Adrenalin 26.11.1 stops the Radeon driver from writing to your system drive nonstop. It's an optional driver, so you have to download it yourself, and it ships with a list of known issues, including one for Gears of War: Reloaded.
Earlier this week we told Radeon owners to check whether their graphics driver was chewing through their SSD, and we promised to tell you when the fix landed. It’s here. AMD released Adrenalin Edition 26.11.1 on November 12, and the official release notes list two fixes, both aimed squarely at the problem: “Excessive writes to the system drive may be observed while the system is idle on Radeon RX 7000 series graphics products and above,” and excessive writes “while moving or resizing application windows.”
That second line matters. It means the bug wasn’t only an idle problem. Dragging windows around your desktop could trigger the extra writes too.
You have to go get it
The catch is that 26.11.1 is an optional driver, not a regular release, so it won’t necessarily show up on its own the way a standard update does. You’ll need to grab it from AMD’s site. As PC Gamer put it, that’s “a slightly odd move” for a bug this serious, and we agree. When a driver is quietly writing to your drive around the clock, the fix should be front and center, not something you have to know to go looking for.
Here’s the quick version:
- Download Adrenalin 26.11.1 from AMD’s release notes page. It supports Windows 10 and Windows 11 64-bit, version 21H2 and later.
- Install it and restart.
- Open Resource Monitor (Win + R, type resmon), go to the Disk tab, sort by Write (B/sec) and make sure atieclxx.exe isn’t writing constantly anymore.
If you turned off the AMD External Events Utility or Resizable BAR as a workaround, this is the time to turn them back on and check resmon again.
Who it covers, and who might still be waiting
AMD’s wording names RX 7000 series cards “and above,” which covers RX 7000 and RX 9000 owners. The driver itself installs on cards going back to the RX 5000 series, but the fix line doesn’t mention older GPUs. PC Gamer points out that some user reports involved RX 6000 cards, so if you’re on RDNA 2 and still see heavy writes after updating, that’s worth reporting to AMD.
The known issues
Optional drivers usually come with rough edges, and this one lists several. The one Xbox fans on PC should know about: AMD says a black screen may appear when launching Gears of War: Reloaded on Ryzen AI 9 400 series processors, and recommends switching the in-game display mode to Windowed and then back to Fullscreen.
Other known issues include intermittent crashes or driver timeouts in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced on RX 7000 cards, driver timeouts in War Thunder on RX 5000 cards (AMD suggests staying on Adrenalin 26.9.1 if that hits you), and crashes in Cyberpunk 2077 on some RX 9000 cards when FSR upscaling, Anti-Lag and frame generation are on while video plays on a second screen. RX 9000 owners playing Phantom Blade Zero may also see visual corruption on character hair, and AMD’s fix for now is turning off the High-Quality Hair setting. AMD also warns that Smart Access Memory may turn itself off after installing on Windows 10, so double-check that setting.
Radeon owners, did 26.11.1 fix your SSD writes?
Vote and see what other Xbox fans think.
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Our take on the turnaround
Credit to AMD for shipping the fix inside the November window it promised. But the timeline still stings. An AMD rep acknowledged the reports back on October 21, and the fix arrived three weeks later as an optional download with a known-issues list longer than its fixed-issues list. That’s the same month Lisa Su called AMD “a data center first company.” Radeon gamers have been loyal through a lot. A bug that wears down their drives deserved a louder, faster fix than this.
If you’re on a Radeon card, don’t wait for this to land in the next full driver. Grab 26.11.1 today, check resmon, and get back to gaming.
Image: OnPoint 4 Gamers
Sources
- AMD: AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.11.1 Optional Driver Release Notes
- PC Gamer: AMD has patched its SSD-eating GPU driver bug with an optional Adrenalin update
- TweakTown: AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.11.1 driver addresses the excessive SSD writes issue
- OnPoint 4 Gamers: AMD Admits a Radeon Driver Bug Is Hammering Some PCs’ SSDs
