PC Drivers & Software

[jcadduono]

Hi, I recently discovered that you can't unplug HDMI cables from the 7900 XTX without crashing the Adrenalin drivers and requiring a reinstall of Adrenalin to get the drivers working again. Is this normal behavior? I can repeat it with 100% failure rate. Restarting Windows does not reload the drivers.

I came from an RTX 2080S and was used to being able to swap between my two TVs at any time while my PC was running by unplugging and plugging in the other HDMI cable to my GPU. Unfortunately the 7900 XTX model that I have (XFX Merc310) only has 1 HDMI port as well.

DisplayPort is fine with hotplugging, I have zero issues there although I don't really need to as there's already 3 ports lol.

If this is not normal behavior, is there any way I can provide logs for AMD to investigate?

PS. Reddit tells me that unplugging HDMI cables while PC is running is very dangerous and can destroy my GPU, is this true?

Update: Investigating a bit more it seems the OLED C1 keeps the HDMI connection completely active even after being turned off, perhaps putting a bidirectional HDMI 2.1 switch after the GPU will be an option and save me from wearing out the port... I just hope swapping outputs on it doesn't crash the drivers too.

[Geno71]

Probably not normal, I was able to plug and unplug display and HDMI cable while the computer is running, and it recognized monitors in new posts and turned them on with no issues. I have a 7900 XT.

[Matt_AMD]

I just tested this on my 7900 XTX and I was able to hitplug the HDMI cable without issue too. 

[jcadduono · Accepted solution]

I bought an 8K "certified" hdmi cable and using this I no longer crash the Adrenalin drivers when unplugging my TV. also HDR looks surprisingly a lot better now, I guess it is showing as 4:4:4 now too instead of 4:2:0. seems it was down to faulty cables. very interesting. perhaps it might be worth an investigation though as to why a defective hdmi cable was able to do that. the weirdly acting cable in question was a Monoprice Commercial 18 Gbps cable (https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=13782) and the new one that works without issue is this Maxonar one (https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08TV27NL3)

anyway glad it's solved