Driver timeouts on AMD Hardware (with driver 23.9.1)

[青木 果報]

This thread is for anyone experiencing the following issue on AMD hardware:
After playing for 30-60 minutes, the game freezes and Radeon software informs of a "driver timeout" having occurred.

For me, this happens mostly in outdoor areas. In-game graphics settings are all low, with film grain and motion blur along with all supersampling and variable resolution settings turned off.

R7 5800X, 7900XTX, 1600W power supply, BAR resizing enabled. Max temperatures for both CPU and GPU at 70°. Windows 10 19044.3324.

UPDATE: AMD pushed out a new driver version right after the launch of the early access, make sure you're running 23.8.2 OR LATER before posting here!
I was able to turn all settings back to maximum apart from FSR and variable rate shading.

UPDATE 2: Drivers since 23.9.1 don't specifically mention Starfield in the changelogs.

Possible fixes to reduce crashing:
- Use newest driver (23.10.2 at time of edit)
- Reduce all settings to Low, increase incrementally one by one
- Turn off all Variable settings such as FSR, variable rate shading etc
- Don't ALT+TAB
- Set a GPU Core clock limit ~200-300MHz below stock (<3GHz tested mostly stable on 7900XTX)
- Use the "Auto Undervolt GPU" option in Radeon Software

[Count Orlok Gaming]

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

Originally posted by Richard Harrow Gaming:

People with 70 series cards are getting driver timeouts for Starfield. Dont know what to tell you. Dont have driver timeouts for other games, I would definitely know by now. Only encountered driver timeouts with Starfield.

Mate I literally just said I have a brand new 7600 card. I got driver time outs on stock settings repeatedly with these drivers. Under volting the gpu by 25mv made the game rock solid stable.

You can argue the point all you want. Fact is driver time outs by definition mean a driver error. You are acting like AMD drivers are perfect. They are not, and have several known issues such as core power spiking. And its well known that GPU vendors turn voltages up to sell "clocked" cards that are not always stable.

When did I ever state that AMD drivers are perfect? No drivers by any company are perfect. That is why driver releases have a "known issues" thread.

I was never arguing with you. I was agreeing with you. Was just stating that if its a driver level issue I do not encounter any driver timeouts in any other game then Starfield. So currennt drivers that are out must have some issue that is caused by Starfield, that is all.

[Count Orlok Gaming]

Originally posted by Caduryn:

Originally posted by Richard Harrow Gaming:

what GPU do you have?
I've seen quite a few people complaining about driver timeouts, they all seem to have 7000 series and AMD cards

rx 7900 xt

what driver are you on

[AoD_lexandro]

Originally posted by Caduryn:

Originally posted by Richard Harrow Gaming:

what GPU do you have?
I've seen quite a few people complaining about driver timeouts, they all seem to have 7000 series and AMD cards

rx 7900 xt

Asus card? In my experience Asus tends to have the best coolers and lowest voltages overall.

[AoD_lexandro]

Originally posted by Richard Harrow Gaming:

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

Mate I literally just said I have a brand new 7600 card. I got driver time outs on stock settings repeatedly with these drivers. Under volting the gpu by 25mv made the game rock solid stable.

You can argue the point all you want. Fact is driver time outs by definition mean a driver error. You are acting like AMD drivers are perfect. They are not, and have several known issues such as core power spiking. And its well known that GPU vendors turn voltages up to sell "clocked" cards that are not always stable.

When did I ever state that AMD drivers are perfect? No drivers by any company are perfect. That is why driver releases have a "known issues" thread.

I was never arguing with you. I was agreeing with you. Was just stating that if its a driver level issue I do not encounter any driver timeouts in any other game then Starfield. So currennt drivers that are out must have some issue that is caused by Starfield, that is all.

Sorry its the way you worded it. It made me think you were just saying "na not the case". Ma bad.

[PocketYoda]

I get tons of freezing and crashes on my rx6700xt.. i'm pretty used to it now.

I'm on 23.9.3

[Caduryn]

Originally posted by Caduryn:

Originally posted by Richard Harrow Gaming:

People with 70 series cards are getting driver timeouts for Starfield. Dont know what to tell you. Dont have driver timeouts for other games, I would definitely know by now. Only encountered driver timeouts with Starfield.

I dont get Driver timeouts....

But i am also on Driver 23.9.1

Originally posted by Richard Harrow Gaming:

Originally posted by Caduryn:

rx 7900 xt

what driver are you on

[Caduryn]

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

Originally posted by Caduryn:

rx 7900 xt

Asus card? In my experience Asus tends to have the best coolers and lowest voltages overall.

Sapphire

[Count Orlok Gaming]

Originally posted by PocketYoda:

I get tons of freezing and crashes on my rx6700xt.. i'm pretty used to it now.

I'm on 23.9.3

same here, but the actual driver time outs are annoying. Got my first one that actually showed a black screen today.

[Tyrax Lightning]

I just looked back through the Thread after seeing people state their Card and it seems like I never remembered to state mine... mines a SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon VII, 16GB of VRAM.

[catch22atplay]

This sounds like New world all over again. Just undervolt and continue playing. Worked for that game and others and should work here to. There's also a registry key to increase the gpu timeout delay (TdrDelay) which helps some people. Can also disable Multiplane Overlay (MPO) via a registry key as well. The last i use with my nvidia card but it can help any gpu.

[青木 果報]

Updated the OP a bit since this is getting bumped again.
I did mention that setting a GPU core clock limit helps with stability, which is akin to undervolting but failed to account for the fact that most cards have lower stock frequencies than the newest generation.

I personally have nothing new to report, I got the game running stable with the solutions mentioned in the OP but the game was bad so I stopped playing it.

[ºArchAngelº]

I managed to pin down a saved game that would blue screen around 3 minutes after loading, even if the game is left unattended.

Once the save loaded, I did nothing but continuously restart the (Nvidia) display drivers in Windows. The game was still left unattended. Starfield still crashed after a few minutes. In one instant, it crashed as the (Nvidia) display driver just came back online. Graphics Preset was set to LOW with no upscaling. Interestingly, I was able to play past that save point by setting the Graphics Preset to Ultra with DLAA. I have tried Starfield with my 3090, 4090, Sapphire Radeon RX 6900xt Nitrro+ and a Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X Nitro+ (my god, the crazy naming). They all crash at about the same rate in my machine. I really don't think it's a display card and/or driver problem. it's just bad coding. But after saying that, I have found that changing the Graphics Preset levels (up or down) seems to lessen crashes and at times it even carry you past those crashing hot spots.

I have also found that the Beta version, with DLSS/DLAA (enable or not) will cause save files to be corrupted if saved up to 2 mins before a crash point.

Have anyone noticed if your computer was accessing your drive (SSD) or if your internet was busy at he time of the crashes? Reason why I am asking is because my "crashing episodes" usually starts around 15:00 and 23:35. Game usually runs without too much problems between 08:00 to around 15:00 and also between 18:00 to 23:00. I went through (even with regedit) all auto run and scheduled processes and programs, auto system scans of any type, program updates, driver update, browser updates, windows update and etc but I still can't find any common threads. I have also tried running manual update checks on all active programs and drivers, along with manual windows update checks and run a virus scan (just to get it over with) before running Starfield. At times, it does seem to settle the crashing but at other times, it makes no difference. I have also tried running Starfiled on offline mode but that also did not help.

At this point, I'm just happy that I only have one more achievement (One Giant Leap) to get, yes I'm still only on my 1st run through after +700hrs of play (corrupt save files, many many, many replays caused by crashes and etc...). I'm not going to bother with NG+. I'm planning to move onto Boulder Dash 3 after this. Starfield falls flat in so many way, no technical issues withstanding!!! Way too much hype with no functional depth. A truck load of very poor amateur design decisions. How many times have one of your NPC stand in front of you when you are in your pilot seat and his or her leg fills the whole screen? How many times have your character get up from the Pilot Set during a multi-ship engagement?!

[Dim]

Had to necro this, since getting same driver crashes, not only in SF, but in almost any games now. And no, my system is more than capable to run it, since playing at 5120x2160. Problem is with amd drivers. There's unlimited posts at official forums, which i see users keep reporting exactly same issues, across series 6xxx/7xxx, yet no fix from amd.
I let here just one of the posts.

https://community.amd.com/t5/drivers-software/7900-xtx-driver-timeout/td-p/609601

Welcome to the AMD club

[Donaldo Trumpado]

AMD hardware behaving like AMD hardware: garbage is garbage

[phxrider]

I realize this thread is old, but will certainly come up in searches for people having the same issue with newer drivers, as it did for me.

Turn off "memory context restore" in your BIOS. Yes, this will vastly increase boot times and that sucks. It will also very likely fix your problem and other stability problems with DDR5 systems.