Question Are The AMD Drivers For The Radeon 5700 XT Really That Bad.

Dec 24, 2019
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I want to build a pc with a Sapphire Pulse Radeon 5700 XT graphics card. It seems like a very good card with alot of value, but many people have commented that amd have very bad drivers. I’m a little froghtned by this as i dont want to spend 400 dollars on a graphic card for it to constantly crash. Are the AMD really that bad, and if so, which GPU should i go for?
 

ShadowLinkX37

Reputable
Jun 14, 2019
23
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I would stay away from AMD drivers currently. I have a Red Devil 5700XT with all updated drivers, sufficient power etc and I believe it crashes constantly. I can't pin down the problem and why it's occuring, but it points heavily to the GPU or the drivers being faulty. I would highly suggest you go for an Nvidia 2060 super card. Although they're more expensive slightly and also less power for gaming, I had zero issues with the Nvidia drivers for the 3.5 years I had my 980Ti
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
I would stay away from AMD drivers currently. I have a Red Devil 5700XT with all updated drivers, sufficient power etc and I believe it crashes constantly. I can't pin down the problem and why it's occuring, but it points heavily to the GPU or the drivers being faulty. I would highly suggest you go for an Nvidia 2060 super card. Although they're more expensive slightly and also less power for gaming, I had zero issues with the Nvidia drivers for the 3.5 years I had my 980Ti
This sounds like a heat and/or power issue, not drivers.
 

60frames

Great
Jun 4, 2019
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I want to build a pc with a Sapphire Pulse Radeon 5700 XT graphics card. It seems like a very good card with alot of value, but many people have commented that amd have very bad drivers. I’m a little froghtned by this as i dont want to spend 400 dollars on a graphic card for it to constantly crash. Are the AMD really that bad, and if so, which GPU should i go for?
Just do not buy the cheapest 5700xt out there and you will be good. Buy the Nitro version of the 5700xt. Keep your system clean and do not use 3rd party software. Just use the AMD cleanup utility when you buy the card. The issues that you have heard are temporary and AMD is already working on it. Even I had some issues with my AMD card (RX 460) but they were fixed after some months of launch.
 
The last 3 cards I've owned were AMD. They really need to fix their driver issues as those seem to be ongoing at times. I can't say I've had the issues you all here have had, but it does seem after they get the initial things worked out, the cards are good. If they could just get them stable to where they don't crash at launch they would be in better shape.
 
Jan 4, 2020
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I just received the 5700xt and had one issue with the black screen on 19.12.3. After seeing many go back to driver 19.12.1 it has helped, no issues so far and seems to be running smoothly.
 
Glad it is working for you. I would stay with that and keep an eye out for new releases and see if anyone has any notes on them.

Edit: went over to amd.com and they have the 19.12.3 drivers listed. But looks like those show up as optional. If you go down a little further, they show 19.12.2 as recommended. So it may be 19.12.2 is the stable version and .3 is basically beta. But since folks are having luck with 19.12.1, if you can get that version, that may be the one to get for now also.
 
Last edited:
Jan 4, 2020
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Glad it is working for you. I would stay with that and keep an eye out for new releases and see if anyone has any notes on them.

Edit: went over to amd.com and they have the 19.12.3 drivers listed. But looks like those show up as optional. If you go down a little further, they show 19.12.2 as recommended. So it may be 19.12.2 is the stable version and .3 is basically beta. But since folks are having luck with 19.12.1, if you can get that version, that may be the one to get for now also.

You do bring up a good point. The first driver I downloaded was 19.12.2 and it did seem to work properly, but I didn't really test it too much, I then went to 19.12.3 and that is when I had one issue but didn't want to keep testing and reverted to 19.12.1. I'll wait until I see progress on new drivers before I change over.
 

M3rKn

Respectable
Nov 13, 2019
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1,890
I recently bought into a Gigabyte Aorus 5700xt. Are there issues? Well it depends on who you ask. I have not gotten any black screens or game crashes. These seem to be the major issues. I do however have a few things to nit pick.

I first did a full driver and Radeon software install (19.10.2) because this was stated to be the most stable driver per the community. The software was working fine for me, but I noticed the fans would not spin. Then I realized you have to disable the auto fan stop. Easy fix, but even with it disabled sometimes the fans wouldn't spin. Once I had gotten some load on the card the fans got jet plane loud. Also the performance/frame rates were a little below what I was expecting. I tried fixing this with Wattman by setting custom fan profiles and disabling enhancements, but none of those things really fixed anything for me.

I am used to using MSI Afterburner, and it was what I had initially attempted to use to control the card, but whenever I launched MSIAB my screen flickered every 5 or so seconds, and would not stop unless I closed AB completely. Minimizing it wouldn't help and the issue continued. This also meant the in game overlay was unusable because my screen would flicker every 5 seconds.

For a few days now I have been on a drivers only install of the latest recommended drivers (20.11.3). I used 7zip to unpack the AMD drivers. I went into safe mode and did a DDU of all drivers and Radeon software (as I did before with my INVIDIA drivers before installing the new card). I then used device manager to update the display adapters and did a driver only install.

End results are I can use MSIAB without any screen flickering, the card doesn't sound like a jet plane (can't hear it anymore), I do not have the Radeon Malware and performance killing extras, the performance of the card has bumped up to what I was initially expecting,.
 

Jorma04

Reputable
Nov 28, 2019
78
17
4,565
I want to build a pc with a Sapphire Pulse Radeon 5700 XT graphics card. It seems like a very good card with alot of value, but many people have commented that amd have very bad drivers. I’m a little froghtned by this as i dont want to spend 400 dollars on a graphic card for it to constantly crash. Are the AMD really that bad, and if so, which GPU should i go for?
Personally no major issues with AMD drivers Minor bugs that get fixed after a few days.
 
I want to build a pc with a Sapphire Pulse Radeon 5700 XT graphics card. It seems like a very good card with alot of value....
I personally know 5 people with 5700/XT's and all 5 have experienced really very few problems with their cards beyond the usual game problems. Including myself, some have had problems with some titles (Ghost Recon Breakpoint which is a mess and really strange since it was a game bundle for the card). But updates with the game and doing a proper CLEAN install of the drivers has fixed it mostly...GRB does continue to be super sensitive to overclocking for me.

I think you have to consider that problems come from a number of things including: not doing a proper job of cleaning up old drivers, overclocking too far for stability (video card, CPU, memory, whatever) and driving game settings beyond what their card and computer can handle for a particular game. Then last but not least, we come to the driver issues that come and go with updates and belong to AMD for a fix. If you COULD completely eliminate the first ones I do wonder how many of the last one would remain. And there's the problem: how many people are truly setting up their system stable and clean before hitting the nets to cry out loud.

Finally, I also feel a lot of the 5700/XT buyers are former, and skeptical, Nvidia owners looking for value who don't mind getting caught up in drama while forgetting the problems they had with their prior cards.