Hi Chopsuey,
I have a Red Devil 7900 GRE and was constantly having the driver timeout issue (CTD with amduw23g restarting). So, I made an account so that I could give you information on what finally solved the issue for me recently (assuming it's not too late). I want to say up front that this issue had persisted for months, and I had tried all of the solutions you had mentioned (including all of the drivers from 23.7.2 through 24.10.1). I had even tried underclocking but still had the timeouts at the same rate. So, I moved on and wasted a lot of time on other possible solutions. However, what fixed the time outs for me was more informed underclocking. I don't know if this will help you - you may have already done exactly what I did. If so, I'm sorry I couldn't help you with this. But, just in case revisiting underclocking could help you (or anyone) like it did me, I want to throw this info out there. I was having the driver timeout issues constantly with both Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree - this solution fixed it for me.
First, context of the driver timeouts (just to see how well our issues align):
To start, ALL of my settings in Adrenalin were default - never overclocked my card inside of or outside of Adrenalin. I left everything stock standard and left Adrenalin to manage everything as "Default", but I still kept having constant driver timeout issues. After trying probably a dozen or two dozen different solutions across pretty much every version of the drivers, I realized that the driver timeouts only happened with certain games (like you did) and did not happen with browsing the web or idling. And I noticed that, amongst those games that seemed to cause the driver timeouts, the timeouts were more frequent with some than with others but there was no specific action in any game that caused it. Nor was there any commonality between any of the games (i.e. different engines, ranging from Win XP aged games to 2024 games, widely different graphical fidelities, huge differences resource requirements/intensities, etc.).
Second, identifying conditions of the driver timeouts:
I got real tired of the constant timeouts, so I decided to start recording what my GPU was doing when these crashes occurred. I downloaded HWInfo64 and set it log my PC's sensor data before playing anything. Whenever the driver timeout occurred, I would note the time, stop HWInfo's logging, and save the CSV. I would then go into Event Viewer and find the 'Display driver amduw23g stopped responding and has successfully recovered' that was closest to the time I wrote down before (and I would write down the time from Event Viewer). Finally, I looked at the HWInfo log and review every column pertaining to my GPU during that timeframe (+/- 5 or 10 seconds). There were several patterns I identified, but the only data point that stood out at the time of driver timeout was the "GPU Front End Clock [MHz]". Every single time this value exceeded 2812, I had a driver timeout. Every. Single. Time. If the clock was 2811.9, I was fine. But if it was 2812.2, then there was a driver timeout. I will add that the timestamp line up wasn't exact. It always looked like HWInfo would record the GPU's Front End Clock jumping to 2812 a few seconds before the time out and for a few seconds after the time out (at least based on Event Viewer's timestamp). So, while the timestamps weren't necessarily consistent, what was consistent was that HWInfo's recording of the GPU hitting 2812 MHz always immediately preceded a driver timeout. Trying the games that didn't crash? The GPU's clock never approached 2812 (no game ever exceeded 2300), and they never crashed.
Third, the solution:
I was a bit surprised that the GPU clock was jumping that high because Adrenalin defaults it to have a max clock of somewhere in the 2500s (the default max honestly varies with each driver install). So, despite trying underclocking before, I decided to try it again. Previously, I had followed suggestions online just underclocking by percentage, but I didn't realize that even with underclocking, Adrenalin would boost past the max that was set (mostly because I thought the word "max" meant "max"). I set the card down to 2500MHz. Tested. Saw it timeout again once it hit 2812. But the overall average clock speed of the card was lower. So, I went to TechPowerUp's website and saw that this card is only rated for a boost clock of 2391. Underclocked it to 2350. I set to logging the clock speeds while playing the games that were the worst offenders. The GPU never climbed above 2700 for me. I'm happy to report that I did that about a month ago, and I've still had no timeouts. Oh, and I was able to reenable hardware acceleration in both Firefox and Steam with no issues, whatsoever.
Fourth, (my) conclusions:
1) Adrenalin seems to boost the GPU to whatever it thinks it can get away with. My guess is that it's supposed to figure out or be informed by the card if the card's silicon can't handle boosting beyond a certain point. However, Adrenalin is clearly not getting the message in my case (or many others', it would seem).
2) Adrenalin treats the "Max Frequency" setting as more of a suggestion or a pre-OC threshold. Lowering the Max Frequency setting does reduce how much Adrenalin will boost the card, but it seems that Adrenalin will still always boost beyond the max. In my case, I didn't realize that Adrenalin boosted beyond max, so I didn't think it was boosting the card to instability.
3) I could probably discern whatever mathematical curve Adrenalin applies in order to reclaim those clock cycles I've dropped for stability but I hated the driver timeout problem so much, I can live with losing just over 100MHz in boost clocks.
4) In short, it may not be enough to underclock it by 5% or 10%. You may need to see if there's a specific clock speed threshold for your card that can't be crossed. For me, it was 2812, but everyone's silicon differs in tolerance. For some, a 5% reduction might keep them under their number (be it 2812, 2900, 2600, or something else). For others, maybe it's closer to a 15% reduction. Likewise, dropping the max to the manufacturer's specification might work, or it might still give Adrenalin enough room to boost up to an unstable speed. As best as I can tell, you have to find that number yourself for your GPU, and then rein Adrenalin until it no longer hits that number in one of the games on your list.
That was long, but I really hope it helps.
