I've had an RX 6950 XT for almost 2 years now and ever since I got the GPU I've been having black screen/ grey screen crashes ranging from a few times a week to sometimes a few times a day. Well in the last few days I've had enough and I've done an enormous amount of troubleshooting and have figured some things out. First before anyone asks let me list the things I've tried to resolve my issues:
- Different Windows versions and windows reinstalls (both Windows 10 and 11).
- Disabling MPO.
- Since I have 4 monitors I've actually tried unplugging them all individually and using them in all possible configurations (single monitor,dual,triple etc).
- Undervolting the GPU.
- Overclocking the GPU
- Both setting the powerslider to less than 100% and to more than 100%.
- Using my GPUs secondary quiet vBios.
- Uninstalling drivers with DDU (with ethernet unplugged so windows doesn't install drivers on its own) and testing at least 4 different versions of both Adrenaline and Pro drivers.
- I'm using 3 different PCI-E cables.
- Tried 2 different PSUs (my current one is a 1000W Seasonic Platinum rated)
- Disabled XMP/PBO and had my entire system running stock.
There are actually more things I've done but I can't even remember to list them all at the moment.
Now for the big revalation of my troubleshooting:
Grey screen crashes with blue lines and black screen crashes are the same crash!
How did I figure it out?
Well I'm lucky to have 4 (actually 5) completely different monitors and I realized I'm getting a grey screen crash only on my OLED 1440P ROG monitor and on my LG C2 tv. I think the reason it's a grey screen with blue lines and not a black screen is because of either the 10 bit color depth or HDR being enabled.
That's why you see so many people with Samsung G7,G8 and G9 monitors complaining about grey screens with vertical blue lines and they think their issues are unique and it's because of Samsung but actually they're getting the same black screen crash most people are getting only in a grey color since those are the most widespread HDR/10 bit monitors.
How did I confirm this?
There's a game called Predecessor that's literally the only game in which I can 100% of the time replicate the grey screen/black screen crashing. This game for some reason can almost immediately crash my GPU and is the perfect testing ground for troubleshooting.
To be clear I'm still getting crashes in regular destkop use and in other games, they're just not happening as often and are not as easy to replicate.
So when I unplugged my OLED and was testing my 1440p VA 8 bit monitor as my main to see if my PC would crash it would still crash, only this time it would be a black screen crash due to the lack of either HDR or 10 bit ( not exactly sure).
Okay.. so far so good but there's still the issue of..what the issue actually is.
And to be frank.. I don't know. Seems like those issues really accelerated after 22.5.1 since AMD started changing the way their DX11 inner workings function. I'm sorry I don't have the technical knowledge to fully explain, but that's when all sorts of dx11 acceleration issues in browsers popped up and when people started experiencing more and more crashes.
In my amateur opinion, having tested multiple different monitor, driver and OS configurations I think that either there's a hardware flaw in these GPUs (which would be weird given the fact that even people with 7000 series cards have grey screen/ black screen crashes) or there's something fundamentally wrong with the drivers.
So what are the solutions?
Linux is one of them, as I've rarely if ever seen people complain about AMD GPUs working properly there but given the fact that the user base is extremely small and most popular games don't even run because of anti-cheat issues (eazy anti cheat not working in linux) I can't say I'm confident these GPU bugs don't exist there either.
I've spend so many hours in trial and error and at this point the only solution for me personally is to go back to Nvidia. I feel extremely annoyed because I'm going to have to buy an overpriced 4080 right at the end of the GPU cycle but I simply can not have my PC crash at random times just because it's using graphics acceleration (something GPUS ARE MADE FOR). The other day it even crashed in VS Code while I was in the middle of an important project.
And lastly for the people that are bound to comment with "bro I've had an AMD GPU for 45 years and have not experienced a single issue" - well congrats to you! That doesn't invalidate all the bad experiences people have had and are continuing to have on a daily basis. But at least if someone from AMD reads this the one important note they should take from it is that grey screen crashes = black screen crashes.
