PC Graphics

[thedood365]

My setup:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @3.8 GHz, 1.4v
GPU: Sapphire Reference Vega 56 w/ 64 BIOS + Morpheus II
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB @2933 MHz
SSD (Primary): Samsung 840 EVO 500GB
HDD (Secondary): Western Digital 1TB 7200RPM HDD
PSU: Seasonic SSR-550RM 550W 80 PLUS Gold
Monitors:
ASUS 24" 1080p 144Hz VG248QE
LG 27" 4k 60Hz IPS 27UD58P-B

OS: most testing done on Windows 7, some crashing experienced on W10

Alright, So I've been fighting this issue for a while now, and I've run out of ideas. My PC crashes when playing games that put the GPU under high load, such as GTA Online, Forza Horizon 3, and even Risk of Rain 2, primarily when running them on at full resolution my 4K monitor. Sometimes it will crash on the menus, sometimes it will crash about 10 minutes in, but I never seem to get over 30 minutes in these games without a crash when playing them at 4k. If I play them on my 1080p monitor, I see no issues. This crash happens on both Windows 7 on my SSD, and Windows 10 on my HDD.

Now when it crashes, I will lose video on both monitors in addition to audio, in what seems to be a complete lockup, forcing me to hard-reset the PC (I used to get a black/grey screen, but disabling MSI Afterburner has left me with crashes like this). Another weird thing is, if I try to reboot without disconnecting and reconnecting my monitors from the GPU, the PC won't get past POST, and will show a GPU failure LED on the motherboard.

What I've tried:

Reinstalling/ downgrading video drivers normally

Using DDU to uninstall the video drivers in Safe Mode, then reinstalling the latest driver (19.4.1)

Disconnecting/turning off my 1080p monitor before playing

Putting my Ryzen back to stock clocks

Swapping around the power cables at the PSU (I do have 2 separate 8-pin cables going from the PSU to the GPU)

Setting Windows power options to High Performance/Balanced (no difference)

Changing the Color Depth to 8bpc for both monitors (the LG supports 10bpc by default, the ASUS can't)

Setting the Performance / Watt profile to Power Save

Setting the power level to +50% in Wattman

Setting the Minimum Memory State in Wattman to State 1 (500 MHz)

That last one's a bit special, because I was having this sort of issue a while back, and doing this seemed to fix it for quite some time. Now that it started to act up again, I tried going into Wattman to see if maybe a driver update wiped my settings, and I found something peculiar. My minimum memory state is now set to State 2 (800 MHz) by default, and will not go any lower (if I try to set it to state 1 or 0, after clicking "apply", it just resets to state 2 again). I'm thinking whatever is causing this might be my culprit. I've recently found it was doing this BEFORE and AFTER using DDU then reinstalling the drivers. And the weird thing is, the GPU memory will only idle at 800 MHz if Radeon Settings is running in the background; if I restart my pc, and I don't launch the settings, GPUZ shows the memory idling at 167 MHz (attached is a GPUZ readout when I launch Radeon Settings). It seems my games can go a bit longer if I just run them without launching the settings, but they do still crash after some time. Might be a separate issue

I would blame the PSU not being powerful enough, but under max load, GPUZ reports around 180 Watts, and this issue only really flared up recently (I've had this GPU/setup since the Vega 56 launched).

Any ideas? I'd really hate to have to get another GPU, the 4k performance of this card is pretty good, besides the whole crashing thing.

Thank you.

[orcblood]

Same problem here with me and was fighting it this weekend. I have the 2700x with an Asus X470 WIFI Crosshair VII with 32GB of ram and a Radeon VII. Sure different GPU but very similar as far as architecture. I updated to 19.4.1 from 19.3.3 sometime last week and I think that's what caused my issue. I did similar to what you did with reinstalling drivers with DDU in safe mode. I have two monitors, a small 1920x1080p dell 60hz to the left and a main Asus 144hz 2560x1440p. It would happen so randomly(sometimes far apart from the last crash (many hours) or close together(minutes). I played mostly Apex Legends this weekend. I'd be playing the game and all of a sudden my game would freeze in place followed 3-5 seconds later by both monitors going black and all sound off including mic. Sometimes if I waited long enough both monitors would come back and I'd get this https://imgur.com/a/1aNnnPC on my main display with the game closed out. Usually though a hard press on the power button is what I had to do. I thought maybe it was Apex but it happened again with a very identical error message when playing competive Overewatch(Sorry team!). When that happened I just mostly played Apex until I was confident I sorted out the error. Last evening (Sunday) I finally wised up and rolled back the driver to 19.3.3. That may have solved it. I'll have to play more this week to know for sure.

TLDR: I think the latest driver is the issue. Roll back to the previous driver. 

[orcblood]

So I gamed over an hour last night and still no crashes with the 19.3.3. Maybe I just need more time but rolling back does in fact seem to have fixed the issue. Also something I forgot to mention 19.4.1 seems to work well with my rx 580 when I swapped in in this weekend. Had no crashing with that card and played for a couple of hours on it. I think 19.4.1 just doesn't play well with Vega arch cards.

[nyus]

I'm pretty sure, that your PSU is far too weak, because the Vega needs a lot of power. I would recommend you to buy one with 700W. If you want to be sure, you could calculate it based on your components.

[thedood365]

EDIT: Another update, 4/17/19

   So, I went ahead and replaced my PSU with a Seasonic Focus Plus 750w 80+ Platinum, just in case if I happened to have been miscalculating all this time and....I wasn't. I'm still seeing crashes under load (I even had Escape from Tarkov crash in the same manner on my 1080p monitor a few days ago, before I replaced the PSU.) At this point I think I've pretty much ruled out power supply issues, and I'm starting to think it's the GPU itself.

Update, some new findings:

So I rolled back the driver to 18.12.2, and I sort of have more control over my memory settings, but the crashes still persist. (I think I'll just make another post about this as a separate issue, because it crashes no matter what the clocks are)

For the record, I did try to flash another, slightly older Vega 64 bios, but it sill crashes just the same.

Now, I tried playing with the Power Save and Turbo Performance/Watt Profiles in Wattman again, and I noticed my games tend to last a lot longer when in the Power Save profile. I would like to think it's an issue related to power draw, but according to GPU-Z, my average gpu-only power draw during these sessions is around 140 watts, and the clocks/in-game performance is roughly the same when under load, whether the profiles are set to Power Save or Turbo. Does anyone know what the profiles in Wattman actually do?

I also did a bit more research about my system's wattage. According to pcpartpicker, at least, my system should be using a maximum of 420-ish watts, and that would be with the GPU running at 215 watts by itself. I can see my GPU jump over 200 watts in GPU-Z, but it's only for short moment. Under max load, at least with my testing, it seems to be hovering around 140 watts when it crashes, which seems like it's well within my PSU's limits. I've also seen some others having this type of issue, only to persist after replacing the PSU for a much larger one, so I'm a bit skeptical towards replacing my PSU at the moment.

[heartless_ca]

I have the same or a similar issue with a MSI Vega 56. Upgraded psu from 600 watt to 750 and had 0 change. Wasn't a psu issue in my case, feel like I wasted money on a psu but had to do it to rule out that as part of the issue.  I'm still searching for an answer but wanted to let you know about the psu.

[muon]

I also upgraded my PSU for the video card because of screen freeze with the vega 56, which is wasted money as it hasn't fixed them. Where can we go to get help with these issues? I have tried all software and hardware variations without success. Latest test was if it was daisy chaining from single psu line, but problem persists after.

It literally just froze as I was typing this message with the GPU at 45C and I had to reboot.

[heartless_ca]

I rma my card awaiting a return. Popped in old gpu and running flawless for ~3weeks now.

[gunbuster]

Vega 56 here. Having the same issue. Will crash to black screen even under light load like just browsing in chrome...

[bcpierce45]

I have the msi radeon vega 64 air boosted, have tried everything rolled back drivers, clean install, power cables. Everything will randomly crash, black screen, have audio from discord and game for about a minute, than nothing, also fan speeds max out. If you find any fix to this problem please let me know. I'm to the point I want to throw the damn rig away. Lol

[dahuckk]

I have msi Vega 56 air boost. I flashed my graphics card with sapphire Vega 56 nitro+ bios and it works without any issues now. it was randomly freezing before. Idk maybe it could be helpful for your 64 one

[kunrix]

I have the same issue with my vega 64.

I tried different wattman settings, but that didn't seem to be the problem. I added second power cable and updated drivers, but I am still getting random freezes and crashes.

I think the problem might be that my vega is just dying, but I hope that its just the drivers fault.