AMD RDNA3 Graphics cards are unusable

[r0ach]

I'm sure many of you have seen complaints about various things concerning AMD cards before from either ultra-casuals or random nitpickers complaining about something related to GPU computing that's not even part of the card's core usage (gaming), or some other issue. Well, as some of you will recognize my username, then you'll know the only two things I care about concerning these cards is gaming use and input lag.

As a backstory, I've seen Nvidia drivers get more and more bloated by the day with increasing problems for things like input lag, and DCH drivers are just an abomination in general. So AMD drivers can't be worse, right? Well, if you don't use AMD driver slimmer, they are in fact even more bloated and worse. You can bypass this issue by using driver slimmer to remove all the asinine HDMI audio drivers and NUMEROUS other shovelwares it tries to auto-install, then after installing in "driver only mode" with no control panel you get somewhat decent mouse movement.

Now here's where the actual problems begin. If you use something like a 7800xt on a 1080p monitor, the card will rarely if ever run in P0 state, so 1080p 144hz or 240hz has weird frame dropping issues and general un-smoothness to the point where it says you have 500 FPS but it plays like 40 fps on a 60hz monitor. In real world usage, a 240hz 1080p monitor actually plays worse than a 144hz one due to this issue. The problem is SO BAD with aggressive RDNA3 power savings that low load games like League of Legends will literally semi-hard lock for a few seconds at a time. How can a company making gaming video cards not get things right for one of the most played games in the entire world? It would be like Honda designing a car that can't function on....roads.

Some of these games will play normally at 1440p instead of 1080p. Playing games like Roboquest at 1440p on a 7800xt is ultra-smooth, while doing it on 1080p is not. Same with games like Apex Legends. I couldn't find any 1440p monitors that didn't have enormous eyestrain or that I actually liked for other reasons (forced DSC mode on giving you high input lag), so had to go back to 1080p making the GPU the equivalent of a brick and sold it. Even at 1440p I'm sure these cards have issues with low load games like Battle Brothers and such (probably still issues with League there as well), and there's so many of these games that it's just not worth the hassle.

On Nvidia you just go into the control panel and set "performance mode" to solve this problem, while AMD for me wasn't usable at all without installing in "driver only mode" with no control panel, but I don't think they've ever even implemented a feature like this in the first place. Yes, yes, here is where an ultra casual or Java bootcamp user says "just use so and so 3rd party program or registry settings to try and force P0 state." #1 - things like MoreClockTool don't even work on RDNA3. #2 Win 10 is mostly not a 'tweakable' OS and using registry settings like this for whatever reason gives you unexplainable slug cursor for no reason. Example: I would love to have registry settings like "SearchOrderConfig" turned off at all times to prevent auto-driver installs, but setting it to "0" gives you more sluggish cursor movement for no reason so you just have to leave it at default like millions of other Win 10 settings.

So this is one of the dozens of factors that contribute towards making AMD cards unusable. Most are AMD's fault. Some are Windows 10's fault. They basically need a physical switch on the card itself to turn off power savings and force a locked clocks P0 state to fix this issue under all these circumstances.

 

[Toothless]

I can comfortably say I do not have this issue with my XTX, nor have I heard of this issue before. Also AMD does have options for quiet/balanced modes in the driver.

 

[Space Lynx]

I can comfortably say I do not have this issue with my XTX, nor have I heard of this issue before. Also AMD does have options for quiet/balanced modes in the driver.

Same, had a flawless experience with my 7900 XT. I only ever ran into issues when I would OC, as some strong oc's would work fine in some games, but not in others. at stock though, flawless.

 

[Konyalee]

My sapphire 7900 XTX is cool and quiet, runs perfectly fine at bios settings and stable even when overclocking +3GHz

 

[r0ach]

My sapphire 7900 XTX is cool and quiet

You guys are going to need to fix the neural net that made this AI generated post calling a 400 watt GPU "cool and quiet" before it casts Chris Pratt as the lead actor in a Netflix Genghis Khan documentary. As for others saying "no issues here," it's mostly a problem at 1080p and not 1440p, which....just so happens to be the most favored resolution of competitive gaming.

Load something like Apex Legends at 1080p on the 7800xt and you'll see these ripples of tearing when panning around at certain things as it drops frames or fails to perform any type of valid frame pacing due to downclocking. Lesser pronounced but same issues in even UE4 titles like Roboquest. Then plug in a 1440p monitor to the same system and it plays about the smoothest you've ever seen. So, yea, the GPUs are usable if you can find a 1440p you like, but that only saves games that are medium load at 1080p. Low load games are likely still toast at 1440p on the stronger AMD cards, and there's just a lot of those games out there from League of Legends, to World or Warcraft, to whatever.

 

[Space Lynx]

you must have done something wrong when setting up your PC or installing drivers got messed up.

building a PC is not for the faint of heart, it's not plug and play. you might have just missed an update or a step along the way.

 

[LabRat 891]

You guys are going to need to fix the neural net that made this AI generated post calling a 400 watt GPU "cool and quiet" before it casts Chris Pratt as the lead actor in a Netflix Genghis Khan documentary. As for others saying "no issues here," it's mostly a problem at 1080p and not 1440p, which....just so happens to be the most favored resolution of competitive gaming.

First off, unless you're telling me Intel ARC is the best option, there's 0 room to 'talk smack' in regards to power draw. (Plus, AMD cards typically only light on fire, when it's the User's fault. If you need a punching bag though, the Radeon VII deserved it. Old news nowadays tho...)

Load something like Apex Legends at 1080p on the 7800xt and you'll see these ripples of tearing when panning around at certain things as it drops frames or fails to perform any type of valid frame pacing due to downclocking. Lesser pronounced but same issues in even UE4 titles like Roboquest. Then plug in a 1440p monitor to the same system and it plays about the smoothest you've ever seen. So, yea, the GPUs are usable if you can find a 1440p you like, but that only saves games that are medium load at 1080p. Low load games are likely still toast at 1440p on the stronger AMD cards, and there's just a lot of those games out there from League of Legends, to World or Warcraft, to whatever.

I've been wrangling with those kinds of issues today, on my 7900 GRE.
(Which, I run with a 144hz 1080p display)

Here's the 'stitch', though:
neither cause was related to the AMD card.

1st issue were loose PCIE 8pins, causing the GPU to 'crash clocks' often.
(replaced one, bent-back the other. My PSU's plugs have been inside many a GPU)

2nd was Windows friggin updates.

Beware: Win11 KB5035853 Cumulative Update may cause stuttering and other performance problems.

Just got done spending over 4 hours troubleshooting GPU, Power, fTPM, NVME HMB, etc. I was having major stuttering in games like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and HBS'BattleTech. 'thought it was a bad PCI-E 8-pin power cable (again) but, no. After a bunch of (mostly pointless) troubleshooting...

www.techpowerup.com

(Maybe 3rd? Was fTPM stutter)

Also, MCT works just fine on Navi3x. It's just limited to the same limits as AMD Wattman.
(Still handy if you don't want the lil bit of latency from AMD Radeon Settings running in the background.)

you must have done something wrong when setting up your PC or installing drivers got messed up.

building a PC is not for the faint of heart, it's not plug and play. you might have just missed an update or a step along the way.

I will say that occasionally AMD's drivers have some oversights or shortcomings.
Typically, I run R.ID drivers but, in my limited experience, I'd say AMD's pro drivers were 'more stable' than always grabbing the latest Adrenaline.

NtM, even when I have had Le AMD Driver Problems, it's a simple clean uninstall and rollback.

 

[r0ach]

you must have done something wrong when setting up your PC or installing drivers got messed up.

building a PC is not for the faint of heart, it's not plug and play. you might have just missed an update or a step along the way.

This is like telling Joe Montana maybe he should just get an office job instead. Since I don't feel like typing out all this stuff, I'll just link a post of another guy who just got done typing out the problem. All of these AMD issues have been well-known for a long time. I just thought I could defeat them by using 1440p. You either need to be living under a rock or a shill farm to deny them by now (especially on RDNA3):

 

[Dr. Dro]

This is like telling Joe Montana maybe he should just get an office job instead. Since I don't feel like typing out all this stuff, I'll just link a post of another guy who just got done typing out the problem. All of these AMD issues have been well-known for a long time. I just thought I could defeat them by using 1440p. You either need to be living under a rock or a shill farm to deny them by now (especially on RDNA3):

Sure, but have you checked the "directionality" of your HDMI cables yet? Made sure that you're running limited color through DisplayPort to ensure "smoothness"? Made sure your memory tertiaries aren't off by a single cycle, causing massive input lag problems? Have you entirely decapped your power supply to ensure that your mouse cursor is working as well as it should, and of course how could I forget, made sure that your ethernet adapter not being the culprit for a laggy cursor? Checked the ferrite chokes on your mouse? I hope you also remembered to downgrade your browser to some very specific old build of Chromium that allegedly has superior input handling. Amongst other things.

RDNA 3 is fine. You have a history, however, of changing settings you do not understand and a tendency to dive head first into any and all sorts of "street wisdom" and that's putting it mildly. Do us all a favor, install Windows again and use it as it was meant to be used, and you'll find AMD GPUs work just fine. They may have their downsides (and their upsides as well), but the problem here is definitely not AMD. Had I been a mod this thread wouldn't have gotten past the first post.

 

[r0ach]

^No idea who you are. Stop spamming thread with gibberish about an AMD problem that huge amounts of people already know about as fact.

 

[remekra]

Sure, but have you checked the "directionality" of your HDMI cables yet? Made sure that you're running limited color through DisplayPort to ensure "smoothness"? Made sure your memory tertiaries aren't off by a single cycle, causing massive input lag problems? Have you entirely decapped your power supply to ensure that your mouse cursor is working as well as it should, and of course how could I forget, made sure that your ethernet adapter not being the culprit for a laggy cursor? Checked the ferrite chokes on your mouse? I hope you also remembered to downgrade your browser to some very specific old build of Chromium that allegedly has superior input handling. Amongst other things.

RDNA 3 is fine. You have a history, however, of changing settings you do not understand and a tendency to dive head first into any and all sorts of "street wisdom" and that's putting it mildly. Do us all a favor, install Windows again and use it as it was meant to be used, and you'll find AMD GPUs work just fine. They may have their downsides (and their upsides as well), but the problem here is definitely not AMD. Had I been a mod this thread wouldn't have gotten past the first post.

Never forget to decapp that power supply.

 

[r0ach]

I've been wrangling with those kinds of issues today, on my 7900 GRE.
(Which, I run with a 144hz 1080p display)

Here's the 'stitch', though:
neither cause was related to the AMD card.

1st issue were loose PCIE 8pins, causing the GPU to 'crash clocks' often.

And you have not solved the problem. You just had multiple problems. Until you plug a 1440p panel into that card you will not see the level of fluidity which the card is capable of. Might be a few exceptions like running Starfield at 1080p. And then you will start to say "hmm, why is this heavy ass game Starfield that's not even pushing high FPS waaaay more smooth and fluid than a game made 10 years ago on this card? Then you will come back and re-read this thread and say "wow, this r0ach guy was right...so I'll just go post in another thread, hope this one dies, and silently sell this GPU on Ebay and live happily ever after."

 

[LabRat 891]

RDNA 3 is fine.

Into day 3 of owning a Golden Rabbit,
after having to listen to my best friend (w/ a 7900XTX) talk about how smooth he was gaming, for the last several months...

You have a history, however, of changing settings you do not understand and a tendency to dive head first into any and all sorts of "street wisdom" and that's putting it mildly.

Mild enough that I can agree with, wholeheartedly.
(admittedly, as someone who was once younger and even dumber, I have a modicum of empathy for them)

Do us all a favor, install Windows again and use it as it was meant to be used, and you'll find AMD GPUs work just fine.

You are incorrect, here. There's a good chance that a Windows update will break something.

They may have their downsides (and their upsides as well), but the problem here is definitely not AMD.

That has been my experience: 7900GRE>WX9100-6500XT-Vega64>RX580X>R9 290X>R9 290>HD7970>HD5870>HD4890>X800GTO , included ATi in there...

Had I been a mod this thread wouldn't have gotten past the first post.

I was tempted to report it, as this is clearly their entertainment for the night/morning.
NGL tho, I wanted to see how far this could get before da TPU po po show up.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Into day 3 of owning a Golden Rabbit,
after having to listen to my best friend (w/ a 7900XTX) talk about how smooth he was gaming, for the last several months...


Mild enough that I can agree with, wholeheartedly.
(admittedly, as someone who was once younger and even dumber, I have a modicum of empathy for them)

You are incorrect, here. There's a good chance that a Windows update will break something.

That has been my experience: 7900GRE>WX9100-6500XT-Vega64>RX580X>R9 290X>R9 290>HD7970>HD5870>HD4890>X800GTO oops:, included ATi in there...)

I was tempted to report it, as this is clearly his entertainment for the night/morning.
NGL tho, I wanted to see how far this could get before da TPU po po show up.

I mean, it's one thing to bring up valid criticisms, but I tend to read a user's post history before providing any help or thoughts... and then I re-read our last exchange. Touche about the Windows update

 

[r0ach]

Into day 3 of owning a Golden Rabbit,

Three days is not long enough. I'm as good as it gets for things like this and three days is still the denial phase of "maybe it's just this driver," "maybe there's better drivers," "maybe they will release better drivers at a future date." You will not fully come to terms with this thread until owning that card for probably several weeks. And if it was to actually be fixed, it would probably require sweeping changes to the GPU firmware, not just a driver.

Why do you think I sold my 7800xt and have a 3070 RTX in the mail? It's not because I like to waste money. Having said that, your easiest semi-fix if you want to keep the card is to buy a 1440p monitor so the thing doesn't downclock to nothingness, which will allow you to avoid these issues in a large amount of games. I'm staying on 1080p for now so the 7800xt became unusable.

 

[Toothless]

Three days is not long enough. I'm as good as it gets for things like this and three days is still the denial phase of "maybe it's just this driver," "maybe there's better drivers," "maybe they will release better drivers at a future date." You will not fully come to terms with this thread until owning that card for probably several weeks. And if it was to actually be fixed, it would probably require sweeping changes to the GPU firmware, not just a driver. Why do you think I sold my 7800xt and have a 3070 RTX in the mail? It's not because I like to waste money.

I run beta drivers and have less issues total than you have in a day. This is 100% PEBCAK.

 

[LabRat 891]

And you have not solved the problem. You just had multiple problems. Until you plug a 1440p panel into that card you will not see the level of fluidity which the card is capable of.

Dude... Are you darkwing's alt. account? -telling me what I have or have not/can experience(d)? -and, outright ignoring what I have written and referenced?

I've never played a smoother experience than this GRE @ 1080P 144hz FreeSync. Ever. My best friend's pestering me to get a 1440p or better display, but I want min framerates approaching my refresh rate.
(I'm not much a 'twitch gamer' anymore, but I've been 'chasing the dragon' of low-latency and smoothness, like of 'the CRT days')

Might be a few exceptions like running Starfield at 1080p. And then you will start to say "hmm, why is this heavy ass game Starfield that's not even pushing high FPS waaaay more smooth and fluid than a game made 10 years ago on this card?

Why would I care about games like Starfield when I can immerse myself in The Zone, or The Inner Sphere?
If I want 'open world space game' I'll pull out an .ISO of FreeLancer and find my archived mods folder.

Otherwise, I can pay the guy that made some of the best space combat sims, huge sums of cash for a much more in depth experience...

Then you will come back and re-read this thread and say "wow, this r0ach guy was right...so I'll just go post in another thread, hope this one dies, and silently sell this GPU on Ebay and live happily ever after."

Enthusiasts =/= Gamers, clearly.

 

[r0ach]

I run beta drivers and have less issues total than you have in a day. This is 100% PEBCAK.

You probably just have lower standards. I haven't seen things like tearing or chop on any system I run since something like the year 1999. But load up Apex Legends on a 7800xt at 1080p and you will see it. Then plug in a 1440p monitor and it's instantly gone. It's an egregious AMD power savings problem. There's probably just less shills and spammers on Guru3d because it's more common knowledge there and you don't have this wild brigade of "AMD can do nothing wrong" shill factory experience:

Downclocking of RDNA 3 vs. RDNA 2 in High-FPS Games

Hi, my 6800 XT just died and I am about to buy a RDNA 3 card as a replacement. For my 6800 XT, I had to disable deep sleeping states via the more...

forums.guru3d.com

*also find it kind of funny how people in that post just see it as normal as a very new card like a 6800xt dieing for no reason when Nvidia cards that are 10+ years old all over the place run like the day they were new.

 

[fevgatos]

It's not just rdna 3, rdna 2 also has lots of issues.

 

[tpa-pr]

Sorry to hear you've had issues with RDNA3 but I think a blanket declaration of "all AMD cards are unusable" is a bit unfair. My 7900 XTX has been flawless since I got it and my 6950 XT was the same before that. Based on other comments here and elsewhere it seem others mirror my experience. The only time I've ever had problems is when I've been testing my undervolting and pushed it too far

If an AMD card doesn't work then I suggest you swap to Nvidia if you haven't done so already. Find the best hardware that works for you.

 

[Toothless]

You probably just have lower standards. I haven't seen things like tearing or chop on any system I run since something like the year 1999. But load up Apex Legends on a 7800xt at 1080p and you will see it. Then plug in a 1440p monitor and it's instantly gone. It's an egregious AMD power savings problem. There's probably just less shills and spammers on Guru3d because it's more common knowledge there and you don't have this wild brigade of "AMD can do nothing wrong" shill factory experience:

Downclocking of RDNA 3 vs. RDNA 2 in High-FPS Games

Hi, my 6800 XT just died and I am about to buy a RDNA 3 card as a replacement. For my 6800 XT, I had to disable deep sleeping states via the more...

forums.guru3d.com

*also find it kind of funny how people in that post just see it as normal as a very new card like a 6800xt dieing for no reason when Nvidia cards that are 10+ years old all over the place run like the day they were new.

Ran Apex on a Titan Xp, 6800XT, and 6950XT with zero issues across the board.

 

[LabRat 891]

It's not just rdna 3, rdna 2 also has lots of issues.

The only issue(s) I'm particularly aware of w/ RDNA2:
-Some vendors re-used coolers and cooler designs that were totally inappropriate for the GPU. *cough*MSI*cough*.
-RDNA2's RT capabilities are laughable. (though, they did 'scale' up and down the product stack consistently. So, +point for product segmentation, I guess?)

Let's not forget: the Steam Deck, is RNDA2.
Even compared to newer generation 'Handhelds', it's still an efficiency monster.

 

[r0ach]

It's not just rdna 3, rdna 2 also has lots of issues.

Besides the egregious power savings (which is such a problem it basically ruins the card), I didn't really even find any other issues besides Total War Warhammer not rendering the ground....at all...which kind of makes the game difficult to play. Think that can be fixed by ghetto rigging some forced tesselation setting, though (didn't spend much time messing with it while I had the card). There's really not a whole lot to complain about besides the power savings thing. But like I said, it's a show stopper in itself.

There will be people in this thread (as you can see) that are content in running some massively powerful, expensive GPU at 1/3rd it's max speed, non-P0 state, while having frame drops, tearing, etc, which causes you to notice that switching from a 1080p 144hz to 240hz connected to a 1070 GTX gives you a wildly different experience, then doing the same thing on the 7800xt and you're like "huh? where did the difference go? Why does League of legends play like running an Intel integrated GPU from 2016 at 48 FPS while this bloated Starfield game feels ultra responsive?" Some people will just not be able to figure it out and put 2+2 together.

 

[fevgatos]

The only issue(s) I'm particularly aware of w/ RDNA2:
-Some vendors re-used coolers and cooler designs that were totally inappropriate for the GPU. *cough*MSI*cough*.
-RDNA2's RT capabilities are laughable. (though, they did 'scale' up and down the product stack consistently. So, +point for product segmentation, I guess?)

Let's not forget: the Steam Deck, is RNDA2.
Even compared to newer generation 'Handhelds', it's still an efficiency monster.

Some games don't work at all with rdna 2,especially older titles. Divine divinity is a prime example.

When you have the amd software installed it constantly wakes up the gpu even if you have an igpu as the primary display, killing baterry life on laptops.

Small stutters when you are running something like a youtube overlay while playing a game

I can go on...

 

[LabRat 891]

*also find it kind of funny how people in that post just see it as normal as a very new card like a 6800xt dieing for no reason when Nvidia cards that are 10+ years old all over the place run like the day they were new.

Cards can be made defective; "reference" and AIBs alike.

GF: The last 2 generations of team green's top-tier, like to light themselves on fire, and then nVidia's AIBs pull a "you're holding it wrong".

RX: Radeon VII was a travesty! W/o custom cooling, they an hero (GPU warps, VRMs and Chokes die).
I'm not sure how a consumer-facing card could've been released w/ such poor cooling and structural support. I genuinely believe somebody, somewhere in AMD did it on purpose. Why? The surviving VIIs sustain unbelievably good minimum framerates.
Personally, I feel like AMD 'killed off' HBM in consumer cards; not, merely 'abandoned it'. Yes, I'm unreasonably bitter (I literally try to tell myself that the MCDs on Navi 31 are like HBMcache)

AIB partner(s):
-XFX is permanently on my S-list for F'ing me over in an RMA on my 4890 (that died at the VERY edge of warranty).
'Bought a 'release' 4890, a good 'beefy' card. Upon RMA, I received their self-destructing cut-down model that could barely meet a 4870.
-Gigabyte has become so lax on QC, that they send out cards w/ screws falling out, and PCBs designed to crack... (my 1st 7900GRE was a gigabyte. It was returned inside 4 hours, and never touched my rig.)