The Driver Issue: A Year of Complaints and a Promising Update

As I sat down to discuss the latest developments from AMD's CES 2020 conference, one thing was clear: the driver issue has been a persistent problem for the company. "I've been complaining about this for a few years," I said to Andy, "and it's finally starting to feel like they're taking notice." The complaints have been mounting, with many users frustrated by the inconsistent performance and lack of stability in AMD's graphics drivers.

AMD acknowledged the issue, stating that it's "a problem" that they've been aware of for a long time. "It sounds like they know this is a problem and the right people know it's a problem," I said, hoping that this newfound acknowledgment would translate to actual changes. The company has promised to follow up on fan issues, which have been a source of frustration for many users.

To address the driver issue, AMD's team worked closely with me to identify the problems and create a plan to fix them. We used tools like Trello boards and bug reports to document the issues and track progress. It was clear that the team was committed to making changes, and I was impressed by their willingness to listen and take action.

One of the most promising developments is the promise of actual stability pushes and bug fixes in 2020. This is a significant departure from previous years, where AMD's driver updates often seemed to address one issue but introduced new problems elsewhere. While it's still early days and there are no guarantees that all the promised changes will be implemented, I'm hopeful that this marks a turning point for the company.

The Upstream Dynamics of Driver Development

But the driver issue is just one part of a larger conversation about AMD's approach to driver development. At CES 2020, Andy from AMD had the opportunity to discuss some of the challenges they face in terms of responding to user feedback and comments online. "We thought that was kind of obvious," he said, referring to the launch of their new GPU, the 5600 XT.

The 5600 XT is a 36-core unit that uses the same architecture as the 5700, but with some key differences in terms of power consumption and performance per watt. The card is priced at $280, which is significantly lower than Nvidia's equivalent offerings.

Interestingly, Andy pointed out that one of the most common questions he hears from users online is "why does this exist?" This question is easy to answer, according to AMD: it's because they want to compete with Nvidia in the high-end GPU market. "We're obviously going head-to-head with nvidia," he said.

The Legacy of Radeon and the Future of Driver Development

Looking back on previous years' drivers, it's clear that AMD still has some work to do. The company has struggled to match the performance and reliability of Nvidia's GPUs, particularly in terms of power consumption and stability.

However, AMD is committed to improving their driver development process for 2020. They've acknowledged the issues with fan control and promised to address them, as well as improve overall stability and performance. It's a promising start, and I'm hopeful that this marks a turning point for the company.

The Conversation: CES 2020 Trade Show Highlights

In addition to the driver issue, there were several other topics of discussion at AMD's CES 2020 conference. One of the more lighthearted moments came when Andy was asked about how they respond to comments online. "We did call best overall for 2019," he said, referring to their flagship GPU, the RX 5700 XT.

However, this is where things get interesting: AMD pointed out that one of the most common comments they hear from users online is that Nvidia is "not good enough" compared to Radeon's GPUs. This is a tricky situation, as it sounds like AMD is trying to respond to criticism rather than engage in a constructive dialogue with their customers.

Despite this, I'm hopeful that AMD is taking steps in the right direction. By acknowledging the issues with their drivers and promising to address them, they're showing that they value user feedback and are committed to improving their products.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe're at CES 2020 and just got done speaking with AMD we're actually in the msi booth right now where there's a bit more space to film but we spoke with AMD about a few things on the topic for this specific video is what's going on with the drivers and the reason i wanted to focus on that for the for our meeting with an these graphics team is that the GPU is physically as Hardware they're pretty good now objectively AMD's in a good spot for performance but the one thing that's constantly criticized by us and by more so than us is by users was the driver package so we decided to talk to em D and asked you're clearly aware of this issue right what's the plan to fix it that's what we're gonna talk about today along with some additional clarification notes on the 5,600 XT which was announced earlier in the show before that this video is brought to you by Squarespace Squarespace is what we've been using for years to manage our own gamers Nexus store and we've been incredibly happy with the choice Squarespace makes ecommerce easy for those interested in starting stores but it also has powerful tools to build all types of websites photo galleries for photographers resume and portfolio sites and small business sites are all easily done through Squarespace having built a lot of client websites the old way before running GN full-time we can easily recommend Squarespace has a powerful fast solution go to squarespace.com slash gamers nexus to get 10% off your first purchase with Squarespace let's start with a driver story our China position on this 2019 we gave the 5700 XE Best Overall for the GPU the downside was the one major downside was that drivers in a lot of instances were still kind of questionable for some users specifically to monster games had to return cars we've heard about because the card the drivers weren't playing well with the system as a whole and then the other issue is just weird things like the fan profiles not quite working and we showed AMD some of our screen grabs of those bugs while we're in the meeting span profiles not working since Vega frontier edition general bugginess in the driver package but then still doing a major overhaul that completely changes the UI so it's almost like what's really the the focus here because you're improving the a the UI and the user experience before fixing the bugs so actually it's not improving the user experience so that's the problem with and these cards even if it's working great for you and the 5700 XTS we don't really have too many major critical system breaking bugs anymore there are a lot of people who still have those and when we recommended the the 57 RFC is best overall one of the comments towards the top of the of the video was well I wanted to like it I bought it but I had to return it because it didn't work so I asked AMD about that and the message that Andy's kind of sticking with here on this one is adrenaline 2020 that December launch driver package fancy new UI and everything the goal for that was to reset and revamp the UI it's Andy's wording for that and make it more accessible so wat man was the given example of that we can speak to this where wat man we used it because we had to and that was the only reason because afterburner we're in the msi suite after all afterburner wears far better when it when it works with the card but a lot of the time you were stuck using wot man just because of compatibility issues so anyway Andy acknowledge that wot man was kind of difficult to work with and they've tried to improve it with the new adrenaline 2020 update there were Andy said that they are continuously monitoring issues on forums and they especially monitor Reddit and forums around launch so they do see the complaints and try to act on them now one of the concerns I had that I did bring up in this meeting was we've wee voice the same issue raised the same concerns with AMD since bigger fronts here edition with these drivers and every time I bring it up with someone the the good side of it is I bring up with someone today MD and they say oh wow I didn't know about that that's that's concerning that's annoying whatever let me try and get this fixed then every time it's like it's a new story to someone I talk to which the problem there should go ahead okay cool this person cares enough that they're reacting in a way that seems like they they genuinely want to fix the issue with the driver that I'm whatever I'm talking about at the time but then it doesn't go anywhere because the next person has never heard of it a fixed number comes out so I brought that point up Andy's aware of it it sounds like there's a bit better internal communication now between the teams so you have to remember the GPU Hardware team is different from the software team so there's some coms there as many companies within another mini company of AMD ultimately so there's some comms that where you can have some I guess signal-to-noise issues but it sounds like they're trying to fix the internal communication to get those issues as they're brought up past to the right people and fixed and in media we do see a lot of the issues before they go out to public anyway because we have early samples so there's a possibility that this could be if AMD can properly communicate it internally and get stuff fixed as as media raises the issue there's a possibility that this could be a major help to the drivers we have to see it actually happen but another thing I have to note is that the features are done at this point and they're focusing now on stability so all the fancy features fancy UI that was totally unnecessary but it looks good I guess they're they're supposed to be done with that stuff and focusing on fixing crashes black screens weird bugs where the fan speed doesn't set and resets itself all that and the point that is often brought up almost every year with the Radeon group or anyone remotely close to radio and graphics is that Nvidia control panel looks old like 90s old or early two-thousands old and my response is always the same which is but it works and I know where the stuff is and it doesn't move and change the names and it doesn't crash and most of time so Andy's aware of this - and it sounds like I could say this from my meetings over there the right people want to fix the product so that's really good that's really encouraging it's just a matter of it getting done so the fact that someone actually wants to fix it I'm like a lot of the companies we work with where you kind of talk to PR and they okay whatever they don't really report back the issue to the PM's or the people actually in charge of fixing things the fact that AMD wants to actually improve the the drivers is the first step another thing that AMD noted it it's promising on following up on the fan issue that I've been complaining about for a few years I actually sort of believe them this time because the the people I was talking to genuinely seem like they want to fix that problem and I came prepared I had a Trello board I made with bug reports of steps to reproduce and jiff captures of the issue and I think that was enough to finally get some attention on the problems I've had so I basically treated it like a bug report for any any company if you were working there's a test technician separately let's see it looks like I think it's just a matter of getting stuff up the chain so anyway if you've been wondering come on idea what's the deal with the drivers get the drug get it together because the hardware is good but the drivers are still the toughest point for a cell or the toughest point for a customer who doesn't know a lot about troubleshooting then it sounds like they know this is a problem and the right people know it's a problem and like I said now it's just it's kind of hard to trust too much because we've heard this so often but from what I heard today I'm hoping that the right people are trying to fix the problem and we'll see it sounds like maybe for 2020 properly there should be some actual stability pushes and bug fixes and there's already been one for this year that I haven't tested yeah that's fixed a few other problems I complained about I think so anyway that sounds promising is where I'll probably leave the driver discussion if you're curious what I am that you had to say about it that's more or less what it was that are aware of the issues so the other upside here is it's not like Andy's saying we don't we don't see any problem with the drivers at all what are you talking about its acknowledgement which I can't emphasize enough how rare that is in this industry where typically you get I've never heard that before and that's the go to PR answer to complain so anyway that it sounds like a positive direction for Andy driver said one other thing I want to bring up one of the the more fun topics I like to ask for manufacturers at trade shows is okay so after your announcement did you look at comments online and if so what's the common misconception or what's the thing you want to respond to the most because I'm curious if they are as tortured by comments as we often are and the answer was for the 5600 XT launch apparently there are a lot of questions of why does this exist and we thought that was kind of obvious so if you're not aware of the 5600 XT it's a 36 TV unit same C used as the 5700 but they can kind of fuse between them based on supply is pretty common approach for segmentation that I'm fine with actually it's Bend for lower leakage so the goal is to focus on performance per watt rather than just peak clock performance so focusing on power leak there's a way to do that but why does it exist comment I think should be pretty easy to answer it's $280 part comes in same as the TI 16 60 TI which shouldn't exist really and over the 16 60 super which is 240 or something so Andy hasn't had it card there they've had the 5500 XT and they've had the 5709 XT there's this massive hundred sometimes hundred plus dollar gap between the two where Nvidia's existed stand alone and you can't really count the RX 500 series anymore because they're not good anymore by modern standards so that's why the card exists figured I'd answer that one it's it's to go head-to-head with nvidia we're obviously and he has no current market offering and I think that probably covers most the main discussion for the nd stuff for the Radeon side anyway where we just want to cover the driver story so we talked to them I showed them a Trello board with all the logs I've produced of bugs we won't publish it but we went to Andy first with it to see if it can hopefully get fixed and hopefully things improved for drivers but just to really emphasize the hardware is good the 5700 XT we did call best overall for 2019 and I mean that's it's because it owned it but it needs to get the drivers down so they're 50% of the way there which is a lot more than previously and things are looking hopefully positive for the rest of Radeon for 2020 but we'll follow up obviously as we hear more thanks for watching check back for more coverage of CES 2020 subscribe for more gonna store documents X's net or patreon.com slash gamers Nexus tops out directly and we'll see you all next timewe're at CES 2020 and just got done speaking with AMD we're actually in the msi booth right now where there's a bit more space to film but we spoke with AMD about a few things on the topic for this specific video is what's going on with the drivers and the reason i wanted to focus on that for the for our meeting with an these graphics team is that the GPU is physically as Hardware they're pretty good now objectively AMD's in a good spot for performance but the one thing that's constantly criticized by us and by more so than us is by users was the driver package so we decided to talk to em D and asked you're clearly aware of this issue right what's the plan to fix it that's what we're gonna talk about today along with some additional clarification notes on the 5,600 XT which was announced earlier in the show before that this video is brought to you by Squarespace Squarespace is what we've been using for years to manage our own gamers Nexus store and we've been incredibly happy with the choice Squarespace makes ecommerce easy for those interested in starting stores but it also has powerful tools to build all types of websites photo galleries for photographers resume and portfolio sites and small business sites are all easily done through Squarespace having built a lot of client websites the old way before running GN full-time we can easily recommend Squarespace has a powerful fast solution go to squarespace.com slash gamers nexus to get 10% off your first purchase with Squarespace let's start with a driver story our China position on this 2019 we gave the 5700 XE Best Overall for the GPU the downside was the one major downside was that drivers in a lot of instances were still kind of questionable for some users specifically to monster games had to return cars we've heard about because the card the drivers weren't playing well with the system as a whole and then the other issue is just weird things like the fan profiles not quite working and we showed AMD some of our screen grabs of those bugs while we're in the meeting span profiles not working since Vega frontier edition general bugginess in the driver package but then still doing a major overhaul that completely changes the UI so it's almost like what's really the the focus here because you're improving the a the UI and the user experience before fixing the bugs so actually it's not improving the user experience so that's the problem with and these cards even if it's working great for you and the 5700 XTS we don't really have too many major critical system breaking bugs anymore there are a lot of people who still have those and when we recommended the the 57 RFC is best overall one of the comments towards the top of the of the video was well I wanted to like it I bought it but I had to return it because it didn't work so I asked AMD about that and the message that Andy's kind of sticking with here on this one is adrenaline 2020 that December launch driver package fancy new UI and everything the goal for that was to reset and revamp the UI it's Andy's wording for that and make it more accessible so wat man was the given example of that we can speak to this where wat man we used it because we had to and that was the only reason because afterburner we're in the msi suite after all afterburner wears far better when it when it works with the card but a lot of the time you were stuck using wot man just because of compatibility issues so anyway Andy acknowledge that wot man was kind of difficult to work with and they've tried to improve it with the new adrenaline 2020 update there were Andy said that they are continuously monitoring issues on forums and they especially monitor Reddit and forums around launch so they do see the complaints and try to act on them now one of the concerns I had that I did bring up in this meeting was we've wee voice the same issue raised the same concerns with AMD since bigger fronts here edition with these drivers and every time I bring it up with someone the the good side of it is I bring up with someone today MD and they say oh wow I didn't know about that that's that's concerning that's annoying whatever let me try and get this fixed then every time it's like it's a new story to someone I talk to which the problem there should go ahead okay cool this person cares enough that they're reacting in a way that seems like they they genuinely want to fix the issue with the driver that I'm whatever I'm talking about at the time but then it doesn't go anywhere because the next person has never heard of it a fixed number comes out so I brought that point up Andy's aware of it it sounds like there's a bit better internal communication now between the teams so you have to remember the GPU Hardware team is different from the software team so there's some coms there as many companies within another mini company of AMD ultimately so there's some comms that where you can have some I guess signal-to-noise issues but it sounds like they're trying to fix the internal communication to get those issues as they're brought up past to the right people and fixed and in media we do see a lot of the issues before they go out to public anyway because we have early samples so there's a possibility that this could be if AMD can properly communicate it internally and get stuff fixed as as media raises the issue there's a possibility that this could be a major help to the drivers we have to see it actually happen but another thing I have to note is that the features are done at this point and they're focusing now on stability so all the fancy features fancy UI that was totally unnecessary but it looks good I guess they're they're supposed to be done with that stuff and focusing on fixing crashes black screens weird bugs where the fan speed doesn't set and resets itself all that and the point that is often brought up almost every year with the Radeon group or anyone remotely close to radio and graphics is that Nvidia control panel looks old like 90s old or early two-thousands old and my response is always the same which is but it works and I know where the stuff is and it doesn't move and change the names and it doesn't crash and most of time so Andy's aware of this - and it sounds like I could say this from my meetings over there the right people want to fix the product so that's really good that's really encouraging it's just a matter of it getting done so the fact that someone actually wants to fix it I'm like a lot of the companies we work with where you kind of talk to PR and they okay whatever they don't really report back the issue to the PM's or the people actually in charge of fixing things the fact that AMD wants to actually improve the the drivers is the first step another thing that AMD noted it it's promising on following up on the fan issue that I've been complaining about for a few years I actually sort of believe them this time because the the people I was talking to genuinely seem like they want to fix that problem and I came prepared I had a Trello board I made with bug reports of steps to reproduce and jiff captures of the issue and I think that was enough to finally get some attention on the problems I've had so I basically treated it like a bug report for any any company if you were working there's a test technician separately let's see it looks like I think it's just a matter of getting stuff up the chain so anyway if you've been wondering come on idea what's the deal with the drivers get the drug get it together because the hardware is good but the drivers are still the toughest point for a cell or the toughest point for a customer who doesn't know a lot about troubleshooting then it sounds like they know this is a problem and the right people know it's a problem and like I said now it's just it's kind of hard to trust too much because we've heard this so often but from what I heard today I'm hoping that the right people are trying to fix the problem and we'll see it sounds like maybe for 2020 properly there should be some actual stability pushes and bug fixes and there's already been one for this year that I haven't tested yeah that's fixed a few other problems I complained about I think so anyway that sounds promising is where I'll probably leave the driver discussion if you're curious what I am that you had to say about it that's more or less what it was that are aware of the issues so the other upside here is it's not like Andy's saying we don't we don't see any problem with the drivers at all what are you talking about its acknowledgement which I can't emphasize enough how rare that is in this industry where typically you get I've never heard that before and that's the go to PR answer to complain so anyway that it sounds like a positive direction for Andy driver said one other thing I want to bring up one of the the more fun topics I like to ask for manufacturers at trade shows is okay so after your announcement did you look at comments online and if so what's the common misconception or what's the thing you want to respond to the most because I'm curious if they are as tortured by comments as we often are and the answer was for the 5600 XT launch apparently there are a lot of questions of why does this exist and we thought that was kind of obvious so if you're not aware of the 5600 XT it's a 36 TV unit same C used as the 5700 but they can kind of fuse between them based on supply is pretty common approach for segmentation that I'm fine with actually it's Bend for lower leakage so the goal is to focus on performance per watt rather than just peak clock performance so focusing on power leak there's a way to do that but why does it exist comment I think should be pretty easy to answer it's $280 part comes in same as the TI 16 60 TI which shouldn't exist really and over the 16 60 super which is 240 or something so Andy hasn't had it card there they've had the 5500 XT and they've had the 5709 XT there's this massive hundred sometimes hundred plus dollar gap between the two where Nvidia's existed stand alone and you can't really count the RX 500 series anymore because they're not good anymore by modern standards so that's why the card exists figured I'd answer that one it's it's to go head-to-head with nvidia we're obviously and he has no current market offering and I think that probably covers most the main discussion for the nd stuff for the Radeon side anyway where we just want to cover the driver story so we talked to them I showed them a Trello board with all the logs I've produced of bugs we won't publish it but we went to Andy first with it to see if it can hopefully get fixed and hopefully things improved for drivers but just to really emphasize the hardware is good the 5700 XT we did call best overall for 2019 and I mean that's it's because it owned it but it needs to get the drivers down so they're 50% of the way there which is a lot more than previously and things are looking hopefully positive for the rest of Radeon for 2020 but we'll follow up obviously as we hear more thanks for watching check back for more coverage of CES 2020 subscribe for more gonna store documents X's net or patreon.com slash gamers Nexus tops out directly and we'll see you all next time\n"