PC Graphics

[i3lumi]

Hello,

this is my 6th ticket regarding audio dropouts and cutouts and sadly until now, nobody has been able to solve my issue. I've also created several threads over the internet and no-one can help me.

When I used my RX5700XT the issue occured for the first time (october/november 2020) before that (april 2020 - oct/nov 2020) everything was perfect.

Now I own a RX6900XT and sadly, the issue is still persistent.

When I'm gaming and only while gaming, my audio suddenly drops completely. When I'm using another audio output e.g. the onboard soundcards, clicks and pops are audible.

I've tried reinstalling windows 10 times in different versions 1909-21H2 and everything in between. Also I've tried every single driver version of audio and GPU drivers I could find, without success. I'Ve tried tracing the issue with tools like "latencymon" and it always points to "dxgkrnl.sys" which translates to GPU drivers.

I also traced it myself via Xperf (Windows
Performance Toolkit) and got the same results.

Something interesting that's might worth a share:

When I'm installing the radeon driver/software, in the last 3-4% my NVME drives gets disconnected and reopens in explorer. I also hear the windows iconic disconnect/reconnect sound, really strange.

The issue is reproducible by 100%.
When I'm ingame, it doesn't matter which one, I just have to open the Radeon Overlay by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + O and the stutter/dropouts and or clicks begin. Sadly, as already mentioned, it does not only happen when opening the overlay, also randomly in game. My gpu clocks are also relatevely inconsistent and tend to downclock significantly (from 2300MHz to 1000MHz) which also results in terrible frametimes.

I would love to get assistance and get this issue fixed!

My system:

Reference RX6900XT
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite(newest BIOS F35)
GSKILL AEGIS 16Gb à 8GB DIMMs 3200MHz (XMP (tested on and off)
850W Seasonic PSU (changed that from a 680W BE Quiet, no difference)
NVMe Corsair MP510 (PCIe3)
NVMe Corsair MP600 (PCIe4)

Let me know what else you guys need, I really hope you can fix it.

[Thunderbird1400]

Hey there!

I have exactly the same problem with my 6900XT! I have the problem since 1 or 2 weeks, before that everything was perfectly fine.

The sound dropouts only appear while playing games, never on the desktop/ web browser etc. Sound is gone for approx. 0,5-1 second and it appears randomly. Sometimes it doesn't appear for minutes, sometimes it appears multiple times per minute. Extremely annoying.

I already thought that my Onkyo AV-Receiver is defective. Graphics card is connected via HDMI with the AV-Receiver. But at the moment I think it's a driver problem (the AMD High Definition Audio Device driver). When I uninstalled this driver and re-installed it (my current version is 10.0.1.20 from 02. March 2021), the problem was completely gone for a couple of hourse. But then the problem returned.

Since then I'm waiting eagerly for a new AMD graphics driver, hoping that it includes a new version of the High Definition Audio Device driver.

Other possibility is that it is a hardware defect of the graphics card, that would be really bad You say you have tested different graphics drivers..... hmm, but maybe the High Definition Audio Device driver is not overwritten when installing an older graphics driver? Maybe we should use the AMD driver removal tool to make a really clean uninstall before installing an older driver.

Edit: Ah, and what I forgot to mention: The problem obly appears when using Multichannel sound. When I change to Stereo-Sound, the problem is completely gone.

[i3lumi]

Hey there!

Thanks for replying and telling me, that I'm not the only one.

I'm probably at the edge of throwing my whole system out of the window :D.

Please let me know how you switched from Multi-Channel to Stereo Sound.

I've looked into my sound settings but couldn't find anything.

P.S: Nice to hear that you found a working "fix".

Are you using PCIe 4.0 in BIOS aswell as SAM?

Do you use NVMe SSD(s) particulary PCie 4.0?

How does the rest of your system look?

[Thunderbird1400]

Hi!

To change the speaker setting in Windows 10, just right click on that tiny speaker symbol in the task bar. There's a point "speaker setting (5.1)" or so (don't know exactly how it's named in English, I have a German Windows). There you can select 5.1, 7.1, Stereo etc.

I'm using an AMD 5900X on a X570 board (MSI). Yes, I have PCIe 4.0 and SAM activated and I'm using a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

Last night one thing came into my mind: My GPU is slightly undervolted (to 1110 mV). Then I switched off the undervolting last night and played Rayman Legends for a while.... absolutely no sound problems for about 15 minutes. I already thought that the undervolting was the cause, but then the sound problems suddenly returned. 15 minutes nothing and then suddenly sound dropouts every 30 seconds or so.

Hmm, that lets me think that it could have something to do with temperatures... but didn't make further tests yet. The GPU had 60°C when the problems appeared.

PCIe 4.0 or SAM is also an interesting idea. Have you already tried to switch that off?

EDIT: I've tried to switch off SAM and changed PCIe in the BIOS to 3.0 and disabled the Onbaoard Sound. None of these things solved the problem. Also temperatures don't seem to be the cause, the problem also appears with GPU temperatures around 50°C. So I still don't have any other explanation than a driver problem or a hardware problem. At least the problem seems to appear much less often after I switched off the undervolting (but this could also be coincidence).

[Thunderbird1400]

Small update on this topic:

I found out, that the problem completely disappears, when I increase the game resolution to a value higher than my native TV resolution (1080p).

As soon as I increase the resolution to 1440p or higher, so that the graphics card has to downsample the image to 1080p, the audio dropouts are completely gone.

So it seems that the graphics card is somehow not able to synchronize (uncompressed 5.1) sound and picture via HDMI when it doesn't have to rescale the picture. But when it rescales the picture, it works. Very strange. Of course it isn't a huge problem as I play most of the games in higher resolutions than 1080p anyway, but I also play Retro-Games which sometimes can't use higher resolutions, then it's actually a problem.

Here are more people with the same problem by the way: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/peoglg/x570_ryzen_7_3700x_radeon_rx_6900xt_audio_dropouts/

One with a 6900XT and another one with a 6700XT.

[cvzone]

I have a similar problem since 21.6.1 that comes with a new HDMI audio driver. Since then i cannot enable Dolby Atmos on a LG C9 or CX. Driver from 20th Oct 2020 works fine. Even the new driver with 21.9.1 wont work...

[Thunderbird1400]

HOLY CRAP! After 2.5 months I finally found the cause of the problem! In Windows the display refresh rate was set to 59.94 Hz instead of 60Hz, that caused the synchronization issues between picture and sound.

That explains why the problem didn't appear with downsampling, because then the GPU scales the picture which obviously fixed the synchronisation.