Radeon RX 7900M Alienware m18 R1 bugs addressed via display driver workaround

The recently-released Alienware m18 R1 was the very first laptop model in the world to ship with the new Radeon RX 7900M GPU designed to compete against the mobile GeForce RTX 4080. In our full review of the model, we found the AMD GPU to nearly rival the RTX 4080 in many titles while saving buyers over $500 USD. Nonetheless, we noted several major issues including black screens and freezes upon bootup. Thankfully, a quick fix is already available.

According to Dell, owners of the AMD-powered Alienware m18 R1 should install this specific display driver which is an older version from September 2023. Newer drivers, which we installed on our review unit, have not yet been optimized for the Alienware m18 R1 as of this writing which led to many of the issues we experienced. Users should therefore disable any Radeon auto-update features and stick with the older v31.0.14076.3, A01 driver for now even if AMD Adrenalin recommends otherwise. Dell themselves will push the update when newer drivers become ready at a future date.

After rolling back our display driver to the one Dell suggested, we can confirm that many of our issues had disappeared. The main screen would exhibit no wake-from-sleep or boot issues and even WLAN battery life would improve to 3.5 hours. Only more minor bugs would remain such as the inability to run 3DMark Speed Way, Blender Classroom HIP, or Baldur's Gate 3 on Vulkan.

In short, early adopters interested in the latest AMD-powered Alienware should therefore have nothing to worry about so long as they stick to a very specific display driver.