Are you really surprised by that title? Let’s review the blunderous release and negative impact on ENTIRE GAMING RIGS for 5% more FPS…

I “pre-downloaded” Doom. Once it was installed my Steam client (because installing game without a company getting their hooks in your data isn’t a thing anymore) informed me that I’d be able to play this on the 19th of March. So, I tried all day. That was wrong.

Okay, the 20th hit. Oh look, I’m able to play. Well, that was the release date, so no harm done. I played for half an hour and liked what I saw. I have a 4K HDR monitor and an AMD 5700 graphics card. The rendering was glorious. I set the screen resolution to 2k and locked the FPS to 60. I was in heaven… hell…. Wherever I was supposed to be. I was SO THERE!

Then there was an update to Doom Friday evening. Wow, okay, let’s get that installed.

Once done, I hit play and…

“You need to update your Adrenalin drivers to 20.3.x” I can no longer play Doom because it demands that I use updated drivers.

Okay, I drop in the Adrenalin driver front end and an hour later..

1%

For a 400 meg file. It errored out because bandwidth was so constrained from the source… and of course it was. Everyone that was playing Doom with an AMD card was updating their drivers too…

So I jump over to the AMD website and try downloading the Adrenalin drivers. The whole package. It starts…

And informs me it’ll be two days.

I go to bed frustrated. I remember playing Doom on a 386. The day it came out. For hours… weeks… months… straight.

When I wake up in the morning I check the Adrenalin download. It errored out, because of course it had. So I restart the download.

Twenty mins later I have the drivers (6 a.m. Saturday morning). Now we’re in business…

Except that when I double tap the file Windows defender protects me from myself because why would I want to run an executable? I check a box and tell it to install anyway. Windows 10 then informs me “it’s not a Windows file.” Of course it is, I selected the Win10 download from the site, it’s an executable, and you tried to protect me from running you ignorant…

I try right clicking on the driver and install as Admin. Now Windows tells me it can’t find the file, though I can see it right there in file explorer.

Frustrated as hell at this point I go back to the Adrenalin drivers and tell them to update again. This time the update runs, and installs. Guess the driver can circumvent the Win10 bullshit. Thankfully the driver installs. Finally, I can play Doom.

I click Play and…

Let me translate this for you. I have been provided drivers that will give me 5% more FPS, something I don’t benefit from in ANY WAY because I locked the FPS at 60, in exchange for playing ANY games in HDR. This means I CAN’T play Star Wars Jedi:Fallen Order in HDR anymore.

Before the update everything worked great, after the update I have to give up EXPECTED FUNCTIONALITY.

To ID, to AMD, I say fuck you, you thoughtless imbeciles. WHY would you make a game REQUIRE me to update to buggy drivers that negatively impact MY ENTIRE GAMING EXPERIENCE? No a 5% boost in FPS is not worth LOOSING HDR. And the fact that I get to be a victim of that stupid, instead of chose what works best for me….