Install Video Driver Only – AMD Radeon Graphics Card

Update!  AMD has added a Driver Only option to their Radeon install package. Nice! Thanks to William Cronk for the notice in the comments below! 

AMD Radeon - Driver Only

Still no “driver only” option for your AMD Radeon card?  Continue reading below…

Got me a shiny new AMD Radeon video card and…

Issue: AMD doesn’t make individual drivers available for their video cards. The only way to get a driver for your AMD video card is by installing the complete AMD ADRENALIN software suite – did you know, with this software you can control your video card settings from a phone! Holy cow it has a NEWS FEEEED!! When you install AMD “drivers” there is no custom option, there is no “select this software” option. No way to remove the junk and use just the driver. It’s the full Adrenalin Software suite or nothing. You need the driver, but you’re going to get a dumpster fire of useless crap along with it. Unless…

Solution: Start the installer, do not actually install! Then update the video hardware driver directly.

If your video card does not show up in Device Manager
– try enabling show hidden devices: View > Show Hidden Devices
– or run a manual scan: Action > Scan for Hardware Changes.
For any video card that shows up – manually update it’s driver via the steps below.

  1. Download “drivers” here: https://www.amd.com/en/support
  2. Unzip the download into the default folder C:\AMD……..
  3. Let the Install screen open but do not install
  4. Cancel the install
  5. Go to Device Manager
  6. Update Radeon Device from Local disc – C:\AMD\… “Search all folders”
  7. Boom – drivahs!
  8. No BS no, overhead, no sign in account tracking your info, no news feed… just you know, drivers.
  9. Delete  C:\AMD folder if you like (1.x gigs)

Downside – you gotta manually update following the above steps

amd radeon video how install driver only

 

8 thoughts on “Install Video Driver Only – AMD Radeon Graphics Card

  1. Thank you!
    Here’s what I did that worked perfectly. I had already installed the complete product so I ran this tool:
    C:\AMD\Win10-Win11-Radeon-PRO-Software-21.Q4-Dec3\AMDCleanUninstallUtility
    Windows switched to the basic video driver.
    In Device Manager right-click that driver and choose to update it.
    Browse to the folder …Packages\Driver folder and search there.
    Found and installed!

  2. When I installed the latest version driver package, there is a selection of Full, Minimal or driver only.

  3. Only way I found to avoid installing all the AMD suite instead of just the driver is to allow Windows to install a graphic driver. Of course its not going to get updated as frequently and it also automatically installs a Radeon app too. Hard to escape the bloat these days. At least the AMD chipset let’s you opt out of some of the bloat like the Power management profile for AMD CPU. Although the best service AMD could do is unwrap the driver from the suite for graphics and offer a standalone driver. Doubt that will happen, and it makes me question buying anymore AMD graphic cards in the future.

  4. Bro I had an issue with my gpus the drivers suddenly failed because I was lazy and used a hard drive from an old os without wiping it – and after like 6 months of use with no problem after doing one update it completely ruined my drivers and my graphics cards no longer were recognized. It took me about 12 hours and I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work, continuously scrubbing the drivers with ddu in safemode and then reinstalling addrenneline. I figured device drivers were what my cards needed and as you know you can’t find them. This was the only way I could fix my issue, maybe there was another way but hats off to you my friend.

  5. Hey! After a couple of reboots the system detected the card was matching the AMD drivers and installed without the crappy software! Now to wait for the green screen of death…

  6. Wish this worked – just purchased a 5700 XT because ALL nVidia products are sold out, everywhere… this is definitely the last AMD/ATI product I ever purchase. I’ve tried this in the past – back when nVidia was running 256 processing cores and to keep up ATI had 4096 cores in it! Damn thing heated my apartment, still ran like shit.
    Now, a month into ownership of this card getting daily green screen crashes…
    Anyway, I digress, this isn’t working for me for the same reason – Windows Device Manager doesn’t see my graphics card. Maybe I’ll try without drivers? Microsoft default graphics drivers.
    I’m at an anger point of buying a really old nVidia and breaking this pile of garbage in half and tossing it in the bin.
    Thanks for your post – I was really hopeful for a moment.

  7. Solved!
    Thanks :D

    Sami, does your GPU show in Device Manager -> View -> Show hidden devices.

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