RX 5700 XT - 75 Hz/144 Hz/non-standard refresh rates causing VRAM clock to run at max

[Tiki Thorsen]

Did anyone else notice a reference to the RX 5500 XT in the latest Radeon drivers?
I wonder why only the RX 5500 XT is mentioned? It certainly hasn't fixed the idle VRAM speed for me, anyway. Perhaps the next driver release will fix it?
View attachment 216941

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-21-9-1

Strangely (and thankfully) it did fix it for my 5550XT, a thing I could never achieve after spending days tweaking with CRU.
I just did an upgrade without factory reset from previous optional driver (I always double-check with Drive Store Explorer in case I need to remove a duplicate/old driver).

Sadly, they have still not fixed the inaccurate clocks (for example it should be 1750MHz on the VRAM clock, not 1742MHz).

 

[P4-630]

i fixed this by selling my 5700xt. Works 100%, tested by me

The ultimate fix is to

 

[Tiki Thorsen]

The ultimate fix is to

ALAS, in lousy countries like Argentina, NVIDIA GPU's command a hefty price premium which is not worth it compared to AMD.

 

[Bomby569]

it's sad to admit it as a long time AMD user, rx 470, rx480 and rx5700, but man i have a lot less crap with Nvidia.

 

[P4-630]

it's sad to admit it as a long time AMD user, rx 470, rx480 and rx5700, but man i have a lot less crap with Nvidia.

In the past and also my first GPU was ATi, ATi was my brand in the past. Later on when the GTX 1xxx Pascal series were out , they were the best GPU's to buy at the time and so I went with Nvidia.

 

[Splinterdog]

ALAS, in lousy countries like Argentina, NVIDIA GPU's command a hefty price premium which is not worth it compared to AMD.

I wouldn't call Argentina a lousy country, personally. It's the economy that's lousy and a quick search on Mercadolibre (our local Amazon) shows RTX 2070/RTX 3070 at US$2000 to 3000 and much more.
So I'll be sticking with my Asus ROG Strix RX 5700 XT for the foreseeable future as it's a damn good card and according to AMD, the VRAM issue is nothing to worry about. Hmm...

 

[Tiki Thorsen]

I wouldn't call Argentina a lousy country, personally. It's the economy that's lousy and a quick search on Mercadolibre (our local Amazon) shows RTX 2070/RTX 3070 at US$2000 to 3000 and much more.
So I'll be sticking with my Asus ROG Strix RX 5700 XT for the foreseeable future as it's a damn good card and according to AMD, the VRAM issue is nothing to worry about. Hmm...

Lousy regarding the import of electronics such as GPU's, taxes and so forth.

 

[Splinterdog]

Lousy regarding the import of electronics such as GPU's, taxes and so forth.

Agreed. Way to isolate a country under populism, but that's another subject altogether.

 

[Bomby569]

In the past and also my first GPU was ATi, ATi was my brand in the past. Later on when the GTX 1xxx Pascal series were out , they were the best GPU's to buy at the time and so I went with Nvidia.

why do they spend so much time with endless features for Adrenaline (that it's nice i admit but it's also not very reliable, showing wrong stats all the time, or having 20 icons on the taskbar, etc...) instead of just getting some stable drivers. It's beyond me, they only care about apperances.
Nvidia control panel seems like something from 2001 but it works, so who cares.

 

[LordFarquaad]

why do they spend so much time with endless features for Adrenaline (that it's nice i admit but it's also not very reliable, showing wrong stats all the time, or having 20 icons on the taskbar, etc...) instead of just getting some stable drivers. It's beyond me, they only care about apperances.
Nvidia control panel seems like something from 2001 but it works, so who cares.

AMD drivers are stable, not sure why you would suggest that it is like installing some beta software on your PC that could break everything, they have inherent issues as does NV, but on the whole they are quite stable and millions of AMD GPU owners don't have any issues with them, though this particular one is a persistent one that many users have experienced, it doesn't ruin the whole AMD experience for them though, it's an annoyance, albeit a frustrating one, but still just an annoyance, I have the same issue and have done for a while now, my only resolution is to set my monitor to 100hz instead of 165hz to stop my vram from running at low idle clocks of 200mhz instead of full throttle 3d clocks of 1750mhz which doubles my idle power consumption from about 11w to 25w and increases my idle temps to 50c from 38c, 25w and 50c is not really an issue, though it's one that triggers me personally as I know it can run cooler and with less power but it's not nuclear reactor type power we are talking about, it's a light bulb... still I would like a fix, but you have to look at things in context, and 20 icons on the taskbar? I have one and have had one for years, again more dramatics, amd adrenaline works, it has quirks but it works

 

[Bomby569]

AMD drivers are stable, not sure why you would suggest that it is like installing some beta software on your PC that could break everything, they have inherent issues as does NV, but on the whole they are quite stable and millions of AMD GPU owners don't have any issues with them, though this particular one is a persistent one that many users have experienced, it doesn't ruin the whole AMD experience for them though, it's an annoyance, albeit a frustrating one, but still just an annoyance, I have the same issue and have done for a while now, my only resolution is to set my monitor to 100hz instead of 165hz to stop my vram from running at low idle clocks of 200mhz instead of full throttle 3d clocks of 1750mhz which doubles my idle power consumption from about 11w to 25w and increases my idle temps to 50c from 38c, 25w and 50c is not really an issue, though it's one that triggers me personally as I know it can run cooler and with less power but it's not nuclear reactor type power we are talking about, it's a light bulb... still I would like a fix, but you have to look at things in context, and 20 icons on the taskbar? I have one and have had one for years, again more dramatics, amd adrenaline works, it has quirks but it works

You're talking to a RX5700XT owner from almost launch. Telling me AMD drivers are stable is like telling the water it isn't wet, you have no idea what that was. Loosing all your work because it decided to freeze my PC endless times, something you could only get out off by hiting the reset button. Fun times.

 

[LordFarquaad]

You're talking to a RX5700XT owner from almost launch. Telling me AMD drivers are stable is like telling the water it isn't wet, you have no idea what that was. Loosing all your work because it decided to freeze my PC endless times, something you could only get out off by hiting the reset button. Fun times.

And you're talking to a long term AMD GPU owner who disagrees with your perspective and say's there are issues, annoyances, but it is not some fly by night company who wrote these drivers in a day, you've had issues, sorry, you're not the majority, other factors come into play, glad you now love your nvidia card though and all of your problems have gone away, bad AMD

 

[eidairaman1]

And you're talking to a long term AMD GPU owner who disagrees with your perspective and say's there are issues, annoyances, but it is not some fly by night company who wrote these drivers in a day, you've had issues, sorry, you're not the majority, other factors come into play, glad you now love your nvidia card though and all of your problems have gone away, bad AMD

Ivr been a long Term ATi User, only had trouble with Catalyst 4.2, and then 16.5s, talk about many years between issues.

 

[Valantar]

Ivr been a long Term ATi User, only had trouble with Catalyst 4.2, and then 16.5s, talk about many years between issues.

Same here, have been using ATI/AMD as long as I've known there were different GPU brands. The only real I had with my 4850s were from trying 1440p gaming with two 512MB GPUs in CF; my HD 6950 was fine for 4-5 years, my Fury X only had some minor driver issues towards the end of its life cycle (mainly frame rate caps etc. not working) and a few bugs in a few games here and there, and my 6900 XT has been working flawlessly (including a major UV in the driver, which is particularly nice to have). Have there been little annoyances here and there? Obviously. Have any of them been deal breakers? Not at all. Of course the 5700 XT was a bit of a cluster****, that is entirely true. Still sad to see that they had that many problems making those GPUs stable, and it truly sucks for those who bought them. No that it's any consolation, but the 6000 series seems rock solid.

Btw, slightly on topic, my 6900 XT fluctuates between ~166MHz and ~800MHz, mostly staying in the lower ranges with regular desktop usage, with one 1440p60 and one 1080p75 monitor. So it seems like this might be a thing of the past?

 

[AlwaysHope]

RX 5700 XT owner here... the Radeon chill feature doesn't work too well, at least in FO4. The .ini files in that game override everything no matter what. 2015 game code killing it!

 

[Lew Zealand]

FYI the high VRAM clocking thing is not a thing of the past as, having read this thread for the first time a few minutes ago, my 5600XT experience matches others' observations about relative monitor refresh rate. I have a 1440p 144Hz monitor and at that and most other refresh rates the VRAM clocks to it's native 1750MHz at the desktop, but at 120Hz (one step below top refresh), it clocks down to 100MHz, the GPU then using 7W instead of 22W.

I'll try 140Hz for fun as someone indicated that might also work but I won't mess with the blanking beyond default. This is kinda fun, like when I rescued a crap 13" CTX CRT monitor with horrid green push which would gamely display any resolution on the screen as long as the pixel clock was within spec. 2048x1536 on a 13" CRT at 17Hz is simultaneously beauteous and nauseating. That thing was closer to an oscilloscope than a monitor.

 

[Splinterdog]

I tried a custom res of 142Hz in Radeon settings, bu the vram stayed the same. I'll give 140 a bash later.
How might the lower refesh affect games by the way?

 

[Lew Zealand]

Tried 140, and also 75 and 90Hz and no different, stuck at 1750MHz for the VRAM. Lol, and 60Hz as well. But 120Hz refresh rate runs the VRAM at 200MHz (I mistakenly put in 100MHz above). I just remembered that I didn't try at 1080p to see if that somehow works differently, this is all at 1440p.

Update: 1080p 60Hz also runs the VRAM at 200MHz and 7W total GPU power. The rest, including 1080p/120Hz run the VRAM at 1750Hz.

So, in total the only combinations that run my 5600XT's VRAM at a low power and speed are:

1080p 60Hz
1440p 120Hz

Everything else from 60-144Hz runs it at full VRAM power and speed.

 

[hidde663]

Can anyone check if our issue is fixed as of Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 22.1.1? (https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-22-1-1)

Fixed Issues​

• Connecting multiple monitors with high display bandwidths and differences in vertical intervals to a system may lead to high idle memory clock values being experienced by some users.

i've since switched to a 6900xt which did not have this issue, so i can not check if it is still present

 

[Naki]

it's sad to admit it as a long time AMD user, rx 470, rx480 and rx5700, but man i have a lot less crap with Nvidia.

I am a heavy AMD user myself -- have to say excepting some black screen issues for a few months (on resume from standby, fixed by AMD a few years ago) I was & still am very happy with my AMD Radeon cards, including the drivers! I have 3 in my PCs -- AMD Radeon R9 290 4 GB in 1 PC, R9 390 8 GB on 2nd PC, and RX 480 8 GB on my 3rd PC.
(and before those I had many other models too, including some from when it was ATI, not AMD)

NO Nvidia for me! Can't afford it, and no need anyway, the cards I have now suit me fine (for now).

 

[Imperator]

I am a heavy AMD user myself -- have to say excepting some black screen issues for a few months (on resume from standby, fixed by AMD a few years ago) I was & still am very happy with my AMD Radeon cards, including the drivers! I have 3 in my PCs -- AMD Radeon R9 290 4 GB in 1 PC, R9 390 8 GB on 2nd PC, and RX 480 8 GB on my 3rd PC.
(and before those I had many other models too, including some from when it was ATI, not AMD)

NO Nvidia for me! Can't afford it, and no need anyway, the card I have now suit me fine (for now).

I am also a AMD card fan.
I own many cards and all of them are from AMD.
HD5870 1 gb, HD 7870XT 2 gb, RX470 4gb, RX480 8gb, RX570 8gb, RX580 4 gb and RX580 8 gb.
95% of them are from Sapphire , but i own also from XFX, MSI and ASUS.
Except the drivers made by AMD which are a crap, i can't say anything bad about these cards. I actually love them.

 

[Splinterdog]

RX 5700 XT here and the latest drivers do nothing for the idle clock speed for, me anyway. AMD reckons it's normal behaviour...

 

[eidairaman1]

I am also a AMD card fan.
I own many cards and all of them are from AMD.
HD5870 1 gb, HD 7870XT 2 gb, RX470 4gb, RX480 8gb, RX570 8gb, RX580 4 gb and RX580 8 gb.
95% of them are from Sapphire , but i own also from XFX, MSI and ASUS.
Except the drivers made by AMD which are a crap, i can't say anything bad about these cards. I actually love them.

Its why Enterprise drivers are a must. I had 1 problem in 2016 which is in my status update, the problem was finally fixed 6 months later but that was due to using the driver reporting system

 

[Splinterdog]

I've had and continue to have, more driver crashes with the RX 5700 XT than any other card since I started using PCs. None of the latest drivers fix the mem idle issue and the driver crashes are persistent.
I've also reported the crashes to AMD using the built in tool, for what it's worth. Anyway, I just live with the crashes now, reboot the system and move on. And if I could afford to, I would certainly upgrade the card, either green or red.

 

[eidairaman1]

I've had and continue to have, more driver crashes with the RX 5700 XT than any other card since I started using PCs. None of the latest drivers fix the mem idle issue and the driver crashes are persistent.
I've also reported the crashes to AMD using the built in tool, for what it's worth. Anyway, I just live with the crashes now, reboot the system and move on. And if I could afford to, I would certainly upgrade the card, either green or red.

Enterprise Drivers even?