Shortly after last week’s release of AMD’s new ‘Crimson’ software and driver suite, card users started reporting very high temperatures. Some have even suggested that said temperatures fried their cards completely (though it’s hard to definitively separate correlation and causation on these reports).
The heat issues stem from a bug with Crimson which messes around with fan speeds, often locking them at lower values like 20%. This doesn’t affect every card in the AMD range (or seem to have much consistency with the cards it does mess with), but was widespread enough for the AMD subreddit to start openly wondering about a full driver recall.
That hasn’t happened, but a tweet from AMD does confirm that the company is aware of the problem and is working on a … ah … ‘hotfix’. I know that’s the term for a quick, interim patch like this, but seriously guys, that’s just asking for more jokes. Anyway, here’s the relevant tweeting:
We are aware of low fan speed reports on select GPUs with Radeon Software Crimson Edition. We intend to publish a hotfix on Monday.
— Radeon RX (@Radeon) November 29, 2015
In the mean time, it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on the fan speeds of your card if you’re using Crimson. If you’re not entirely sure how to do that with the new software, this reddit post has a helpful, step-by-step visual guide. Unfortunately, it sounds like you need to check the fan every single time you restart the PC.
Hopefully AMD won’t be too long in getting their fix out today.
[Update 30 November]: It’s not out yet, but sounds like it’s still scheduled for today.
We are gearing up to update Radeon Software Crimson Edition. We will publish a hotfix in the next few hours w/ great stability improvements.
— Radeon RX (@Radeon) November 30, 2015
