[Windows 11] AMD Adrenalin driver (32.0.31007.5012) causes R9700 VRAM to offload to system RAM on idle - crash with 32GB RAM

[realsheox-max]

Problem

AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 on Windows offloads entire VRAM content
to system RAM after ~15 seconds idle, causing system crash
(32GB RAM fills up instantly).

Reproduces with both Vulkan and ROCm backends.
Also reproduces in LM Studio (Vulkan backend).

Root Cause

AMD Adrenalin Software (driver 32.0.31007.5012, dated 12.05.2026)
installs aggressive DPM power management that evicts VRAM on idle.
The basic Windows driver without Adrenalin does NOT have this behavior.

System

• OS: Windows 11 (Build 26200.8457)
• GPU: AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 (32GB VRAM)
• CPU: Intel i7-11700KF
• RAM: 32GB DDR4
• Affected driver: 32.0.31007.5012 (Adrenalin, 12.05.2026)
• Working driver: 32.0.22042.14002 (09.03.2026, no Adrenalin)

Fix

1. Uninstall AMD Adrenalin, rollback to driver 32.0.22042.14002
2. Use --no-mmap without --mlock

Working command

.\llama-server.exe --device Vulkan1
--model "model.Q4_K_M.gguf"
--ctx-size 65536
--threads 8
--parallel 1
--n-gpu-layers -1
--host 127.0.0.1
--port 8080
--cache-type-k q4_0
--cache-type-v q4_0
--cache-ram 0
--no-mmap

What does NOT fix this

• DisableGpuMemoryTrim registry key
• KMD_EnableContextBasedPowerManagement=0
• PCI Express Link State Power Management=Off
• WSL2 with ROCm (same issue)

Additional Notes

The R9700 is marketed as a dedicated AI workstation card.
The target use case is exactly keeping LLMs permanently loaded
in VRAM for inference workloads.

Ironically, AMD ships the same consumer Adrenalin driver with
aggressive laptop-style power management on this workstation card.
When the LLM is idle between requests, the GPU already draws only
~8W — there is absolutely no reason to evict VRAM contents to
system RAM at that point.

This DPM behavior makes sense on laptops/integrated GPUs to save
battery. On a dedicated 32GB AI accelerator it actively destroys
the primary use case.

AMD should either:

1. Ship a compute/workstation driver profile without aggressive DPM
2. Add an option in Adrenalin to disable VRAM eviction on idle
3. Document this behavior clearly for AI/LLM workloads

Related Issues

• Dual AMD AI Pro R9700 cards failing #22871 - Similar symptoms on Linux/Docker
• [Issue]: Shared memory is forced with llama.cpp llama-server --mlock ROCm/ROCm#4903 - --mlock forces shared memory on Windows AMD
• llama-server keeps loading and unloading the model from RAM: how to keep it in VRAM? #12800 - AMD DPM offloads VRAM to GTT on Linux (fix: amdgpu.runpm=0)

[Jrjy3]

Just got this card today, and I'm facing the same bug. This is the behavior I see in task manager.

Note that I also have a 5080 in this system, but it's disabled and only running on the R9700.