PC Graphics

[SherSpockofTheBaskerville]

Hello,

This is a more beginner approach to save OS reinstallation time, not a real driver fix. That is AMD's driver department's job, not mine, as a beginner "1st" PC builder.

I got at least 12 black screened driver deaths here since March, but solved the timeconsuming reinstallations temporarily with a clone and a second, and third "ghost-clone". A ghost clone is the same as a full SSD-backup, here, but can be done as an Acronis real "ghost" in the cloud for +50$. OS Download time cut down to 14 min -32min, not a 45 hours week of husteling CDs, web downloads, USBsticks that refuse the OS and reformated GTP drives unliked by the windows installer, buing new drivs to feed Windows. Preferably more than two ghost-clones could be done, if you have more old drives laying around in your previous Gaming rig and have plenty of sata ports. More clones, more confusion of which is OS-clone is dead or functional though. I can handle 2. I am not only ignorant, but I am old too 51Y.

My system:

Win 10 EDu (old student aiming for an M.a. after two B.a.)

Crossfire 8 (wifi)

Ryzen 3500x with stock cooler set on 3600Ghz. (And a ryzen 9 5900x bought in an unopened box, for Nzxt 360 rad when stable)?

Mem: 1/2 set of G.skill 4133hz 8gb. The other stick not included. It is crazy O.C'd as is for 2 ram sticks. run them now on Auto accroding to CF8 it on 2444Hz. Memtested 1 cycle 0 % errors in 4133hz. Jay2cent says no O.C. even when built for 4133Hz, so i stay on CF8 recommended 2444hz

GPU: RX 6800XT Arous master type c, 2310 MHz (Reference card: 2250 MHz, Game Clock* : up to 2065 MHz. Low fan curve, pegged red hot on 99C on for an hour, stable o.c bios. Feared open "testbench" (cardboard cooler box would start to burn) Run it now on silent BIOS around 85C. Need Afterburner to tune up fans to 100%.

PSU: Be quiet black pro 1200W. GPU on 2 separate rails to even get the mobo to start! i

Drives Kingspec "original OS " drive 52GB formated. Win 10 32GB! VERY SMALL! copied in 14 minutes.

Clone 1 drive WD green 240GB

Clone 2 drive Kingston 250GB

WD sn500 1T, not installed.

Cloning-Software: Acronis 2021 cloning software, 5 licenses free with WD green.

Hw monitor, cpu-z, afterburner, memtest64 steam client.

An obvious warning: I cannot what so ever, take responsibility for any thing going wrong with your system. I don't know even if I do the method below right my self, and I do wear out my, PCIe ports, m2 ports, cables and SSD drives by the practice (below), and I fried a NVMe drive, and dropped my key board in the ground, and HDMI fried my cheap 5.1 amp port, for my movie system, so this can get very expensive if your gear is hot! I am NOT an expert what so ever, but this card force me to improve beyond complete "noob"-itude. I don't know wheather if it is illeagal to clone OS, and such for personal use in "emergency" in your country. You do everything on your own risk. OK? For +50$ Acronis can safeguard your OS copy in the cloud, so you don't wreck your original drive. I have not gone that far, yet. I have not sold my card either. I know the hardware works on the Xbox series X, so it must be software issus, ironed out over time. An xbox is good to have in order to have faith in AMD's awsome harware.

I cut down the OS “bag and gag” of the graphics driver to a 14-32 minute repair, for cards that works well in OS environment, but go blind screen of death, at reboot. I have no other problem than Gigabyte O.C’d the bejesus out of my RX 6800XT/(=6900 non-XT?). Stable even at 99C for 1 hour Tomb Raider Raising, wattage was on 370w (AMD limited it down to normal, and way too low after my warning). My fan curve on my O.C bios mode was too low for comfort (modified through Afterburner). Silent BIOS is good, but slightly too silent and still "hot" on 85C for a open cardboard test bench. I refus to put my PCparts under a hood (case), until it functions are stable! So that is why I felt like my RX 6800XT is super-functional, but the Adrenalin drivers are still under development and too sensitive to be shut down. I guess no-one has turned their RX 6000 cards off, because they are Hashing Ether, to pay for them? I am stupid enough to think it is a pyramide money game, killing hardware, electric bills, fans and nerves. Nothing for me!

Method:

3ssd, making one tiny original SSD and 2 different sized and branded clones. Brand/size helps to see which identical clone is which, of course! The 1st and extremely cheap small ssd becomes the original "OS-cd/win update/USB-stick”, for the bigger 2 cloned SSD-copies. Clone them as the same computer and let the cloning-program (here Acronis) make one bigger partition of the original SSD, not two partition. Size, because it helps a lot to have the original Dolly on the smallest drive possible, like 90GB or 120GB, with less empty sectors to analyze. I have a "no name" 52GB formated as "original". Thus everything hast to be zipped, at the speed the OS is growing after win 11 is comming! The next is WD green 240GB, and the next is Kingston 470GB. MVNe's are faster. Caution: I gave my evo860 500gb “Alzheimers”, by either pulling it out one too many times of the m2-port, as USB, or I just quick format before the clonings too many times (not necessary), or the Alzheimers was increased by changing the driver letter around too many times on top of that. SSD’s are even cheaper, and handle more than 500 rewrites, that the latest and greatest NVMe drives only can handle. Murphey’s law.  Now, OS doesn’t know which identical clone is which, so you need to shift driver letter in Diskmanager, and rename “Clone 1 for i.e. Adrenal 21.5.1 v1”, so Windows and you, have a clue what is going on. (Press windows key+x and click diskmanager). This way, you don’t wear out your drive twice as fast. 1 name change is better than two and you have 1 perfect copy if needed.

Reboot, go BIOS. Set driver order according to Drive size. Original Dolly, smallest drive 1st, After cloned dolly 1 and clone Dolly 2, boot order. This in order to have 1 functional ssd when things go driver-dark (Black screen of death). A clone might be knocked out, and booting from a clone will thus cause confusion. If you are confused or have Alzheimers like I do (51Y), the little OS original is boot 1.

Save, restart, and then go back to BIOS, and choose forced boot of Dolly-Clone1. Hope your mobo has that feature. otherwise you will have to pull out sata cables, and if you don't have hot plug like Crossfire 8, you might fry something. Like what I did to my NVMe. The same with HDMI ports. 5Watts. Mind you, I fried a amplifier swaping HDMI cords hot. Close of your screen and pull the cord, instead of wearing out the switch, when swapping.

After that, reboot. BIOS, force boot to clone 1, install all programs but Adrenalin from toolbox, like cpu-z, HW-monitor and the cleanuputility, steam, games, and the few steam games/programs you want to beta test (saves time). Run the game in MicrosoftBasicDisplayDriver, in 720p so all the steam downloading is done. Some program updates regularly. Saves time on clone 2. Run cloningprogram (here, free WD Acronis). Clone all for 14-32 minutes (bigger drives take more time). Now I have two fresh drives with installed programs to beta-test the latest Adrenalin drivers on.

NOW, I install Adrenalin! For the tough ones, start by installing the Adrenalin driver only option, and don't reboot as the program asks you to. My GPU games away happily here. If you are a nervous wreck from all the OS crashes like me, just unpack Adrenalin. Go to the windows menu and update the MicrosoftBasicDisplayDriver your self, by Dubble click, select update. selecting the C: find the first map named AMD, and click your way down through the map-tree, in order to find the map called "driver". Install that. BLING! 1080p on my TV. 4K on yours? Now you can game, stable games, if your card is OK (then memtest ram, under/overvolt etc. I am just on the “baby level, consulting Jay2cents building 1st computer @: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYYoCXh2gtw ). But around here comes the crux of the matter with my OC card way into RX 6900 non XT territory. After shuting down the cardboard open testbench, (I have never let the PC be on so far in sleep mode), due to excessive heat on paper and anti static plastic bag. Fire hazard? So, I feel compelled to shut down, though my driver will turn into VGA 620*200, at reboot. And possibly Amiga hi-res 1991 640*420. And if I am really lucky, the OS says “Terminal process death” which meant that the OS bagged and gagged the AMD driver (March 1-May 21 rev 1 in june). This was going on through April, if you use those drivers. In May, OS didn’t show a sign of this, but bagged and gagged the driver at fresh boot instead. In the end of May, if you use those drivers, the sign was gone in the boot as well, but still the driver was gone, so just a black screen.

Solution to that? Let the card cool down for an hour or two. Install your older than hell, Nvidia card in crossfire, which sparks the OS to install a second back up NVIDIAdriver. Use two HDMI cables from each GPU. The NVIDIa card skipps BIOS and jumps straight to Winodows., the AMD does not. If you switch over to the AMD gpu, you can change bios, and force boot from the good clone, number 2.

After April 21.4.1 the drivers behaved much better! But still, the graphics driver is bagged and gagged the driver at shut down. The same happends still with 21.5.2 May21 revised today. 2 more new ones to test still, 21.6.1. and 21.6.2. with brand new tech, buggy?, but I  have still hopes!

If your driver goes VGA 640*420, you can check if you have the Microsoft Basic display Driver active, before you swipe away all AMD drivers through the clean up utillity. If you use factory install in Adrenalin you have to do this before, otherwise you make your sef blind for no good reason at reboot, and waist a clone.

Now, Reboot, force boot to same drive. You have function again, but if you shut down, you have the same bug. You can avoid using up a clone, by reverting to the old MicrosoftBasicDisplayDriver, in device manager. This usally makes the reboot free from driverblindness. Back in windows environment it is OK, to update MBDD driver to the new the Rx 6800XT driver again in device manager. That might get you going for some more runns, before you shut down and forget to change the driver. Clone waisted. If it doesn't respond with a new clone, let the GPU cool for 1-2 hours, and put in a NVIDIA card from 1932, in crossfire. Put in both HDMI cords to your screen, because you can see what the RX card is doing once the NVIDIA driver is in action. Even get into BIOS with the RX 6800XT, which my NVIDIA card doesn't let me do.

If you get tired of "clowning" around with drivers. Close cardboard box and wait for new updated drivers. Programmers need sleep and time to fix the code. So does patience, so I don't use the PC until a driver emerges.

Inbetween I game with my daugher on the Xbox, which works flawlessly. So, it is down to programming. The hardware is great. The RX 6800XT is an Xbox series x with an extra PS5 in it, and faster and bigger CPU 12 C/24T and 4133Hz memory and possiblility for WD SN850 NVMe that is about 2*faster!

Now I need to get back to 21.6.2.

P.s. Check if you can get a cloning program for free with the ssd. WD had, so did Kingston.  All must be zipped to save space and time, and a cloning program, that is installed (here Acronis free with WD green 240gb): 

I

In the toolbox I put in:

the latest zipped AMD drivers,

the amd cleanup utillity https://www.amd.com/zh-hant/support/kb/faq/gpu-601

zipped CPU-z,

zipped HWmonitor. If you want to drive the driver programmers crazy,

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

install zipped Afterburner as well.

https://www.msi.com/Landing/afterburner/graphics-cards

Memtest64 or so https://www.techpowerup.com/memtest64/

If bought WD ssd/(NVMe?) green/Blue or such: 5 licenses of Acronis (downloadable at     https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?FW&lang=en&family=wdretailkits

[SherSpockofTheBaskerville]

Problems solved: The card needs a modern AMD sync Pro screen with 1080 lines or more. 

The issues was due to a false 1080p screen (TV) with 990-ish lines, instead of required 1080 lines. A complete mystery a few lines can kill a driver. 

Also, the card was knocked out when switching between hdmi ports, by the 5V spark for up to 6 hours.

Both problems solved by using a Display Port cable and connecting to a Gigabyte M27Q. Not a single problem for a year!

And, post processing Disney+ through Adrenalin, by up scaling to 1444p,  add anti lag, and colour calibrate more red into the picture for warmth, AA x16 and loads of  image sharpening, is an incredible upgrade of the standard 1080p TV signal. I went crazy and added all alternatives possible.

Note, Win 10/11 v-sync/VRR might interfere with Adrenalin amd v-sync PRO. Keep one of them off, to avoid lag/interference. Or both off... If it is still bad like in Cyberpunk 2077. Only use v-sync in Cyberpunk and on the monitor, Otherwise 3 programs fight over the signal, with understandable, but unbelievable, lag.