AMD's Adrenalin 26.11.1 optional driver is now available with the promised fix for the Radeon bug that kept system drives writing in the background. According to the release notes, the update addresses excessive writes to the system drive while the PC is idle on Radeon RX 7000 series cards and newer. It also fixes a related case where excessive writes could show up while moving or resizing application windows.

AMD confirmed the problem earlier this week, tracing it to the External Events Client Module (atieclxx.exe) in the 26.10.1 and 26.10.2 drivers. User reports put the write rate anywhere from 0.3 MB/s to 5 MB/s, which works out to roughly 26 GB to 432 GB a day on a machine that's doing nothing. Until now, affected users had to disable the External Events Utility, turn off Resizable BAR, or use a community-made open-source tool that blocks the writes. The release notes only mention RX 7000 and newer for the idle fix, so it isn't clear whether older Radeon cards were affected at all.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 26.11.1 OptionalThe driver does come with a fairly long list of known issues, including crashes or driver timeouts in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, War Thunder, and Cyberpunk 2077, plus visual corruption in Phantom Blade Zero and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered on RX 9000 cards. AMD also notes that Smart Access Memory may get disabled after installation on Windows 10, so anyone who switched off Resizable BAR as a workaround should make sure it's back on after updating. The full changelog is pasted below.

Fixed Issues

• Excessive writes to the system drive may be observed while the system is idle on Radeon RX 7000 series graphics products and above.
• Excessive writes to the system drive may be observed while moving or resizing application windows.

Known Issues

• Intermittent application crash or driver timeout may be observed while playing Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced on Radeon RX 7000 series graphics products.
• Intermittent driver timeout may be observed while playing War Thunder on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics products. Users experiencing this issue are recommended to use AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.9.1.
• Intermittent application crash or driver timeout may be observed while playing Cyberpunk 2077 with AMD FSR Upscaling, AMD Radeon Anti-Lag and in-game frame generation enabled during video playback on a secondary display on some Radeon RX 9000 series graphics products. Users experiencing this issue are recommended to disable in-game frame generation.
• Call of Duty : Modern Warfare Remastered may become unresponsive while using Alt+Tab during gameplay on Ryzen AI Max PRO 400 Series processors.
• Black screen may be observed when launching Gears of War: Reloaded on AMD Ryzen AI 9 400 Series processors. Users experiencing this issue are recommended to switch the in-game display mode to Windowed and then back to Fullscreen.
• Failure to install may be observed while installing AI Bundle components in some regions with limited access to HuggingFace and GitHub.
• AMD Smart Access Memory may become disabled after driver installation on Windows 10 systems.
• Visual corruption may appear on character hair while playing Phantom Blade Zero on Radeon RX 9000 series graphics products. Users experiencing this issue are recommended to disable the High-Quality Hair setting in the game.
• Black corruption may be observed while playing Call of Duty : Modern Warfare Remastered on Radeon RX 9000 series graphics products.