AMD GPU Driver Crashes on two Monitor Setup

[Tech_fanatic]

I have two monitors connected to the dGPU. The monitors are from Samsung. The primary is the Samsung Odyssey G4 1080p 240Hz while the other (secondary) is a 10 year old Samsung S19B150 1366x768p 60Hz display.
The primary is connected via a high quality DP cable while the secondary is connected via a DVI to DP cable. The primary is set to 240Hz in windows display settings and also has freesync premium turned ON while the secondary is at its default res and 60Hz.
The problem is that the AMD Adrenalin software and the driver of the GPU crashes intermittently (rather frequently). This mainly happens when I play videos on the two monitors simultaneously or when I play a game on the primary with the videos playing on vlc on the secondary. When the driver crashes the system becomes unresponsive and the screen on the primary monitor goes black and the mouse clicks and the keystrokes, even Ctrl+Shift+Esc, are not registered and the system hangs for like a minute and then the primary screen turns ON showing that the Adrenalin software had crashed and asks me to report it to AMD which I have already done multiple times. I have tried re-installing the adrenalin software multiple times using amd's clean uninstaller but to no avail. I think it might be because of the difference in refresh rates of the two monitors connected to the same gpu but I may be wrong.
All the chipset and graphics drivers are up to date on a fresh install of windows 11.
Has ideas to solve this issue would be of great help. Thanks!

 

[Calenhad]

Do the crashes go away if you use only the primary monitor? The huge difference im specs could be an issue. But first you need to make sure that is a symtom. And I don’t see this mentioned in your post.

You say you use a DVI-DP adapter. This is not necessarily properly supported by the hardware, as it is not officially in the DP spec. I would recommend using DVI-HDMI since that is guaranteed to be 100% compatible.

When your computer goes unresponsive and the screen goes black, that is normal behaviour for driver crash recovery.

It is possible that this is a DRM issue (HDCP). That old monitor will have a much lower version than your newer monitor

 

[Tech_fanatic]

Do the crashes go away if you use only the primary monitor? The huge difference im specs could be an issue. But first you need to make sure that is a symtom. And I don’t see this mentioned in your post.

You say you use a DVI-DP adapter. This is not necessarily properly supported by the hardware, as it is not officially in the DP spec. I would recommend using DVI-HDMI since that is guaranteed to be 100% compatible.

When your computer goes unresponsive and the screen goes black, that is normal behaviour for driver crash recovery.

It is possible that this is a DRM issue (HDCP). That old monitor will have a much lower version than your newer monitor

I had already bought a DVI to DP cable as the GPU has only one HDMI port and three display ports and the old monitor has only VGA and DVI connections. Since VGA being analog I decided to get a DVI to DP adapter and not a VGA to DP one. Yes you are right about the fact that the old monitor has a very old version of connectors which can cause some issues. But at the moment the monitor is working fine and I want to put it to use.
Yes the system responds normally and the graphics card seems to behave normally when I disable projection to that monitor from windows display settings itself (without needing to unplug it). I think this may also be something due to one monitors supporting Freesync and the other not supporting it. I will try with Freesync disabled and update but I really need that feature so need something that can solve that issue. Will get one DVI to HDMI connector and try that also.
Thanks

 

[GerKNG]

Hey.
I have (had) the same problem as you. actually a LOT of people have currently the same issue and i troubleshooted it over the last couple days.
and it seems that AMD has an issue with MPO (Multi Plane Overlays) with 240Hz and above Displays in the current drivers.
It's NOT your Cable, Not your GPU or Monitor.

as a Workaround disable MPO (NVidia had the same issue a while ago and they still have a registry key edit for it on their website.)

NVIDIA Support

nvidia.custhelp.com

download and run the "disable MPO" registry key. and restart your PC afterwards.
my crashes, instability and grey screen driver timeouts are fixed.

when you don't trust the registry key file do it by hand: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm, create DWORD OverlayTestMode with value 00000005.

From Latest AMD Driver:

Known Issues​

During video playback and window switching, an intermittent driver timeout or black screen may occur on Radeon™ RX 6000 series GPUs using some 240Hz refresh rate displays or high refresh rate primary display plus low refresh rate secondary display configurations.​

 

[Tech_fanatic]

Hey.
I have (had) the same problem as you. actually a LOT of people have currently the same issue and i troubleshooted it over the last couple days.
and it seems that AMD has an issue with MPO (Multi Plane Overlays) with 240Hz and above Displays in the current drivers.
It's NOT your Cable, Not your GPU or Monitor.

as a Workaround disable MPO (NVidia had the same issue a while ago and they still have a registry key edit for it on their website.)

NVIDIA Support

nvidia.custhelp.com

download and run the "disable MPO" registry key. and restart your PC afterwards.
my crashes, instability and grey screen driver timeouts are fixed.

when you don't trust the registry key file do it by hand: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm, create DWORD OverlayTestMode with value 00000005.

From Latest AMD Driver:

Known Issues​

During video playback and window switching, an intermittent driver timeout or black screen may occur on Radeon™ RX 6000 series GPUs using some 240Hz refresh rate displays or high refresh rate primary display plus low refresh rate secondary display configurations.​

Wow seems I am not alone and this is not an isolated issue. Will try the registry hack that you have suggested and update this thread. Thanks . If this is a known and reproducible issue then why doesn't AMD provide official support via drivers. I guess it's the downside to choosing team RED.

 

[PandaOG]

Hi,

I just wanted to say I've got exactly the same problem while using LG 32GP850 (165Hz) as a primary and Acer ED323QUR (75Hz) as a secondary.
The day I received 6900XT and installed it in my system I had continuous crashes on desktop even at IDLE. I spent about a week diagnosing potential hardware issues and I thought the cause is the faulty GPU.
Then after realising that dual screen setup with different refresh rate has been adressed in the patch notes I just disconnected secondary monitor, not a single driver crash since then.

I guess we'll have just to wait for AMD to fix it, sadly.

 

[Tech_fanatic]

Hi,

I just wanted to say I've got exactly the same problem while using LG 32GP850 (165Hz) as a primary and Acer ED323QUR (75Hz) as a secondary.
The day I received 6900XT and installed it in my system I had continuous crashes on desktop even at IDLE. I spent about a week diagnosing potential hardware issues and I thought the cause is the faulty GPU.
Then after realising that dual screen setup with different refresh rate has been adressed in the patch notes I just disconnected secondary monitor, not a single driver crash since then.

I guess we'll have just to wait for AMD to fix it, sadly.

I too saw it in their latest driver (22.11.1) release notes after being pointed out by @GerKNG . They just broke one more thing to support a couple of more games!

 

[babineaux]

I too saw it in their latest driver (22.11.1) release notes after being pointed out by @GerKNG . They just broke one more thing to support a couple of more games!

any luck on GerKNG’s tip he gave?

 

[Toothless]

I'm running 144hz on my main and 60hz on my two others. No issues but if you keep having issues please use the bug report.

 

[babineaux]

I'm running 144hz on my main and 60hz on my two others. No issues but if you keep having issues please use the bug report.

i fill out the form every time and get nothing back

 

[evernessince]

Wow seems I am not alone and this is not an isolated issue. Will try the registry hack that you have suggested and update this thread. Thanks . If this is a known and reproducible issue then why doesn't AMD provide official support via drivers. I guess it's the downside to choosing team RED.

Nvidia, Intel and AMD are having this issue because Microsoft made changes to MPO.

I would say your anger would be better directed at Microsoft but I doubt they'd care.

 

[Bagerklestyne]

Same boat for me 144hz 1080p and a 4k 60hz and it throws a hissy fit on a regular basis even at idle. I might give the registry hack a crack and see if things improve

 

[eidairaman1]

Use Radeon Pro for Enterprise Drivers

 

[Toothless]

i fill out the form every time and get nothing back

You're not meant to get anything back. It's for AMD to internally review.

 

[eidairaman1]

i fill out the form every time and get nothing back

I reported issues back then and eventually issues are fixed

 

[NRANM]

Just noticed this thread. I have the same issue.

The "solution" is to revert back to the 21.12.1 driver, as that one is stable. The AMD software still seems to crash in some (rare) situations, but the driver itself is stable. It is also smoother. I get some choppy cursor movement with the 22.xx.x driver.
Another workaround is to disable FreeSync in the AMD software and Adaptive Sync in your monitor's settings. That also seems to result in stable operation, at least based on my testing, but I don't know if both options are necessary to achieve stability. However, since the older driver was smoother, I didn't spend a lot of time testing this workaround, so I'm not 100% certain if it provides complete/long-term stability.

Issues like these are the reason I'm going back to NVIDIA for my next card, which may happen as early as late December. It's a shame really. AMD offers much better price/performance ratio but all of that is nullified if the driver is a mess.

EDIT:
Forgot to mention that I would also recommend enabling the following policy in the Group Policy Editor: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Manage Updates offered from Windows Updates -> Do not include Drivers with Windows Update.

Not sure if it helps, but I hope it does. After a few months of peace and quiet, Windows began forcibly "upgrading" the v21 AMD driver with v22, even though I had turned that off in the Device Installation Settings, which I'm not sure if applies to drivers to begin with.
After enabling the aforementioned policy, things have calmed down, for now at least.

 

[eidairaman1]

Just noticed this thread. I have the same issue.

The "solution" is to revert back to the 21.12.1 driver, as that one is stable. The AMD software still seems to crash in some (rare) situations, but the driver itself is stable. It is also smoother. I get some choppy cursor movement with the 22.xx.x driver.
Another workaround is to disable FreeSync in the AMD software and Adaptive Sync in your monitor's settings. That also seems to result in stable operation, at least based on my testing, but I don't know if both options are necessary to achieve stability. However, since the older driver was smoother, I didn't spend a lot of time testing this workaround, so I'm not 100% certain if it provides complete/long-term stability.

Issues like these are the reason I'm going back to NVIDIA for my next card, which may happen as early as late December. It's a shame really. AMD offers much better price/performance ratio but all of that is nullified if the driver is a mess.

EDIT:
Forgot to mention that I would also recommend enabling the following policy in the Group Policy Editor: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Manage Updates offered from Windows Updates -> Do not include Drivers with Windows Update.

Not sure if it helps, but I hope it does. After a few months of peace and quiet, Windows began forcibly "upgrading" the v21 AMD driver with v22, even though I had turned that off in the Device Installation Settings, which I'm not sure if applies to drivers to begin with.
After enabling the aforementioned policy, things have calmed down, for now at least.

AMD Software Adrenalin 22.11.2 Released

AMD released the latest version of the AMD Software Adrenalin drivers. Although released in December, the drivers bear the version number 22.11.2 (as opposed to something like 22.12.1); as they were probably finalized late last month. Version 22.11.2 beta adds optimization for "The Callisto...

www.techpowerup.com

Nv is not perfect either with drivers.


Fyi there are Radeon Pro For Enterprise (Radeon Pro) Drivers for anything of the R7 200 Series all the way to the RX6900 series.

 

[Tech_fanatic]

Just noticed this thread. I have the same issue.

The "solution" is to revert back to the 21.12.1 driver, as that one is stable. The AMD software still seems to crash in some (rare) situations, but the driver itself is stable. It is also smoother. I get some choppy cursor movement with the 22.xx.x driver.
Another workaround is to disable FreeSync in the AMD software and Adaptive Sync in your monitor's settings. That also seems to result in stable operation, at least based on my testing, but I don't know if both options are necessary to achieve stability. However, since the older driver was smoother, I didn't spend a lot of time testing this workaround, so I'm not 100% certain if it provides complete/long-term stability.

Issues like these are the reason I'm going back to NVIDIA for my next card, which may happen as early as late December. It's a shame really. AMD offers much better price/performance ratio but all of that is nullified if the driver is a mess.

EDIT:
Forgot to mention that I would also recommend enabling the following policy in the Group Policy Editor: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Manage Updates offered from Windows Updates -> Do not include Drivers with Windows Update.

Not sure if it helps, but I hope it does. After a few months of peace and quiet, Windows began forcibly "upgrading" the v21 AMD driver with v22, even though I had turned that off in the Device Installation Settings, which I'm not sure if applies to drivers to begin with.
After enabling the aforementioned policy, things have calmed down, for now at least.

Yes rolling back the drivers is an option but the older drivers don't support the igpu of zen 4 cpus. Even though the igpu is not being used it comes in handy as a backup if the dgpu suddenly fails.
I also have noticed that this driver and choppiness issue of dual monitor setup when playing a video on one with a game/video running on the other mainly occurs with the AMD freesync enabled.

Yes the new

AMD Software Adrenalin 22.11.2 Released

AMD released the latest version of the AMD Software Adrenalin drivers. Although released in December, the drivers bear the version number 22.11.2 (as opposed to something like 22.12.1); as they were probably finalized late last month. Version 22.11.2 beta adds optimization for "The Callisto...

www.techpowerup.com

Nv is not perfect either with drivers.


Fyi there are Radeon Pro For Enterprise (Radeon Pro) Drivers for anything of the R7 200 Series all the way to the RX6900 series.

Yes the drivers released on 12/01/2022 address some of the issues but some still persist like:

• Intermittent system stuttering or UI flickering may occur when two videos are simultaneously playing using chromium-based browsers.
• During video playback and gameplay, frame drop may occur in chromium-based browsers with variable refresh rate enabled extended displays.
• Brief display corruption may occur when switching between video and game windows on some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon™ RX 6700 XT.

AMD AE 22.11.2
Will try it today evening and check if the same has resolved or not.

any luck on GerKNG’s tip he gave?

I tried it but the issue still persists for me but it's worth a try. You can also try the new drivers.

 

[NRANM]

I already tested the newest beta driver, and the issue is not resolved. At least not the issue I'm experiencing.

I'm aware NVIDIA's driver is not perfect, but I've never had such major issues with my previous GTX 1060.

I may try the Radeon Pro For Enterprise driver later today, but I'm not holding my breath. Is this driver still fine for gaming?

EDIT (automatic merge?):

Based on the advice of a person I know, I tried the latest Adrenaline driver (from yesterday) but with GPU scaling enabled in the AMD Software. I was skeptical but so far it is actually both stable and smooth. I'd have to use it more to be confident it's fine, but for the last few hours everything has been fine. Color me surprised!

EDIT #2:

Spoke too soon. The GPU scaling option seemed to improve things, and eliminate the issue with choppy cursor movement and flickering secondary screen when hovering on various elements on websites, but the crashes still occur.

Now trying the enterprise driver but it's also choppy without GPU scaling, so my guess is it will crash soon enough as well.

How can a company like AMD, with all of its resources and years of experience with drivers, manage to screw things up this much? Having a pretty stable driver, albeit still producing video corruption when skipping in some video files, then just creating this dumpster fire of a driver afterwards? Or am I just one extremely unlucky bastard?

 

[Toothless]

You're just unlucky. I've never had issues like this with ANY red or green driver, beta or not.

Maybe windows OS install is borked?

 

[GerKNG]

the latest driver fixed these problems for me. MPO works, no crashes or freezes. no stutters or slowdowns with HW accelerated video playback.
can't wait for the next three drivers that fuck up something so bad again that they need another year to fix it...

 

[Toothless]

the latest driver fixed these problems for me. MPO works, no crashes or freezes. no stutters or slowdowns with HW accelerated video playback.
can't wait for the next three drivers that fuck up something so bad again that they need another year to fix it...

At least they're actually trying. Given the budget difference between the teams AMD actually does a good job on turnarounds.

 

[GerKNG]

At least they're actually trying. Given the budget difference between the teams AMD actually does a good job on turnarounds.

but that does not help me... the customer.
we are now ~ 10 years in of non stop driver problems that appear out of nowhere, get fixed after months and then re appear again.
general instability back with GCN 1.0 across the board (game crashes, windows crashes etc.)
Polaris released with super broken drivers with massive image problems in many games.
RDNA released with the black screen issue (which was never fully fixed until this day for everyone)
HW Acceleration was broken for years.
RDNA2 was very unstable and had lots of bugs on launch (i remember trying to Play CoD BO:CW with a friend and had weeks over weeks of non stop driver timeouts in this game until it got fixed)
then we had the MPO bug which made basically EVERY GPU useless for people with 240+Hz displays since it constantly locked up and froze with a grey screen... since February!
Enhanced Sync was unuseable for several years and is still very buggy.
and now we are in late 2022. our RDNA2 cards are now two years old and in two weeks RDNA3 releases... took them almost the whole Lifespan of the RDNA2 Architecture to fix it's biggest issues. I bet money that RDNA3 will be the same mess as usual...
for me and many others this is just unacceptable.

there is a reason why AMD has the better Price/Performance Cards, way more VRAM and still has barely 10% market share.

 

[3x0]

@NRANM So I take it the MPO fix didn't resolve your issue?

Running a 6600XT with a 1080p 240Hz monitor without any issues like broken HW acceleration in FF/Chrome or black screens from the beginning. Only trouble I had was with CSGO not loading maps, but it's fixable via command line.

 

[GerKNG]

Running a 6600XT with a 1080p 240Hz monitor without any issues like broken HW acceleration in FF/Chrome or black screens from the beginning. Only trouble I had was with CSGO not loading maps, but it's fixable via command line.

do you have a second monitor? that's a requirement for the issue to appear.
this is how it looks when you use a 240Hz+ Monitor and play back a Video with HW Acceleration on a second monitor.
grey screen, PC Locks up, plays back Audio for 20-30 seconds and then you need to cut power. (i can reproduce this issue with a 100% success rate with every driver since at least march 2022 until it was fixed with the latest one)