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[whoareyou]

I've had several issues with my AMD 6600 / drivers and JRiver. they have been very frustrating.  To be clear, these all seem to be AMD driver related bugs. 

First issue I encountered was frame drops directly related to D3D11, which I believe the latest drivers have fixed.

Another problem has been with enabling JRiver's hardware acceleration, which again results in frame drops. I always turn  off acceleration even though with a decent graphics card this just seems counterintuitive.

Now, another issue has popped up, and I'm wondering if anyone has seen this one.  MC just closes up with following entry in windows event viewer:
Faulting application name: Media Center 31.exe, version: 31.0.43.0, time stamp: 0x64d29e53
Faulting module name: amdxx64.dll, version: 31.0.21023.2010, time stamp: 0x64b74dbe

It appears to be yet another AMD driver issue.  It is sporadic, and I have yet to capture this event in a JRiver log.

I was wondering what other's AMD experience has been like.  For that matter, I'd like to hear from NVidia owners as I'm pretty much ready to ditch AMD.   

[BryanC]

When JRVR was first released I spent a lot of time trying to get it to work properly on embedded Ryzen devices with Vega 3 and Vega 8 iGPUs, but I could never get it to stop dropping frames. I ditched them and purchased an even weaker Intel UHD device and haven't had any issues. FWIW Hendrik has also said on multiple occasions that he solely tests on nVidia/Intel, and in less words isn't a big fan of AMD drivers. Instead of trying to iron out AMD support, I found it much easier to swim downstream and switch platforms instead.

[Hendrik]

FWIW Hendrik has also said on multiple occasions that he solely tests on nVidia/Intel, and in less words isn't a big fan of AMD drivers.

I test and develop with the hardware I own and use. None of us here own a big lab full of hardware to test things on, its just what we have and use. There is practically no hardware specific work ever going into anything, that is not a level we even work on. We develop against the specifications provided by Microsoft for Direct3D or similar things for cross-platform. If we work on features that might require particular hardware capabilities, I'll always consider all 3 major brands, and ensure they work or have a fallback.

As for AMD, its just experience from doing hardware video for 15 years that has me not buy their hardware (quite a while before I even joined JRiver). There is a long history of problems specifically with video use (across many software products, not just LAV or MC), and a culture of not really being reachable for developers. This is just to illustrate where I'm coming from, and of course that won't help you if you have their hardware.

These kind of bugs, just from a development perspective, for example if a graphics driver crashes, or it disconnects the audio when we turn HDR mode on (to name another problem being brought up in another thread), there is really very little we can even attempt to do about that. There is no information in these crashes to really act on, and even less if its just a behavior problem without a crash.

For the crash above, it would already help if you determine if this was in Theater View, or in Video Playback. Both of those use quite different ways to interact with the hardware.

[BryanC]

That was in no way meant to be a slight, Hendrik's contributions to video playback are fantastic and we're all grateful. I totally understand that you aren't responsible for driver/hardware issues, that was simply a recommendation to an end user to sidestep potential headaches. As novices it's common to focus in on benchmarks and assume everything should "just work" without considering other important details with which you are intimately familiar and outlined in part above.

Occasionally I think back to the nightmares of yore of having to install Soviet-themed codec packs and the constant fiddling required to make everything work. RO/LAV was the penultimate step and JRVR the final leap forward to move us past that nonsense. Thank you!

[whoareyou]

I test and develop with the hardware I own and use. None of us here own a big lab full of hardware to test things on, its just what we have and use. There is practically no hardware specific work ever going into anything, that is not a level we even work on. We develop against the specifications provided by Microsoft for Direct3D or similar things for cross-platform. If we work on features that might require particular hardware capabilities, I'll always consider all 3 major brands, and ensure they work or have a fallback.

As for AMD, its just experience from doing hardware video for 15 years that has me not buy their hardware (quite a while before I even joined JRiver). There is a long history of problems specifically with video use (across many software products, not just LAV or MC), and a culture of not really being reachable for developers. This is just to illustrate where I'm coming from, and of course that won't help you if you have their hardware.

These kind of bugs, just from a development perspective, for example if a graphics driver crashes, or it disconnects the audio when we turn HDR mode on (to name another problem being brought up in another thread), there is really very little we can even attempt to do about that. There is no information in these crashes to really act on, and even less if its just a behavior problem without a crash.

For the crash above, it would already help if you determine if this was in Theater View, or in Video Playback. Both of those use quite different ways to interact with the hardware.

It's just playback from standard view.  Last night I had a couple of crashes playing a pure audio rip (MakeMKV complete backup).   Just displaying the static video screen showing track info.

And FWIW, I don't believe there is any reliable way of testing these crashes for JRiver or anyone else.  The crashes are so sporadic, and AMD seems to introduce a new bug with every driver release.   You can't fix AMD for AMD.

Because of this I hold out on updating drivers as long as possible, and I only update when they've fixed something I need.  Even then, I check the user groups for new issues with the new drivers. 

Even with this approach, I end up getting short end of the stick when I discover the newest driver bug.

It's the first and last AMD product I will ever buy.  It's probably going to get pulled out of my machine and I'll go back to the 12700 iGpu for a while until I can replace it with something reliable.

[Manfred]

I have AMD Ryzen 7 5700G AM4 on my workstation and it works on my UW Monitor, no 4K, no HDR. No problems.
Behaviour is different if you use the driver coming with Win11 or AMD Adrenalin driver.
If you have Win 10 this is also different.

[craigmcg]

Hi, I've used AMD APUs and CPU/GPU for years with Media Center with very few issues.

@whoareyou - I have a Ryzen 5950x CPU and RX6600 GPU in my main pc used for home theatre (running at 1080p due to a great plasma tv) and have no issues. I also have no issues on the AMD Ryzen 5600G and 5700G systems used elsewhere for 1080p and audio. It might help others if you provided more details on your pc hardware, OS, and MC settings for video playback (like default JRVR).

Craig

[whoareyou]

Hi, I've used AMD APUs and CPU/GPU for years with Media Center with very few issues.

@whoareyou - I have an Ryzen 5950x CPU and RX6600 GPU in my main pc used for home theatre (running at 1080p due to a great plasma tv) and have no issues. I also have no issues on the AMD Ryzen 56600G and 5700G systems used elsewhere for 1080p and audio. It might help others if you provided more details on your pc hardware, OS, and MC setttings for video playback (like default JRVR).

Craig

Thanks.
You mentioned "very few Issues", so what kind of issues did you encounter with AMD?

I've used many different JRVR settings.  Everything from high performance settings to defaults for low powered iGPUs. Regardless, I shouldn't have to change JRVR settings to prevent the AMD driver from sporadically crashing.

Also, perhaps I'm being a bit biased, but when issues are reproduced based on the AMD driver versions, my suspicions point directly at AMD driver defects, not some incompatible JRVR setting.

And don't get me started on issues I've encounterd at OS level and Edge,  Same thing there with being able to reproduce issue based on driver version installed.

At this point, it makes more sense to remove AMD from the mix and see if my JRVR problems go away. 

 I'm ready to move on and see if my old Nvidia card (which was stable for years, as in zero issues, on old machine), or the 12700 iGPU can do the job for my video needs.

[craigmcg]

The most recent issues that I had were earlier this year where the AMD driver would crash unpredictably, particularly if I had the AMD Virtual Super Resolution enabled in the driver settings (I use the standard graphics profile). I haven't seen those issues for a few months with this setting disabled (it's under Gaming - Display) and recently re-enabled it on my main htpc without seeing the recurrence of these issues. I'm using Win 11 pro with AMD 23.7.2 drivers so it might be worth trying this setting change (the AMD driver originally suggested that I enable it) if you have virtual super resolution enabled to see if it helps.

If it doesn't, I'd try just removing the GPU and use the Intel to see if it meets your needs as you mention. If that doesn't work then I'd upgrade to an Nvidia card (I almost have the wants for the  RTX 3060 TI which is on sale in some online stores).

[whoareyou]

I install driver only without AMD software.  I used to install it, but for me it didn't seem to provide any benefit.  I don't need overclocking, and if I'm remembering correctly, many of the settings caused frame drops or unnatural looking video with my 4k screen. 

I ultimately removed the app because of the AMD blue screens I encountered, and I wanted to make certain the AMD app wasn't somehow interfering with the driver's operation.

It's easy enough to try, so I'll give the app another chance, but I don't hold out much hope for any setting making a difference.

It's really a shame with this card.  I think the hardware is solid, and in today's GPU world of crazy lopsided performance / price, it's a great deal (if it worked for me).

Thanks

[craigmcg]

I always use the clean install (uninstall what's there then reboot and install fresh) when I first run the AMD driver/software install then I don't change any settings in the driver. I use MC31 with JRVR default except for enabling hardware acceleration and video clock and have no issues. i never overclock either.

Good luck!

[whoareyou]

Yeah,I've done more clean installs than should ever be necessary with drivers. 
Of course, have to use DDU at this point since AMD has the clean install disabled because - you guessed it, a serious defect with the process.

[craigmcg]

I last did a clean Windows install on my main pc in early April and hadn't noticed that AMD had greyed out the factory reset. Have you tried the AMD uninstaller at https://drivers.amd.com/drivers/amdcleanuputility.exe? Silly question- when did you last do a clean reload of Windows and what version of Win 11 Pro are you on?

As I mentioned before, if you can't make the RX 6600 work for you and the Intel IGPU doesn't do what you need, I'd lean toward a RTX 3060 TI.

Good luck!

[whoareyou]

Windows is completely updated to latest moment (or whatever they call it now) release.  This machine is not that old, so it's not loaded up with a bunch of junk yet. 

I generally don't go down the reinstall path unless there is something obviously wrong with the OS, and I just don't see that type of problem in this case. Even then, I have generations of backups in case of failure.

As far as video card, I've already pulled the AMD card and removed AMD drivers with DDU.  Been running with the iGPU for hours now and things have been rock solid.   Video after video, and JRiver has yet to crash.

Thanks for card suggestion. 

I looked at the 3060ti and also the 4060.  It's close between the two, but I'm leaning towards the 4060 because of the lower power draw, it's newer generation, performance is similar.  Also seems to be somewhat cheaper at the moment. 

[whoareyou]

Just to close the loop on this - at least for my PC configuration.

12700K iGpu - a little too low powered for more advanced JRVR settings I'd like to configure, but rock solid stability.  At more basic settings, a solid performer with no frame drops.

I ended up purchasing Nvidia rtx 4070.  A bit more expensive than I would have liked to spend, but graphics cards are just expensive.
Plays flawlessly with pretty much every JRVR setting maxed out.  No crashes and so far rock solid.

As far as that AMD card.  If you can get stable performance, I'd say a card such as the 6600 is a great deal with decent performance when using mid level settings.  AMD has just released a new tool to troubleshoot many of the issues I've encountered, so they seem to be making a substantial effort to fix these issues.  I'll probably revisit using the card at later date.