AMD RDNA3 Graphics cards are unusable

[PixelButts]

Getting my bias out of the way first - I've been Nvidia-free and Intel-free where I can be since 2012. Beyond my trusty EVGA 750 Ti SC I have hated Nvidia's offerings, especially drivers. Make no mistake I definitely didn't have a smooth road going full AMD thanks to getting unlucky on 2 different ryzen cpus, those being first-gen first batch 1600 which had zero room to run anything beyond stock anything and even then was still unstable, and a 3700X that occasionally lost/regained an entire core between reboots. This isn't about CPUs but I wont deny there have been times I've had issues.

I work in Quality Assurance at a game publisher, where my expertise and more realistically my pile of hardware gets utilized across a number of workloads usually performance comparisons or encode/decode because recording and stuff is always needed somewhere along the line. Having my hands in AMD, Intel and Nvidia for CPUs and GPUs and accounting for what's going on in production environments, I've seen a lot of weird things, like 4090-exclusive bugs in editors and people trying to run a GPU with 512MB of vram on a game needing minimum 4GB. Comparing these side by side, seeing what breaks or what doesn't (lookin at you Oculus) or what we can or cant control, I find AMD just does what it's told without really fighting back. Nvidia on the other hand I find fights back or hand holds in ways that I really wish it wouldn't. Intel Arc is doing pretty well in my tests on these games and it makes me smile which honestly surprises me a ton because the machine at work we test it in doesn't have resizable BAR support until I update the bios and well, I did something funny to it so I'm not sure if I could update it.

At this point in time I have 2 different 7900 XTX cards now. One being MBA (Sapphire specifically if it matters), and one being Yeston. With the exception of that defective vapor chamber on the first MBA card which I have since returned and replaced with another MBA, I have no issues with them at all. Cooling, hardware, capabilities, size and clearance, power draw, hell I even threw ZLUDA into it because I thought it was funny doing CUDA workloads on it. Of the complaints I have, it comes down to drivers as many end up pointing to. 24.1.1 had an issue that makes gpu usage compltely erratic until a reboot after playing a game so until that's fixed I'm chilling on the release right before it. Beyond that, I have not had much issue with any configurations, normal or unusual, overclocking or undervolting.

I wouldn't call RDNA3 unusable by any stretch. I would however say they should really not let some of those egregious issues with drivers through like that erratic usage. As for Intel though, I still plan to swear off on Intel CPUs, but Intel GPUs I am not at all opposed to so far. I got 2 of em already and am eagerly waiting to see where Battlemage brigns us.

 

[r0ach]

You can't have it both ways. Claim that Nvidia cards run like new 10+ years and then come back and say, "well....you know, there were some problems with some Nvidia cards....but, but, but, but, it was because of bad ram!".

It took me owning an R9 290 to know cards pulling over 250 watts are memes. Don't double down on stupid and purchase another 350+ watt card while saying "this time surely will be better" without learning your lesson. When I was alluding to Nvidia cards seeming to be more durable, because even for my mining cards no Nvidia has ever gave me trouble while cards like R9 290's would go up in flames, I didn't mean to include outrageous 400 watt cards in this statement.

 

[tabascosauz]

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.

Doesn't the newest update of More____Tool solve the RDNA3 compatibility issue?

I did encounter something similar with Pstate on my 7900XT in the early days, but it had more to do with VRAM Pstate. Core fluctuations was only a multi monitor simultaneous video playback/gaming bug that's probably fixed by now. And the low load issue seemed to be an issue with FRTC.

Otherwise, this thread seems to have run its course. You seem to have a knack for posting baity things like this. Some of us do want to draw attention to AMD's shortcomings in hopes of getting things fixed (and ultimately pay the Nvidia tax if we can't afford to wait indefinitely for a fix), but this is something else.

 

[kapone32]

Eh? VRR in the radeon settings IS freesync

Freesync became VRR.

 

[r0ach]

Otherwise, this thread seems to have run its course. You seem to have a knack for posting baity things like this. Some of us do want to draw attention to AMD's shortcomings in hopes of getting things fixed (and ultimately pay the Nvidia tax if we can't afford to wait indefinitely for a fix)

And it's never going to be fixed if you let annoying people spam the thread pretending it's not a real issue to try and troll the thread closed. Only way it gets fixed is by threads like this sitting up until it costs AMD money and they're forced to fix it (probably combination of firmware update and driver change). Not gonna happen if people attempt to astroturf the thread. The whole situation is kind of ridiculous in general. If the goal is to 'save the planet' or something through overly egregious power saving settings, then just don't release 400 watt GPUs. If that's not the goal, then just uh, issue a firmware update so the cards aren't memes.

 

[Arkz]

Freesync became VRR.

Freesync IS VRR.
Funny you're mocking the guy over that, when he's not even wrong. Freesync is what any AMD GPU user turns on for a Freesync monitor or VRR TV.

 

[Onasi]

Freesync IS VRR.
Funny you're mocking the guy over that, when he's not even wrong. Freesync is what any AMD GPU user turns on for a Freesync monitor or VRR TV.

I think there is a misunderstanding. @kapone32 is arguing the exact thing you are, if you read his posts with the context of what he is answering to.

 

[Arkz]

I think there is a misunderstanding. @kapone32 is arguing the exact thing you are, if you read his posts with the context of what he is answering to.

You're right. I saw his post saying "LMAO, no one uses Freesync. That was the most idiotic comment I have seen in months." but didn't look at the quoted post to see he was laughing at the guy actually saying that.

Sorry for the confusion.

 

[tabascosauz]

And it's never going to be fixed if you let annoying people spam the thread pretending it's not a real issue to try and troll the thread closed.

Oh, don't worry, we don't like to delete threads here. This one will stay up for good. That doesn't mean it won't get locked, and as far as I can tell the other members have so far exercised a pleasantly surprising amount of restraint. You're free to express your opinions, and others are free to express their reactions within reason.

Only way it gets fixed is by threads like this sitting up until it costs AMD money and they're forced to fix it (probably with a firmware update).

I think you're really overselling your individual impact on AMD's operations.

 

[r0ach]

You're right. I saw his post saying "LMAO, no one uses Freesync. That was the most idiotic comment I have seen in months." but didn't look at the quoted post to see he was laughing at the guy actually saying that.

Sorry for the confusion.

Are you people still talking about the damn freesync meme? Yes, ultra casuals love freesync. We know. In the real world, I haven't had visible screen tearing on a properly configured system in like 20+ years, so it's a solution looking for a problem that has the side effect of floatier and more annoying mouse movement. Nobody uses this in actual competitive gaming. It's just a marketing gimmick. It's best usage is for things like SNES emulation to get fast scanout rates while playing 60hz content. Stop drinking the AMD marketing koolaid (that Nvidia also jumped aboard with their own proprietary chip - thanx for yet another industry fragmentation gimmick), people.

 

[Onasi]

Are you people still talking about the damn freesync meme? Yes, ultra casuals love freesync. We know. In the real world, I haven't had visible screen tearing on a properly configured system in like 20+ years, so it's a solution looking for a problem that has the side effect of floatier and more annoying mouse movement. Nobody uses this in actual competitive gaming. It's just a marketing gimmick. It's best usage is for things like SNES emulation to get fast scanout rates while playing 60hz content. Stop drinking the AMD marketing koolaid (that Nvidia also jumped aboard with their own proprietary chip), people.

So, are there only two types of PC gamers, r0ach? Ultra-casual peasants whose opinion on anything and everything should be instantly disregarded and real competitive pro-gamers who run "properly tuned" Windows 7 Ivy Bridge systems without "clown cursor" which allows them to pwn noobz at the peak efficiency (presumably around Gold Nova rank)? There are only those two options, nothing else?
Anecdotally, BTW, a good friend of mine played CS at Global Elite level and later went semi-pro via FaceIT. He knew exactly jack and sh*t about PCs. The guy had to call me up when he wanted to reinstall an OS a couple of times, for Pete's sake. He definitely ran no "advanced tweaks". He did have a 240Hz monitor and he did run FreeSync on it. That, weirdly enough, did not stop him from being insanely good at the game. Funny that.
Oh, and I am sure that numerous actual testing done that proves that VRR with a proper frame-cap has no actual negative input effect should also be disregarded as fake and false? Again, when are you going to actually, for the first time in a decade, put your money where your mouth is, acquire an LDAT kit and prove, once and for all, that your way is the way?

 

[Arkz]

Are you people still talking about the damn freesync meme? Yes, ultra casuals love freesync. We know. In the real world, I haven't had visible screen tearing on a properly configured system in like 20+ years, so it's a solution looking for a problem that has the side effect of floatier and more annoying mouse movement. Nobody uses this in actual competitive gaming. It's just a marketing gimmick. It's best usage is for things like SNES emulation to get fast scanout rates while playing 60hz content. Stop drinking the AMD marketing koolaid (that Nvidia also jumped aboard with their own proprietary chip - thanx for yet another industry fragmentation gimmick), people.

Ugh what? It's precisely useful to get as many frames as possible out of a game without having the tearing that would ensue from no vertical sync of the frames. If you're happy to play at vsync 60 or what ever refresh/framerate, that's fine. But if your fps drops lower than that you're gonna get stuttering. VRR provides the solution to that perfectly. You don't even need to be chasing excessive frames. You could cap your framerate to 60 still but not get any stuttering when it drops lower, due to the variable sync.

At this point you have to be trolling. Everything you're saying is so utterly backwards. I mean VRR is in lots of TVs now and even consoles have it, but you think fewer and fewer people use it?

Is there something in the water there?
You're just taking anything that people know to be true and saying nuh uh, wrong!

 

[neatfeatguy]

Are you people still talking about the damn freesync meme? Yes, ultra casuals love freesync. We know. In the real world, I haven't had visible screen tearing on a properly configured system in like 20+ years, so it's a solution looking for a problem that has the side effect of floatier and more annoying mouse movement. Nobody uses this in actual competitive gaming. It's just a marketing gimmick. It's best usage is for things like SNES emulation to get fast scanout rates while playing 60hz content. Stop drinking the AMD marketing koolaid (that Nvidia also jumped aboard with their own proprietary chip - thanx for yet another industry fragmentation gimmick), people.

So are you having an issue with gaming in general or just competitive gaming? I'm having a hard time following your train of thoughts.

You: All games have these issues with AMD's RDNA3 cards!
Others: I'm not having those issues.
You: I'm talking about specifically 1080p.
Others: I haven't seen those issues with 1080p.
You: Nvidia cards last forever and AMD just dies!
Me: I had a Nvidia die on me after 3 months.
You: It was bad RAM!
Others: That "bad" RAM wasn't the issue.
You: It died because it's a "nuclear reactor"!
.......this goes on for ad nauseum.

If you don't like high power cards or if you have issues with specifically AMD cards, just don't use them. Constant backtracking and belittling people's opinions because they don't match your train of thought is growing tiresome. I almost feel bad for you that this bothers you so much.

I hate Razer's products and software, but I'm not out making posts and doubling down on my own stupid comments once they've been disproven. I just don't support Razer. If you feel that way about AMD then don't support them.

 

[kapone32]

Freesync IS VRR.
Funny you're mocking the guy over that, when he's not even wrong. Freesync is what any AMD GPU user turns on for a Freesync monitor or VRR TV.
View attachment 338987

He was saying they don't use it.

 

[r0ach]

Ugh what? It's precisely useful to get as many frames as possible out of a game without having the tearing that would ensue from no vertical sync of the frames.

How does your brain not comprehend that this supposed tearing is not even visible on a properly configured system with vsync off and that people like Nvidia have probably implemented some form of frame pacing for years so frames are not just being magically discarded with you losing half your 240hz by not running with freesync on. This doomsday scenario you're trying to describe is actually something similar to what happens on a downclocking RDNA3 card, but it's not something that happens on a non-ghetto computer with vsync and freesync off.

 

[Arkz]

How does your brain not comprehend that this supposed tearing is not even visible on a properly configured system with vsync off and that people like Nvidia have probably implemented some form of frame pacing for years so frames are not just being magically discarded with you losing half your 240hz by not running with freesync on. This doomsday scenario you're trying to describe is actually what happens on a downclocking RDNA3 card, but it's not something that happens on a non-ghetto computer with vsync and freesync off.

Yeah. You have to be trolling. No one is this dumb.

 

[r0ach]

Yeah. You have to be trolling. No one is this dumb.

Yea man, you are so right. Everyone on the entire planet was incapable of playing competitive video games before freesync was invented. The tearing was just so much that nobody could see anything and they just ran into walls and died. No. This did not actually happen. Absolutely NOTHING changed once freesync came out. Stop pushing this delusional theory of yours.

 

[Arkz]

This is like conversing with a brick wall. Good luck. Hopefully when they fix the gas leak you'll gain some sense.

 

[r0ach]

It's impossible to discuss anything with ultra-casuals. All you're doing is reading off some AMD marketing pamplet.

 

[Onasi]

How does your brain not comprehend that this supposed tearing is not even visible on a properly configured system with vsync off and that people like Nvidia have probably implemented some form of frame pacing for years so frames are not just being magically discarded with you losing half your 240hz by not running with freesync on. This doomsday scenario you're trying to describe is actually something similar to what happens on a downclocking RDNA3 card, but it's not something that happens on a non-ghetto computer with vsync and freesync off.

What the actual hell does this even mean? First, that's not frame pacing. It's a term that has a definite meaning and it's not whatever you are implying. Secondly, nobody even inferred that without VRR frames magically disappear or anything close to that. I have no idea where you found THAT windmill to fight. Go watch, I dunno, GamersNexus video of an interview with one of NVidias engineers where he explains how their frame queue works, how it interacts with Reflex, NULL and VRR. You might actually realise that you have no idea what you are even talking about.

Yea man, you are so right. Everyone on the entire planet was incapable of playing competitive video games before freesync was invented. The tearing was just so much that nobody could see anything and they just ran into walls and died. No. This did not actually happen. Absolutely NOTHING changed once freesync came out. Stop pushing this delusional theory of yours.

Did anyone say that you CANNOT play games, competitive or otherwise, without VRR? No. Of course you can. But arguing that a technology that allows us to "fix" one of the limitations of fixed refresh displays of old is pointless and a "marketing gimmick" when it provably works and does what it says on the box is insanity.

 

[r0ach]

You two ultra-casuals feel free to take your insanely overwhelming freesync "advantage" to go take over the FPS world now. Feel free to benchmark and video tape yourselves as well so we can see the 2% aim improvement with freesync turned off instead of on too.

 

[PixelButts]

You two ultra-casuals feel free to take your insanely overwhelming freesync "advantage" to go take over the FPS world now. Feel free to benchmark and video tape yourselves as well so we can see the 2% aim improvement with freesync turned off instead of on too.

I recommend disabling any vsync and freesync entirely, enabling RSR 50%, slapping a nice 240hz 1440p display on your desk wired over displayport 2.1 (no latches! they interfere with signal integrity), running with 360fps cap, setting all in-game options to low, and enjoying the silky smooth gameplay. Be sure to set your GPU overclocked and underbolted with manual fan curve of 100% with no 0-speed state for extra cooling just in case. If it still isn't making the mark be sure to increase the memory clock speed by 30%. If you're still losing 0.1% of your performance be sure to shunt mod it to get double the available power draw to really give you that extra edge.

This should give you the 1.5% performance boost you're looking for

 

[KedsDead]

What is the reward for successfully trolling the TPU forum? Cause this guy has earned it. I have read 4 pages of what looks like a night at the bar, when people start arguing over one topic, then instead of admitting defeat, change the subject and argue over another topic.

Is it the Drunken Poster Award? Do we have that?

 

[PixelButts]

What is the reward for successfully trolling the TPU forum? Cause this guy has earned it. I have read 4 pages of what looks like a night at the bar, when people start arguing over one topic, then instead of admitting defeat, change the subject and argue over another topic.

Is it the Drunken Poster Award? Do we have that?

I wouldn't call it a success. I feel like it's a bunch of us on a Thursday with not a lot goin on just seeing where it goes.

 

[neatfeatguy]

What is the reward for successfully trolling the TPU forum? Cause this guy has earned it. I have read 4 pages of what looks like a night at the bar, when people start arguing over one topic, then instead of admitting defeat, change the subject and argue over another topic.

Is it the Drunken Poster Award? Do we have that?

Folk like this I just end up blocking them. Doesn't hurt my feelings if I can't see what they post and if I cared if they blocked me I'd be sure to make a topic about it and rant and rave and then double down on my stupidity because no one is listening to me!

All in all, this thread was entertaining for a bit. Now it's just sad and pathetic.