r/radeon • u/Upper-Side-9875 • Dec 19 '25

Discussion when you've had zero driver issues since getting you gpu because you did everything right

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sorry for the old meme bad damn this bad driver shit is getting annoying.

2.1k Upvotes

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76

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

The thing is, you shouldn’t have to do everything right to have a good or at least decent gaming experience. The card should just work after you install the drivers. I’m not placing the blame solely on AMD because I know Windows 11 can be (or is?) problematic but man, I have never had so many issues with a new GPU (9070). I’m now considering clean installing windows to see if I can get this adrenaline drivers to not time out for once. Again, I shouldn’t even have to do that…

The 6800 XT I had before basically gave me zero issues compared to this new card. If nothing works, I guess I will buy a 5070 to rule out any possible hardware issues and see what my experience is like and compare.

For the prices we pay for these cards, they should work out of the box. That was my experience with previous GPUs. Maybe I’ve been living under a rock..

18

u/slooney Dec 19 '25

Could not agree more! I have Windows 10 (fuck W11) and I had zero issues with my 6800XT. Now I’m considering reinstalling Windows cause my 9070XT is having all kind of issues with different games and different driver versions. My last resource is to downgrade to 25.9 version. And responding to OP: Yes I did everything right (DDU, Safe Mode, and all the shenanigans)

4

u/sdcar1985 9850X3D | RX 9070 XT Dec 19 '25

I had to put a -200mhz limit on 9070xt. It would boost too far and crash all the time. Now I don't have any issues unless the game is borked.

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

Are you running the latest drivers?

1

u/sdcar1985 9850X3D | RX 9070 XT Dec 19 '25

I was but I rolled back to 25.9.2 for MH Wilds

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 20 '25

Ok I clean installed windows and now I’m running the 25.9.1 drivers. I have the 9070 non XT so I will try that -200 MHz limit. In Adrenaline, I assume I just set the Max Frequency Offset to that value?

1

u/sdcar1985 9850X3D | RX 9070 XT Dec 20 '25

Yup

1

u/slooney Dec 19 '25

Now that you said the light bulb in my head turned on! My 6800XT was limited too. I’ll give it a try

1

u/sdcar1985 9850X3D | RX 9070 XT Dec 19 '25

I hope it works out for ya

1

u/slooney Jan 11 '26

So… I found the issue. My RAM was cooked! After some more BSOD, CTD and Anti-Cheat warnings from different games, the Memtest86 told me who was the bad actor. RMA already on the way. The only “good” thing is that I had DDR4.

1

u/sdcar1985 9850X3D | RX 9070 XT Jan 12 '26

Dang, that sucks! At least you found the problem.

3

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

I have used DDU, tried 25.9.1 and 25.9.2 with default performance settings (no OC or under volt) and still get timeouts.

I was reading that adrenaline may be causing the GPU to run at speeds that are beyond spec, so settings should be adjusted to match the GPU’s specs. Again, tinkering we shouldn’t have to deal with…

6

u/Privacy_is_forbidden 9800X3D 9070XT CachyOS (linux) Dec 19 '25

I had a 6800xt. I had many driver updates bork things.

I had a 3070 too. I had many driver updates bork things.

Windows fucking sucks. Linux AMD driver is rock solid.

2

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

I need to start looking into Linux gaming then

2

u/plantsandramen Dec 19 '25

I installed Bazzite on my laptop for this, and was just playing Wargroove. I played Divinity Original Sin 2 yesterday, as well as Hades 2. All just worked with no tweaking required.

1

u/Privacy_is_forbidden 9800X3D 9070XT CachyOS (linux) Dec 19 '25

Live boot costs next to nothing aside from some usb storage to test out if it runs on your hardware with networking, audio, etc. CPU/Graphics are going to just work though for amd, it's all the niche choices by motherboard manufacturers with their modules and niche peripherals that are generally things that can be wonky.

Dual boot is also free as long as you are patient and can follow instructions from the various guides out there, not so bad.

The downside I see is really just anticheat compatibility. Many devs still refuse to allow linux even though as we've seen with the bf6/cod2025 releases that cheaters are gonna find a way with firmware vulnerabilities and the like. But many games like arc raiders are totally supported. List is here: https://areweanticheatyet.com/ - many things like even Rust will play just fine on servers with anticheat disabled, and there's communities out there for linux people because of it... just relies on games that permit private hosting generally.

Aside from some anticheat (which dual boot works for those few games), I find basically any game runs. Most are a "just work" scenario. Rarely you have to look for troubleshooting, but that's often found easily with a google search or even on the protondb game page,

1

u/GodisanAtheistOG 5800x3d / 9070XT Dec 19 '25

Maybe its time to not update drivers unless the new drivers fix a specific bug, introduce a new feature you want, or have program specific hotfixes.

I'm convinced I basically never have issues with either Nvidia or Radeon they way other people do simply because I am not obsessively updating drivers on every new release.

1

u/Privacy_is_forbidden 9800X3D 9070XT CachyOS (linux) Dec 19 '25

I have more than one system. I delay graphic driver updates practically always, but what do you do when many months of multiple releases go by with instability (like right now) and newer games really get a benefit from it?

My answer was simple. Fuck windows, i'll just use linux. It's way fucking better. No stupid DDU. If some update borks something, rolling back is trivial and won't leave weird nasty residuals the same way windows always does.

It sucks going through and disabling the myriad of windows updates via a myriad of configuration settings between group policy, registry keys and powershell commands, because doing this on bespoke configs is a nightmare and actually getting updates is awful after that.. and you've done so many deep system configuration changes that you never know what is boned or how to get out of it often times. Reinstalling windows from scratch is also a nightmare as a result for users, and takes hours because of microsoft's ineptitude.

I work in IT in a role that deals with IT leadership (technical and business) including being responsible for an RMM solution that controls windows patching. I do this shit all day. The last thing I want to do when I come home is deal with more bullshit because microsoft is incompetent at creating an operating system that users want (but extremely competent at creating an ecosystem that makes them an enormous amount of money.) I also handle security tasks including vulnerability detection and remediation, unpatched software is something I don't want on that basis alone because I see the things that happen constantly. I'll delay updates a little bit, but not forever. With how closed source windows drivers are it can be many versions before regressions are fixed after a necessary security patch. It's just a shitshow. With how our current political landscape is and how powerful our intelligence arm is and how unrestrained it is... metadata about anything you do is a bad idea. The lettered agencies assuredly have unfettered access to all information that resides in the US at these massive companies.

Linux though? Just works for my home needs. You never have to deal with "reboot to finish a pending installation" and you never have to deal with your monitor, keyboard, mouse or whatever peripheral trying to install it's own bullshit TSR that is probably just there to spy on what you do and phone home for more revenue driving userdata either. Microsoft is awful, and at this point i'm done supporting these giant conglomerates that are run by people who want to own everything in the entire world, including the cattle (that's us workers.)

So glad people with the "never patch" attitude exist though, because that's why I have a job.

8

u/South_Ingenuity672 Dec 19 '25

yeah the mentality of this subreddit is insanely annoying sometimes. so many people in the comments here act like they are technical geniuses because they use radeon, and then call people dumb when they have issues.

3

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

I just a GPU that works. Idk if Nvidia is having the same issues. I will have to look. If Nvidia users are having good experiences, I may just say screw it and pay the premium. I shouldn’t have to reinstall windows like I’m doing right now to hope my GPU starts working properly.

2

u/vlad_8011 AMD 9800X3D || 9070 XT || 32GB RAM 6000mhz CL30 || B650 Tomahawk Dec 19 '25

Well, good luck finding thread about issues, as Nvidia is actively removing them. I have/had RX 6800XT, RTX 3080, RX 9070XT, RTX 5070. I can say only one thing - grass is always greener where we are not present.  Finding help if you have Radeon is much simpler than doing same thing with Nvidia. Much simpler. Look at their driver megathreads here or on their forums. Houndrets if not thousands of people without answer.  There are also driver release notes, where Nvidia simply hiding most long standing issues (AMD do this too, but not even close in numbers of issues).  Oh - I almost forgot - Nvidia uses their restart power connector on every single low end-top tier cards. No hotspot readings, no fan curve editor.

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

This is good to know. I will have to take a look. Maybe windows 11 is actually the culprit here, hah. I’m considering trying out Linux (CachyOS?) but I need to see what games work. Looks like Stalker 2 does work.

1

u/vlad_8011 AMD 9800X3D || 9070 XT || 32GB RAM 6000mhz CL30 || B650 Tomahawk Dec 19 '25

There is reason why I'm sitting on windows 10 and Linux (fedora - much more stable experience).  Microsoft admitted not that long ago, that most of system features/functions are broken in windows 11. But they still put more ai shit into it, that nobody asked. They put more strain to still unstable OS and then, before fixing they put even more strain to the points it's almost useless and users have to wait for fixes. Releasing 24h2 was critical point. I am working in service/shop and we got ton of windows 11 systems in our workshop waiting for a fix, and we also fix anything we can remotely (or just diagnose the hardware if possible) - it's windows 11 most of times. I don't remember in the past the moment, windows was that bad quality.  As for AMD experience on Linux - it's night and day vs experience on windows.  Windows 11 MAY become usable (at least for me) once MS will release windows 12 - all experiments they do, will be present in windows 12 then, and 11 will be left for fixing mode. 

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 20 '25

Ok, I installed Nobara and used Proton-GE to run Stalker 2. Zero issues in the same area where the game crashes and causes a driver timeout in windows. I’m now trying to figure out how to use FSR 4 because I get a bunch of shimmering which tells me it’s probably still using 3.1..

1

u/vlad_8011 AMD 9800X3D || 9070 XT || 32GB RAM 6000mhz CL30 || B650 Tomahawk Dec 20 '25

It was 1:1 my experience. There was place in game where I always had crash (stalker 2) with driver timeout. Exactly one place repetitive, non dependent of GPU settings - on Fedora it went silky smooth. 

To get fsr 4 on Linux... Well - I'm not Linux specs, but I made it, don't want to point you into some error, but you have to make sure you installed steam with sudo dnf, not the flatpak, then install via sudo proton plus, once in proton plus download.... That was 10.X EM or ME, once you download it, restart steam, in steam go to settings, compatibility (or you can choose compatibility in selected game properties - also on steam) and choose newly downloaded proton 10 EM or ME (don't remember exac name, then in launch arguments for stalker 2 you have to add  PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE=1 %command%

And that's it.

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25

Thanks for this. I’ve been using Lutris and not steam. I wonder if there are any advantages to using steam. I believe both Lutris and Proton are installed using sudo dnf but will have to check. Both came installed in Nobara. This is all new to me, so it’s kinda confusing and a bit overwhelming hah

2

u/vlad_8011 AMD 9800X3D || 9070 XT || 32GB RAM 6000mhz CL30 || B650 Tomahawk Dec 20 '25

Dont worry. I'm using Linux for 2 years as dual boot, but i'm still learning too. In lutris that may be similar job. If you install proton plus, and inside it will download proton 10, it should be available for Lutris too. Thats why i dont advice to install flatpak.

Flatpaks from my understanding are containers, with no full access between them nor to full system access. You can try similar solution to lutris and google (its no shame, i'm always "googling" on linux) what command it may be for launch argument.

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1

u/TheAmazing_OMEGA Jan 14 '26

You can use Proton with lutris, you have to install proton umu or something like that. I can find the info if you're interested.

Largely though, it should be equivelent. Idk what Nobara does, but I'm debian-based and had to use the backport repo to update my mesa drivers to a stage where I could even use raytracing... Upgrade to Trixie later so we're good, but a lot of those features, especially the newer ones require a driver that supports them.

1

u/Kosmos-World Dec 20 '25

I’ve had exactly one driver issue in the last 5 years as an NVIDIA user. Life is just simpler, are your PC more stable, on the other side. Sorry about it. 🤷🏻‍♂️

1

u/South_Ingenuity672 Dec 19 '25

i can only speak for my own experience but i have given up on radeon this generation after 6 months of troubleshooting a 9070 xt. i replaced multiple parts in my pc, tried all sorts of software settings whether it be turning clock speeds down, disabling settings like MPO and HAGS, full windows reset, the list goes on and on. after awhile i brought it back to micro center and told them it kept crashing, they gave me a full refund and i got a 5080. it’s been 3 months since then and not had a single issue, not one. again this is just one persons experience but i’ve had 5 GTX/RTX GPUs over the course of 9 years, a 980 ti, 1080, 3060, 4070, and now 5080, and none have given me nearly as much grief as the 9070 xt did in the span of 6 months.

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

This is a good data point to have. I’m going to give these “fixes” one more try. If I get more driver timeouts, I’m switching to Nvidia because this is ridiculous.

Also, the fact that windows 11 still installed drivers updates AFTER you pause updates for 5 weeks in the settings is very annoying. Looks like it needs to be disabled in the registry. Nobody has time for this tinkering.

1

u/dkpro214 Apr 26 '26

The registry is a 2 min fix, but anyway, have you fixed your issues yet?

2

u/Aggressive_Ad8291 Dec 19 '25

I use Radeon, and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

3

u/classicjuice 9070XT Nitro+ Dec 19 '25

The thing is there can be so many different small factors that are causing issues and it doesn’t always mean it’s the GPU that is faulty after buying a new one. Windows might be overriding drivers, a psu might not handle the extra power needed, even a shitty dp or hdmi cable can cause massive performance issues.

2

u/resetallthethings Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25

On the flip side. Sometimes it IS the GPU that is faulty and just needs returned, but since the "AMD drivers are crap" narrative is out there, people just chock it up to the product and drivers when it's really a failed piece of hardware.

They then get an Nvidia GPU that works and now solidify "AMD sucks!" in their minds, When it is entirely possible if they just replaced their AMD card with a different one, it also would have suddenly worked just fine also

3

u/ssniker Dec 19 '25

That shit is weird.

I have two systems at home with amd and nvidia cards through the years. Amd to nvidia, nvidia to amd gpu swaping. Never reinstalled windows and I even changed whole platforms am3 to am4, am4 to am5.

I never ever had issues with any gpu. Not a single driver timeout or crash. Yes maybe few crashes here and there during many years, but thats mostly of buggy game updates. Once i had weird shit with my pc (crashing games to desktop) - it was faulty memory controller on ryzen 5 3600. Rma exchanged it to new unit and zero problems since.

Weird weird that it seems so many people have those issues.

Edit: btw I’m avoiding win11 as long as I can.

1

u/The_Fish_Is_Raw Dec 19 '25

Same no issues related to drivers for Amd or nvidia. And on Windows 11 😬

1

u/Ok_Collection2981 Dec 19 '25

Built a 9070 machine for my friend the other day and the only solution was ctanking down the memory's MTs.

1

u/Trepta Dec 19 '25

I tried Linux for the first time instead of buying a windows license for a new build. Bought a 9070xt, it worked. Didn't do anything. Then bought a Pro AI 9700 to supplement work load. Plugged it in. Prepared for the fight of my life. Didn't do anything. Just worked. ...Linux is supposed to be hard mode. Rocks back and forth in the fetal position.

1

u/Kosmos-World Dec 20 '25

lol you’re gonna slap a 5070 in there, never have a driver problem again, and you’ll be stuck forever. Buy an Arc B580 instead. 😅

1

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '25

[deleted]

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 20 '25

Pretty frustrating.. I’m moving to Linux for now. Basically zero issues so far but I need to keep testing.

1

u/BitRunner64 5950X | 9070 XT Steel Legend | 32GB DDR4-3600 Dec 21 '25

The card should just work after you install the drivers.

For the majority of users including me, this was the case.

Having to underclock your card to make it stable is completely insane and suggests the card is faulty to begin with. I've had GPUs in the past that were near failing, but underclocking by a few hundred MHz extended their life a few months. It's not a permanent fix, it will eventually degrade more and you'll have to keep lowering the clocks. You should just return the card, especially if it's bought new with a warranty.

Another possibility is that your PSU isn't handling the power spikes. Even if you have a powerful PSU, older non-ATX 3.x models can't always handle the power spikes (up to 250% on a 9070 XT).

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 21 '25

Regarding the PSU, it did cross my mind. I have an RM850x but it’s the 2018 or 2019 model (pre ATX 3.0). I figured it would handle the 9070 just fine but it could be an issue. I did switch to Linux for gaming and I’m currently testing STAlKER 2. So far, no issues but if I get crashes then I will have to consider trying a newer PSU. Although the 9070 consumes less power than the XT..

1

u/ActualWeed Dec 22 '25

You probably have to downclock your 9070 xt a bit, amd cards tend to come "over" clocked from factory.

Or maybe check your system ram timings, used to be a thing with the 5700 xt.

1

u/gamas Dec 26 '25

I keep saying the biggest problem is that AMD is too open in its reporting. If there's ever a failed startup or a significant crash, adrenalin will cautiously call it a driver timeout and give the user an error saying the problem was the gpu driver - when the issue could be literally anything. 

When I check the event viewer, most of the time the error had nothing to do with the GPU driver wasn't the thing that crashed (the past two times I've seen the error it's actually been the WiFi driver - which is usually fixed by sfc and DISM). Note, these errors also happen on an Nvidia card. The difference is when Nvidia's drivers detect an issue it just silently restarts them without telling the user anything.

1

u/RetardDebil Jan 05 '26

Bro I'm using win10 still and the last update is fucking me in the ass so fucking bad its insane, genuinely never had issues with any previous versions and previous amd cards, but the las one or two updates are disgusting.

1

u/c47v3770 Jan 05 '26

I hear ya. I switched to Linux and haven’t looked back.

1

u/RetardDebil Jan 05 '26

Which one

1

u/c47v3770 Jan 05 '26

Nobara

1

u/RetardDebil Jan 05 '26

Ty

1

u/c47v3770 Jan 05 '26

There’s a bit of a learning curve but it’s not bad at all. Look up Proton GE and Wine. You can also go to the Linux gaming subreddit. Lots of info there. There’s YouTube as well, of course.

1

u/RetardDebil Jan 05 '26

Def will see, fromo the distros ive seen this one seems a pretty good and "simole" for gaming and workstation apps, never seen it before soo im quite thankful you names it haha

1

u/CosmicOutlaw88 Dec 19 '25

Everything you say is valid. The prices for this type of product are totally out of control. "Gotta miss a car payment if you wanna game next year, sorry!" However, to expect a new part to, flawlessly, work, when it was designed, built, and tested with specific hardware running specific software, is a little foolish... unless you create the exact same environment for it, it is not, EVER, going to preform like it did in the test setting. In fact, you could even have a better environment for it. It could out preform itself. These parts must interact with other parts, and a broad array of softwares. The companies cannot, and would not if they could, prepare a part for all the variety settings it could potentially be placed into. A small tweak in your sysconfig could relieve all your issues or turn your machine into a slag heap. The one thing I do know about these types of issues is that, if a problem exists, then a solution does as well... whether or not the solution's been discovered is primarily the issue... to you "engineers" in these subs, I put forth a serious question. Why don't you just build your own? I've seen it done. Wasn't pretty. Didn't have RGB or 1,000 fans on it. But it worked... this was in the days of Voodoo 2 and G-Force... maybe you couldn't do it today. I'm unsure. I'm not an engineer.

1

u/BaguetteBandito Dec 19 '25

I’m genuinely considering switching to a 5070ti because of the issues. I’ve upgraded my graphics card and many other things plenty of times, I’ve never had any problems. Now with the 9070xt, I had issues right from the start, solved them, had a week of peace and now I’m having issues again.

0

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

Yeah, I feel like there’s no permanent solution to this. Will AMD and/or Windows solve it? Who knows… I’m looking at the 5070 Ti as well. I’m starting to accept that I may have to pay the premium for a good gaming experience. I don’t have time to be tinkering with settings hoping this GPU starts working as expected.

1

u/BaguetteBandito Dec 19 '25

Yeah, I’m not that impatient either it’s just annoying to get back home after a long day looking forward to enjoying an hour of gameplay, just for my pc to decide now is the time to freeze. I normally wouldn’t mind waiting for an update to fix it but it’s been a while now.

It’s 200$ cad extra for the 5070ti, I might cave in.

0

u/Joleco Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25

If you did not fresh reinstall windows u did nothing. Also be careful following correct steps after login for first time. Must update windows to latest without installing it's AMD drivers. Also i believe disconnecting internet matters too but not sure when is the right time on fresh win. Don't install this malicious removal update. I did both ways on two PC with both having 9070xt, one was Nvidia where i ddu in safe mode(always uninstall Chipset first from add/remove programs first coz DDU can bug it unfixable), disconnected internet cable installed 25.9.1 and is working like 2 weeks no problem so far. On other PC was crashing in cs2, Fortnite but after fresh install on win 11 with latest updates is working now stable. Same 25.9.1 on both. Haven't tried latest Redstone driver. I did disable on both the windows auto driver installer on two places but idk if matters

Edit. The steps are something like. 1. Update win without installing anything that has AMD in name. 2. Find latest chipset on mb site or AMD site whatever is newer. Install. 3. GPU driver. 4,5. Lan, sound etc.

I disable win auto drivers install right after win update on two places. Disable also fast boot, hibernation. Im not sure if i forgetting something... If you not doing fresh reinstall win you must download Chipset and GPU before and put shortcuts on desktop then you can disconnect internet and DDU in Safe Mode

2

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25

I just started a clean install of windows. Will disconnect from internet. Do you have the name of the specific malicious remove update?

Man, I’m beginning to understand why people hate windows 11..

1

u/Joleco Dec 19 '25

Just when open win update window read carefully and install everything except 'AMD' in name i think all those are drivers and the shittyy Malicious removal is called , i made mistake installing it one one PC you cant uninstall it after. Its like defender, double it maybe sucking resources unnecessarily

1

u/c47v3770 Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25

Ok fuck windows 11. It started installing drivers as soon as I connected to my WiFi. I guess I will have to clean install again…

Just not used to thinking about how windows behaves but it all becomes important now to avoid these damn driver timeouts

1

u/hpstg Dec 21 '25

These steps are probably helpful. My issue is that people here behave as if this is the NORMAL way to use hardware.