Purchased a new XFX RX 480. Everything works fine until i try to play a game. The screen goes black but game is running. I have to do a hard boot to
restore the picture?
What game are you playing?
I have encountered this problem when I run some old games (such as some DX10 / DX9 games), some of them have solutions, some are not (at least I did not find)
Also please tell me what your OS is, and what is the driver version
Yes, please provide more information about your computer for quicker troubleshooting... such as the OS and power supply, and also which titles you're trying to run as the previous response suggested. It's also important to know if you've installed any updates, including those that may affect graphics hardware.
Once we have that stuff, we can better serve you.
Windows 10
intel core i7 960
ASUS SABERTOOTH X58
16 Gig system mem
PSU Corsair RM850x
radeon soft version 18.10.2
runs all non game stuff great.
games: Empyrion, world of tanks, eve online, no mans sky
This is a common issue. In Radeon Settings, Wattman, increase the power limit slider to its maximum, all the way to the right. This issue is typically caused by the cards power ceiling being a bit to low and this setting eliminates the issue. If this does not fix the issue and the card did work fine before, then you likely have an issue with the hardware itself. Power supplies degrade slowly over time and it may be time for a new one. It is not impossible the card is having issues itself. You can test the card in another computer if available and see if it has the same behavior. You can try another power supply if unsure how to test yours. Google is your friend for how too's! OCCT software from OCCBASE_COM can run software tests on the Video Card and Power Supply.
It is likely the simple power limit slider max will fix things. Please note if your drive crashes after that or you update the driver it returns that setting to default again so you need to slide back to max or save a profile to recover the setting.
Are you only using one monitor? Was a 2nd monitor ever connected in the past which had a different resolution and removed? The game might be running in fullscreen mode outside the current display area. When you have the black screen with the game audio press the Win + d or Alt + tab to see if you can minimize the game and get the desktop screen to show up.