"Couldn't initiate render device"

[TheOtherGuy]

Hey there,

today I encountered the problem, that all Games (all on steam) seem to not recognize my gpu. There always appears a promp like "Couldn't initiate the render device" or something of the sort.
I already tried reinstalling the drivers and the games.
In the system settings everyting is shown and the status shows that everything is fine.
It would be awesome if someone could help me with this.

The card is an AMD RX 470

 

[carnageX]

What games specifically?

And what are your full system specs?

 

[TheOtherGuy]

The game that brings the mentioned prompt is Natural Selection 2.
But other games that show some kind of message are:
Black Ops II (shows a "fatal directX error")
Dota 2 (shows a message that says my system specs aren't good enough)
Planetside 2 (opens a browser where the same message as for dota is shown)
Shogun 2 Total war (can't remember what message it was here, deinstalled it)
Rome 2 Total war (same as for shogun)
...

System specs:

MSI Z-170 A Pro
Intel Core I5 6500 3.2GHz
Radeon RX 470
Windows 10 Pro (64 bit)

Anything else you need?

 

[PP Mguire]

Go into your device manager and make sure that Windows is properly recognizing your GPU.

Also try downloading this.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

 

[TheOtherGuy]

Yes its being recognized in the device manager and also says that everyting is fine with the card.
What will the download do for me?

 

[PP Mguire]

Just try it.

 

[TheOtherGuy]

Didn't fix anything unfortunately.

 

[PP Mguire]

A quick Google shows this seems to be a common problem, and yet people swear AMD have fixed their drivers. Do a clean install of the drivers with DDU, and if that doesn't work try an older version of drivers. You're basically going to have to experiment to see which driver set doesn't crash the card.

 

[TheOtherGuy]

Ok thanks a lot for your help!
I found a different solution tho.
Through the device manager I found an option to use the previous driver.
That fixed the problem.

 

[PP Mguire]

Same thing I suggested, just a dirtier way to do it. That's what others have done. Get used to the process, because this has been an issue for many generations of AMD cards.