BEWARE Radeon 12.1 PREVIEW RUINS EYEFINITY!

[c69]

This driver has ruined my system and may require a fresh OS install as DriverSweeper can not clean up the remnants of this crap driver.

I installed this hoping to get the claimed small % improvement in Battlefield3. What the 12.1 drivers did was introduce frrequent BSOD and blackscreen/reboot failures, along with bad stutter.

So I uninstalled, ran driver sweeper and tried reverting to a prior version. Now my system is plagued with strange artifacts on two of the three monitors. It is as if the DisplayPort->VGA and HDMI->DVI monitors I am using only support 16 colors (only the DVI-DVI monitor works now), but instead of interpolating colors it only displays black/white and some of the primary colors, so the screens are mostly black with outline garbage.

12.1 Does something to the system or makes a PERMANENT change to the graphics cards that they will no longer run eyefintiy unless I reinstall 12.1. I have tired 11.10, 11.11a/b/c and installing none of these fixes the damage done by 12.1 preview.

I have tried uninstall with and without DriverSweeper, have tried all the CCC options to fix. Nothing. Cannot revert to older drivers.

Summary: 12.1 preview drivers are crap and they modify the system so that prior drivers no longer work. I have spent 4 hours uninstalling/reinstalling drivers and system only works with 12.1 now and they cause stutter/bsod.

Sadly, only eyefinity users are going to see this problem.

It seems the 12.1 uninstaller is broken, and even when installing prior versions of CCC and uninstalling, they now ALL hang. 12.1 installation makes a permanent change that cant be uninstalled and breaks all other drivers/installers. This problem will only be seen by multi-monitor users.

F*** you amd.

[suiken_2mieu]

Well it is a preview driver and those are to be used at ones own risk.

EDIT: Though thanks for the info, you should submit your finding to the driver team.

[ritchietos]

12.1 on my 6950 (shader unlocked) runs good no bsod for me and it runs 4 c cooler now in bf3 dont now why :). the fps is a bid more stable now
i have a eyefinity setup of 5100/1050 whit bezel correction other games runs fine for the moment no crash .

[Bifurk8]

Updated from 11.11c Preview to 12.1 yesterday on my 2x 5870 Crossfire system running at 6048x1080 with bezel compensation. Thankfully, I'm not having any problems here. Played about an hour each of Battlefield 3, Skyrim, and Saint's Row 3. Performance on these three games felt about the same under 12.1 as it did with 11.11c.

[c69]

Can someone for whom 12.1 is working please try to uninstall the drivers and see if the uninstaller is working?

On my system, when I try uninstalling 12.1, the screens go black and the system hangs. After 10 minutes I reboot and complete the uninstall. This seems to have fubared the installation and operation of other (older) drivers. Even trying to uninstall older drivers 11.10abc, once installed, the system now hangs.

Also, regarding them being preview drivers, there is BOLD red text on the download page that strongly encourages everyone to install them.

[ViciousXUSMC]

No issues with 12.1 for me as far as bsod or crash.

I have some performance issues with crossfire but I had just installed the 2nd card so no way to know if those issues were there before or not.

[Bifurk8]

Last time I had anything similar happen was during an attempt to uninstall one of the 10.X drivers and update to the latest 10.X at the time without having used Driver Sweeper first. It BSoD'd me during the install of the newer driver. Afterwords, any attempt to uninstall the newer driver so I could revert would BSoD. Rather than troubleshoot, I took the lazy way out and reverted Windows to a previous restore point.

I know that's not much help :( Sorry! I will try an uninstall on 12.1 now and update this post once finished. Here's the procedure I normally use for an uninstall:

1. Uninstall from Programs and Features in the Windows Control Panel.
2. Uninstall display adapters from Device Manager in the Windows Control Panel.
3. Reboot into Safe Mode.
4. Run Driver Sweeper.
5. Reboot.
6. Run Catalyst Installer.
7. Reboot when prompted.

*Edit* Just did the steps above and didn't have any trouble uninstalling/reinstalling on 12.1 */edit*

[c69]

Thanks for testing this.

I followed the normal procedure for my uninstall.

1) Uninstall CCC/Install manager from Control Panel.
2) Reboot
3) Driver Sweeper
4) Reboot
5) Install new

This has worked for at least 20 installs over past month.

The only thing that was different this time was that I did not diasable CF before the uninstall.

[c69]

*Edit* Just did the steps above and didn't have any trouble uninstalling/reinstalling on 12.1 */edit*

Reinstalling 12.1 is not a problem. Its trying to install an older driver afterwards that is creating the issue.


I am doing a system restore now. I thought I had disabled that. Thanks for the reminder.