News AMD Radeon Software Reportedly Alters CPU Settings Without User Knowledge

[Admin]

Igor’s lab investigated an issue regarding AMD’s Adrenalin GPU software that purportedly changes Ryzen CPU settings within the BIOS without the user’s permission.

AMD Radeon Software Reportedly Alters CPU Settings Without User Knowledge : Read more

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

have seen quite a few complaints recently with users of AMD graphics claiming their Power Plan profile's CPU settings weren't being followed and that BIOS settings seemed to be getting overwritten.

this would seem to explain it...

 

[-Fran-]

Damn. That sounds really annoying for people that likes fine-tuning their settings.

Come on, AMD. Fix it xD

Regards.

 

[spongiemaster]

Damn. That sounds really annoying for people that likes fine-tuning their settings.

Come on, AMD. Fix it xD

Regards.

Fix? You really think this wasn't intentional?

 

[drea.drechsler]

I'm left a bit confused by the translation. It sounds like it may not make changes unless you use a Radeon Settings Profile for overclocking GPU. If so then using MSI Afterburner may not do that. Which would help explain why I've had much better stability, with better results, since I started using Afterburner for overclocking my 5700XT.

I only load Radeon Settings so I can enable SVR, RSR, SAM and a few other things.

Fix? You really think this wasn't intentional?

I'd agree it probably was intentional: the FIX would be to give users an 'opt-out'.

 

[watzupken]

This is intentional for sure. AMD have always advertised that you will get the most when you pair an AMD CPU with GPU. In this case, I think AMD may have overstepped the boundary. On a laptop, I think it is a good feature. But on desktop where people may have their own CPU settings, they should never fiddle with it. I do hope this is not some dodgy method of boosting performance in games.

 

[-Fran-]

Fix? You really think this wasn't intentional?

Yeah. AMD isn't Intel or nVidia

Regards.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I don’t use their software except for the drivers and that’s it no extra garbage for me

and the reason for this is if you don’t just install the drivers only it automatically includes you and their user experience which gobbles up tons of your bandwidth without your permission. I got so sick of their garbage that I don’t use Radeon software at all and I never will again

 

[Colif]

it has to be intentional, why else would they integrate Ryzen master into the GPU drivers otherwise?

Since the release of AMD’s GPU driver “Adrenalin 22.3.1”, the Ryzen Master module, which is now firmly integrated into the driver, also tries to make changes to the CPU configuration when loading a GPU profile in the driver.

May contain traces of Ryzen Master - Does the graphics card driver secretly change BIOS settings of the CPU? | igor´sLAB

Disclaimer: The following article is machine translated from the original German, and has not been edited or checked for errors. Thank you for understanding!

www.igorslab.de

its an unannounced "feature" to make the AMD combo better.

 

[-Fran-]

Ryzen Master integrated into the Radeon suite is intentional. The behaviour I'm almost positive is not.

The GPU settings are always "default" when you go there and you have to accept the EULA to enable that setting. Same with the CPU's side. So, yeah, this must be an unintended thing as they void your warranty if you accept that EULA and start tweaking. Also, it's the same with the Intel OC software. It's, more or less, the same EULA that tells you it'll void your warranty.

Regards.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

It’s bolloks

 

[drivinfast247]

Total malarkey!

 

[SpenReyn]

This behavior has been normal in Ryzen Master since its release, and simply because you can't have two pieces of software overclocking the CPU at the same time. BIOS settings on the motherboard can interfere with the driver's ability to control voltage levels, etc. The same thing happened to me when I installed a motherboard overclocking utility from the motherboard's manufacturer, when I used the software on my desktop, it set the BIOS settings to default, and the software controlled the overclocking from the OS.

 

[-Fran-]

This behavior has been normal in Ryzen Master since its release, and simply because you can't have two pieces of software overclocking the CPU at the same time. BIOS settings on the motherboard can interfere with the driver's ability to control voltage levels, etc. The same thing happened to me when I installed a motherboard overclocking utility from the motherboard's manufacturer, when I used the software on my desktop, it set the BIOS settings to default, and the software controlled the overclocking from the OS.

That's an interesting piece of information.

I've never installed Ryzen Master because I do all tweaking from the BIOS, so I had no idea this was "normal" for any OC software running at the OS level. If this is known by AMD then, they have to change that behaviour for sure. It sucks.

Regards.

 

[SpenReyn]

That's an interesting piece of information.

I've never installed Ryzen Master because I do all tweaking from the BIOS, so I had no idea this was "normal" for any OC software running at the OS level. If this is known by AMD then, they have to change that behaviour for sure. It sucks.

Regards.

The only thing they could change is have a very plain and obvious message telling users "proceeding will remove any BIOS overclocking settings, do you wish to proceed?". That is already contained in the long legalese paragraph/warning that comes up when you try to overclock anything, but I agree they should make it more obvious.

 

[Giroro]

I've been 100% avoiding AMD Ryzen Master, because the one time I tried it the program broke some setting in Windows which permanently locked my 3700X into a reduced-performance Eco mode that could only be fixed by reinstalling Windows. (I tried every possible way of trying to clean that software off my PC) My settings in BIOS were right, but it changed back to the bad settings whenever that broken windows profile was loaded. The settings in the BIOS never changed, just windows would do its own thing after startup.

That said, I don't see how a Windows App could actually go into the BIOS and change settings at that level. That would be terrifying, if possible. I also don't see how BIOS changes could stop OC software from changing settings in Windows, because that's not what happened for me.

 

[waltc3]

If I read this article correctly, then the "fix" is extremely easy: do not use the default Adrenalin settings... I try not to in every case. I always plug in my own settings and I make custom game profiles for every game I run so that I can set them all a bit differently if I want. I have had a 5700XT and now a 6700 XT running the latest Adrenalins and have not seen this at all. I've never seen these adrenalins overwrite my CPU bios settings in any event, whatsoever.

Sounds to me that he's become confused between RyzenMaster and the Adrenalins--Ryzen Master will most certainly write in its own bios settings the minute you hit "apply" (which is why it asks you to reboot when testing and applying)--I've seen that many times. But Ryzen Master is intended primarily for users who know little to nothing about overclocking but for some reason want to try it, anyway. I don't use it anymore. It's not bad or anything, I just don't need it. It's also possible that he's running the "overclock" function of the Adrenalins, which I never use, either.

It would have been nice had the author of this piece been able to duplicate the assertions himself--which apparently he could not for whatever reason. As I say (see sig), I've never seen this happen, and I go into the bios frequently.

 

[Deleted member 431422]

I'm confused. The article is about Ryzen Master or Adrenaline software. Whatever the case PBO on a CPU voids warranty, as mentioned before, and shouldn't be enabled without user consent. The whole issue looks like a bug, otherwise AMD would face some nasty legal backlash. The author should mention it applies to discrete GPU, because my current setup, a Ryzen 5 Pro 3350G falls into a AMD CPU+GPU category and I thought I might be affected.
I should mention I have latest Ryzen Master installed, cuz it's the only software that shows proper values for AMD CPU's. It's a monitoring tool, cuz I can't do much with my CPU with it anyway.
The only issue I noticed with installing latest Adrenaline version is change to Win10 power plan "CPU energy management --> CPU min state" setting. I keep it at 40%, new install defaults it to 90%.

 

[lothear]

Ah I was wondering when more anti AMD propaganda would show up here, seems to be always close to new hardware releases...

I love AMD software and not have really on sketchy 3rd party overclocking software like MSI afterburner.

Also the Adrenalin suite blows away that NT era Nvidia control panel in ease of use, look and feel. Feels so much more modern...

 

[drea.drechsler]

Ryzen Master integrated into the Radeon suite is intentional. The behaviour I'm almost positive is not.
...

I can't fathom a good reason to include RyzenMaster services unless the purpose is to access BIOS level settings. There are many methods aside from RM (AMD wrote the book on that, IIRC) to monitor CPU performance so that can't be it. So I would accept the behaviour is intentional.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I love AMD software and not have really on sketchy 3rd party overclocking software like MSI afterburner.

Also the Adrenalin suite blows away that NT era Nvidia control panel in ease of use, look and feel. Feels so much more modern...

It may look sharp but AMD's settings UI has been off and on buggy ever since the ATI Catalyst days before AMD took over. It's settled down a lot in the last year and a half. When I first got my 5700XT it was absolutely horrible. I don't blame the drivers either as that's when I started doing driver-only installs and running Afterburner as my overclocking tool. I sidestepped almost all the problems, aside from game specific problems which frequently spring from poor driver level optimizations.

I definitely don't consider AfterBurner 'sketch'. It's been around a very long time and is very well supported.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...I have latest Ryzen Master installed, cuz it's the only software that shows proper values for AMD CPU's. It's a monitoring tool...

It's actually a very poor monitoring tool because it's well known to interfere with system performance. But it was never intended to be one: it's a tool for dynamic overclocking without having to restart the system. Useful for competitive overclocking where performance isn't really the goal, just raw clock speeds, but not for day to day use.

And you are mistaken about nothing else reporting proper values: HWInfo64 does. And reports much more completely too. I understand HWMonitor of latest revisions does too but haven't verified it.

 

[passivecool]

Nice that TH still regularly quotes IGOR after throwing him out.

 

[TerryLaze]

That said, I don't see how a Windows App could actually go into the BIOS and change settings at that level. That would be terrifying, if possible. I also don't see how BIOS changes could stop OC software from changing settings in Windows, because that's not what happened for me.

The same way that bios saves settings, the bios has a very small memory area that is volatile (writable) and if you know the values you can just write the values you want to that address.

Memory Map (x86) - OSDev Wiki

wiki.osdev.org

 

[Phaaze88]

It's actually a very poor monitoring tool because it's well known to interfere with system performance. But it was never intended to be one: it's a tool for dynamic overclocking without having to restart the system. Useful for competitive overclocking where performance isn't really the goal, just raw clock speeds, but not for day to day use.

So RM is akin to Intel's XTU in that sense...