Bug Fixes & Issues in Radeon Software Adrenalin 17.12.1

As a quick note, AMD has had two (quite verbosely-named) Windows 10 Fall Creators Update beta drivers that coexisted with other driver branches. It was made clear that Adrenalin Edition 17.12.1 fully supports Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, which is actually the recommended version for Adrenalin. Meanwhile, 17.11.1 is the most recent WHQL certified driver for the Fall Creators Update. So both 17.12.1 and 17.11.1 supersede the previous beta drivers.

With the exception of the newly launched Ryzen Mobile processors, Adrenalin Edition supports consumer APUs. And as a reminder, the Radeon RX Vega, RX 500, RX 400, R9 Fury, and Pro Duo series are only supported by Adrenalin on 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows 10.

Moving on to the list of resolved issues, the very first one should bring much holiday cheer to many an eSports fan: the longstanding Overwatch bug has been fixed. Furthermore, several video game bugs and particular Netflix playback stuttering have also been corrected.

The full list of resolved issues is as follows:

  • Overwatch may experience a random or intermittent hang on some system configurations.
  • Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege may experience an application hang when breaching walls with grenades or explosives.
  • Assassin's Creed: Origins may experience bright or saturated lighting in cave missions.
  • Mass Effect Andromeda may have issues enabling HDR10 on an HDR capable display.
  • Forza Horizon 3 may experience corruption on rocks or foliage during gameplay.
  • Halo Wars 2 may experience a crash on game launch.
  • Netflix playback in a browser or via UWP application may experience stutter.
  • After recording with ReLive, GPU usage and clocks may remain in high states.
  • Enabling HBCC on mGPU RX Vega configurations may cause the secondary graphics card to be hidden in Radeon Settings until reboot.
  • Resizing the Radeon Settings window may cause the UI to restart or hang with HBCC enabled.

As for the documented open issues, only three pertain to new features introduced by Adrenalin. Of them, the RX Vega profile loading failure is arguably the only non-niche and most impactful bug.

Known Issues

  • [New Adrenalin Feature] Performance Metrics Overlay may hang if enabled when cycling display power off and on.
  • [New Adrenalin Feature] Trimming videos may fail to create a thumbnail if the video contains non-English characters.
  • [New Adrenalin Feature] Wattman may intermittently fail to load profiles for RX Vega on the global Wattman page.
  • Upgrading Radeon Software with mGPU RX Vega configurations on X99 chipsets may cause system instability after reboot.
  • Radeon Settings may experience a hang when enabling CrossFire with three or more graphics products.
  • 3x1 display configurations may experience instability during Eyefinity creation or during gaming.
  • The “Reset” function in Radeon Settings for Display, ReLive, and Video may not work as intended when using Radeon Settings in certain regional languages.
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider may experience an intermittent application hang during gameplay.
  • A random system hang may be experienced after extended periods of use on system configurations using 12 GPUs for compute workloads.
  • The GPU Workload feature may cause a system hang when switching to Compute while CrossFire is enabled; a workaround is to disable CrossFire before switching the toggle to Compute workloads.
Radeon On Your Smartphone: AMD Link Final Thoughts
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  • lmcd - Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - link

    Didn't realize how far AMD has gotten. Would've considered purchasing except for the unfortunate power draw.

    While multiple people are claiming that power draw should not be a consideration for me within the United States, heat is a consideration as to both the product's lifespan and its case compatibility. As someone happy with my Silverstone SG09 (except, maybe, that it's not an SG10), an ITX form factor GTX 1070 was the obvious choice. The Vega 56 does not have any ITX models, to my knowledge, and any such options would require liquid cooling and a custom PCB (well out of my price range).
  • B3an - Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - link

    Wish Nvidia had those streaming features but i'm not downgrading to a less powerful GPU for them.
  • FourEyedGeek - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link

    The bait was thrown out, 3 days later no one has still bitten.
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - link

    I'm not so sure about the names of these driver releases from AMD. We've had ReLive and Adrenalin so is Amygdala or Pituitary next and when will we start exploring other hormones and neurotransmitters?
  • extide - Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - link

    It's Adrenalin, not Adrenaline. Adrenalin is a flower.
  • rocky12345 - Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - link

    Nice write up on this thank you

    I kinda like the new look of the overlay and actually getting better support for a lot of the settings we need. The smartphone connect thing is also nice but myself and maybe a lot of other people already use the onscreen performance monitors provided through MSI Afterburner+Riva Tuner together. I also hope they do not break my Sapphire 390x tri-x card again like when the first Crimson driver release happened it took about a year to get that sorted out. Then again since most of this is just feature updates and not driver related us 290 & 390 series owners should be fine.

    Good to see AMD actually adding features a lot of people want it is to bad there are no Vega updates mind you I am sure the Vega owners were looking forward to some AMD love on the Vega front.
  • deksman2 - Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - link

    People... the reason Vega's power draw is a bit higher in relation to Nvidia is because AMD is forced to use a 14nm process designed for low power and low clocks - plus, it usually overvolts its GPU's for the sake of improving yields, and both Vega 56 and 64 have much higher amount of stream processors, which means they have higher compute capabilites - and guess what, that takes power.

    Obviously if you go past a certain limit in clocks, power draw skyrockets.
    The new 12nm process Vega refresh will be made should get rid of that problem and allow Vega to clock much higher with lower power draw.

    On the other hand, if you also undervolt Vega on stock clocks and even overclock it, you can get Vega 56 to behave like Vega 64 performance wise, while drawing LESS power than 1080.

    On the other hand in games that are optimised for PC platforms, also ones using DX12 and Vulkan, Vega 56 and 64 generally beat their Nvidia counterparts at stock.
    Vega 56 at 2k and 4k for example is equivalent to 1080, while 64 gets within 10% of 1080ti.

    Undervolt them both, and you gain better efficiency (more so on Vega 56 than 64).

    But, as I said, the 12nm LP should allow Vega to clock on both the core and HBM to higher levels while using less power, and ergo will perform a lot better.
    The 12nm LP is a process which Nvidia will be using for transitioning from current 16nm process (designed for high clocks).

    Plus, before he left AMD, Raja Koduri mentioned that Vega's Infinity Fabric was not optimised for games and that game optimised versions of Vega are coming (most likely on 12nm LP).
  • Gigaplex - Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - link

    Why is AMD forced to use a lesser manufacturing process? Neither AMD nor NVIDIA own fabs, they both subcontract to the same fab companies.
  • JasonMZW20 - Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - link

    The 14nm LPP process node is a decent process and is efficient. If it wasn't, Ryzen would've been a disaster. Sure, it's not the best out there, but it is a refined Samsung node that GloFo licensed. 12nm (14nm+) might be tech they acquired from IBM. "12nm" isn't a cure-all for Vega though; large dies have notoriously poor yields and 12nm won't shrink the die size (does have improved density though). Sure, it'll allow slightly higher clocks within the current 295W TBP (345W for LC) or they can offer the same clocks with a lower 236/170W (64/56) TBP (Flat 25% power reduction from 295/210W). True 2Gbps HBM2 would help too, as HBM2 voltage spec is 1.200v, but Vega64 has to use 1.356v to overclock HBM to 945MHz (from 800MHz).

    Vega uses more power simply because of what you said: amount of shader processors and higher stock voltages than optimal. Ryzen and Vega are similar in that they're pushed a little bit past their efficiency point. I've achieved good efficiency by undervolting, but I've completely given up on OC because my Vega64s just aren't compliant without significantly raising voltage and spiking power draw for a few percentage points of increased processing power (and maybe 5fps for an extra 40W). I need over 1.150v just to get 1677MHz. I stick to about 1565-1605MHz at 1.018-1.025v with good overall performance and reduced power usage.

    Keep Vega below 65C and you'll reduce chip leakage as well. I reduced power usage by 10-15W just by doing that on my air cooled cards (tested both with the same settings aside from temp target and 75C card consistently used 10-15W more with spikes up to 25W at times). 10-15W can get you a bit more headroom for GPU turbo.

    Also, Infinity Fabric auto overclocks with memory speed. At/After 1115MHz HBM, IF domain overclocks to 1200MHz (from 1107MHz), which can slightly improve overall performance if you can get it stable (HBCC, especially).
  • mapesdhs - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link

    #include <rant.h>

    When did drivers start being given marketing product names as if they were physical things? At this rate driver releases are going to get "reviews" just like any other product, and they won't be free anymore.

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