AMD Drivers and a Month of Broken Lumen

Findings

On 1 Oct 2024, AMD released WHQL AMD Adrenalin Edition 24.9.1. That driver version breaks Lumen in Unreal Engine 5 and in Fortnite.

Later that month, on 19 Oct 2024, AMD released version 24.10.1. It failed to fix the issue and as such as of the time of writing this, Lumen is still broken on latest GPU driver versions.

If you are working inside UE5, you would want to downgrade to 24.8.1 which on GPUs like mine, an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, fixes the issue.

If interested, read my findings below and watch the videos that showcase further evidence.

Intro

Last year, I spent lots of my free time working on a personal environment art scene in UE5. I went through Unreal Engine 5 Early Preview to UE5.0 and from all versions between and up to UE5.3. For that, I was using the same Radeon RX 7900 XTX as well.

In those months, and all those frequent engine updates, I have seen all kinds of behaviour, bugs and amusing findings when it comes to Nanite and Lumen.

All in all, with each update, newer changes made performance better. Visual presentation was improved too. If light leaks or other visual issues showed up, in the versions after, they were quickly patched.

Meanwhile, I went through a lot of driver versions for the AMD Radeon gpu as well. All of which were mostly trouble free.

As such, my experience, both with improvements on AMD’s end and on Epic’s end, has been positive.

Fast forward to the past weeks when I finally made it back into UE5 after a break. I re-opened my old scene, the one that had had no large issues (or any that were there, I had found good ways to fix). I was met by this:

Video embedded above. It showcases three clips cut one after the other. First one displays a scene in UE5.4.4 with Software Lumen enabled. Second video is UE5.4.4 again but this time Hardware Lumen is on. The visuals are the same (faulty and leaking). Finally, the video cuts to a laggy footage from Fortnite where in a dark barn the same Lumen light leaking is observed.

If you watch the above video to the very end, you will see me experience the same issue in a dark interior barn in Fortnite (my FPS there is low because my OBS glitched, but whilst playing my performance was fine, only the visual glitch showed).

I felt like something must be fundamentally wrong for the light to be in such a bad state now. You can see it again in the still image below.

A still screenshot from the previous video. It shows an angle of the environment, seen after a sudden camera move had been made. The dark interior is revealed to be leaking with light spots, as if Lumen struggles to update the lighting correctly. Text says its UE 5.4.4 and Hardware Lumen on.

I explored turning on and off Hardware Raytraced Lumen. Between it and software one there were no differences and both looked glitched. I decided to look a bit further into it and with some serendipity I found the culprit.

Investigation

AMD Driver 24.6.1

I rolled back my drivers to WHQL 24.6.1 dated as 27 June 2024.

I headed into Fortnite. I went inside the same barn I conduct all tests in (zone called Freaky Fields).

This is the behaviour and footage that I captured:

Video embedded above. Similar clip to before, but this time around the footage is recorded on gpu driver version 24.6.1. The interior of the dark barn no longer glitches in white flashes with the flick of the player camera.

I went inside the depot of my project. UE5 editor settings and scalability are identical to before (to when I was using driver version 24.10.1). This is what I observed:

Video embedded above. A clip of the environment with my crystal inside UE5.4.4. The footage is recorded on driver version 24.6.1 and when the camera flicks around in an aggressive manner, there are no bugs or visual presentation artifacts.

AMD Drivers 24.7.1

On 19 July 2024 AMD released AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.7.1.

Back then, I installed the update, paying particular interest on one change in the list in particular:

Fixed Issues and Improvements

Improvements to stutter when AMD Radeon™ Anti-Lag and AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution 3 frame generation is enabled.

Improvements to stutter while playing Fortnite with DirectX® 12 API.

Texture corruption may be observed while playing TEKKEN™ 8 with Ray Tracing or Upscale enabled.

Corruption may be observed while playing Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded Edition with Radeon™ Boost enabled.

Intermittent system crash or corruption may be observed while playing Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy with Ray Tracing enabled.

Virtual Super Resolution or Display Color Enhancements may be set to disabled after driver upgrade.

Unable to change display pixel format with certain Windows display languages.

Intermittent black corruption may be observed on scaled 3d models while using Origin or OriginPro application.

Black corruption may be observed while fast forwarding using PotPlayer.

― 19 July 2024, AMD

The one mentioning Fortnite drew my attention as it claimed that stutter in Fortnite had been improved. The game has always suffered by that and I wanted to see how much it has improved.

After installing the driver and going into the game, my conclusion was that stutter had indeed been reduced, though not fully eliminated. Shaders compiled much faster at launch of the game (and entering my first match). While in the game, it was obvious when on-demand shader compilation was happening. Nonetheless, that felt improved too, and the stutter was lower than the previous few months of drivers and game versions.

I thought that I remembered this was the first time I also saw visual light issues bigger than usual.

However, I now went back and tested. I found out that 24.7.1 does not break Lumen.

Video embedded above. It shows my crystal scene interior. The camera flicks around and there are no visual glitches like seen before..

AMD Drivers 24.8.1

I went further up, now to driver version 24.8.1. This video showcases my tests both in UE5 Editor and in Fortnite.

Video embedded above. It shows the dark, blue crystal interior. Camera moves quick but there are no issues. Next, a clip from Fortnite barn cuts. All is fine there too..

No issues seen neither in UE5 nor in Fortnite above.

AMD Drivers 24.9.1

Next, I went to 24.9.1. This release, dated at 1 Oct 2024 is the first time when things break.

Lighting Issues Start

Fortnite had always had noise in the Lumen global illumination updating. It is a game where you can dynamically destroy structures after all. That changes the way light interacts with the environment by big sways. Yet, since the moment the game updated from UE4 to UE5 some years ago, I always thought it did the GI real time updates relatively well, when it comes to visual presentation.

There was noise, there was “lag” in the visuals of the light. There were small leaks in the modular pieces of the buildings and the interiors. Yet, there weren’t many “big” offenders.

In this update 24.9.1 all of that had changed. Lots of the lights, when in the open, looked like they were increased way too much in intensity. As if their art direction was lacking.

Looking away from those problematic lights, when going quickly from exterior zone to an interior zone, you could see tons of white noise on the screen, as if Lumen struggles to keep up with your movement. Something that had never been in such a bad visual state before.

Video embedded above. When the camera moves swiftly inside the interior in UE5, the lights now break. Next, clip cuts to the dark interior in Fortnite. There things break too.

AMD Driver 24.10.1

Everything I described above as issues can be seen in this clip too. In this one, we are on latest, current as of the time of writing this driver version 24.10.1.

Video embedded above. It showcases a clip from Fortnite. There is a dark barn interior. Player looks in one corner, then their camera flicks to the other corner. Suddenly the interior gets flooded with white, glitched light. Captured on AMD driver version 24.10.1, as explained by the green text on screen.

The visual glitch seen above looks identical to 24.9.1. I’ve not included the 24.10.1 video from inside my UE5 scene here again simply because you already saw it in the intro of the post.

Fortnite Screen Message

After doing most of my research, I found out about this warning, that pops up on launch of Fortnite, if you were on driver version 24.9.1 or 24.10.1 and using AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX:

Screenshot of a warning message that appears once opening Fortnite on driver 24.9.1 or driver 24.10.1. It’s message is transcribed below.

It reads:

“WARNING: Known issues with graphics driver

The installed version of the AMD graphics driver has known issues in D3D12. Please install the recommended driver version or switch to a different rendering API.

Would you like to visit the following URL to download the driver?

https://www.amd.com/en/support

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Installed: AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.10.1 Recommended: 24.8.1 (5000-series GPUs and above) or 24.9.1 (pre 5000-series GPUs)”

This perfectly aligns with my findings. It would be amazing if this type of message were to appear on opening of Unreal Engine 5, for users with hardware like mine. It’s very useful in Fortnite, but it seems it would be amazing in UE5 as well, in my opinion.

Conclusion

WHQL AMD Adrenalin Edition 24.9.1 driver (dated 1 Oct 2024) broke some part of Lumen and resulted in light leaking and visual artifacts on screen update.

The issue observed is severe. It is present in both hardware enhanced ray tracing Lumen and in software based Lumen. Changing scalability settings of the engine or the game (Fortnite) do not seem to alleviate it.

Any of the drivers that come after, in the following one month have the same issue. None resolved it (namely 24.10.1 released 19 Oct 2024).

Rolling back drivers to WHQL AMD Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1 (dated 29 August 2024) resolves the issue.

Rollback Methodology

I download the old driver packages from the AMD website. I perform DDU and after successful uninstall, I install the older version drivers.

Full Specs

Windows 11

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six-Core Processor 3.4 GHz

32 GB Ram

Fortnite and UE5 Editor both ran on NVMe M.2 SSD.

Bibliography

AMD Drivers:

WHQL AMD Adrenalin Edition 24.6.1

WHQL AMD Adrenalin Edition 24.7.1

WHQL AMD Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1

WHQL AMD Adrenalin Edition 24.9.1

WHQL AMD Adrenalin Edition 24.10.1