AMD Fixes Radeon Software Crimson GPU Fan Profile Problem With Hotfix

By Kevin Carbotte
published

Last week, AMD launched its new driver software suite, Radeon Software Crimson. Shortly after the launch, reports started trickling in that the driver was locking the fan speed at 20% and killing GPUs. AMD quickly acknowledged the issue and announced over the weekend that it would be releasing a hotfix to correct the problem.

Late yesterday afternoon, AMD released a hotfix driver to correct the fan speed problem. The original Radeon Software Crimson driver package is still available on the website, but there is now a beta version with the correct fan profile parameters. The update includes a number of bug fixes that AMD managed to correct already in the first week. 

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Header Cell - Column 0 Resolved Issues with AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11.1 Update
[82050]Star Wars: Battlefront - Snow flickers in a few locations in the game
[82240]Star Wars: Battlefront - Sky rendering may be broken in some game locations
[82645]Fallout 4 - The compass may flicker during gameplay on AMD Radeon R9 390 series products. We continue to investigate the issue with AMD Radeon R9 290 and AMD Radeon R9 295X2 series products
[82667]Star Wars: Battlefront - Shadowy textures are visible around hills/structures/caves
[81890]Just Cause 3 - Texture corruption may be experienced during gameplay
[54874]Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Poor AMD Crossfire performance may be experienced
[82338]The driver installation may fail while installing the ACP component
[82426]The font size in Chinese language installations may be too small
[82438]The label range values in some AMD Freesync installations may be incorrect
[82536]The Radeon Settings dropbox does not close when it is clicked on a second time
[82603]The AMD Overdrive fan settings is always set to ON after first edit on reboot
[82586]Language shows up as Chinese Simplified when Chinese Traditional is selected in Windows 7
[82656]Radeon Settings crashes on the Display tab when cloning a display via HDMI on some notebooks
[82671]Overdrive fan speed is reset to Manual on exiting from a 3D game or application
[82766]Radeon Settings does not get upgraded in some install scenarios
[82691]AMD Overdrive cannot revert to default settings in some situations

As with any software update, some issues were corrected, whereas others were brought to the surface.

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Header Cell - Column 0 Known Issues with AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11.1 Update
[82789]Total War: Rome II : Choppy gameplay may be experienced
[82788]Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Frame freezing during gameplay may be experienced
[82794]Just Cause 3 - The system may hang when task switching on systems with AMD CPUs and GPUs
[82775]Just Cause 3 - Flickering may be experienced during gameplay and on menu screens
[82778]Anno 2205 - Water splatter may flicker during in Ultra high mode on 4K displays
[82779]Fallout 4 - Gameplay may be choppy in AMD Freesync mode in Ultra mode at 1440p resolution

AMD’s Radeon Software Crimson 15.11.1 Beta is available now from AMD’s support page.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Sakkura
    Killing the graphics card would require some additional factor, like the card not throttling down correctly or poor VRMs. Still a nasty little bug.
    Reply
  • JonnyDough
    Does this include a re-release for the beta Crimson for older cards that became end of life?
    Reply
  • jayracer7474
    Fallout 4 compas flicker made me fall back to 15.7, is it fixed or just being investigated?
    Reply
  • GPUEnthusiast
    Something about these reports of dead cards is fishy to me. Stories like that don't result from the fan not spinning fast enough, at least not alone, they result from thermal throttling protections being turned off somehow.

    I had the bug on my card, I thought the driver was so good that it made my card more efficient (fans weren't picking up). I thought that until the moment my framerate in Crysis 3 took a dump, and I checked HardwareMonitor to see my GPU temps at 85 C.

    However it throttled properly, as should any GPU with correct protections in place.
    Reply
  • firefoxx04
    The only problem with fan control that I have heard of is the speed being locked to 100%. I had that problem.

    I lock my 7850 at 20% via speedfan. Never overheats. I guess big boy cards might get hot.
    Reply
  • Anarkie13
    Hotfix... I see what you did there.

    Seriously though, happy to have a new GTX970 right about now. AMDs horrible driver reputation isn't going to get much better at this rate. My 7870 Myst always ran quite hot (and loud).
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    17047096 said:
    Killing the graphics card would require some additional factor, like the card not throttling down correctly or poor VRMs. Still a nasty little bug.

    20% fan speed at high load for extended periods of time could every easily result in dangerously high temperatures.
    AMD said in a statement that it is aware of cards failing and acknowlegded it being a caused by a bug in the driver.
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    17047103 said:
    Does this include a re-release for the beta Crimson for older cards that became end of life?

    AMD stated last week that no further updates will be coming for end-of-life products.
    the Crimson Beta for these cards was delivered as-is so I wouldn't count on an update.
    Reply
  • andre_888
    I have a Powercolor R9 290X on Windows 10 and have experienced no issues. In fact my card has been running at 100% for a couple days as I was reminded about using Folding@Home.

    I tried playing BF4 for a bit, and it was fine. I believe the temperature topped out at 65C.
    Reply
  • ZachSense
    Was wondering why my r9 270 was at 100C...
    Reply