<< Solved >> 6900 XT not as smooth as RX 570? Driver Issue?

[TripleYoThreat]

Is this just an issue with the way the drivers are written? Have others noticed this? Bought a brand new 6900 XT from AMD, and it is NOT as smooth as the RX 570 (4GB lol)

I think it's the way the drivers work with macOS animations, idk.

The score on Geekbench metal is right where it should be. But the overall use with the UI is not as smooth

oh yeah! and during use, bout every 20-30 minutes, it'll have like a freeze for 3-5 seconds, and then resume normally. This doesn't happen at all with the 570
The 6900 XT doesn't have any of these issues on Windows, have gamed for hours.
So I'm trying to figure out if it's a faulty unit but it seems unlikely since it works well on Windows.
Can anyone else confirm some choppiness with an AMD Reference 6900 XT? or possible solutions?
Running Monterey 12.3.1

 

[TripleYoThreat]

Any thoughts guys?
I've been rocking the 570 since and it's still liquid smooth with the UI. I haven't had issues with Photoshop or AI work either - nothing intensive lately.

 

[irz]

You couldn't just buy a new GPU and install it : )

My experience while swapping card is to clear for everything like caches, prefs, etc & may be reinstall full OS X image on the top of current system.

Try onyx, nvram reset, manual clearing and may be install 12.5 with full image

 

[TripleYoThreat]

You couldn't just buy a new GPU and install it : )

My experience while swapping card is to clear for everything like caches, prefs, etc & may be reinstall full OS X image on the top of current system.

Try onyx, nvram reset, manual clearing and may be install 12.5 with full image

I've done a fresh clean install with just this gpu.

Also, macOS has never shown issues with swapping native graphics cards, so usually one can pretty much buy a new gpu and install it.

I can swap 570s and 580s and they're equally smooth. It's just the 6900 XT which isn't as smooth so the question is if others are seeing this too, meaning it would be a system wide driver thing, or if it's just me, and it may be this unit in particular.

 

[Edhawk]

Going by the lack of response to your question I would say it was a more likely to be a problem with your card. But.

Have you used it in any other OS, Linux, Windows etc. does it behave in the same 'Choppy' manner?

I'm just asking to rule out a Hardware issue. If it works in the other OS's then it is more likely to be a macOS problem, not a hardware issue.

Assuming it is not an XFX card with a funky VBios.

 

[10tacle]

I never had a 570 but as for the 6900 XT I can't confirm any of this. There are no occasional 3-5 second freezes and the UI is always as smooth as it's supposed to be.

Adobe on the other hand is just poorly written, the UI does get a bit choppy sometimes. I've been saying for years, no matter how much hardware you throw at it, Photoshop and all the others never feel really smooth. But that's something I experience on any Mac and PC, whether it's Windows or macOS with or without Hackintosh (and it's really annoying). That's nothing any GPU or whatever can compensate.

 

[TripleYoThreat]

Going by the lack of response to your question I would say it was a more likely to be a problem with your card. But.

Have you used it in any other OS, Linux, Windows etc. does it behave in the same 'Choppy' manner?

I'm just asking to rule out a Hardware issue. If it works in the other OS's then it is more likely to be a macOS problem, not a hardware issue.

Assuming it is not an XFX card with a funky VBios.

Man, I was desperately awaiting a response can't believe I missed this. I just went back from the 570 to the 6900 XT, and would like to bump this thread.
There it all is again, the 3-5 second freezes, plus some coil whine every time my background changes. It's ridiculous. I paid 1500 for it brand new. and it's at like 700 now from an AIB with better cooling.

No issues in Windows. No freezing or anything like that, though the same coil whine exists.
I believed it to be a macOS issue too, but if others aren't facing it, what can we say?

It's the official AMD reference model

I never had a 570 but as for the 6900 XT I can't confirm any of this. There are no occasional 3-5 second freezes and the UI is always as smooth as it's supposed to be.

Adobe on the other hand is just poorly written, the UI does get a bit choppy sometimes. I've been saying for years, no matter how much hardware you throw at it, Photoshop and all the others never feel really smooth. But that's something I experience on any Mac and PC, whether it's Windows or macOS with or without Hackintosh (and it's really annoying). That's nothing any GPU or whatever can compensate.

Which model do you have? No occasional freeze ups? damn. Which Monterey are you on? I'm on 12.3.1, which I only did after they announced the 5000 and 6000 series issue to be fixed. I'll jump to 12.5.1 tonight and report back..

Au contraire, Adobe runs great here. No issues on the 570 or the 6900 XT. I feel it was a tad 'faster' on Windows, but more harnessed and smoother on Mac. Photoshop and Illustrator ran great on the 570 as well, no choppiness, quick to move, scale, transform objects, render lights and all that.
Then on the 6900 xt I've done a bit of everything. Premiere, After Effects, the whole 9.
What's your primary use case? I had a lot of issues with Premiere until I adjusted the preview file format. that helped a lot

 

[TripleYoThreat]

In short, I just plugged in the 6900 XT after using the 570 for months, which I only did cause the 570 had one DP, one HDMI, & one DVI, and I grabbed my old 4k monitor to use alongside mmy 2k 165hz...needed two DisplayPorts so I reinstalled the 6900 xt.
There it all is again.
I did NOT remember this freezing. The UI looks nearly the same tbh, but that freezing is enough to mess it up.
On the brightside I suppose, not seeing the freezing for about 2 months does verify that it is indeed the graphics card.

Any thoughts from anyone will be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Edhawk]

I would look to RMA the card if it is still an option, as it sounds like you have a defective card.

 

[Middleman]

In short, I just plugged in the 6900 XT after using the 570 for months, which I only did cause the 570 had one DP, one HDMI, & one DVI, and I grabbed my old 4k monitor to use alongside mmy 2k 165hz...needed two DisplayPorts so I reinstalled the 6900 xt.
There it all is again.
I did NOT remember this freezing. The UI looks nearly the same tbh, but that freezing is enough to mess it up.
On the brightside I suppose, not seeing the freezing for about 2 months does verify that it is indeed the graphics card.

Any thoughts from anyone will be greatly appreciated!!

The card shouldn't be playing up like that. The first issue I'd work on would be try to upgrade it to Monterey 12.5 as we previously posted back in March version 12.3 was reported to have problems with the card. There's a whole thread dedicated to this issue:

> https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...ems-for-5700-6800-6900-graphics-cards.319421/

The fix for it was mentioned in this post > https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...00-graphics-cards.319421/page-10#post-2312828
Aside from that, the 6900 XT requires the use of agdpmod=pikera and see if enabling Above 4G Decoding and Resizeable Bar in BIOS helps. (Resizeable Bar is the PC equivalent of AMD's Smart Access Memory, which allows the cpu better access to the overall total available graphics memory, so textures and so on loads up much quicker). If you have set any existing boot-args for the RX570 they will need to be removed from the config.plist otherwise it can cause KP conflicts.

As a precaution I would also double check if there's enough power going to your GPU from your PSU. On my Ryzen 5900X B550 Vision D system, I found I had to use a 750W PSU to provide enough power to run my 16GB RX6800 card plus associated peripherals.