Acer Nitro 5 AN515-42-R5ED - Computer Graphics Failure.

YeshuaBryant

I just purchased the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-42-R5ED Gaming Laptop, with the AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, AMD Radeon RX 560X Graphics, 8GB DDR4 RAM. We have run into an indefinite problem in it's use however. As it's purpose primarily is gaming, she has GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2, No Man's Sky, and other titles. Recently, we had run into the issue where the computer would start GTA V in a very small window and turn all her graphics down and say she doesn't have enough VRAM to change it back, the number was out of 1000 or so, which equates to 1GB. She obviously has more than 1GB, she has 4. I've checked, and when we first got the laptop GTA V ran fine, and listed 4. It turns out, in RADEON, there was a tab entitled "Switchable Graphics" with there being two options, GPU 1 and GPU 2. 1 had 1000 and 2 had 4000. There was also an option to switch from 8GB of RAM to 4GB. So I told her, every time we play, just go into RADEON and switch it. Well, then she purchased Red Dead Redemption 2, attempted to play and every time it crashes immediately upon start up. It says she doesn't have the recommended amount of RAM, which is 8GB. She does. The system sometimes says 7 or so, which is understandable since the system uses that small amount to operate, and on any computer and laptop, games will still run regardless of this. Here, this is not the case. We updated her graphics driver, and now "Switchable Graphics" isn't an option and RDR2 will not start, neither will No Man's Sky. As you can imagine this whole thing has been baffling. I've tried everything I can to find a solution, but I can't. Her laptop is MORE than capable of running No Man's Sky (as she did before this problem) and I'm sure it's capable of running Red Dead on low to medium, settings; I imagine she could push for high though.
After contacting AMD with this, we tried updating the graphics drivers as they told us to (even though I had already) and I got this error message:

<< The Radeon™️ Software package contains generic drivers that supports a wide range of AMD Radeon™️ Graphics products. A possible reason why the Radeon™️ Software Installer failed to identify your graphics hardware is because it belongs in one of these unsupported product groups:

Embedded AMD Radeon graphics
Legacy AMD Radeon graphics
Customized AMD Radeon graphics for an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) system >>

All of this is beginning to be far beyond my knowledge, but I know something is wrong. AMD referred me to the computer manufacturer so I've come here to ACER. I will do anything it takes to fix this problem ASAP. Please someone take a look into this, and give me some insight. Thank you.

andylb

Problem solved follow my walkthrough, I have your exact model

Firstly your BIOS version should be 1.16 go here to update
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/7605?b=

The new AMD Adrenalin 2020 Control Center is designed to give support for your hardware and contains Mobile Driver support for this exact model, the Graphics Drivers on the Acer site are only base drivers. If you haven't already downloaded and installed it then click the link below to download it.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-20-1-4

If you get a failure installing the new Control Center then download and run DDU https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html for a clean uninstall of your current AMD Center and Drivers then try to install again

Most of the problems I have encountered answering questions similar to yours are that users do not have the GPU set up correctly in the Control Center and are gaming on their Dedicated Vega 8 GPU which gives poor performance and is not designed for gaming. I have your exact model and my gaming experience using the AMD 2020 Control Center is good, Follow these instructions

First make sure you game with your battery charged to 100% BEFORE gaming and KEEP plugged into the main AC power while gaming. Make sure "High Performance when on AC", is selected in your Windows Power Plan and in Nitrosense. If you fail to do this your CPU will run at around 50% of capacity and you will experience poor game performance

Open the New AMD 2020 Control Center and click the GAMING tab then click the 3 dots in the upper right hand corner and select ADD A GAME, navigate to your games .exe file and double click it to add it, or you can select SCAN FOR GAMES and let the Control Center search your harddrive for games to add. After successfully adding the game click on the game and you will be taken to another window and click the LAUNCH GAME tab.
Only in this way will your games use the Discrete Rx560x GPU, NEVER launch your game through a desktop shortcut or any other way, do it in the manner I have described.

Please remember that online gaming may experience low fps and stutter due to the games servers and bottlenecking and that has nothing to do with your GPU.

PLEASE CLICK YES IF I HAVE ANSWERED YOUR QUESTION, THANKYOU

YeshuaBryant

As much as it pains me to say, no this didn't really work. For some reason she can play GTA, and after following your steps No Man's Sky works again but when she starts it, it says she hasn't got enough RAM, We followed all the steps you said. Red Dead does not work at ALL, and I know that it should at least load up the main menu and let her run the game on low or medium. There's still something wrong even after following all your steps. BIOS updated, new AMD Center. What next. And thank you for all the help, regardless if it works. It has been much appreciated.

batmalin

You gave 8gb of ram from which 5,9 are usable, the rest is reserved for the vega graffic. So the answer is yes you don`t have enough RAM. Put one more 8gb stick and you will be able to play.

andylb

Make sure she has the battery charged to 100% BEFORE gaming and KEEP plugged into the AC while gaming, also make sure High Performance on AC  is selected in both Nitrosense and the Windows Power plan.
8gb of RAM is on the low end for gaming and I would upgrade to 16gb. The link below is to 8gb of RAM from Crucial who guarantee compatibility for your exact model. I write down the part number and buy it from Amazon.
https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/an515-42-r5ed/CT13836247

Alecsino23

Hy,i am experiencing the same problem,did you sort it out eventually?