Modern AMD GPUs on NT 6.x is a mixed bag

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K4sum1
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Modern AMD GPUs on NT 6.x is a mixed bag

Unread post by K4sum1 »

For the past little while I've been using a 6800XT in my main PC, I've been trying the AMD drivers to see how good they are and if they've improved since last time, back when I had a 5700XT.

Windows Vista:
I could probably never test Vista with this card. Everything after 18.3.4 seems too broken to easily fix, and I'm not sure if anyone cares enough to try. However with an older card and in the limited testing I've done, it's the same as 7, but OpenGL is brokie past 15.100.

Windows 7:
The card works pretty well under 7, general use is no different than when I had a Nvidia card.

AMD has some advantages over Nvidia, as you have both FreeSync and integer scaling on 7/8, which Nvidia restricted to 10+
(Fun fact: G-Sync used to work with Kepler and 7/8, but at some point Nvidia restricted it to Pascal and 10.)

However, there are some negatives. OpenGL performance is worse, but that's a given with an AMD drivers. DX11 performance is also worse because AMD drivers. There are some bugs with older or more obscure games, but that's also a given with AMD drivers. Vulkan ray tracing doesn't work on 7, or that could be Quake II RTX being a Nvidia game, not sure which. BSODs can sometimes appear corrupted. Monitor can be stuck in limited color if a HDMI to DVI adapter is used (the software has no option to enable full color). My tertiary monitor keeps resetting to limited RGB after a reboot. Also last, but not least, full screen games can get in a bugged state where they're locked at 1 FPS, and there can be screen and audio corruption, but alt tabbing and going back to the game one or more times fixes it.

Windows 8.0:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/177198-artificial-amd-driver-block-on-windows-80/

Windows 8.1 (pre-update 1):
There's kinda no reason to use this. It's basically just 8.0 with a start button, none of the other improvements that 8.1 is known for. I only tested this on a random AMD GPU laptop I had because I heard it has the same problem as 8.0, but kinda sorta. 8.1 RTM works with much more recent drivers, something happened between 19.4.3 and 22.6.1 that broke 8.1 RTM in a similar manner to 8.0.

Windows 8.1:
It's sorta improved since last time, it doesn't BSOD or YSOD anymore, but it does have a new big issue that is pretty annoying. The below is on top of everything under Windows 7.

DirectX 11.1/11.2 features appear to work, except DXGI flip. However, the drivers were improved a bit before the final driver, as DXGI flip doesn't cause a YSOD anymore. It's just a black screen that flashes white, and can either be gotten out of by using alt + f4 or opening task manager, ignoring task manager and right clicking the game on the taskbar and closing it. Any recentish Unity game in fullscreen and anything that can use DXGI flip is affected.

And now, the biggest problem. Discord, Reddit, YouTube, and more can cause the driver to crash. The driver doesn't like 8.1's media foundation, so anything that uses it is liable to make the driver crash. Also things that use their own codecs can also crash anyways, but it's less likely. There's also general instability where the drivers can crash if some hardware accelerated software is used, not sure if related. However, games themselves appear to be very stable, I don't think I've seen just a game crash the driver.
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K4sum1
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Modern AMD GPUs on NT 6.x is a mixed bag

Unread post by K4sum1 »

So I slotted a RX 480 into my system, and found that the two 8.1 issues just disappeared. Both DXGI flip and hardware decoding work fine. I only quickly tested both, so I'm not sure if they're completely stable, but they should be fine.
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Modern AMD GPUs on NT 6.x is a mixed bag

Unread post by TylerTT »

Been getting the Windows 8.1 driver crashing since I upgraded from my RX 580 to my RX 6600 XT :((

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Modern AMD GPUs on NT 6.x is a mixed bag

Unread post by K4sum1 »

Probably terrible idea but flip or return the 6600XT, and get a Vega 64, or even Radeon VII. I'm curious to see how they would fare with 8.
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Modern AMD GPUs on NT 6.x is a mixed bag

Unread post by K4sum1 »

Not sure if this is 8.1 only, but in further testing later, I've found the AMD card seems less smooth compared to my Nvidia card. Test game is Skyrim locked to half refresh rate on my 144Hz monitor. (72 FPS)
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