• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

AMD Radeon Software Reportedly Alters CPU Settings Without User Knowledge

Soldato
Joined
7 Dec 2010
Posts
8,691
Location
Leeds
https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/new...use-ryzen-instability?utm_campaign=socialflow

AMD Radeon Software Reportedly Alters CPU Settings Without User Knowledge

Adrenalin drivers seemingly go haywire.


German publication Igor's Lab investigated a potential abnormality surrounding AMD's Adrenalin GPU software. The current speculation is that the integration of AMD's Ryzen Master module into the Adrenalin version 22.3.1 software or later has inadvertently allowed the program to manipulate CPU PBO and Precision Boost settings without the user's permission.

According to user feedback, the problem occurs only with AMD CPU and GPU combinations since that hardware supports the Ryzen Master SDK. So if you are running a system that has either an Intel CPU paired to a Radeon GPU, or a Ryzen CPU paired to an Nvidia GPU, you will not encounter this problem.

For some reason, AMD's Adrenalin software will automatically enable PBO or the "CPU OC" setting when applying GPU profiles -- including the Default profile, which happens automatically.

This situation can be catastrophic if you already have pre-configured CPU overclocking and undervolting settings in your motherboard's BIOS. In addition, Adrenalin can override your settings with something it made up itself, impacting CPU stability. Igor's Lab discovered that the AMD Adrenalin software is changing the power limits and the maximum boost frequency of the Ryzen CPU through the PBO settings. It is unknown if instability only arises from users manually adjusting CPU settings or if it happens under default conditions also.

Thankfully there are multiple ways to restore your CPU to its original configuration. One method is to go back into your board's BIOS and re-enter all your CPU settings (or disable PBO if you run default settings). Alternatively, you can also run Radeon Software Slimmer, which can delete the Ryzen Master SDK from the Adrenalin software, preventing the module from adjusting any CPU settings. Radeon Software Slimmer is from a third-party program, so use it at your own risk.

But, the easiest solution comes from a Reddit user who explains how creating a new tuning profile for your GPU within the Adrenalin software will stop the module from manipulating PBO settings in your motherboards BIOS entirely.

AMD hasn't shared any information on the topic, so it remains a mystery why the Adrenalin software can modify BIOS settings without user manipulation.
 
Dumb, why do they even need to bundle it with the drivers instead of just keeping them separate?

I believe they run polls about what people want to see on the performance interface and many people wanted to see the performance of the cpu as well as the gpu (on the gpu overlay). I quite liked that they combined the gpu and cpu overlay so that I can easily monitor both at the same time
 
I like the integration for monitorig purposes. I haven't noticed this issue, but then I've been running my GPU with an undervolted/mem OC profile for some time so I guess that's prevented it from occurring.
 
I run the Radeon software with chill enabled to cap performance, so perhaps if anyone is worried about damage to their cpu they could also use chill to cap their performance and then enable their overlay for awhile in each game to monitor that it is working correctly.
 
Last edited:
My undervolted 5800x and 6700xt combo has been working without any issues on my b550. Haven't seen any misbehaviour from the drivers of the kind the OP talk of. I have tuned PBO settings in the bios.
 
Back
Top Bottom