Drivers & Software

[david224]

• AMD Graphics Card
  • RX 480 (MSI Gaming X, bios updated to the latest version available)
• Desktop
• Operating System
  • Windows 10 64bit (I also tested everything on Windows 7, no differences)
• Motherboard + Bios Revision
  • Z97M-PLUS/BR
• CPU/APU
  • Intel i7-4790k
• Power Supply Unit  Make, Model & Wattage
  • XFX 650w (don't remember the model right now)
• RAM
  • 12 GB

    I was having some really bad issues when doing GPU intensive stuff on my PC, like some more demanding games or rendering on SketchUp. The problem war that I had some really nasty frametime spikes every 1.5 seconds or so, periodically like a clock, and when a pushed my card a little further, like on specific things on Shadow Warrior 2 or Monster Hunter or by stress testing it on FurMark, the screen would just go black, with no video signal coming from de GPU, and I had to pull the chord to turn of the computer.
     I've tested my rig with another PSU and yesterday I tested my RX 480 (MSI Gaming X) on a friend's rig, same problems again.
     When I got home, I decided to rollback to 17.1.1 and all the problems I was having are now gone, stress test doesn't screw my PC anymore, no more lag spikes, nothing.
     Needless to say, I found this workaround but I don't want to be stuck in an outdated driver version forever, and the driver issue report link on AMD support page don't work, it just displays "Redirecting to page" forever.
     Is there anything more that I could do to further troubleshoot those issues?

     And I know this may sound cliché or something, but sorry for any bad english above, I have near 0 practice at actually writing in english, so I don't know if I'm screwing it up or not.

    EDIT: Forgot to mention that this issues started more or less a month ago, suddenly. And back then I also had the latest drivers installed, it just started suddenly.

               After much testing, I identified the driver version this issue starts: Crimson ReLive 17.11.1. No driver that I've tested older than this one gives me those problems and all drivers newer that I've tested do

     EDIT 2: Turning "Power Efficiency" on Radeon Settings makes the frametime spikes last longer, the frametimes stay really high for 2 to 3 times the length (visible on the frametime graph).

[alleyviper]

On MSI forums their support is very helpful to provide the latest vbios for your card, you might try it to see if the situation improves (serial number and current bios upload is required). Also, if it's a OC'd Gaming X model, you might try to temporarily downclock to AMD's 1266 instead of default 1303MHz to see if the situation changes. If so, your card might need a bit more voltage to sustain its pre-oc under latest drivers.

[david224]

Forgot to mention, I already updated the card's bios to the latest version.

And about OC and voltages, how can I know how much should I change the voltage? Where I can learn about that?
  Anyway, thanks for the help!

[david224]

     I updated to the latest drivers available and I used WattMan to set the frequency of my card to the frequencies of the reference model.
     The problem keeps happening, is there anything that I can do?

[pokester]

You won't be able to re-load your Wattman with this 12.2.2 driver. They changed how Wattman works. You will have to start over with your settings.

[david224]

I am not using custom WattMan settings and I have never used (besides this troubleshooting test).

[pokester]

Sorry what you said:

	I updated to the latest drivers available and I used WattMan to set the frequency of my card to the frequencies of the reference model.
	The problem keeps happening, is there anything that I can do?

Had me think it was an issue recovering your prior settings.

[david224]

Oh, that's because Gaming X cards come with factory OC.

[waltc]

If it's of interest, my RX-480 8GB is still running like a top...;)  No problems whatever--latest drivers are fine.  Sounds like you have something else in your system going on.  Good luck!

[shadow07]

It seems like it's a better idea not to install AMD Driver at all...……………..

[pokester]

Remember after installing a driver you need to re load any Wattman profile you had set. For instance if you have your power limit maxed as most with RX 480's do to get stability. If you have not done this please do it may help. These settings get returned to default every time you reload the driver or every time the driver hangs. So maybe you just need to load your settings back in?

[pokester]

I was just thinking, if you were on 17.7.1 that may be pre-wattman. You may have been stable at default. If your card is a factory overclock then you likely fall in the same camp as many of us and NEED TO NOW MAX YOUR POWER LIMIT SLIDER in Wattman. Slide it all the way to it's max. Likely +25 - +50 depending on model. See if that doesn't help.

[david224]

It doesn't. And the driver that I'm using (and don't have the problems) is 17.10.3, and it does have WattMan.

[pokester]

The big issues in Wattman began with 12.10.1. You mentioned you were on 17.7.1 previously and that it was fine. Sorry for MY? confusion. You also said before your card was a factory OC. Either way not sure what you have. If you are not maxing the power limit this is the common stability fix for RX series, polaris cards. Try it if you have not. You need to restart, should mention on Windows 10 you need to disable fast startup. Even if you change it in Radeon Setting this setting can be cached by fast startup and not work until disabled.

[dblagent007]

I have the same card and have experienced the exact same problems. Version 12.2.2 is so bad that about 50% of the time nothing comes up on my screens when I turn the computer on. I also updated the bios of the MSI card to the latest version and maxed the power in Wattman.

Since the day I bought the card, I had a problem where one of my two screens would go black and then come back. It was annoying but not too bad. I honestly thought it was the screen not the graphics card. Lately, with each new firmware update, the problem got worse. At one point, both screens would go black. Then both screens would go black and the windows would be resized when it came back. Then on 12.2.2 (and possible a few earlier versions), the screens wouldn't even come on about half the time when I started my computer or tried to wake it from sleep. This is when it got serious enough for me to put significant effort into figuring out what is going on, which is why I'm here.

I'm now in the process of rolling back the driver until I can find the latest one that only causes the screen to turn black without resizing the windows. That is at least a usable situation, although not ideal.

I don't use my computer for gaming. I use it for work, which is mainly writing documents in Word and using Chrome.

I use the card to power two 40" 4k Samsung TVs (Model: UN40KU6290FXZA)

Here is the info for my system:

Radeon Software Version - 18.8.2 (***Note: I'm in the process of reverting drivers; this version still causes both screens to go black and resizes the windows)

Radeon Software Edition - Adrenalin

Graphics Chipset - Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics

Memory Size - 4096 MB

Memory Type - GDDR5

Core Clock - 1303 MHz

Windows Version - Windows 10 (64 bit)

System Memory - 24 GB

CPU Type - Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz

Radeon Settings Version - 2018.0827.1014.18428

Driver Packaging Version - 18.30.11.01-180827a-332601E-RadeonSoftwareAdrenalin

Provider - Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

2D Driver Version - 8.1.1.1634

Direct3D® Version - 9.14.10.01359

OpenGL® Version - 24.20.11000.13539

OpenCL™ Version - 24.20.13011.1009

AMD Mantle Version - 9.1.10.0278

AMD Mantle API Version - Not Available

AMD Audio Driver Version - 10.0.1.7

Vulkan™ Driver Version - 2.0.49

Vulkan™ API Version - 1.1.77

Graphics Card Manufacturer - Powered by AMD

Graphics Chipset - Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics

Device ID - 67DF

Vendor ID - 1002

SubSystem ID - 3413

SubSystem Vendor ID - 1462

Revision ID - C7

Bus Type - PCI Express 3.0

Current Bus Settings - PCI Express 3.0 x16

BIOS Version - 015.050.000.001

BIOS Part Number - 113-V34111-F1

BIOS Date - 2017/07/27 21:37

Memory Size - 4096 MB

Memory Type - GDDR5

Memory Clock - 1750 MHz

Core Clock - 1303 MHz

Total Memory Bandwidth - 224 GByte/s

Memory Bit Rate - 7.00 Gbps

2D Driver File Path - /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}/0000

[sinxro]

The same identical issue with my MSI RX 480 8 GB gaming X. Tried all official versions of bios. The issue is not reproduced on 17.10.3(and below) and in these cases:

1. if downgrade power limit slider to -35% and below...the power/gpu curve is stable but decreased.

2. In global settings Frame Rate Traget control should be 55 fps and below.

3. Enable Vertical Sync in game(in most cases helps but not always)

There are no freezes in games in these cases .