Just for Information: Windows AMD GPU Driver offline package not really offline package with active internet connection

[_roman_]

I just want to share:

This driver package was downloaded last wednesday via smartphone from computerbase.de/downloads
whql-amd-software-adrenalin-edition-25.3.1-win10-win11-march-rdna.exe

That package goes into different Installation Routine when it sees an active internet connection.

A second attempt with reboot and no active internet connection succeeded in offline installation. In my case the usual upgrade.

• This is not really an offline installer
  • with active internet connection you get this dialog.
    • the chipset driver in my point of view should never be mentioned or be in the graphic card driver
      • i set the option to not install the chipset drivers = disable = no install & removed the internet connection & tried to "accept & install" -> the installer refuses.
        When I went "back" and tried to install the graphical user interface vanish and the computer does nothing for more than 5 minutes. A reboot has shown after several minutes - no graphic card driver was updated. There was no user dialog to be seen. The installer dialog just vanish - gone.

There are several bugs.

• When amd consider a chipset driver to be a graphic card driver, than it should be in the gpu driver package included. I got a different installer dialog when I rebooted windows 11 pro 24h2 with the radeon 7800xt graphic card without active internet connection.
• When AMD thinks such stuff belongs in a graphic card driver package, which I personally disagree, than they should rename it. It seems to be some sort of AMD Hardware driver Package installer, not a pure AMD graphic card offline installer.
• Even when disabling the internet connection while reading the dialog boxes should not cause the installer to fail the installation. Which was proven to succeed with a warm boot and leaving the "default" internet connection offline after every boot.

Final thoughts. AMD should stop doing nonsense and just provide a real offline graphic card driver. +200MB for wag

~900 MiB of nonsense

roman@Sienna_Cichlid /mnt/windows/Software $ ls -alh *25.3.1*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 roman roman 893M Mar  6 21:06 whql-amd-software-adrenalin-edition-25.3.1-win10-win11-march-rdna.exe

I only keep a few older graphic card installers +200MiB bloatware for basically barely any more functionality. I think the previous installers were even smaller in the 6xx MiB range.

roman@Sienna_Cichlid /usr/portage/distfiles $ ls -alh *adrenalin*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 roman roman 707M Mar 20  2024 whql-amd-software-adrenalin-edition-24.3.1-win10-win11-mar20-rdna.exe

this is for information purposes. The windows amd gpu drivers need more love in 2025.

 

[QuietBob]

Yeah, this is a new feature added in the current driver:

You can now opt to update chipset drivers at the same time as graphics, though I found the installation process a bit tricky. The installer launches a process in the background, which the OS stops from executing until you manually confirm it's safe to run. The thing is, this dialog window is hidden under the installer one, and you can't see it until the installation ends.

Also, the installer lets you finalize the installation with the new GPU driver in place, even though chipset drivers haven't completed installing. Luckily, it'll pop up a notification asking you to reboot when this background installation finishes.