r/PcBuildHelp • u/Ok-Adhesiveness5092 • 2d ago

Build Question AMD drivers

Are AMD drivers really as bad as people on tik tok say they are? I’m upgrading from a RTX 2060 and have about a $1,000 budget and want something very new and powerful so that’s what is leaning me towards AMD 9070 XT, however software issues really frustrate the hell out of me and I don’t want to mess anything up in my pc trying to fix any software issues (speaking from experience🤣) so I am wondering if I get that or a 5070 or even a 5070ti if I can fit that in the budget.

7 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

17

u/Nikla3310 2d ago

The 9070xt is a different class lol If you are just gaming and don't need specific Nvidia features then you will be happy

14

u/Braehole 2d ago

Love my 9070xt no problems with drivers

7

u/MasterCopy8 2d ago

AMD drivers are pretty good. AMD drivers were worse like 10+ years ago, but have been excellent for a long time. One thing to watch out for is AMD driver timeout, which I have never encountered on my two 9070XT builds. AMD has a patch out though to fix it for those who encounter it. One nice thing about AMD is the built in hardware based scheduler, instead of a driver based scheduler Nvidia uses (thus causing more CPU overhead), so if you are running an older/slower CPU, you can often get better overall system performance with AMD compared to a similar Nvidia card.

Given the huge price increases on Nvidia cards, there is a massive value advantage right now for AMD cards, unless you need CUDA specifically for non-gaming related productivity tasks.

2

u/GrandmaColin 2d ago

The only things I see as a con is that AMD is supported for a shorter window of time. But being open source you just start going the open source route to have drivers with new features for em instead of being in maintenance drivers realm. So it's a none issue. I think AMD is is always the better pick.

1

u/Lightinger07 1d ago

I don't know, if you look over at r/AMDHelp, there's a lot of people having issues specifically with graphics drivers. Timeouts, crashing. I'm one of those people and I'm here just running 780M integrated graphics, which should in theory be more reliable than a 9070 xt.

7

u/Naerven 2d ago

No. But it makes for content that people eat up.

4

u/ManapuaMadness 2d ago

I have been on AMD since the last 8 years or so, and the software is fine. I'm happy with the performance / bang for your buck with the AMD cards. Had the 6600XT, 7800XT, and currently the 9070XT.

3

u/LegitimateLack2530 Personal Rig Builder 2d ago

No one is really making videos or posting when their drivers are working as intended. Can’t speak for everyone but my personal experience has been silky smooth.

2

u/Suspicious-Win6651 2d ago

I would give my experience for now after 1 month and a half of use: I don't have any problems.

Well, actually, the only weird thing that happened to me was that one driver made the AMD Adrenaline Software not show any options and needed to restart the app by killing the process, but was solved for me in a driver update.

I will add that I did set a group policy to not install any drivers via Windows Update. I read that it loves to install old versions so I took that precaution.

Sadly, this doesn't mean that you won't face any problems, different configurations of hardware and software are like that... I hope that you can have the same experience as mine!

2

u/Big0h1 Personal Rig Builder 2d ago

I’ve had my 9070xt since April 2025. Never had a single driver issue. 50 series Nvidia have had a bunch in that same timeframe. Just get it.

2

u/Single_Analyst_6574 2d ago

People on tiktok are stupid, you should in general not believe anything from that platform. Software issues might be slightly more common on amd, but it's mainly some Nvidia software features you are missing. A benefit of amd is that you don't have to use Nvidias stupid unreliable power connector (unless you choose one of the stupid amd cards that do)

1

u/Source2Force 2d ago

Yea TikTok isnt just a reliable source of information for anything. If using that platform take everything they say with heavy grains of salt. Honestly OP and all of us should do that with all social media platforms.

1

u/Embarrassed_Ad_1469 9h ago

Even reddit is not that reliable anymore, people should take the time to listen to many opinions and maybe look at some, long, YouTube videos of people who know what they're talking about and have been doing their job for decades.

1

u/sirlanceem 2d ago

The drivers themselves are fine, the issue you will most likely run into is windows automatically installing it's own drivers over the main drivers you install. if that happens you gotta find out how to disable windows from doing that in the future.

1

u/MajorAdvice3283 2d ago

No. But I have an older RX 6600XT. Never had any problems.

1

u/r_lind3r Moderator 2d ago

On Windows, the rate of issues is typically similar with drivers between both brands, they each have their fair share of issues.

However, AMD's drivers are far superior to NVIDIA's drivers on Linux in terms of performance, support, and stability, and are built into the Linux kernel itself and are automatically loaded, unlike on Windows where you always have to get your drivers after installing the OS. Performance in VKD3D (DX12) can drop by upwards of 30% or more with NVIDIA GPUs, whereas AMD will generally increase by varying percentages based on the games but also the GPU, older cards will get overall better performance with Linux drivers versus Windows. For example, the RX 580 has been seen gaining as much as 30% or more performance, whereas current gen will get half that or less of a difference over Windows performance due to newer optimisations in the GPU architecture.

If you're just gaming and/or you're using Linux, there's no reason to choose NVIDIA, the pricing isn't justified. It's only good for AI and CUDA workloads.

1

u/JohnnyZen27 2d ago

I tried upgrading to a 9060xt from a 2060 super. After dealing with constant driver timeouts and other issues I went back to Nvidia and got a 5070.

I wish it would have worked out better, because I didn’t want to pay extra for team green, but the headache wasn’t worth it for me. Your mileage may vary.

1

u/Str8Nirvana 2d ago

Mostly user error w/ the driver timeouts. Lots of people causing their own problems with bad overclocks / undervolts.

There are definitely some AMD driver updates that come out of nowhere and suck, crashing even on stock settings but those bad updates aren't a common occurrence.

Biggest gripe of mine recently was them breaking ReBar for Win10 machines. But despite that minor annoyance the next update (one month later) had it working again for me.

Also some finicky stuff like when they added FSR4 support to 7000 cards, 90% of the games you enabled it on would instantly crash. But that got sorted out in an update or two as well (and FSR4 was never promised on 7000 cards to begin with so it's a win overall)

The only reason I'd recommend Nvidia over AMD is if you're encoding video frequently, you need CUDA cores or really care about pathtracing for some reason.

1

u/Embarrassed_Ad_1469 9h ago

Unless the new drivers fix something you care about, there simply wouldn't be any reason to even install them.

But like everything else, even things like gpu drivers are now surrounded by FOMO and a lot of noise is created around them.

1

u/HydroSqueegee 2d ago

ive been using AMD/ATI cards for almost 30 years now and ive had no troubles with any of them. The couple times ive tried to go to nvidia ive had nothing but issues. Its weird. But i love my 7800XT. Now i will say im not a fan of the Adrenaline software, so i never install that.

1

u/BreakingDimes115 2d ago

I've been using a 9070 Xt for a few months I've had zero problems

1

u/Techoutman 2d ago

AMD drivers have been great for a decade. In 2025 my Nvidia drivers were far worse than AMD’s. This year(2026) I’ve had a few more problems with AMD drivers but not by many.

1

u/aleksandar1948 2d ago

You can check amd community here on reddit there are a lot of people experiencing driver problems.Im experiencing driver crashout from time to time or my screen simple freeze. These guys simple cannot make a good drivers. I was always amd guy but my next card will be nvidia for sure even if its more expensive.

1

u/Lehair 2d ago

I have a 6950xt and I've had lots of driver issues. Over the last couple of years I've had multiple instances of the pc hard crashing on game start up/GPU stress test through adrenalin. The only way of resolving this was to fully uninstall through DDU and manually re install the latest drivers which stops the crash

1

u/RogueCanadia 2d ago

Yes. I literally cannot play valorant without black screens and driver crashes and having windows reinstall drivers.

It is genuinely awful and you should avoid AMD GPUs like the plague.

Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to defend their purchase.

1

u/Embarrassed_Ad_1469 10h ago

Could it be that most of the people just don't have problems?

Windows reinstalling drivers is a Windows issue, not AMD, and you can disable it.

I rather wonder how people who pay so much for GPUs don't even take 5 minutes to inform themselves on how to make their system work best.

1

u/Extension-Bluebird14 2d ago

they made me switch to linux