State of AMD Drivers, a 2020 Review: The overlay sound effect can't be disabled. Wattman is STILL broken. It is literally a requirement to use OverdriveNTool to get custom tuning to work. IMO, this is a "bug" that has existed for so long, while 3rd party tools work, that I now think AMD has broken Wattman ON PURPOSE. How else do you explain 3rd party editing works, while driver controls do not? Also, every card since Vega has issues hitting boost clocks without manual overrides. I have steam friends who report the 5700 XT is completely broken, and forums are full of error reports with NO KNOWN WORKING DRIVER. Vega HBCC will crash your system, doesn't work. FRTC was removed, apparently had "issues" with latency, but EVERYONE would rather use FRTC than CHILL, especially since CHILL is broken garbage, especially on 5700 cards. Drivers have had TDR BSOD's since 9.x, reportedly now fixed, but forums report settings "TdrDelay" to "8" to fix BSOD's. Not a good look for AMD. Also to fix black screens, press Win+Ctrl+Shift+B, which is great feature Microsoft has, but proves AMD drivers are garbage. 2020 is generally good driver, but will occasionally TURN THE SCREEN DARK like low brightness, usually after exiting low power. The only fix is to toggle GPU scaling on/off. 5700 has issues with RAM speeds not entering low power modes (among other issues), which has been a problem ever since AMD broke the 390's powersaving features and no tech site reported on it, only working cards are Fiji/Vega with HBM (barely). 390 powersaving has been broken since Doom 2016, multimonitor completely disables RAM powersaving, driver team LIES ABOUT THIS, saying it's a requirement, but IT WORKED BEFORE. You can chase ALL OF AMD'S DRIVER SHENANIGANS BACK TO THE 390. First, 390 had driver optimizations on release not ported to 290, and same with windows 10 optimizations / draw calls not ported to windows 7. Modders ported drivers to 290, and later AMD backported these fixes. This is where Radeon Image Sharpening tactics ORIGINATED. New cards get a SOFTWARE FEATURE, while older cards have to wait for AMD to backport a ReShade clone / etc. This has been a KNOWN SOURCE OF BUGS since AMD bought ATI, when there were 3 driver teams that screwed up the RAGE launch so badly that AMD had to consolidate the driver team from 3 to 1. ARTIFICIALLY SEGMENTING SOFTWARE FEATURES IS BAD, DON'T DO IT. STOP. Speaking of, all of AMD's APUs have horrible driver support and NO RELIVE options, which makes NO SENSE when the options are in the hardware. Including FREESYNC, which is based off eDP, while eDP freesync is not available. Speaking of, HBCC is a pretty questionable Vega limited feature, as AMD was previously "working" on Fiji memory constraints of 4 GB. Highly likely to be a *software* feature limited to Vega, although it doesn't work stable anyway, or at least not on Ryzen 3700X/32GB/X370, which Ryzen in general is pretty garbage with memory and requires manual timings and 3rd party tools to get said timings. Bad drivers and iffy OS support outside of linux don't help Ryzen either.
Performance Review: All known performance issues can be directly linked to AMD's overly aggressive power saving which CAN NOT BE DISABLED. It doesn't help that most cards are overvolted with limited power limits and fan speeds, and require undervolting and raising fan/powerlimits to hit boost clocks. The CONSTANT UP AND DOWN BOOST CLOCKING RUINS PERFORMANCE, AND CAUSES STUTTERING. You can never achieve a set clockspeed. Games will bounce clocks up and down depending on usage, including going into a game menu. I have experienced these problems with games with built in dynamic resolution, leading me to believe "Radeon Boost" will be a COMPLETE FAILURE due to boost clocks wildly jumping around for each resolution change. Chill works the same. The agressive powersaving BREAKS EVERYTHING, as performance is NOT STABLE with unstable clocks.
Vega 56 fix: P6 1560 @ 1048 mV / P7 1666 @ 1072 mV | Mem 880 @ 910 mV | fan 65 % | Power Target 24% Actual GPU MHz: ~1600.
You can get more powersaving at lower mV, but at the expense of clocks. Same with reverse. This is my ideal compromise for performance / power / stability / 1600 MHz target. You have to pick a MHz target, and tweak for power / stability. Powercolor Red Dragon is one of the best Vega 56's, but uses Hynix HBM. You can not safely bios flash or raise HBM voltage, but it is more power efficient. This is how Vega should have been made, and proves AMD just screwed it up. AMD also screwed up all newer cards by using thermal pads instead of paste. Replacing the pads are not guaranteed easy fix, since the pads are a "fix" for coolers not sitting flush with both HBM / GPU, worst card is Radeon VII.
Bugs: Multimonitor / Don't even try it. Breaks everything including FreeSync, and I don't think AMD cares or tests for it. Borderless window modes still have issues with Overlay. You can only "sorta" get it to work. Custom monitor Overrides still don't support FreeSync ranges, requiring CRU. Nvidia isn't reported to support custom LFC ranges, so I think AMD still has the edge here. If they do, it's not being properly advertised. Freesync is also clearly superior to Gsync at this time, with FS monitors supporting both FS and ULMB simultaneously, as well as having large panel OLEDs cheaper than BFGD. The Gsync shills were wrong. Nvidia is rebranding these monitors as Gsync, because their disinfo campaign was so effective rebranding was necessary. DIAF Gsync shills, even Nvidia admits the truth now, albeit only through rebranding, and lying by omission. Typical Nvidia. Also, I expect less Gsync shilling now that site traffic dropped and Gsync is rebranded. I fully believe Nvidia was paying people to shill Gsync, along with the brainwashed fanboys, but site traffic no longer justifies the cost, and reality has gotten through to most people today. Nvidia should fight on their merits, not lies, and there are decent merits today. AMD's poor power tuning and driver optimization especially.
Overall: New drivers are nice, but AMD clearly doesn't care about fixing any of its REAL PROBLEMS, which are mostly all power saving related, as well as the lesser optimization and artificial product segmenting issues. The hardware and software is completely broken, and requires manual adjustment for acceptable results. Fixing powersaving would resolve 90% of everyone's problems, but AMD is instead putting lipstick on a pig with new driver UIs. I will say the new UI is better, but none of the core problems are being addressed.
Side note: AMD / Nvidia CAN DO RAYTRACING ON NON-RTX HARDWARE, perhaps better than RTX. It is called PTGI, Path Traced Global Illumination, proven to work on existing hardware. AMD has completely FAILED to push developers into using this technology, but it does work on existing hardware. Nvidia on the other hand, may be coercing developers to not use it in favor of RTX.
https://www.patreon.com/sonicether
https://youtu.be/nt2iURehGkE
Also, Minecraft's OFFICIAL Super Duper pack upgrade was cancelled, and Nvidia's RTX mod came out right after. Make up your own mind on what happened, but Nvidia is well know for these tactics. Pulling an Epic Games exclusive deal for RTX titles is extremely shady, and there are several RTX exclusive games now, much like PhysX had exclusives. Not cool. At least Minecraft has modding, but not everything else does.
Scott Wasson on Adrenalin 2020
https://youtu.be/KqA6ol7g10Q
The one button configuration options seem to be mostly useless bloat prone to future bugs outside of easy noob one button. Better to leave this as install option, not in control panel, and just provide better documentation in control panel.
GPU Metrics: No tooltip popup what the history of your GPU clockspeed is, nor has right click options. It only shows a graph and current clockspeed (only when open, no previous history). This may be an indicator that AMD is attempting to hide your clockspeed history of constant fluctuations, which can be directly correlated with FPS drops and stuttering.
Tuning: No set minimum, lol stops those pesky full speeders. No editing secondary memory states or voltage. Fan Tuning disables Zero RPM for no reason. Best to use OverdriveNTool, which proves tuning works, just not the Control Panel, and it is deliberate. Zero RPM disabled is clearly deliberate. Broken Tuning is intended. Not saving your settings is intended. Broken Tuning support *as intended* needs to be strongly frowned upon, by everyone. Especially when Tuning is literally a requirement to get AMD GPUs to work as advertised.
Performance logging: Why can't we log in system memory, and option to save? Maybe I'd like to see logs without saving? Why is logging not an option IN METRICS!? Why no logging tab? Sounds like deliberate obsfucation. MSI Afterburner FTW. Also, logging to a file is completely useless to anyone who doesn't want to view files instead of graphs.
Game Advisor: Why is there no clockspeed Metrics? Seems like AMD is DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO HIDE GPU METRICS. Probably because their aggressive power tuning is screwing performance, and they don't want to tie Frame Times to Power Tuning, which is the reality of AMD's performance issues. Lol @ settings advisor. Tells you everything except how to fix AMD's clockspeed fluctuation issues. Have weird performance glitching? Check your clockspeeds. 90% of all problems. Also, graphs are HIDDEN BY DEFAULT, and require clicking the option.
Metric Overlay Custom text color for Red is: #FF0000
Ridiculous that this is NOT A DROP DOWN OPTION, and you only have White, Blue, Green, Magenta, and Custom. Not only should Red be an option, it should be the default option.
Video quality: Been garbage since CCC went away. There is no upscaling option, and all options make video MORE PIXELATED. This makes 3rd party upscalers like MadVR a requirement to watch any video, as default settings are unusable, and Fluid Motion does not smooth 30 FPS to 60 either. Video options are mostly useless.
Hotkeys: REALLY STUPID DEFAULTS. Ctrl-Shift ANYTHING NEAR WASD IS SUPER BAD IDEA. Try playing Shadow of War kb/m with default hotkeys! You will be constantly triggering every single hotkey that uses a WASD key. Push to Talk is also Mouse Middle, and can't be bound Ctrl-Shift-Middle or Right+Middle. Don't stream any game that uses mouse middle when hotkey enabled. Stupid.
Mobile support: I've had issues with early versions and losing connection. Maybe it's better now (seems so), but if AMD can't get Wattman working, I doubt this will get proper bugfixes either. Streaming to mobile? Get it working over the internet and provide advanced configuration. Also, why is this a hidden option outside of Home/Cogwheel now? DON'T HIDE FEATURES.
VR: I got rid of my Samsung VR, but AMD needs to copy Nvidia's VR "optimization", and make it default (it's partially done in software, and AMD supports most hardware features). Otherwise, speed sucks, and so does VR in general. Also, support 3d monitors. No excuse. You can turn any 144hz panel into 3d with 3d conversion kit.
VR Streaming: is this integrated VR streaming to mobile support? Awesome. There is no documentation or easy access to this function though, not to mention controllers are limited on non dedicated VR, unless there is one I don't know about. IMO, VR Streaming to mobile is the only way to move forward, as VR companies have ruined the market and it won't go anywhere with their control of the market. AMD Bit rate ranges are pretty terrible though. Apparently this is officially for mobile based VR headsets and not specifically phone VR, but this clearly proves VR streaming works, and mobile VR is basically phone VR. Pricegouged VR sets are now dead.
General Video recording: AMD has 3 quality profiles for hardware encoding, low/med/high, and I don't mean bitrate. Default usually is medium, which is not that great. High quality rivals CPU encoding. Hiding this option pisses me off. I shouldn't have to registry edit for it, if there is even a googleable setting, or available outside of 3rd party. This is AMD's hardware equivalent to x264 veryfast-fast-etc. The option should either be available or default high for hardware.
Control Panel Layout: Better and worse. Design is better, while layout now hides all advanced options BEHIND THE COGWHEEL. STOP. Cogwheel setting should be DEFAULT OPTION, or have option to disable NOOB MODE. Noob Mode makes everything harder. Every advanced feature is now hidden behind the Cogwheel mode setting. This doesn't improve ease of use, IT MAKES IT WORSE. The only saving function of forced noob mode is that there is usually a shortcut to go Cogwheel *somewhere*. Also, most advanced settings were thrown into Cogwheel / General, and it is an absolute mess of everything thrown into one tab with NO organization. If you don't need quick access, fine, but this is ridiculous and is in no way "better". One step forward, two steps back.