AMD's Windows 11 graphics driver can mess up the Ryzen CPU settings in the BIOS

Last month, AMD released a utility to support Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) technology through Radeon Adrenalin 22.3.1 WHQL driver update. This is considered a useful feature, working quite effectively in visual tests.

However, things do not seem to go as smoothly as AMD expected. Immediately after this driver update was released, there were a series of reports related to software conflict errors. The problem is more likely rooted in the firmware, resulting in the Ryzen processor settings being messed up or resetting.

This issue was first reported by a user on the ComputerBase forums with the nickname 'der-Kalli'. The problem appeared almost immediately after the user upgraded to driver version 22.3.1. The problem then gradually became common among the AMD user community on Windows 11.

Preliminary analysis results suggest that the problem may stem from the "Auto Overclock" feature that AMD added to the Radeon Adrenalin 21.9.1 driver released last September. This feature allows overclocking both the CPU and GPU in one place, and so users may not need to resort to something more complicated like the Ryzen Master utility.However, it is more likely that the Radeon driver while access to the firmware may have conflicted, messing with the user's settings, and it's worth noting that this is also the driver that allows Windows 11 to support Radeon GPUs.

Currently, AMD has not officially commented on this issue. However, with more and more bug reports being reported, that silence probably won't last long.

Lesley Montoya

Update 04 April 2022