AMD has acknowledged that a bug in its current Adrenalin Radeon graphics drivers is causing systems to run continuous SSD write activity, even when the system is running idle. In light of that, the company has promised a fix with the upcoming Adrenalin 26.11.1 driver update.
The Adrenalin Radeon drivers in question are version 26.10.1 and 26.10.2, and the problem reportedly involves a process within the AMD External Events Utility, aptly called the External Events Client Module, or atieclxx.exe. According to users, the process continuously writes data on to the system drive at rates ranging from 0.3MB/s to 1.5MB/s, with one user reaching up to 5MB/s.
While these numbers may appear to be small, it’s important to remember that, because of the continuous write activity, they accumulate over time. Take that 5MB/s figure as an example; at that rate, in one day, the unchecked process would take up approximately 432GB worth of writes. In a month, that’s an average of 13TB, but to be fair, these estimates are based on uninterrupted activity.
The Adrenalin 26.11.1 drivers are expected to roll out a little this month, although AMD isn’t providing an exact date. For now, the CPU and GPU maker is recommending users of Radeon-based systems to see fi their systems are affected via the Windows Resource Monitor. That’s the (sort of) good news: not every Radeon user is affected by the bug.
As for a workaround, affected users are have posited two workarounds. The first is to disable AMD External Events Utility through Windows Services. The second is turning off Resizable BAR in the BIOS. The (sort of) bad new here, neither method works in every reported case, and they’re far from ideal. Disabling the service can reportedly mess with the Adrenalin hotkeys, plus certain display functions. Disabling the Resizable BAR may, unsurprisingly, reduce gaming performance.
(Source: Videocardz, Reddit)
