AMD users may want to exercise some degree of caution before installing AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.2.1, the new driver package that red team released yesterday with performance improvements and updated features for Radeon RX 6000 Series and Radeon RX 7900 Series graphics products. According to what is said to be a growing amount of complaints on various forums and social media, the new drivers may corrupt Windows installations, requiring affected users to set up their machines all over again. Some say that the issue stems from the drivers changing BIOS settings, while others say that they haven’t run into the alleged problem.
From an AMD Community blog post:
Each driver undergoes countless hours of testing across thousands of different configurations, but ultimately, there will still be some issues due to how vast and complex the PC and gaming ecosystems are. We have a dedicated team that actively monitors our community for any issues that are raised online or through the Bug Report Tool found within the Adrenalin software. Several user-reported issues were identified and resolved for this release, including:
- AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition may fail to launch with the error message “Delayed Write Failed” on Microsoft Windows 11 version 22H2.
- Poor performance and load time may be observed while playing SpaceEngine.
- Corruption may be observed while scrolling the points shop in STEAM on Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs.
- Performance drop may be observed during Fortnite and YouTube playback with Enhanced Sync enabled on some AMD Graphics Products such as AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics.
- Corruption or game crash may be observed while playing Door Kickers 2.
- Missing or flickering textures may be observed while playing Emergency 4.
- Application crash may be observed when launching Baldur’s Gate 3 using Vulkan API on Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs.
- Stuttering may be observed while playing Sea of Thieves on Radeon RX 6000 graphics and above series GPUs.
- Corruption may be observed while playing Battlefield 4 with Post Process Quality settings set to high or ultra on Radeon RX 6000 series graphics and above.
- Intermittent system stuttering or UI flickering may occur when two videos are simultaneously playing using chromium-based browsers on some multi-display configurations.
[Update] The driver seems to change BIOS settings. Check the boot options when your system doesn't boot after installing the driver. Do not just reinstall the OS.
— CapFrameX (@CapFrameX) February 15, 2023