Graphics Cards

[davejb]

TL/DR: POWER SUPPLY!

Well, curious. I wonder if some of the changes I made over the last year or so might have softened possible transient power spikes? I think I've read the Vega (and maybe 580) have bigger transient spikes than in the past? Anyway despite all the time that has passed since this post and all the things that seemed to help sometimes even for weeks, recently I had another HORRIBLY maddening run of random crashes in game.

PROBLEM SEEMS TO BE SOLVED: power supply. God bless it.

So, I had quality Antec 750 watt power supply that I think I bought in about 2011. Right up until I replaced my R9 280 (first with a 580 then Vega RX56) I had incredible stability so it never occurred to me the PS could be the problem. I'm pretty sure the Vega RX 56 doesn't draw MORE power than an R9 280 but I have read that possibly it does spike quite high sometimes.

Anyway, I bought a brand new Corsair HX850i and have now gamed for at least 12 hours with no crashes. Interestingly, the power drawn through this PS shows that it's not pulling even half of 850 watts so it's total overkill apparently. I mean, the power supply fan hasn't even needed to come on yet.

I still haven't tried re-enabling the TDR feature but that would the big test I suppose.

Hi guys, I had this problem for almost a year (see here my terrible crashing for months fixed - RX 580 and Vega RX56 ) and I was ... losing my mind. In short, I had NO stability issues for almost 3 years with an Intel box and an R9 280. I then upgraded to an RX580 and started to get the amdkmdap error constantly. Then the Vega RX56 came on sale and I hoped that the 580 was defective and the Vega would fix the issue. Nope. These crashes were just constant, no matter what I was doing. Of course I'd tried playing with the Wattman settings, different driver versions, different graphic settings, I fully wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Windows 10, etc etc. Now, I've been PC gaming for 23 years and building my own gaming systems since the late 90's, so I'm no noob (plus I'm a sys admin for a living) but this was driving me nuts. If I had had more time to dedicate to solving this problem instead of just trying to spend my little bit of free time gaming, I would have have been more methodical and figured it out sooner but oh well.

Now, I have a few posts on this forum about this and thought I had it figured out a couple times thinking something else was causing it, but no. I've fixed it now. No more crashing. It took me a very long time to track down the specific problem by starting to take notes to any changes made by me, Windows Updates, or driver updates. I had tried the TDR_Delay fix and that seemed better for a while but wasn't good enough. Also, either this key or another key (I'm not at home to see my notes) kept changing even DURING my gaming sessions. I'd set it, it would be fine as long as it remained then the driver would crash and when I looked at the registry key it had been changed back.

Okay, the fix for me was to set (or add the key) TdrLevel to "0". This means that a graphics driver crash means you'll need to fully reboot the PC, but I had no choice. I had so many nights where I couldn't even play for 3 or 4 minutes without a crash. Here's a URL that describes the key. TDR Registry Keys | Microsoft Docs

I've now gamed for over 20 hours with no more amdkmdap errors, though I have had a crash or two that forced me to hold the power button in for five seconds to power cycle the computer. Not perfect but I'll take it.

One interesting note. On my work PC which is running Windows 10 1803, there are no TDR keys at all. So, I'm wondering if the cause of going from a system that had an AMD card (the R9 280) and was stable for years and then the frequent crashing (after upgrading to the 580) is because AMD added the TDR key themselves with the newer cards.

Notes:

The only two games I've been playing were NBA 2K17 and Mass Effect Andromeda.

System specs off the top of my head:

Intel i5-4670K (Haswell)

Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z97 motherboard

16 GB 1866 PC3-14900 DDR3 RAM

AMD Vega RX56

Samsung 850 Pro SSD

750 watt power supply

[flugelman]

I built a Win10, i5-8400, ASRock Z390 mother board, 16gb, in Feb.2019 and added the AMD RX 580 8gb.

I'm having the same issues.  Crashes to a black screen for a few seconds.  Restores.  Happens frequently when I change window sizes by grabbing a corner and sliding the window width to the left.  I web develop and want to check response to window sizes.  Also is happening in Adobe Photoshop.  Notice it when I drag a new image onto a canvas and grab a corner to resize the layer.  I have been wondering if my older Samsung DVI display may be the problem and I should purchase a DataPort or at least an HDMI display.

Any thoughts?

[icrysysi]

Solution, your welcome
"https://answers.microsoft.com/es-es/windows/forum/games_windows_10/soluci%c3%b3n-el-controlador-de-pantalla-dej%c3%b3/c2f1eb8c-f0c5-4d11-bdd6-b2cbe466453b?tm=1574696060739"
Engipi

[davejb · Accepted solution]

Going to just paste in here what I posted in this long thread. This is the original thread I've been working in:

https://community.amd.com/t5/graphics/display-driver-amdkmdap-stopped-responding-and-has-successfull...

Here's my newest post about this. Hope it helps:

SON OF A !!!!! YEARS LATER, I figured it out. It's fixed. NO MORE CRASHING.

So, I've mentioned in this thread and others that I had none of these issues until I replaced my older (RX580?) card with a RX Vega 56. I'm not sure of the timing exactly but somewhere around that time (or maybe exactly the same time) I also replaced my monitor with a VIOTEK GN32Q monitor because it supported Freesync. It turns out that it's somehow related to the lack of a monitor driver (with a proper list of supported resolutions and refresh rates, and possibly FreeSync range) for this generic monitor. Bear with me as I'm not at home on my gaming system to have to guess at the names of some of the thing below.

I stumbled onto this thread here. Like, him, the AMD driver showed my monitor's supported Freesync range at 90 to 144 Hz. FWIW, the game I really struggled with the crashing in is F1 2020 (Codemasters) and I was running Anti-lag, Enhanced Sync and FreeSync. My in car driving frame rates are, IIRC, in the 80's. I think the crashing was caused when the game would cross the 90 FPS range and then maybe the driver would try to switch to FreeSync.

I used the CRU utility to change the FreeSync range from "90 to 146Hz" to "40 to 146Hz". I also edited the monitor's Detailed resolutions to have only two settings supported, the 2k res at 60Hz and at 144Hz. This took a LOT of experimenting and reboots but in the end it's FIXED for me. I've even turned back on the TDR setting with no ill effects.

Changing this stuff isn't perfect. When sitting at the desktop (windows 10) I sometimes have to use the display settings to switch back and forth between the refresh rate, between 60 and 144 Hz. For the most part, once I'm done gaming I change it back to 60Hz.

I'm not sure how useful it would be for me to walk anyone through every step since you may not have the same monitors. This is a lesson for me to never buy a generic monitor again. This monitor, I love everything about it and it cost me only $450 while supporting FreeSync and the other certified FreeSync monitors at the time were starting at $900, IIRC. I am referring to monitors with a minimum size of 32" BTW.

I hope this helps get some of you on the right track. I can tell you that many nights, for the first 30 minutes my F1 game would hard lock (I had TDR turned off) sometimes 5 or more times then for whatever reason would usually settle in for the next few hours. Now, I've had at least 5 gaming sessions with not one crash of any kind.

Poor AMD, this was never even their fault and I can now see why while this problem wasn't that rare, there were many people having no issues like this. I'll criticize AMD in one way, they should have a good bug reporting tool that could have tracked that many of us have generic, uncertified (in terms of FreeSync) monitors.

Lastly, I'll help when I can but I'm super busy and it may be days until I can respond here. Suffice it to say, you need to understand how to use CRU, you need to know your monitor's supported refresh rates, and you need to have big cajones because you may end up having display issues if you mess up the CRU settings.

Oh, one more huge frustration I had with F1 2020. Until I figured out the problem, the game would sometimes be blurry and not smooth at all. I'd look in the games video settings and saw F1 had switched to a customer resolution that was just below the native 2k resolution (3840 x 2160 or something?). I couldn't fix this no matter what. It turns out that the per game AMD driver settings must not be on anything but Full Panel. Maintain aspect ratio was the setting that was causing this. It seemed like the right setting but in hindsight was not.