AMD vows to fix Adrenalin driver DirectX 9 crash bug

AMD has backtracked on a claim that it is 'unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources' to resolving issues with older DirectX 9-based software when running the company's latest 'Adrenalin' driver bundle, stating now that it is actively working on a fix for release as soon as possible.

Released last month, the Radeon Software Adrenalin Bundle brings with it the latest support for the DirectX 11 and Vulkan application programming interfaces (APIs), along with a new in-game overlay system and a companion mobile app. These new features, though, appear to have come at the cost of backwards compatibility: Users of AMD graphics cards have reported that selected DirectX 9 titles, including entries in the popular Command & Conquer franchise, no longer work as of driver version 17.12.1.

'The 17.12.1 driver breaks the Command & Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3 (and associated expansions). The games crash with the error "exception in exception handler", but after reverting to the previous driver the games work properly,' user 'yogald' reports on the AMD Community forum. 'According to Reliability History the faulting module is atiumdag.dll, which further proves it's a driver issue.'

With other users chiming in to confirm the problem, AMD responded - but the news wasn't good. 'This title is from 2007, so we are unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue,' claimed an AMD spokesperson responding to the complaints, 'which is most likely caused by outdated API modules.'

An outpouring of complaints followed AMD's dismissive response, and at the time of writing the original forum thread had been locked since December 25th. Other threads on the same issue, however, are still open, including one questioning whether AMD has officially ended support for DirectX 9 titles, another highlighting the issue with Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth, and another confirming the issue affects multiple Command & Conquer 3-based games.

Thankfully, the pseudonymous staffer was apparently misinformed: AMD's Terry Makedon took to social networking service Twitter to confirm that a fix is indeed in the works. 'I am seeing some stories pop up about AMD not supporting some old games. That is absolutely not true,' Makedon told followers, 'we are identifying the bug and working on a fix asap. C&C [Command & Conquer], Witcher, BfME [Battle for Middle Earth], etc will be working again.'

AMD has not yet issued a release date for the fix, though a temporary workaround of rolling back to an earlier driver release is available.