AMD's new Crimson drivers accused of burning up video cards

[dlevere]

Fans stick at 20 percent even during intense gaming.

By Peter Bright

AMD announced its new Crimson drivers, replacing the Catalyst name and software, with great fanfare earlier this month. The first Crimson drivers are now out, and they appear to have a serious problem. There are widespread reports of cards overheating and perhaps even failing permanently.

It appears that the new driver is setting the video card fans to 20 percent and then leaving them there. Normally, the fan speed should increase as the GPU temperature goes up, but that is not happening with Crimson. Even during games and intensive workloads, the fans are sticking at 20 percent, allowing GPU temperatures to climb to more than 90° C. These high temperatures are causing poor performance due to thermal throttling, graphical glitches and crashes, and some users are reporting permanent hardware damage. Although the GPU itself throttles when it overheats, there's speculation that other components on the cards, such as the VRM's, can still be damaged.

AMD has acknowledged the fan speed issue and says that a hot fix will be published today. This is unlikely to be any great comfort to those whose cards have bitten the dust, and it makes for an inauspicious debut for AMD's new driver. This is, however, not a problem unique to AMD; in 2010, Nvidia published a driver update that had a similar fan controller issue that led to cards overheating and in some cases breaking entirely. Another Nvidia release in 2013 also yielded complaints of overheating and video card destruction.

[Tony H]

I tried upgrading to the new Crimson software, but after nearly an hour of frustration, I finally ended up re-installing my original drivers. Guess I was lucky.

[dlevere]

I'm glad that I didn't update, too.

[Skiller]

ya i updated the drivers but it took alot of work ..

the actual Pack crash and wont install
so i unpacked everything and installed.. it made for a pain to install it .. it seem to take alot longer then normal to
its a good thing i only use there driver and then us msi Afterburner to control my fans and stuff :P

my 7970 has overheating issues normally had to take it apart and clean up the thermals on it works better now.
iv been noticing that most cards run really hot .. i had 2 Dual GPU cards from ATI before this and they also had heating issues ..

[MIR]

This is why i <3 Nvidia drivers, they can be annoying but at least they work (somewhat) and dont try and destroy yur expensive stuff. Then agian i now exclusivly use linux and the best drivers in the form of stability are Intel then Nvidia then the opensource AMD/ATI, then Via then AMD propritarty and then nouveau. though Nouveau (nvidia opensource drivers) and AMD's propritary aree constantly switching places.

Basicly it has gotten to the point where i dont even glance at AMD/ATI videocards anymore due to their pisspor cperformace to cost ratio, the lack of knowing how well the drivers will function, and the lack of trust between me and the manufacture in the quality of the product.

I buy Nvidia now otherwise i Intel.