The AMD Driver Thread

[megatron]

I've been running 26.8.1 and its been rock solid. Only in stable diffusion workloads do I get driver timeouts but it doesn't stop the workload. I've downloaded 26.9.2 will try it soon. In the past I had trouble with BF6 crashing and sparklies in marina area of redsec.

 

[BS Dave]

Yeah I don't understand why this tech isn't pushed, We got in Black Ops 7 which didn't need it and Crimson Desert which isn't exactly a pixel peeper of a game, Really weird game decisions.

Avatar Frontiers of Pandora is an AMD sponsored game, Zero sign of Ray Regeneration.

I'm hoping it's not yet another case of AMD doing an AMD and shooting themselves in both feet, Which sadly they are very well known for, They have good tech, Get it out there, Throw money at studios if they have to but get the tech into a hell of a lot more games, It's what Nvidia does and it works.

Didn't someone patch in the black ops preview to cyberpunk and it resulted in wobbliness? I can only assume it's been given more time in the machine learning oven. @AMD_Vik give is a wink if that's anywhere near the truth?

I know the guy working on drivers is doing his best but we could probably crowdsource some money for a bit of overtime...

 

[Purgatory]

Just a heads up..

Windows 11 26H2 Update Pushes Forced AI Agents, And Breaks Graphics Drivers for Gamers

The Windows 11 2026 Update (26H2) embeds AI agents in Settings and Task Manager, but gamers report broken GPU drivers, black screens, and TDR crashes.

respawnfirst.com

 

[BS Dave]

... fsr4 for Linux a priority!!!

 

[Dicehunter]

Didn't someone patch in the black ops preview to cyberpunk and it resulted in wobbliness? I can only assume it's been given more time in the machine learning oven. @AMD_Vik give is a wink if that's anywhere near the truth?

I know the guy working on drivers is doing his best but we could probably crowdsource some money for a bit of overtime...

I read there were 2 people at AMD that worked on drivers but 1 has left so 1 man is now left to do GPU drivers, Likely why these things are taking extremely long.

 

[Brutal biff]

Just a heads up..

Windows 11 26H2 Update Pushes Forced AI Agents, And Breaks Graphics Drivers for Gamers

The Windows 11 2026 Update (26H2) embeds AI agents in Settings and Task Manager, but gamers report broken GPU drivers, black screens, and TDR crashes.

respawnfirst.com

linux gets more and more appealing only downside i cant play some of my games on it

 

[BS Dave]

I read there were 2 people at AMD that worked on drivers but 1 has left so 1 man is now left to do GPU drivers, Likely why these things are taking extremely long.

And there was me thinking I was just joking. Surely they can afford more than one guy? AMDs relatively cheap pricing and faster better drivers are ehat is going to take customers from Nvidia. As always defeat from the jaws of victory

 

[MyBrainz]

Just a heads up..

Windows 11 26H2 Update Pushes Forced AI Agents, And Breaks Graphics Drivers for Gamers

The Windows 11 2026 Update (26H2) embeds AI agents in Settings and Task Manager, but gamers report broken GPU drivers, black screens, and TDR crashes.

respawnfirst.com

Not seeing any AI stuff added since updating to 26H2.. love how I can now get rid of the 'category' junk in the Start menu that I never used and now make all the icons smaller. Also played a couple of hours of DayZ earlier on the latest 26.9.2 driver, ran great without any crashing. Not even seeing any added AI stuff in settings etc.. it all looks normal.

I have turned off 'Text and image generation' and 'Foreground text access' under Privacy & Security but I always turn almost all of these off anyway.

Not sure what people are crying about at the moment, maybe its the usual Windows bugs that we usually get and they are just blaming this update, but 'for now' its all running peachy for me.

We shall see if I have just jinxed myself lol

 

[chaosophy]

Not seeing any AI stuff added since updating to 26H2.. love how I can now get rid of the 'category' junk in the Start menu that I never used and now make all the icons smaller. Also played a couple of hours of DayZ earlier on the latest 26.9.2 driver, ran great without any crashing. Not even seeing any added AI stuff in settings etc.. it all looks normal.

I have turned off 'Text and image generation' and 'Foreground text access' under Privacy & Security but I always turn almost all of these off anyway.

Not sure what people are crying about at the moment, maybe its the usual Windows bugs that we usually get and they are just blaming this update, but 'for now' its all running peachy for me.

We shall see if I have just jinxed myself lol

Are you on a Pro license or Home?
I also always read articles like these then go to check my PC and see practically none of the things being mentioned and I just put it down to being on Pro, not Home.
Really wish more of these articles would actually test these things and compare versions, rather than just be a 'some guy on reddit "news" aggregation site'.

 

[MyBrainz]

Are you on a Pro license or Home?
I also always read articles like these then go to check my PC and see practically none of the things being mentioned and I just put it down to being on Pro, not Home.
Really wish more of these articles would actually test these things and compare versions, rather than just be a 'some guy on reddit "news" aggregation site'.

26H2 on 2 PC's I had forgot I did my second PC this morning. Both Pro, one has Shupup10+++ installed on it and the other does not and both look the same regarding the update.

 

[AMD_Vik]

And there was me thinking I was just joking. Surely they can afford more than one guy? AMDs relatively cheap pricing and faster better drivers are ehat is going to take customers from Nvidia. As always defeat from the jaws of victory

there's hundreds of sw engineers working on driver software for both windows and linux. i gather the "two guys" thing is a bit of a gag but like, there's dozens on kernel mode driver development alone. there's each individual team for usermode drivers (d3d9 and below, d3d10 and 11, d3d12, opengl, vulkan). there's display abstraction layer, there's firmware and security, multimedia and video, gfx compute (opencl, hip+rocm, others), user interface, packaging and install, audio, and many more i'm surely missing.

if two people could cover those domains in their entirety, i would seriously be impressed.

 

[Dicehunter]

there's hundreds of sw engineers working on driver software for both windows and linux. i gather the "two guys" thing is a bit of a gag but like, there's dozens on kernel mode driver development alone. there's each individual team for usermode drivers (d3d9 and below, d3d10 and 11, d3d12, opengl, vulkan). there's display abstraction layer, there's firmware and security, multimedia and video, gfx compute (opencl, hip+rocm, others), user interface, packaging and install, audio, and many more i'm surely missing.

if two people could cover those domains in their entirety, i would seriously be impressed.

I know you can't say much due to corpo rules but realistically could we expect any work done for bringing FSR4 to Vulkan ? Several games, Namely Star Citizen, Use Vulkan and right now AMD users have access to either FSR2 which is plain horrible or the engines own upscaler which falls short of DLSS that is available to Nvidia users.

Even Star Citizens own devs have previously said they would love to implement FSR4 but due to AMD they cannot so AMD users are left with inferior upscaling options while Nvidia users get their own upscaler that provides superior image quality.

 

[humbug]

I know you can't say much due to corpo rules but realistically could we expect any work done for bringing FSR4 to Vulkan ? Several games, Namely Star Citizen, Use Vulkan and right now AMD users have access to either FSR2 which is plain horrible or the engines own upscaler which falls short of DLSS that is available to Nvidia users.

Even Star Citizens own devs have previously said they would love to implement FSR4 but due to AMD they cannot so AMD users are left with inferior upscaling options while Nvidia users get their own upscaler that provides superior image quality.

He has a point..... i don't think that AMD should follow everything Nvidia do, i think the jury is still out on DLSS 5.

But what about the basic's? Like a per-game REBAR toggle?

FSR 4 for Vulkan?

https://twitter.com/x/status/2095628564334800936

No Man's Sky is not the only game running on Vulkan, Star Citizen has the same problem, Squadron 42 will too, the irony is if i'm on Linux i could get FSR4 working with Star Citizen, its a bit of a workaround, you have to use the right Proton version and Optiscaler but you can do it, if a modders can get it working on Linux why don't AMD just do it natively for both Windows and Linux?

It does feel like if you chose AMD you don't really matter, the software support is minimal effort.

Boulders Gate 3 is also Vulkan.

Hello Games: Light No Fire will be Vulkan... Tides of Annihilation is, Cronos: The New Dawn, Arknights: Endfield

These are critically claimed games running on Vulkan, what are we doing? You invented the API the least you could do is support it, AMD.

You're making us look stupid in front of our Nvidia friends.

 

[Dicehunter]

Boulders Gate 3 is also Vulkan.

Hello Games: Light No Fire will be Vulkan... Tides of Annihilation is, Cronos: The New Dawn, Arknights: Endfield

These are critically claimed games running on Vulkan, what are we doing? You invented the API the least you could do is support it, AMD.

You're making us look stupid in front of our Nvidia friends.

This is why a lot of people opt to go with Nvidia instead, AMD's hardware is really good but the software support is crap, And you know things are bad when even devs like HelloGames are saying they can't do anything until AMD decides to move their collective asses.

 

[humbug]

Oh no....

Context, i've been having random issues with the GPU being disconnected, screen goes black, fans 100%..... this while gaming, i don't know if its the GPU or PSU but this happened today just browsing the net.

 

[Noxia]

Tech analysis: Something is indeed goosed

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Oh no....

Context, i've been having random issues with the GPU being disconnected, screen goes black, fans 100%..... this while gaming, i don't know if its the GPU or PSU but this happened today just browsing the net.

My guess is that whatever the cause is, it's just gone out of warranty...

Guess it's a good excuse for an upgrade though! Bad timing if it's the GPU though...

Couldn't just be a driver issue could it? Have you tried a reinstall or a rollback if you recently upgraded?

 

[humbug]

My guess is that whatever the cause is, it's just gone out of warranty...

Guess it's a good excuse for an upgrade though! Bad timing if it's the GPU though...

Couldn't just be a driver issue could it? Have you tried a reinstall or a rollback if you recently upgraded?

The system froze opening Spotify, weird thing is while the screen was frozen on one image and the system not responding... after about 20 seconds of me staring at it disapprovingly it started playing my Spotify Play List, computer was still frozen but it played Spotify...

I hard reset it and once loaded back in i noticed my HDR no longer worked, i turned the monitor off and on, unplugged and plugged the DP cable in and out. i can't remember what i did but some more prodding around i get a windows notification that there is no GPU installed, i checked Device Manager:> error code 22 on the GPU, i think it was, could have been code 21 i don't remember.

I reinstalled the drivers, that's when i got the errors in the screenshot i posted.

After that i rebooted...... and now it seems to be working fine again! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[humbug]

What's really annoying..

I don't know if this is Windows, AMD's drivers, Faulty PSU, Faulty GPU, i doubt its the CPU or RAM as i hard-stressed them overnight to rule them out, they passed with 0 errors, maybe the Motherboard? I bought the same board during covid and it arrived semi DOA, the No 1 PCIe X16 didn't work at all, i got sent a replacement, same board which has been trouble free for 6 years but whose to say the reason that PCIe slot was not working on the original is because its a weak point on this board?
I still have the original DOA board, rainforest refused to take it back. because of the lurgy?

Without having a spare PC or access to one its hard to diagnose, made even harder given that after swapping PSU cables after suffering back screen crashes it was perfectly fine again for a week. Its so random and intermittent.

 

[Dicehunter]

What's really annoying..

I don't know if this is Windows, AMD's drivers, Faulty PSU, Faulty GPU, i doubt its the CPU or RAM as i hard-stressed them overnight to rule them out, they passed with 0 errors, maybe the Motherboard? I bought the same board during covid and it arrived semi DOA, the No 1 PCIe X16 didn't work at all, i got sent a replacement, same board which has been trouble free for 6 years but whose to say the reason that PCIe slot was not working on the original is because its a weak point on this board?
I still have the original DOA board, rainforest refused to take it back. because of the lurgy?

Without having a spare PC or access to one its hard to diagnose, made even harder given that after swapping PSU cables after suffering back screen crashes it was perfectly fine again for a week. Its so random and intermittent.

Just to be on the safe side you should buy a new GPU, 9070XT is quite nice