Tuesday, April 5th 2022
Report: AMD Radeon Software Could Alter CPU Settings Quietly
According to the latest investigation made by a German publication, Igor's Lab, AMD's Adrenalin GPU software could experience unexpected behavior when Ryzen Master software is integrated into it. Supposedly, the combination of the two would allow AMD Adrenalin GPU software to misbehave and accidentally change CPU PBO and Precision Boost settings, disregarding the user's permissions. What Igor's Lab investigated was a case of Adrenalin software automatically enabling PBO or "CPU OC" setting when applying GPU profiles. This also happens when the GPU is in the Default mode, which is set automatically by the software.
Alterations can happen without user knowledge. If a user applies custom voltage and frequency settings in BIOS, Adrenalin software can and sometimes will override those settings to set arbitrary ones, potentially impacting the CPU's stability. The software can also alter CPU power limits as it has the means to do so. This problem only occurs when AMD CPU is combined with AMD GPU and AMD Ryzen Master SDK is installed. If another configuration is present, there is no change to the system. There are ways to bypass this edge case, and that is going back to BIOS to re-apply CPU settings manually or disable PBO. A Reddit user found that creating new GPU tuning profiles without loading older profiles will also bypass Adrenalin from adjusting your CPU settings. AMD hasn't made comments about the software, and so far remains a mystery why this is happening.
Sources:
Igor's Lab, Reddit Thread
Alterations can happen without user knowledge. If a user applies custom voltage and frequency settings in BIOS, Adrenalin software can and sometimes will override those settings to set arbitrary ones, potentially impacting the CPU's stability. The software can also alter CPU power limits as it has the means to do so. This problem only occurs when AMD CPU is combined with AMD GPU and AMD Ryzen Master SDK is installed. If another configuration is present, there is no change to the system. There are ways to bypass this edge case, and that is going back to BIOS to re-apply CPU settings manually or disable PBO. A Reddit user found that creating new GPU tuning profiles without loading older profiles will also bypass Adrenalin from adjusting your CPU settings. AMD hasn't made comments about the software, and so far remains a mystery why this is happening.
31 Comments on Report: AMD Radeon Software Could Alter CPU Settings Quietly
Ryzen Master module has been integrated since last year with release 21.9.1. and since that time Adrenalin is able to change CPU overclocking or reset CPU to default values.
Clicking "default" means many different things to many different people, but in the case of PBO and motherboard vendors, "default" = PBO Enabled so it's hardly a shock that "default" in Adrenaline means the same thing.
I guess where the controversy lies is a lack of communication in what is being set to default.
AMD Software is so much behind their hardware, i could cry.
The unstable software and its lacks of nice fan- and temp-target-control is the only cause i use a Nvidia GPU.
The temporary workaround for the enhanced vsync is now many years old, embaracing.
I used a Ryzen 2700 and now 5600X, both are excellent, but i will never install any piece of AMD software on my computer myself, if Windows installs a driver, so be it.
The biggest controversy I've seen has beed two fold, the first being "ZOMG AMD CHANGED MY SETTINGS" which is wrong, its a bug not an intentional change by AMD, or at the least if it is intentional there is 0 proof, it appears in all insances to be a software bug.
The other being "ZOMG AMD HASNT PATCHED THIS YET" which, yeah, no shat they havent, this is AMD, it will take 3-6 months of belly acheing and media coverage before they will acknoledge a problem and fix it. See also: frame pacing issues, GCN black screen issues, mobile ryzen driver issues, rDNA clocking issues, and 500 series chipset USB issues. This is normal for AMD
Oh, right. Because it's a deal. So yeah, it was fine when they were the value king, but right now? 30 Series cards are dropping while AMD cards are staying the same in price, which is giving the 30 series an advantage. Meanwhile, Intel had to basically smack AMD with a trout for months before they woke up and dropped prices on their CPU's (and enabled 300 series boards to use their latest CPU from over two years ago). And they're hardly far and away better deals.
AMD isn't acting like the value king, so they need to step up their investment in their software teams if they want to be a premium brand.
Adrenaline is much better than it used to be and offers features that Nvidia don't even bother including at all. Including an easy-to-use OBS and MSI afterburner alternative right there in the driver is great. It's what the encoder hardware and temp/fan/voltage sensors on the card are for, so it's only natural that the driver control panel lets you control those features.
I would be stretching my honesty if I said that the entire AMD ecosystem was a hassle-free as Intel or Nvidia though. AMD is slower to react, later to market, and not as quick to bugfix drivers as the competition. If you are going to charge a premium for your product, that means the hardware AND the software product.
However when i adjusted the memory frequency with the new adrenalin drivers, it would apply another and even more tighter setting(s) of memory on top of the already tweaked one, making it completely chrash.
I dont want drivers messing around with any settings other then the ones i specify.
Known Issues
Overclockers shocked AMD rocked users lived happily never after.