AMD Adrenalin 26.11.1 optional driver fixes excessive SSD writes

AMD released the optional Adrenalin 26.11.1 driver on November 12 to fix excessive system drive writes. The issue was caused by the AMD External Events Utility (atieclxx.exe) in the 26.10.1 and 26.10.2 drivers. While AMD says the idle-write fix applies to Radeon RX 7000 series and newer, some Reddit users reported that RX 6000 series and older cards also experienced the problem. Reports say write rates reached between 0.3 MB/s and 5 MB/s, which can total between 26 GB and 432 GB of data per day. One user reported that the problematic executable continued writing to the drive constantly after installing the update.

Image: eTeknix

The update includes nine known issues. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced can crash or cause driver timeouts on RX 7000 series cards, and War Thunder can cause timeouts on RX 5000 series cards. AMD recommends using Adrenalin 26.9.1 if playing War Thunder on an RX 5000 card. On RX 9000 series cards, Cyberpunk 2077 can crash or timeout when FSR Upscaling, Radeon Anti-Lag, and in-game frame generation are enabled during secondary display video playback. AMD suggests disabling in-game frame generation for that game. Phantom Blade Zero may show visual corruption on hair, and AMD recommends turning off High-Quality Hair. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered can show black corruption on RX 9000 series cards or become unresponsive when Alt+Tabbing on Ryzen AI Max PRO 400 Series processors. Gears of War: Reloaded may show a black screen on launch for Ryzen AI 9 400 Series processors. AMD suggests switching that game to Windowed mode and back to Fullscreen to fix the issue.

AMD Smart Access Memory may be disabled on Windows 10 systems after installation. AI Bundle components may also fail to install in areas where access to GitHub and HuggingFace is limited.

Background In October, Adrenalin Edition 26.10.1 was released about 10 days before the 26.10.2 driver. Our earlier story