PC Drivers & Software

[sur6e]

I installed 22.11.1 and played Age Of Empires 4. Alt tabbed to do something in the browser and got a gray screen. I was able to ctrl shift win B to reset the driver and recover. After the round I exit the game and the screen goes gray again (never got to see the desktop). This time I can't recover. After some time it goes black and is locked up hard. I press the reset button on the case and my MSI BIOS alerts me that the CPU is overheating... This does not ever happen with 22.5.1 so it's not my cooling solution. I don't know if the lockup causes the fans to spin down or something and work the CPU hard and then overheat but it is concerning. Does the overheat protection stop working in the locked up state? Is the protection causing the gray-black screen? Do the newer drivers work the system harder to cause overheating? During the first gray screen I had the browser paused on a yt video. I closed that and opened the Microsoft Family page and left that open for the remainder of the game (Firefox).

Kinda wish AMD would stop calling these drivers Optional and rather something like Beta or Experimental because that seems to more accurately reflect what they are.

After installing 22.11.1 and seeing the release notes I unhooked my second monitor because it runs at 60Hz and my main runs at 240Hz. Clearly that doesn't matter for the gray screen issue. I do have a 5700XT and not a 6000 series. I'm hoping to upgrade soon but all these issues really put a distaste of AMD cards in my head.

[MADZyren]

There is some problem with hardware acceleration of Chome and sometimes it manifests with Edge too (which uses chomes open source engine). Disabling hardware acceleration of those browsers sometimes helps, but you might have to do the same thing to other software running hardware acceleration too. Some people need to disable a Windows layer feature.

Search for this...

"MPO is only active on mainscreen.

MPO only supports 8 bit color depth setting 10 bit color depth disengages it.

Disabling MPO fixes blackscreens and stuttering issues even flickering issues.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm]
"OverlayTestMode"=dword:00000005"

Some people get rid of the problem by unplugging second monitor.

Most people with this issue say they alt-tabbed... Back in the old days you were happy if something worked at all and simply didn't do the thing you new caused issues.

[sur6e]

Thanks for that info, some of that is new to me. I will look into it.

As for my temperatures I realized that when I reset the driver the GPU fancurve and undervolt all went away. That takes my junction temps up to 110C and made my CPU run well into the 80s. With the undervolt my junction temperature is around 90C and the CPU stays in the 70s under load. So the high temps are probably unrelated to the gray screens.

[MADZyren]

Likely not related, but why are your temps so high at default settings. Have you tried running your computer without side panel to see if it just needs more air. Unless you are mining or doing something else very demanding, temps shouldn't generally be that high except maybe with some specific hardware.

[sur6e]

I could try that to see if that's the case (pun intended :D). I'm not too happy with my case. I have two 140mm bottom intakes and 3 120mm right side panel intakes. No rear exhaust option. Radiator in the top with two 140mm fans exhausting it all. I think my Gigabyte Aorus 5700XT is just a hot mess unless undervolted.

[MADZyren]

You have three fans and a large heatsink? My Powercolor 5700XT only has two fans and isn't that big of a GPU. Temps are generally fairly well at bay running at stock settings when gaming.

One option to improve airflow is, leave dust filters out and just clean the machine sometimes.

[sur6e]

Yeah 3 fans with the middle one spinning opposite of the others. I want to repaste it but I have 4 or 5 year warranty with it and don't want to lose that yet. I vacuumed it out today and there is more inlet with the 3 intake side fans than I thought. The filters caught dust nicely yet don't seem too restrictive. There is a large pocket for the cables etc and there's another area of filtered holes under the motherboard where the fans can suck air in from through that whole side pocket. Both had some dust so I know it's pulling air through both so it's better than I thought. I think the case is meant to house two systems but that'd be a tight fit. For one system it seems to work okay.

I put in that registry entry about a day ago to disable Multiplane Overlay. Need more time to notice any difference and give it a chance to gray screen but so far it's fine, and maybe just maybe slightly smoother overall. Could be in my head though. Can't believe I haven't found that before in all my googles. Is there a way to verify that MPO is disabled now?

[MADZyren]

I don't know, bu if you did that change in registry, is should be off. That seems to be a common issue as it caused issues with Nvidias drivers too.