AMD’s recently rejuvenated its Catalyst Drivers, giving the software suite a much-needed overhaul. It comes with a host of new features and a shinier overall presentation – but could also be responsible for the fiery death of a number of GPUs.
The latest, opt-in beta version of AMD’s Crimson driver set has been blamed for frying a few graphics cards. A number of threads on Reddit claim that Crimson has software-locked fans on select Radeon GPU’s, keeping them running at 20% regardless of temperature. While that’s fine for standard desktop usage, games would elevate temperatures well beyond standard operating temps – and without functional fans to cool them down, could end up toasting themselves.
“So, there is a bug with the new Crimson drivers that AMD released (not beta, final release) that lock your GPU fan speed and because of this, many users have reported playing for extended periods of time with their fans locked to 20%,” says one unfortunate AMD user.
“Others, like me, got their GPU burned, in my case it didn’t even reboot the PC, it just crashed the screen graphics (orange bars) and I had to manually turn off the computer. When I opened the case the GPU was so hot I couldn’t even remove it from the PCI-e and had to wait until it was cool enough.”
It’s not an isolated case, thou some reports suggest it’s only happening to non-reference cards that utilise soft-overclocking. It’s something AMD is aware of, and they’ve pledged to release a hot-fix this morning.
We are aware of low fan speed reports on select GPUs with Radeon Software Crimson Edition. We intend to publish a hotfix on Monday.
— AMD Radeon Graphics (@AMDRadeon) November 29, 2015
Until then, one user suggests changing a few settings to keep fans running, and GPU’s from overheating. Unfortunately, it’s something you’ll need to do every time you reboot, until AMD’s hotfix goes live.
“The new Crimson driver set keeps your fan speeds at 20% through the Overdrive profile. Now, you can turn each game to auto individually, and at this point it’ll increase the fan speeds as temperatures increase. However, for me, this doesn’t work and I need to do this in the global overdrive settings.”
You can see a guide on just how to do that here. Anyway, if you’ve been noticing some unusually hot temperatures in your AMD system lately, this is probably why.
Last Updated: November 30, 2015
Alien Emperor Trevor
November 30, 2015 at 08:06
That makes a change, normally it’s the hardware.
Alien Emperor Trevor
November 30, 2015 at 08:09
Fighting overheating with hotfixes!
Jan Prins
November 30, 2015 at 08:26
Also thought that was poor choice of words…
WitWolfy
November 30, 2015 at 08:27
Not to be a fanboy.. But thats why I prefer Nvidia.
miaau
November 30, 2015 at 08:49
I have no idea. Not a clue. This whole which is better thing, I literally bought the cheapest dual monitor graphics card for my last desktop PC. Done.
However, green seems cooler than red. in many ways.
Admiral Chief - CHAAARGE!
November 30, 2015 at 08:59
Well usually team green has the software issues
asus-master
November 30, 2015 at 09:09
To be fair Nvidia did the same thing with their 196.75 drivers. The reason I now avoid AMD cards is the stuttering I used to get with my 6950. Drove me mad trying to play Skyrim with that card…so chill..it happens
Kromas untamed
November 30, 2015 at 09:23
Nvidia had the same thing … twice a few years back soooo meh.
HairyEwok
November 30, 2015 at 08:40
One could say now that team red is seeing red….. gpu meters XD
miaau
November 30, 2015 at 08:48
I remember the old days when you could, fairly easily, hurt the hardware with incorrect settings from PC.
This should not have happened to a company that wants to be seen as specialising in high end graphics cards for high end users.
My laptop, Nvidia 3gig 555 card, runs at like 85c if I even think about using graphics. It can WARM my tea up, if I put it out the fan outlet. That is a major flaw and has been since I got the laptop in 2011. Is that the card or just the laptop config? Either way, very surprising.
HvR
November 30, 2015 at 10:04
There was bunch of Nvidia low power laptop board mounted GPU’s that had design issues that after long term they started running extremely hot that no fan could keep it cool. The fluctuations in my Dell Latitude later caused the BGA solder joints to crack. After some investigation I found that Nvidia actually did issue recall and replacements but it seem South African distributor didn’t bother. Dell took it under consideration and replaced my laptop motherboard free of charge outside warranty.
Also laptop vents are lined with small fin heatsinks that are routed to all the components in the laptop, they should be cleaned out every 2 to 3 years otherwise thermal management gets problematic.
miaau
November 30, 2015 at 10:19
Yeah, mine is a dell XPS. And this is not really “low power”, it bloody well eats battery. Well, maybe low power for the time (2011).
Dell replaced, less than a year ago, the motherboard and redid the gels and whatnot because of exactly this issue, the overheating video card. The dell guy actually said, oops, these have problems.
BakedBagel
November 30, 2015 at 09:17
Another Day 1 Patch.
Kromas untamed
November 30, 2015 at 09:22
I am lucky this has not happened to me. I do have an issue with Fallout 3 and its compass being screwed.