AMD has publicly confirmed reports of crashes with its ATI Radeon HD 5000-series graphics processors, which result in users systems displaying a series of grey or coloured lines.
As reported over on Tom's Hardware, the company has advised customers experiencing the bug that the issue isn't a hardware bug but a software one exacerbated by an update issued by Microsoft for Windows 7.
Despite this explanation, users running other versions of Windows are complaining of the same issue - and in the release notes for the latest version of theATI drivers, Catalyst 10.1, the grey screen crash is noted as an issue which affects all versions of Windows.
Company spokesman Dave Erskine has stated that "only a small number of ATI Radeon HD 5800 series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 series cards are exhibiting the behaviour" and promises that " the [Radeon] team is testing a driver hotfix and initial tests indicate that it resolves the issue."
When pressed on a firm release date, Erskine said only that "we need to test it further but we expect to make the hotfix available shortly."
The driver bug isn't the first software flaw to vex users of AMD's graphics hardware: late last year the PC release of The Saboteur was marred by incompatibilities withATI Radeon graphics cards which resulted in the game crashing on multi-core systems equipped with AMD's graphics processors. While this was later fixed in a patch from Electronic Arts, it left a bad taste in many gamers' mouths - especially as The Saboteur was part of rival graphics chip manufacturerNvidia's "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" programme.
Are you pleased to hear that AMD is fixing they grey screen crash, or are you shocked that such a major software bug ever made it into production drivers? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
As reported over on Tom's Hardware, the company has advised customers experiencing the bug that the issue isn't a hardware bug but a software one exacerbated by an update issued by Microsoft for Windows 7.
Despite this explanation, users running other versions of Windows are complaining of the same issue - and in the release notes for the latest version of theATI drivers, Catalyst 10.1, the grey screen crash is noted as an issue which affects all versions of Windows.
Company spokesman Dave Erskine has stated that "only a small number of ATI Radeon HD 5800 series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 series cards are exhibiting the behaviour" and promises that " the [Radeon] team is testing a driver hotfix and initial tests indicate that it resolves the issue."
When pressed on a firm release date, Erskine said only that "we need to test it further but we expect to make the hotfix available shortly."
The driver bug isn't the first software flaw to vex users of AMD's graphics hardware: late last year the PC release of The Saboteur was marred by incompatibilities withATI Radeon graphics cards which resulted in the game crashing on multi-core systems equipped with AMD's graphics processors. While this was later fixed in a patch from Electronic Arts, it left a bad taste in many gamers' mouths - especially as The Saboteur was part of rival graphics chip manufacturerNvidia's "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" programme.
Are you pleased to hear that AMD is fixing they grey screen crash, or are you shocked that such a major software bug ever made it into production drivers? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
RELATED ARTICLES
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review
October 14 2021 | 15:04
Want to comment? Please log in.