AMD’s latest drivers are causing havoc on Windows PCs
AMD’s drivers don’t have the best reputation, with users and commenters often denouncing their frequency and reliability. Well, here’s something else to add to the list: AMD’s latest Adrenalin 23.2.1 driver appears to be crashing Windows and causing serious startup problems. Oops.
The driver released just yesterday contains updates for AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 and 6000 graphics card families. Also added or improved support for the games Forspoken and Dead Space as well as additional Vulkan extensions. However, upon launch, AMD users made an effort to log their frustrations on forums and social media.
For example Twitter users @PrepperAssassin explained that the driver “crashed my whole pc, now I have to reinstall windows.” Another user, @flyinghyur, complains that the driver “bricked my windows installation”.
That’s not the kind of nasty surprise you’d want when installing a driver, and AMD hasn’t responded to the complaints until now. On AMD’s website, the driver’s known issues list mentions stuttering and crashes in a handful of games, but makes no mention of severe Windows issues as reported on Twitter.
A long delay
The problem is made worse by the long delay AMD users face for this driver. It’s been over two months since the last update, and the wait has been so bad that Frank Azor, AMD’s chief architect of gaming solutions and marketing, had to switch to Twitter two weeks ago Explain the situation. Looks like he’ll have to repeat the trick now.
According to the Twitter account of the PC monitoring tool CapFrameX, it is the driver could change the Windows BIOS settings, which in turn can lead to the crashes and startup issues described by users. If you’re having similar issues after installing the latest AMD driver, check your BIOS settings before reinstalling Windows. Using Display Driver Uninstaller to roll back the driver might also help.
Besides the problems Windows users are having with AMD’s latest version, the driver also seems to be wreaking havoc on Ayaneo portable gaming consoles. According to a post on the Ayaneo website, internal tests have shown that the latest AMD driver limits the VRAM on the Ayaneo 2 and Ayaneo Geek to 512MB. That’s a fraction of the 3GB or 6GB these consoles can be outfitted with, and it could result in a negative performance hit.
All in all, it hardly seems like AMD fans were expecting the driver launch, especially after such a long wait. We hope AMD can quickly roll out some fixes to fix the issues.
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