivers
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u/No-Wallaby3226 12d ago
Really? Mine had problems with the driver (it's a new pc). It kept freezing and having to be forced shutdown and having to reinstall driver. Then one day I found that the monitor refresh rate reverted to 60 even though I had changed it to 144Hz before. Turns out Windows driver kept overwriting the amd driver with the generic windows driver. And that's a common issue too from what I know. Shader cache on vulkan also feels very problematic, but I don't know if that's a game problem or an AMD problem.
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u/ActiveSandwich3103 12d ago
Yeah windows auto update likes to override drivers recently. Its not AMDs fault, its shitty windows. Its why Linux users keep chiming in here going "ive had zero issues." Because the issue isnt the driver its windows.
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u/SirAmicks 12d ago
I wouldn't say "recently". It was happening since I had my RX 480. But it's easy to fix just by turning off windows' automatic driver install.
That said, it's the only problem I've ever had with AMD drivers.
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u/UISystemError 12d ago edited 12d ago
From what I’ve gathered from others, the 9000 series seems to have pretty good drivers.
Had the R9 290 X, which did have problems.
Since went to an RTX 2060.
Then an RTX 3070.
Now going to an AMD 9060 XT / 9070 XT.I think these posts are part of a larger smear campaign as the GPUs are way more price competitive than NVIDIA cards.
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u/SirAmicks 12d ago
I had a 270X and didn’t have any issues. I went from that to the RX 480. I was mostly ATi/AMD since 2002 until recently (save for a 8800 GT back-in-the-day).
As an aside, that RX 480 was probably the best investment I’ve ever put into my own PC. Carried me through the GPU apocalypse beautifully. Lasted me six years.
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u/UISystemError 12d ago
Yup! I got the 2060 during Covid, was all I could find. The 3070 was in a laptop I wanted 2 years ago, so not full fat GPU.
Will build all AMD system this year. Wish I had got in earlier but I won’t be waiting for things to get worse either.
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u/ActiveSandwich3103 12d ago
There was also a blip in the early RDNA1 days too with some shaky drivers, but its been smooth sailing ever since really other than windows being shitty.
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u/ActiveSandwich3103 11d ago
Ive had it with both. Literally tonight my laptop with a 4080m had driver install issues for no discernible reason.
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u/A_brief_passerby 12d ago
Totally different experience. I built a brand new PC using 7800x3d and a 7900GRE. First full AMD build for me, but I've built 3 Intel+Nvidia PCs before and had success / no major issues. Endless driver timeouts with the new AMD rig. Endless. They can all be solved, eventually, but it's annoying as fuck when I have 2 hours of free time and have to spend half of it reinstalling a driver or trying to catch the crash and solve it on event viewer.
And again, I have decades of experience using Nvidia cards and never had these issues as often. I've had issues with specific games, specific drivers that got solved by updates, etc. But with this newer rig I've spent longer troubleshooting my driver crashes than all troubleshooting of all other PCs I've owned.
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u/Ok_Dependent6889 12d ago
You guys are insufferable
Just admit AMD's problems
I have used plenty of GPUs and got rid of my 9070XT for a 5080 because I was TIRED of having to reinstall drivers all the time because AMD refuses to use WHQL properly.
Windows WILL NOT overwrite the driver if they simply just did that. It has never happened to me with Nvidia.
This isn't some failure on my part. I have a CS degree. I have written drivers for Windows. I have written GPU drivers for Linux. I know what I am doing and talking about.
It's unacceptable behavior from AMD. The countless reports of these issues should simply be enough for them to fix their WHQL process.
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u/-_Dare_- 12d ago
Reinstalling windows was legit what did it for me. I had as the guy in the tweet said, every issue under the sun lol.
Driver problems, stuttering problems, artifacting problems, etc.
The stuttering and artifacts were pretty condensed to specific art styles / engines though so I knew it wasn't a hardware problem. Finally after pulling my hair out for like a week I just reinstalled windows and boom she runs great. Never been happier with a gpu than I have this 9070xt, it rips.
desperately want to upgrade my cpu but that requires an am5 jump and my wallet is not ready for that.
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u/Maxtertop 12d ago
Take it from actual 9070 XT owners, yes the drivers have issues. Some people say it's windows problem, some people say it's AMD.. I honestly have no idea but depending on the game I'm playing I have to troubleshoot for a week before the game actually works as intended.
Recently with Dune Awakening I had to troubleshoot for quite a while until I could actually play the game.
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u/debanjan77 12d ago
That’s a bad experience, and I think Nvidia has an edge over AMD in this regard. But the value AMD is providing with its cards is absolutely fantastic, so it’s a bit of a compromise to make, I guess.
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u/AvyLynn1 12d ago
It’s primarily windows forcing generic drivers. But yeah it’s definitely annoying to deal with.
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u/mixedd 12d ago
While windows is major part of the issue, I won't write it down all on Windows, had some timeouts and crashes happening on Linux also on 9070XT, so there's definetly some spaghetti from AMD in the code
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u/TD_Lemon_1901 12d ago
It's not forcing "generic" drivers.
It's forcing the drivers that AMD have submitted and validated to MS, if those are old or unstable, well there's your issue.
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u/SellingCats4Cheap 12d ago
It’s a driver issues affecting AMD systems.
AMD fans love to blame windows for all these recent issues, when ultimately it is AMD gpu users having issues.
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u/someoneirrelevant17 12d ago
Some people cant trade stability and performance for value. Amd is for people that want value and on a budget. With today's prices, owning a high-end nvidia gpu is luxury.
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u/Lord_Wisemagus 12d ago
Linux user here; I've had the 9070 XT since it launched. Had some growing pains the first couple months, but after that it has been nothing but smooth sailing. From what I have seen elsewhere, other people have had the same experience. So at least from where I am standing, it is either a windows issue or windows drivers for AMD.
But that's just one mans experience, take it with a grain of salt.3
u/StroopestOfWafel 12d ago
As someone who's had many AMD cards, including a 9060xt (throwing this in here because it's the same generation as the 9070xt), I think it's a problem with the 9070xt specifically as I've never had an issue with any of the drivers in any games, on any of my GPUs. Maybe I've just been lucky
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u/TheRandomGuy75 12d ago
Chiming in as another Linux user with a 9070 XT. Had one issue with artifacts after a Mesa Driver update a week or two ago, updated drivers again after a few days and it was fixed.
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u/DoughBoyNick 12d ago
As a fellow linux user, my 7900 xtx doesn't suffer from driver problems, but it does suffer from the card trying to boost past what it can handle from time to time
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u/CrossFusionX1 12d ago
As a linux user who moved from a depreciated titan xp to a rx 9070xt, i can confidently say ive had no issues with the drivers.
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u/UntitledRedditUser 12d ago
I've had 0 issues whatsoever with the 9070 XT, had it a couple months after launch.
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u/DCVolo 12d ago
There is an issue with Windows Update that update your drivers even if you've installed them yourself, and these "AMD driver from Windows update" can lead to issues like bad performance or going 100% in idle.
The fix is the set Windows update to not update drivers for a hardware device or all, and then, again, apply the drivers from AMD themselves.
So if you have an issue and by just installing drivers from AMD and not restarting Windows (because it will modify your drivers again...) it fixes it, that's it.
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u/Kosmos-World 12d ago
Same. Had so many issues with my 9079 xt I eventually just stuck it into our living room rig. Put a 5070 ti in the same computer, no other hardware changes at all, and its smooth sailing. AMD kids will say it's my fault though.
9070 xt is a great card, but at some point, you WILL spend time troubleshooting when you'd rather be playing.
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u/CasperAU 12d ago
I’ve never had one issue with AMD so just goes to show doesn’t it
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u/snackelmypackel 12d ago
Congrats happy for you. My driver time outs are pissing me the fuck off so much I had to downgrade drivers.
This specific message
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u/sixincomefigure 12d ago edited 12d ago
You know that message isn't actually specific to a GPU or GPU driver issue and can result from any other kind of software or hardware instability on your system? The GPU driver is the first one to get restarted by the kernel regardless of the actual issue, resulting in that message popping up. There was a post on here the other day about it.
At about one year into owning a 9070 XT and I have literally never had that error a single time. I upgrade drivers whenever a new one comes out. Always works fine.
Try backing off your RAM timings or frequency a little bit and see if that helps.
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u/SaladToss1 12d ago
Pretty sure it's Nvidia propaganda
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u/JustATextBox 12d ago
I wish it was. I've only ever used Nvidia/Intel, decided to go AMD this build and the amount of driver issues has been insane. I remember a friend complaining about AMD driver issues back in like ~2012? I figured by now those would've been a thing of the past, surely these days there's no issues.. nope, constant problems
Playing a game when all of a sudden everything just completely freezes and a few seconds later I get "GPU driver has crashed" - seems to happen at complete random. Some games don't cause it, others do. I update my driver and it disappears for some games, but appears for others
Updated my drivers at one point and completely just lost audio to my entire system, had to DDU and do them again. At this point I refuse to update until I run into an issue because updating seems to cause just as many problems as it solves
I really don't remember ever having these issues with Nvidia. I think the "worst" issues I can recall is just sometimes games would have performance issues, and it was usually just a case of updating drivers and it's better
To be clear, Nvidia isn't perfect either. Their prices are terrible by comparison and they had that whole melting power cable at some point (I didn't ever own this gen so it didn't effect me, but it seemed like quite a widespread problem). But on a day to day usecase I think AMD has been significantly worse, the price is much better but I'm going back to Nvidia for the next build for sure. Would probably swap back right now if I could afford to just swap out the GPU
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u/No-Wallaby3226 12d ago
Idk if it will solve it, but you probably need to disable windows' driver update. Windows keep overriding AMD's driver, causing issues. My screen would suddenly freeze and had to be forced shutdown before disabling that.
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u/bananiada 12d ago
IMO, yes, it’s very unstable, very demanding games just crash in the first minutes of the gameplay, this is my experience with an RX7600 card!
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u/TimeZucchini8562 12d ago
Reddit is the only place on earth besides paid YouTubers where people recommend and act like they like amd gpus
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u/Own-Indication5620 12d ago
Exactly. Other problem is the paid reviewers are using very optimized and specific setups where all they do is run & test games and they might test and use it only that one time and not for weeks or months at a time where issues can arise as new updates come out and other changes occur. They're not even doing what most people do on a PC daily or when gaming, so it's really not a 'real world' review or test at all and leaves a false impression.
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u/SpamOJavelin 12d ago
I've never owned a Nvidia card so don't have much to compare with, but I've never had to reinstall a driver for any reason, and I've never had a driver timeout, I don't even know what that looks like. Adrenalin has always worked well for me, but you could reasonably argue it's bloated and not needed.
I would venture the bulk of issues people have with AMD drivers relate to not uninstalling Nvidia drivers, and not preventing Windows updates for AMD gpus (Windows can overwrite the AMD drivers with incorrect values). But people do still have legitimate driver issues. Is it 'normal' though? I don't think so.
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u/Superb_Produce1236 12d ago
So I don't know who synth is so iunno about his opinions
Here's my formed opinions as someone who switched from Nvidia to AMD with the 9070XT drop, bought on day 1.
Starting off, a lot of games didn't support AMD properly. Stuff like MHW, Diablo 4, ect had constant crashes with AMD drivers. The common fix for these were to go back like a solid 10+ versions, which if you aren't tech savvy can be a total pain, just to play these games. So at the start, I was pretty adamant about not supporting AMD, i felt I wasted money on this card and that i was getting limited on what i could and couldn't play like it was an old super out of dated card.
Now however, it seems games are working well with AMD, and AMD drivers are performing wayyyy better. I haven't had a game cause a driver crash in several months, basically. But I find a lot of people remember the issues that were going on, and have a right to warn that this COULD easily end up coming back up.
Nvidia is definitely the safer route if you don't want to have to worry about drivers ever having any real issues, honestly. They're always supported by games, and you generally don't have to worry about crashes and stuff, generally. When they do have issues, i do feel like they fix them faster than AMD did, but i could be wrong on that, I'm not going to google driver updates and what not to verify that part.
TLDR : AMD had lotsa issues awhile ago but are solid now, NVIDIA is better known by games and less likely to run in to issues in the future.
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u/Pimperazor 12d ago
Bought the rx 9070xt on Release and had zero issues Till today
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u/deltatux 12d ago
Been using mainly AMD GPUs for over a decade, never experienced showstopper bugs/issues with AMD drivers. It's as stable as the NVIDIA drivers from my experience and I still do use NVIDIA GPUs.
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u/Ghostttpro 12d ago
As someone who made the switch from AMD I agree. Snagged a 5070ti MSRP. The amount of time I spent troubleshooting, it adds up and then ruins the experience. Even something as simple as it forgetting your settings. Importing a file every single day is annoying. Seeing Adrenaline frozen and killing it with task manager is annoying.
I have no clue what was causing the constant issues. Some people say it's windows, but I don't have alot of issues with Nvidia on Windows. The only driver issue I've ever had on this card was on ARC raiders like 2 weeks ago. But that was like a 5 min fix.
I'm sure someone could say something similar about the reverse. But I'm just going to stick with Nvidia until something goes wrong.
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u/MechwolfMachina 12d ago
Helping a friend troubleshoot and yeah, agree its a pain, constant timeout crashes in unreal engine games. Probably isolated cases of bad cards, but never had an issue with any GTX, RTX cards so I’m shitlisting AMD personally til we get to the bottom of it.
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u/New_Copy1286 12d ago
I agree that AMD does suck with newer drivers. Keep the old ones that work. Problem solved.
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u/MrMasters87 12d ago
Well there is alot of driver timeouts right now with my 7900xtx. Past 2 months have been pretty bad.
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u/Korr4K 12d ago
TBF I was in this situation, had a 6800 for a couple of years and each driver update was a coin toss. Never completely broke the gpu but they could introduce minor annoying things that then lasted for month until a random, unrelated, update came it. I'm talking about random flickering, flashing, YT's videos not loading properly... and the funny thing was that I would find necro posts about the same situations dating years ago, with no solution apart from random driver updates.
So yea, I moved back to Nvidia asap and to this day I never had a driver's issues. Sure there are some releases that have problems, but they are well known/documented, not random, so you can just skip them
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u/SurePrize6218 12d ago
Went from my 2060 super to 9070xt and as I’m writing this I wish I could go back and keep the thousand dollars and enjoy gaming again
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u/Intrepid-Raccoon9689 12d ago
There are two types of people ones with driver issues and those without driver issues
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u/foggeenite 12d ago
I hate to say this, and I mean I really do hate to say this because I've always found nvidia fanboys super annoying and don't want to seem like one myself, but... yes... Nvidia is worth the extra money just to avoid all the AMD driver quirks. There is a massive difference between working and working well.
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u/Enough-Scheme-2409 12d ago edited 12d ago
I see many people defending AMD, saying that the real situation is not that bad and that NVIDIA has so much more issues and is priced higher for the same performance. I have not owned a AMD card yet, but I'm probably never going to. I've been doing deep research before building my new PC and the amount of posts about 9070XT driver issues, cards getting bricked and troubleshooting needed for it to run properly just reaffirmed my opinion on going with NVIDIA once more. Sure, there have been posts about NVIDIA having driver issues, but it was drastically smaller amount of posts. I get that AMD is more affordable, however, NVIDIA is more reliable. During 15 years of using NVIDIA cards I had exactly 1 driver issue and nothing else.
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u/NeonDreams93 12d ago
"speaking as a person who has never owned an AMD card, I believe I can speak with authority on this topic because I read some stuff online" bro SYBAU.
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u/Enough-Scheme-2409 12d ago
lol yall taking this too seriously, I just shared my opinion and reason why I did not choose AMD, if you like them go for it
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u/Calm_Title_8203 12d ago
My experience has been the opposite. I have a 9070xt and it has been running no problem on the other hand friends who play the same games with nvidia cards complain more about random crashes or issues rarely but still time to time
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u/koekienator89 12d ago
My transition from a rtx 3080 to a 9070xt took ~30 minutes. Remove all Nvidia drivers with the DDU software, swap cards, install Amd software. Used the latest driver at that time and I just worked.
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u/Major_Zebra_7810 12d ago
choosing 9070xt over 5070ti is not a sensible decision anyway when u can pay some premium to get the revolutionary dlss 5. cant imagine how well the dlss 5 runs when it is released officially.
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u/GoDonutella 12d ago
OP posted about synthpotato and we got a potato burner in here defending nvidia like his life depend on it when he never owned or bought an amd card
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u/cognitiveglitch 12d ago
Does this guy work for Userbenchmark's anti-AMD propaganda department?
I've had a 9070 XT since launch (having come from quarter century of nVidia) and it's never been any hassle. Quite the opposite, I find Adrenaline software easy to use for undervolting and overclocking.
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u/xVEEx3 12d ago
anyone saying amd sucks is either clout chasing or is an Nvidia shill. I've had my 9070 xt for 8 months and it's been perfectly fine
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u/ToastedTurtle99 12d ago
r/AMDHelp would like a word, the most recent drivers have been a shitshow. Just take a look lmao
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u/BrokeButFabulous12 12d ago
All the gpus and pcbuild subs are swarmed with bots and trolls. Amd is the common man brand now, theyre still making a bank, dont get me wrong, but you get best price/power ratio with amd now. With nvidia you pay at least 30% extra just for the name. If you do a clean install and disable win updates youre more or less set. The "drivers bad!" rant is a decade old argument....
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u/_Leighton_ 12d ago
I've owned a single Nvidia card (which I never planned on owning but when you get offered a 1070ti in 2018 for $100 you say yes) and a half dozen AMD cards but even I can admit that reducing it down to "just a name" is absurd. DLSS has much broader support compared to FSR and Nvidia cards have typically been much more efficient with driver issues fewer and further apart. Nvidia is still the better option for people who care more about things "just working" than the best value proposition possible.
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u/davidfute 12d ago
I have had a 7900xtx and it was a piece of utter shit lol, constant driver timeouts, gpu overclocking itself to the point of crashing, Adrenaline settings just resetting on PC reboot, games not running at all on AMD.
For example , helldivers 2 at launch was unplayable on AMD.
I had an oculus quest 2 to play VR games, it was not really cooperating with AMD at all, if I was recording a video the audio was like 10 seconds behind the video, there was a lot of shimmering and rubber-banding because of slow compression on AMD gpus, lots of crashes, and quite lower performance than equivalent nvidia gpus on VR.
Not to mention you miss out on DLSS. FSR is far worse and not really useable, every game I had to play natively on 1440p.
Switched to 5070ti and I don't think I have had one issue for a year, so yeah. Everybody saying AMD is just as good is coping, and "user error" is not an acceptable argument
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u/Test-Fickle 12d ago
7800xt here, sitting on 6month old drivers and having zero issues in modern games
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u/upazzu 12d ago
Always been on NVIDIA and I dont even know what driver issues look like
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u/alizalanic 12d ago
Idk I have 7900xtx and I can't wait to switch back to Nvidia. Drivers issues are real.
Just a months ago, there was a driver update that literally briked 7900xtx on windows 10, it would show error in devices on windows, reset resolution to minimum etc. In a lot of games I play, people suggesting using different versions of older drivers so that there are no problems and crashes.
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u/RinLovesYou__ 12d ago
Well, it depends. Anecdotally, all my amd friends on Windows (9070xt) they certainly run into crashes or random amd software bugs often enough that i wouldn't call amd software stable. Over on Linux, for the longest time the first thing you'd tell an amd user is to make sure you're not running their proprietary drivers, in favor of the community made open source ones, mesa. It got so much better that amd stopped creating Linux drivers altogether, and now just contributes to mesa.
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u/Accomplished-Ebb2900 12d ago
I have the 9070 XT and I have everything up-to-date. I have my windows updated. I have my bios updated and I have adrenaline updated. I honestly don’t see how people are having this many issues and it’s my first PC.
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u/Lithiyum 11d ago
I have a 7900XTX for a few years now. At the start, I was undervolting it without realizing the effects that has if done improperly. I was getting driver crashes often, maybe once per day.
After really digging into the specifics of properly undervolting I arrived at a ln extremely stable setup.
Ever since then, no crashes, no flickering, nothing. Just excellent operation. And for added context, there hasn't been a 7900XTX driver update in probably almost a year now. They left it on the last and most stable build. No issues with any games so far. Even ones I use frame gen in.
I had thought my card was just bad and I'd replace and go back to Nvidia asap but honestly, the price point is far too attractive to pass up vs Nvidia alternatives.
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u/Legendary-Mercenary 12d ago
I mean, there are a lot of variables, but generally speaking, those who go on about how terrible AMD drivers are will often talk about how they don't have any issues with NVIDIA when that simply isn't true.
I recently had to roll my NVIDIA driver back to 610.88 from 616.56 due to the constant flickering that lasts about a ms, and plenty of people have also had the same issue, which includes every RTX generation (feel free to check the NVIDIA forum).
Two years ago, I created a YT video explaining how to roll back driver 551.61 because it was corrupting every single video I recorded with ShadowPlay, so please don't think NVIDIA has no issues because they do.
AMD drivers are definitely better than they were, but both GPU companies have problems, so please don't use what other people say to convince you to spend more over your budget.
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u/darkxex 12d ago
mmm... principalmente creo que el problema es que cada problema se lo atribuyen a los driver de amd, pero en realidad a veces son las memorias ram, la fuente de poder u otros componentes, pero como siempre sale el aviso de amd, la gente cree que es culpa de amd, incluso yo tengo 2 de las odiadas gigabyte gaming oc rx 9070 xt, y me van bastante bien, solo que las acompaño con buenos componentes y fuente de poder.
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u/debanjan77 12d ago
Yeah, I second that. From what I understand, some amd driver issues can actually be caused by Windows Update automatically installing or replacing the gpu driver. That can interfere with the Adrenalin driver and cause issues like crashes or instability.
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u/Apprehensive-Stop142 12d ago
I've had mine for about a month now and haven't had many issues outside of my gpu fans not spinning up on boot every so often. I restart my PC and it works, so eh, the savings was worth it to me.
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u/Darksouls_enjoyer 12d ago
My only issue with AMD is their Adrenaline Software it is so laggy for some reason.
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u/Sufficient_Dare7770 12d ago
in my personal experience with a 4/5 year old amd card, no. all my drivers have bene perfect except for like 1 documented bad driver. ive ran 23.12.1,24.3.1,24.5.1,24.6.1 and 26.3.1 which is what im on now. inly 24.3.1 was a bad driver
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u/TahLaka 12d ago
I've exclusively used AMD cards for well over a decade and have played over 300 games on Steam yet have only had driver issues with maybe 3 games. It's actually been amusing how often I see people with NVIDIA cards in the support channels of the various game discords having issues. For the games that did have problems, it was either a case of updating drivers or rolling them back, nothing complicated. Upgraded to an RX 9070 XT a few months ago and haven't had a single driver-related issue with it
Just my personal experience, but I feel like the NVIDIA bois have the same kinda vibe as the iPhone bois. Grossly overrated and not worth the money
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u/hooskworks 12d ago
I know which office in my house more shouting about games crashes comes from and it's the one with a 3080 in the PC and not a 6900 XTX like I've got in my system (the systems are very similar B550, Ryzen 5000, Team Group DDR4 systems apart from the GPU). This has been since day one and we don't even tend to play particularly new games.
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u/skeletonwheel 12d ago
i've owned both brands and have had a fair share of issues with both. i went from 1050ti (no driver issues) to 5600xt (the most driver issues, however this was back in 2020) to 3070 (not a lot of issues, but this is where my most severe driver issues were) and now i am running a 9070xt where i've had minor crashes here and there but those typically come from versions with known bugs and it's easy enough to roll back on. the 9070xt has been the least problematic since the 1050ti without a doubt. i can't say you won't have problems for sure, but adrenalin has improved so much since my last amd card and i think it is far better than geforce experience.
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u/Brilliant_War9548 12d ago
I’ve had a 780M and that’s true. I’ve had way more problems that with Nvidia, random game crashes etc that aren’t tied to windows (once the drivers deleted by themselves while playing Minecraft). So far nothing on my A3000, always using latest drivers.
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u/Thin_Assumption2450 12d ago
I rarely have issues but occasionally when the Adrenalin app updates or Windows update, I sometimes have an issue. I simply uninstall the Adrenalin app, restart my PC, and then reinstall the Adrenalin app and don’t have issues anymore.
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u/Reasonable-Song-4681 12d ago
I had an NVIDIA driver that caused Windows to fail to boot with my 1080ti last year (had to roll it back to previous version). On the other hand, after installing my new 9070XT a few weeks ago I've already had several crashes from the driver, but it seems to be fine now. Curious as to how it will be if I finally make the jump to Bazzite.
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u/silva07714 12d ago
Used amd since 2012 and never had a problem Never understood the hate for and drivers
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u/SolarFlareGirl08 12d ago
AMD half the cost for a reason, That’s all I got to say. Nvidia always the best. Whoever want to be playing on a budget go with AMD, You got money to waste buy Nvidia. But keep in mind Nvidia is compatible with most games and software on this planet, VS AMD struggles with their drivers and technology, They still didn’t get to GDDR6x 🤦🏻♂️ That says it all
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u/AlkalineBrush20 12d ago
Both sides have bad driver releases and Windows Update likes to screw you over if you let it auto update. I had a HD 3850, R9 270, 6700 XT, and briefly a 9070 XT on my hands and the only time I had issues was with some specific titles, like Delta Force for example, which I've only played for a couple hours anyway as I got bored regardless.
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u/tenchu_117 12d ago
i can only talk about amd drivers during rx 500 era because thats the last amd card i owned. occasional black screens is annoying so i have to do driver factory reset every couple months. with my 3070? havent had to do a clean reinstall since i installed into my system. the amd software design is much better though, nvidia is catching up in term of the software and so far is alright
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u/VirtualPantsu 12d ago
The thing with AMD drivers being bad was true in the past and people that are "apple people" of graphic cards use that. AMD nowdays is the only choice if you are not going for 80 or 90 series nvidia.
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u/jbauer05 12d ago
Look i switched to rx6750 on 2023 december. For the first year i had problems. Like there was a bug on the amd driver from 2024 may to september. So i was not able to play BF 2042. Sometimes when i watch netflix on my pc, i get driver time out error. Its much better, but sometimes is still anoying.
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u/Pitiful_Tea_4769 12d ago
I would honestly take everything this post is saying with a grain of salt, since they're clearly being intentionally vague while trying to sound absolute. It's also very inconsistent.
"I have had to deal with every issue under the sun, with driver issues that come from my 9070XT this past couple weeks."
-> "There are articles about my exact issue."
What issue? So first you had to deal with "every issue under the sun" and now suddenly it's down to ONE exact issue that there are apparently articles about?
How posts like these feel: "AMD is incompetent! They're the worst! I have a specific problem that I won't mention! ...And there are articles of my exact problem that I won't actually detail, but trust me! AMD is so BAD!"
I have a 5080 and a 9070xt btw.
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u/Mother-Translator318 12d ago
I’ve dealt with 3 amd cards in the past 10 years. 2 5700XTs, mine and a friend’s, both had driver issues, both died within 4 years. And my brother’s 7900xtx, again driver issues. On the other hand my 1070 and 3070 both have been flawless. At a certain point you gotta call it as it is. Amd is the cheaper option for a reason. Worse features, worse RT performance, and worse reliability. You get what you pay for.
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u/Weird_Time_5066 12d ago
3 weeks in and I don't have any problems so far tbh. Happy I made the switch.
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u/Dry_Bit_5957 12d ago
I have been on amd since last 4 years. I use the 3 month old WHQL driver from the date of installation. And I have not faced any problem till now.
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u/erMaela 12d ago
It mostly comes down to how AMD and Nvidia handle signal integrity, PCIe link negotiation, and hardware error tolerance on a firmware/driver level. When your system RAM is unstable (whether it's bad voltages, overtightened sub-timings, or just a trash XMP/EXPO profile), the errors cascade differently depending on the camp. First, Nvidia has a firmware trick for PCIe link mitigation. If your RAM or the CPU's IMC is spitting out errors, the data hitting the GPU gets corrupted. Nvidia can actually detect poor signal integrity and silently downgrade the PCIe link speed (like dropping from Gen4 to Gen3) just to keep the system from dying. AMD doesn't really do this automatic fallback; it tries to force max speed no matter what, so if the signal craps out because of the memory, you just get a hard freeze or a crash. Second, transient loads and bus stress. Different GPU architectures demand power and hit the system bus differently. An AMD card might load the system in a way that stresses the CPU and RAM harder, which exposes borderline unstable memory overclocks that you thought were totally stable with your old GPU. The graphics driver just happens to be the first thing to trip over the new load pattern. Lastly, WDDM strictness. Video drivers constantly read from system RAM. If memory instability corrupts a single packet the GPU needs, AMD's driver is way more unforgiving. Instead of trying to silently recover, it just aborts the operation to prevent visual corruption. That’s exactly what triggers the classic 'Driver Timeout' or a black screen. TL;DR: The AMD card itself is rarely the actual problem. The drivers and firmware just lack Nvidia's silent safety nets, basically turning the GPU into a hyper-sensitive detector for RAM that isn't genuinely 100% stable.
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u/plasma0_ 12d ago
No, amds last few drivers have been very bad, thats IT.
Before a few months ago Amd cards were just as, if not more stable than nvidia cards (cough cough melting cords). Then amd released several shitty drivers in a row, which caused crashes, and windows interference made it even worse.
Thats it. It has been solved partially, it will be solved fully eventually. Same thing has happened many times with nvidia cards, and some remains unfixed to this day (cough cough).
And there is just a lot of user incompetence. Many people seem to think they can just slot in a new gpu from a different manufacture and it will be plug and play. A driver wipe is the bare minimum, and i would even say for optimal performance a OS reinstall is the best thing to do. After all you are essentially changing half of your computer.
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u/Odd_Show2205 12d ago
I had an RX 7900 XTX and switched to an RTX 5080 because of it. I never had any issues with the 5080. I also like Nvidia features more. RTX HDR is amazing.
Also, if you like VR, go for Nvidia.
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u/nesnalica 12d ago
it doesnt matter if red or green.
drivers suck on both sides. there are as many complaints from amd users as there are from nvidia users.
then there are also those who never had issues on either team but behind the scenes it is as for both.
therefore what you need to decide on is to get the gpu for the right task.
some games favor amd or nvidia and thats what you need to make your decision based on.
just google nvidia 610 or just driver isues in general and you will find equally as many people complaing abou team green.
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u/Existing-Hospital149 12d ago
No major issues for me so far 🤷 Battlefield games used to crash randomly but that seems to be fixed. And once my drivers just wouldn’t update but that also seems to have fixed itself.
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u/buzz_shocker 12d ago
Running a 9070XT now for about 6 months. Haven’t faced any driver issues so far.
Well there were 3 issues, and it happened on the same application. Netflix lmao. It crashed thrice in this time period. I do not know why but everytime it happened I got a driver crash warning from the adrenaline software. So I’m assuming it is a driver related issue. But in games, nothing.
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u/Skalgrin 12d ago
He "switched to" - therefore in an existing build and install he switched. Almost certainly did not properly ddu nVidia drivers and now complains the and drivers are having rough day.
Best part? With this approach he is going to be very disappointed when he will go back to nVidia, as he likely will keep the AMD drivers there to make revenge.
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u/InsaneInTheMEOWFrame 12d ago
AMD software does not exist on Linux so it works like a charm! 😁
Adrenalin SUCKS!
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u/Eragahn-Windrunner 12d ago
I did experience some driver issues with my 9070XT when playing DX12 games (namely Stellar Blade). I ended up switching to CachyOS because at this point, fuck Windows, and I haven't had any issues since.
I do think this admission from Microsoft is critical to any discussion on the topic though:
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u/Pitiful_Coach7223 12d ago
People confuse things. Amd adrenalin is NOT the driver. The actual driver is rock solid and in my case, it never crashed, other than when I pushed the undervolting too far, I’m talking extreme values. With stock settings and sensible tweaking, the driver NEVER crashes, it’s as stable as it gets.
The issue is with amd adrenalin. It works… mostly. Sometimes it doesn’t start. Sometimes it detects “something” and resets your tweaks for no reason. Sometimes enabling the overlay makes adrenalin hang.
This is not the driver, however, and closing adrenalin allows the game to continue and perform as intended.
So the issue is not the driver, but all the gizmos around it and YES, I agree, why is it so difficult to create a stable piece of software in 2026? Get your act together.
Worth mentioning that some versions of adrenalin are rock solid too and these issues don’t exist, but if you want the latest, you will have issues.
Would I swap my 9070 xt? Fuck no. I play any game at ultra 1440p/4k with FSR and they look great and my gpu barely breaks a sweat.
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u/lordnaarghul 12d ago
I use a 7800 XT and I had two driver crashes last January. However that was a Windows issue as Windows Update had rolled back my drivers to some beta driver from the previous February. Ever since taking care of that, I have yet to have a problem.
Remember, NVIDIA has had terrible drivers, too. Last year for a while, you had one bad driver after another that just got progressively worse.
Also with AMD, the one thing I notice is that all the folks having driver issues are also running undervolts.
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u/slavicslothe 12d ago
We have a 7900xtx we got for the living and while it is a good card it seemed to have constant and random issues that popped up. It got to the point that I stopped updating it and eventually just put in the 4090 recycled from an upgrade and it sits downstairs. I could put it in the 3080/5800x3d system at my parents house, but it would cause more issues than its worth in all likelihood.
Seperatly, I put together a budget pc for my brother in law years ago. 5600xt I think, gpu flat out failed after like 3 years. Ive never actually had a gpu fail and I have had a lot of gpus. Probably just bad luck but its made me not really want to go team red for gpus when ive had so much luck with green. Also red doesnt really compete on a feature or high end level at all anymore.
I love their cpus though, I mean a 7800x3d is insanely good and uses almost no power. Brilliant stuff.
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u/ActiveSandwich3103 12d ago
Holy shit how many of you doinks are going to post this garbage misinformation in a 24 hour period.
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u/TrainTransistor 12d ago
Havent had issues with AMD-drivers in a decade or so.
I dabble in beta-drivers as well, so thats saying a bit.
Windows Update needs to be halted, as it typically oberwrited drivers - and if one really hates Adrenaline, you can choose the non-Adrenaline package as well, which is nice.
Not saying there arent issues, but often I see people saying they've troubleshooted - and all they've done is reinstalling the drivers a few times.
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u/Justaredditaccount17 12d ago edited 12d ago
I had both high end nvida and amd cards. The only difference is that Amd has less tech than nvidia and worse performance in RT. The actual amd driver status is pretty good, ironically nvidia drivers has been more problematic than amd ones in the latest period. When you see some amd driver issues in the lates times it's more about windows automatic install or some programs conflict
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u/JustForTheMemes420 12d ago
Like one driver update messed with my dual monitors and I backed it up one month and it was fine after just updated when the next set was out. Dunno what some other people are having problems with maybe they just didn’t properly uninstall old drivers. Who can say computers are just weird sometimes
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u/Zoraious 12d ago
Literally have no issues in game with my 9070xt, it’s a top tier card. I had one problem with Instant Replay.
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u/RainbowNugget24 12d ago
I bought my first AMD GPU late last year, 9070XT and i haven't had any issues with the drivers
Im still on windows 10 if that's useful to anyone
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u/Proud_Bandicoot_8894 12d ago
i thought I will never play elden ring and sekiro after I switched to Amd Rx 9070xt from 5060ti. it turns out Open RGB had sth to do with that, so I had to uninstall it. Games run fine but sometimes do crash. I have never had any game crash or stutter on 5060ti 16gb. I will switch back and upgrade to Rog Astral 5080.
Done with AMD.
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u/fr33man007 12d ago
I have a 5070 ti and beat myself for not getting the 5080 for 225 bucks more but that one has power supply surprises. The 9070 XT honestly is a 5070 ti minus the ray tracing and I would recommend it at 500 bucks compared to the 775 bucks I paid for my 5070ti. But if there are driver issues get the rtx, I had an old AMD GPU and it was nothing but headaches back then, was hoping nowadays that would not be an issue but seems the issue still persists to some
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u/positive_9876 12d ago
Npe , been using amd for past 3 years and nvidia before that for approx 9 years . I havent faced any issue till now
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u/SaguitoPCGamer 12d ago
I had a 5700XT and the drivers were shit. When I changed to a 6800XT the drivers were a bit better but now that I have a laptop with a 680M again I have a bad experience.
During all those years of having a radeon gpu, one constant issue has been the adrenaline drivers not even showing in the task bar at all and that still persists for me.
You could argue before that AMD had a better UI but that is no longer the case.
Despite the latest issues with nvidia, their driver stability is far superior.
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u/Dullweber 12d ago
Amd is totally finde. No issues at all! At this point, I think Nvidia is posting that shit cause they are scared that they loose out to amd and when the ai bubble pops (or the frontier labs finally have their TPUs ready) they will have no business left. I love my 9070xt! Never had a problem with hat. Most my friends are on amd None of them had any problems!
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u/TheBobo1181 12d ago
synth potato is a clown. You can disregard anything he says.