AMD Radeon drivers accidentally change settings in Ryzen CPU BIOS

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The GPU drivers for AMD Radeon video cards mistakenly adjust the bios settings of certain Ryzen CPUs, causing them to automatically overclock without the user’s knowledge. That’s what Tom’s Hardware discovered and AMD confirms. AMD is investigating the issue.

AMD’s confirmation comes after several users report that their CPU has been mysteriously overclocked without their consent, writes Tom’s Hardware. Igor’s Lab discovered that the problem arose in systems with AMD CPUs and GPUs that use AMD’s Adrenalin GPU software. AMD now confirms that, and the company says it is investigating the problem.

Tom’s Hardware writes that AMD originally added support to GPU drivers for automatically overclocking processors in a Ryzen Master module in the Radeon Adrenalin GPU software to make it easier to overclock. Users with both an AMD processor and video card could then overclock both in one interface. Because Ryzen CPUs need to adjust the bios settings for overclocking, the driver had to do this through the bios, via the Precision Boost Overdrive feature.

What is happening now is that the AMD driver can accidentally adjust the bios settings and enable automatic overclocking when a user turns on a gpu profile, without the user realizing what is happening. Additionally, users don’t get the warning they would normally get when they overclock, stating that overclocking will void Ryzen CPU warranty terms and explaining that overclocking isn’t appropriate on every system.

AMD has not yet said whether the warranty will also be void if overclocking happens due to the bug or how they will fix the issues. The company only says it is aware of the issues and is investigating the matter.

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