Graphics Cards

[kshutch00]

I have seen many of these posts...and tried so many things.

My hardware:

• MSI x570 Pro Carbon Gaming Wifi
• Ryzen 7 3700x with Noctua NH-U12a Fan
• GSkill Trident 16c 16gb x2
• Corsair HX 750 Watts Platinum
• Samsung 980 Plus M2 - 500gb (primary)
• WD Black M2 - 1tb (secondary)
• Gigabyte 6800 xt Gaming OC
• MSI 5700 xt Pro Gaming X

Some Details and the Initial Problem

• The computer was built in late February and runs great.  I have been using a MSI 5700 xt Gaming Pro x and it runs great, no issues.  I won a newegg shuffle for a Gigabyte 6800 xt OC. 
• I put the 6800 xt in, turned on the machine, got nothing.  Restarted and then it worked. I opened Red Dead 2 and about 30 seconds in, got a green screen followed by a reboot.  Event viewer showed a Fatal Hardware error Event 18 (unnnnggggg) on some APID.  I try again with Red Dead, same thing happens.  I try with No Mans Sky, same thing happens.  I tried with the Heaven Benchmark, same thing happens.  Then, on the next restart, before I could even open anything.....green screen'd again.  I tried with the Adrenaline stress test still using the default settings, no dice, big fat screen green.  Only one GPU is installed at a time.

Things I have tried

1. Disabled CBP and XMP (nothing else in my bios was outside of default, but went ahead and changed PBO to disabled also, though auto is disabled from what I understand)
2. Tried variations of each CBP, PBO, and XMP off and on.
3. Tried setting the FCLK (Infiinity Fabric) to half of the RAM speed with XMP and then half of the RAM speed without XMP.
4. Removed CMOS. Started Fresh.
5. Ran DDU and reinstalled Radeon from AMD.
6. Flashed MSI bios to most recent version
7. Changed PCI E Slots
8. Changed from using 2 rails to 1 rail (was pretty doubtful on that one, but willing to try anything)
9. Removed Afterburner
10. Changed on each of the above test between Silent Bios and OC Bios on the card.
11. Rechecked that I had Windows 10 Fast Start disabled (it was)
12. Tried running with most startup and service suppressed in msconfig.
13. Tried installing the AMD drivers alone using the extraction, stop the install, update the driver trick.

Things I find noteworthy

• Throughout this, I can still plug my 5700 xt in and have no problems
• The 6800 xt would also crash (or at least this only happens with the 6800 xt) even when in the Bios before the OS (when looking through options), it would crash at random times (at startup, browsing, any time really), and would always crash when stress at all.
• By testing using the Adrenaline Tuning settings, I believe I can say its not the PSU, its not the CPU, its not the RAM, and its not the Board

The Testing

I tried the testing in 2 ways, one with CBP and XMP on, the other without.  No change was found in any of the testing.

With all defaults and only removing ZeroRPM and Increasing the fan curve dramatically, the card was able to function much longer before getting this error.  However, "much" in this case means it would sometimes get through the 60 second stress test, but never a second time.  It still, in most cases would fail and green screen during the first test but with ZeroRPM and no fan curve set, it would fail in the first 20 seconds, without it would usually get passed 30. 

Lowering the voltage had no effect.  I think I could go down to 980 or somewhere in that range.  Tried many different values.

Lowering the GPU had no effect.  I tried at 2100, 2000,...,1500.  I tried all these values and found nothing remarkable.

The memory had no lowering, and was always at 2000 mhz, the only tuning I could do would be to increase the VRAM, which seemed would not help in this issues so I left the values alone here.

I tried the power settings at different percent increases, up to like 15 I think (which was max) and no change could be seen.

I feel that running the same test and playing the same games all this is happening on while using the 5700 xt removes most of the possibility this is coming from something on my system.  For instance, if the wattage draw when running the 6800 xt at a much lower GPU is the same or lower as my 5700, the power supply should not be the issue since the crashing still occurred with no change.  Also, since the GPU is not pushing more than the 5700 xt when the 6800 xt is lowered, it should be something the CPU or RAM cannot handle for some reason, and in the same regard, the board as well if the GPU is actively doing less, that is less for the board to handle.  Basically, in the testing I am reducing the 6800 xt to something below the 5700 xt and the issues still occur at the same rate as having the 6800 xt on defaults.  Of course, that is a little different when turning off ZeroRPM and increasing the fan curve...but only slightly.

Lastly, I decided to make a partition on the WD 1tb drive and try installing windows there and testing this out on a new install.  My thoughts are that it would not solve the issue since even when looking through bios settings while the 6800 xt is installed, I am getting resets (though it does not green screen, but I do see some vertical artifacts before it just resets).  In the process of installing Windows, the computer reset (I install windows all the time, this was not a typical installation reset, this was not a planned action).  Eventually, I got windows installed, and the green screen occurred before I could even install the chipset drivers.  Still, pressed on, got everything installed, still could not pass a stress test.  So the issue is not windows, and I do not believe the issue is the drivers either.  The crashing was so bad, I had to put the 5700 xt back in just to remove the partition and and fix my boot.

Things I know about, but haven't tried

• Vbios update on the 6800 xt.  I cannot find something about how to update the Gigabyte 6800 xt bios.
• Trying the 6800 xt in a different machine.  Most of my other machines are 7+ years old with the next newest being a 4th Gen I5 44xx.  I may try that tomorrow, but I am not sure how that would compare.  I mean...its on DDR3.
• The newegg shuffle was more like a newegg ripoff since I had to also buy a board.  But, that does mean I have another x570 board....but I would rather not take everything off of what I consider to be a better board just to test this on a lesser x570 (Gigabyte Auros Elite).  Also, since running the 5700 xt in a more demanding way and not having the same issues, I can't see this being a problem with the board...and I have read other posts of people using this card on the same board.
• Lighter fluid, matches, and a big devious grin as I watch it all burn....followed by crying, depression, and sleep eating.

I have a ticket with Gigabyte over this...but it sucks.  I had to over spend by hundreds to get this card and if they RMA it and the same crap happens....ungghh....don't even want to think of that.

So does anyone have anything else they think may help in figuring this out?  Its a common issue it seems getting the Cache Hierarchy WHEA Logger Event 18 Processor Core APID [n] error.  It seems many people have tried many things and there is never a concrete answer.  I am of the thinking this card is truly defective.  But, at the same time, more minds on a problem are better than one.