Graphics Cards

[chaotudou]

I built this (PC Part Picker Link) PC at the end of last year, all running smoothly except that in certain games I keep getting an AMD Driver Timeout. All CPU/GPU settings are stock, no OC or UV.

It happens at seemingly random times in Cyberpunk 2077 and Valheim (one fairly graphically intensive, the other... not so much?). Games that have not experienced crashes so far are Age of Empires 2, Kingdom Come, Uncharted 4 and Deep Rock Galactic. The longest I have been able to play without a crash is under 2 hours, but usually even if I leave CBP 2077 running in game but idle, it will crash with a driver timeout on its own within 30m or less. Valheim eventually crashes as well if left idle in game.

Temperatures: CPU tops out at 50C and GPU junction temp at about 65-70 with fan at 50%.

So far I have tried:

• - Clean driver install with latest AMD
• - Previous stable AMD driver (crashing was actually worse with this one), used AMD Driver Cleaner as well.
• - Disabling Multipane overlay
• - Disabled Windows Game Mode
• - Disabled Hardware acceleration in browsers
• - XMP on/off
• - Full screen/borderless window modes
• - Windows powerplan to Performance (usually Balanced)
• All chipset and windows drivers up to date, BIOS is very recent

I have persevered with trying to fix this because it seemed like a good value card - but at this point I feel like I am going round in circles and should just replace it with an RTX 3060 and hope that has less issues.

Any suggestions before I go down that route? 

Thank you.

Edit: Just got a crash on Deep Rock Galactic - DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED

[xlox]

giving us your hardware details could help

[chaotudou]

Apologies if it wasn't clear, I put a link in the OP: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/qMCzK8

[xlox]

ok checked, regarding driver timeout , from my experience several things can be checked

as usual i will start by telling that gpu driver crash doesn't mean the gpu or the driver is the cause, rarely in fact

in my view cause could be ram, psu or bios ... first you should reset everything to default where you can, because adding tweaks to other tweaks could not help as you tested and tweaked several things apparently

i would check ram, psu, bios ..

the first thing i notce is you say bios is "recent" version.. would help to check to be sure to have the last one

[chaotudou]

Thanks for the suggestions - the BIOS I have is 1.90, the latest is 2.20 but from the description all that has been added is support for RTX 40* cards (https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B550M-ITXac/index.asp#BIOS)

Given the system is stable outside of a few games I would hesitate to update the BIOS unless sure it was the issue.

Not sure how I could check PSU and RAM. I ran Windows Memory Diagnostics tool which found no errors. PSU is well above what my system requires and is a decent brand. I have not seen typical issues (glitching) you might expect with a faulty PSU, and have only had CTD, no freeze ups, no BSOD or anything like that just AMD Driver Timeouts.

I have just tried using DDU to clean the drivers and reinstall the latest ones (inc. Adrenaline) - previously I used the AMD Tool but was recommended to use DDU. Running CBP 2077 just now and will see if that has helped.

[xlox]

i think you not reading bios updates description right , i think you should update (but if you fear to do it , ask someone who is used to do it for you maybe)

2.00 : agesa update

2.20 Enhance system compatibility.

only 2.10 is about rtx 40 compatibilty

i think it could worth the try

[chaotudou]

One possible thought was that in CBP 2077 under load the GPU clock was up at just over 2700 MHz, whereas the AMD website seemingly says it can go up to 2400 MHz - is it possible the card just has an unstable stock clock setting?

[xlox]

in my view it is ok and your gpu temps are ok too ... just check this bios thing to start please, can't search for problems solutions without doing basics, or we could waste a lot of time for nothing

[chaotudou · Accepted solution]

To close out the topic, I swapped out for RTX 3060 and the problems went away. Runs a bit hotter but the fans are also quieter and performance bit better.

Only possible solution with the RX 6600 I found was reducing the GPU Clock by about 5-10% which seemed to eliminate the crashing from CBP 2077, it crashed very quickly once back at 100% so it maybe was a bad card.

[xlox]

.... lol ok .. that was funny ... but .. yeah...

best wishes