Fix for AMD Driver Timeout on RX7600 Cards

[Draksyl]

After suffering from this bug causing crashes and lockups regardless of settings (with the exception of the film grain which enabled really ups the odds of this occurring, I eventually stumbled on another post suggesting lowering the GPU clocks back towards stock / default AMD levels - rather than using the default settings on my Power Color Hellhound RX7600 (Factory OCd to ~2.9MHz). So I used Afterburner to drop my frequency down to 2600MHz (AMD reference design is 2650MHz), made that the default Afterburner profile on startup and lo and behold the game has become immediately stable and stopped crashing at the drop of a hat.

The game is doing occasional micro stutters for a fraction of a second at the point where it would typically crash out instead (which is still a major leap forwards) - so as others have already indicated (elsewhere) its probably a legacy artefact somewhere in the rather dated game engine causing the gremlins on RDNA3 cards - which can hopefully be fixed with a combination of game patches and future driver updates.

Im also using the latest AMD Beta driver with FSR3 and Frame Generation, which for playing at 1080p on a variable rate monitor still seems smoother than running it natively even with the extra computational overhead - though im not particularly sensitive to input lag.

I will report back in a few days time to see if it is in fact a permanent fix for the crashes, or whether I've just been lucky so far in avoiding them so far tonight.

[ZombieHunter]

Driver timeout is caused by TDR. I'm not going to gimp my card to fix a driver issue.

[Apoloyn]

I got this problem using some of the newer drivers. (Never had it with 23.9.1)

I went back to it and now everything is fine.

[Draksyl]

To Zombiehunter,

Fine, you do your thing - but given a choice between having a playable game but ever so slightly gimped performance, or not being able to go more than 10 minutes between crashes making the game almost unplayable for long stretches in certain environments then I know which one I would pick.

And your opinion doesn't alter that this fix appears to work reliably whereas changing all of the other graphics settings merely changes the regularity of the TDR timeouts rather than preventing them altogether?

Also in my case Driver rollbacks had zero impact on the crashes.

[RodroG]

Assuming the system and PC configuration are stable, the problem is either the game code, the display driver code, or an interaction between the two factors.

IMO, we should open the appropriate technical support ticket and request a game patch or a GPU driver update that resolves these issues and does not cause new ones.

[Draksyl]

Post-patch as soon as I set the GPU back to its factory OC speed the game starts crashing again, and if I drop it down to reference design speeds (2650MHz for the RX7600) then it behaves - regardless of what other graphics options I have selected.

Im wondering whether Bethesda hard-coded the reference design GPU frequencies for AMD RDNA3 cards into the game engine as part of the frame pacing or other GPU related functionality. Exactly the same GPU drivers play nicely with all my other games, so definitely points at the game engines use of GPU resources more than just being a driver issue IMO.

So for anyone continuing to suffer Driver timeout issues on RDNA3 cards, make sure to test de-clocking it to reference design speeds to see if that helps, as well as the usual suspects of disabling FSR, VRS or Film Grain.

Up to you if you decide to make that a permanent solution for this game or not - but at least you will know if thats the root cause of your instability and crashes.

[PcMasterRace]

is it all 7000 series cards? I have a 7900xtx and have not played in a while. My card is heavily overclocked on core and vram also under volted. I can giver it a try and see my findings if it helps at all

[Draksyl]

Ive seen other 7 series cards including 7800 reported with the same problem. Im not sure if its specific manufacturers implementing something in their aftermarket designs that causes the game and driver to bug out - but why only at higher clock speeds??

For reference mine is a Power Color RX7600 Hellhound (the middle of the range model)

[GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™]

Originally posted by Draksyl:

After suffering from this bug causing crashes and lockups regardless of settings (with the exception of the film grain which enabled really ups the odds of this occurring, I eventually stumbled on another post suggesting lowering the GPU clocks back towards stock / default AMD levels - rather than using the default settings on my Power Color Hellhound RX7600 (Factory OCd to ~2.9MHz). So I used Afterburner to drop my frequency down to 2600MHz (AMD reference design is 2650MHz), made that the default Afterburner profile on startup and lo and behold the game has become immediately stable and stopped crashing at the drop of a hat.

The game is doing occasional micro stutters for a fraction of a second at the point where it would typically crash out instead (which is still a major leap forwards) - so as others have already indicated (elsewhere) its probably a legacy artefact somewhere in the rather dated game engine causing the gremlins on RDNA3 cards - which can hopefully be fixed with a combination of game patches and future driver updates.

Im also using the latest AMD Beta driver with FSR3 and Frame Generation, which for playing at 1080p on a variable rate monitor still seems smoother than running it natively even with the extra computational overhead - though im not particularly sensitive to input lag.

I will report back in a few days time to see if it is in fact a permanent fix for the crashes, or whether I've just been lucky so far in avoiding them so far tonight.

That means you start an RMA for a faulty GPU. Power color values should be stable and they are not, which means RMA.

Basically the factory overclock that you paid good money for is unstable. The very least I would contact power color and see what they have to say, but honestly I would RMA because technically the GPU is faulty.