AMD Adrenalin Driver Update Breaks Some Older Games

Published: January 2, 2018 11:51 PM /

By:


the witcher enhanced edition

AMD's most recent Adrenalin driver release (17.12.1) has been found to cause crashing in games ranging from The Witcher: Enhanced Edition to Command and Conquer 3, according to numerous gamers posting on official forums and Reddit. This seems to be caused by older implementations of DirectX9 in these releases, and more recent DX9 games such as Team Fortress 2 and Borderlands 2 are running without issue.

AMD's original response to the issue has been erased but was preserved on Reddit and is replicated below.

This title is from 2007, so we are unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue, which is most likely caused by outdated API modules.
Released last month, 17.12.1 includes fixes for Overwatch and Mass Effect: Andromeda alongside social networking features for the company's Radeon software suite. The full list of confirmed games that upon launch after installing the new update is below.
  • Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
  • Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath
  • Command & Conquer 3: Red Alert 3
  • Command & Conquer 3: Red Alert 3 Uprising
  • Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II
  • The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
After reaching out directly, a contact at AMD gave us this updated response.
“We are aware of this driver issue and are investigating a fix.”
TechRaptor will continue to monitor the situation and update when these classic games are playable again. In the meantime, if you want to run them on your PC, you'll have to install older versions of the drivers which should allow you to launch them, although the improvements from the newest drivers obviously wouldn't be carried over.


Quick Take

One of the most appealing parts of the PC platform is its endless backward compatibility. Once a game is ported to PC, it's considered "safe" in the eyes of some preservationists. Events like this throw that mindset into question, although it's not a surprise considering the ever-widening gap in technological prowess between AMD and rival NVidia. Thankfully, another great part of PC gaming is that development isn't locked down to the big companies. If AMD can't come up with a fix, someone else will most likely step in to make these games run again. It's an unfortunate solution, but that's the reality of keeping games ever compatible with the wildly different architectures of 2017.

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Alex Santa Maria TechRaptor
| Staff Writer

Alex Santa Maria is TechRaptor's former Reviews Editor (2015-2020) and current occasional critic. Joining the site early in its life, Alex grew the review… More about Alex

More Info About This Game
Learn more about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Developer
CD Projekt Red
Publisher
CD Projekt
Release Date
May 18, 2015 (Calendar)
Genre
Open World, RPG
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