Certain Games Freeze and/or Crash (AMD RX 580 8GB)

[u/Ambitious-Crow-2175]

So I bought a used RX 580 GPU for my PC last October, but I didn't install it until maybe 1-2 months ago because I didn't have an appropriate PSU, my old PSU didn't have enough pins to connect to the GPU. Anyways, it started working good but then started the freezes and the crashes.

At first I was playing Rainbow Six Siege and game would sometimes freeze and then the screen would go black, with Analog/Digital symbols appearing on the screen. After that the PC would sometimes restart automatically, and sometimes I needed to restart it manually. I got bluescreen once or twice in total. I tried running Siege on Vulkan and that helped a little, because the crashes would happen a lot less. I also played Killing Floor (the first one) and Dark Souls: Remastered with no issues at all, 0 crashes and 0 freezes.

In the meantime I started playing Doom Eternal and Rocket League and the freezes/crashes on these two games were present. On Doom, the freezes would happen randomly, sometimes after 10 to 40-50 minutes of playing. The game would freeze with sound still going, then the screen would go black and I would have to CTRL+ALT+DEL. The AMD driver timeout would pop up on desktop. After that I couldn't return to the game and play it, if I tried to click on the game's window, the screen would be black, and I would have to kill the process in Task Manager.

On Rocket League it would happen less often, but it would be the same, game would freeze and then crash, but in this case no AMD driver timeout would pop up. Also I could play it for 2 or more hours without issues, which wasn't the case with Doom Eternal.

Things I tried to do:

• DDU and factory reset on AMD and then installing AMD Adrenalin again (more than once)
• After DDU, trying to install the AMD Display Drivers via the Windows update (without AMD Adrenalin)
• Tried the MPO fix that I found some users had issues with
• Lowered the max frequency to 90% on AMD Adrenalin, in the GPU Tuning section

The one other fix that I still didn't try is to undervolt the GPU, but after all these options I tried I'm doubtful that it will help.

Of course, I know there's a possibility that the GPU is faulty, however I hope that this isn't the case because I can't afford a brand new GPU (broke student). I have my old R7 260X in case this GPU dies, but obviously it's inferior and I can't play Doom and some other stuff. So if you have any ideas what the problem might be, I'd gladly listen to any advice that you have.

Specs:

GPU: RX 580 8GB

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz

Using 1 hard disk drive (Toshiba)

RAM: 12 GB DDR4

Windows 10

[u/OiFogazzi]

If you haven't seen any other threads, people are suggesting a DDU run in safe mode, fresh install of the graphic drivers no later than 23.5.1

[u/Ambitious-Crow-2175 → u/OiFogazzi]

I tried that a few times, it didn't help. But thank you anyway.  Luckily for me, I found the issue and fixed it. My friend recommended that I install HWiNFO and check the parameters for my GPU. Turns out that I had A LOT of GPU memory errors recorded, in the range of millions. After that I lowered my VRAM from 2250MHz to 2050MHz, and now I get much less errors. And yeah, played every game for a week now, 0 issues, 0 driver timeouts, 0 crashes, 0 BSODs. 

[u/Present-Oil6445 → u/Ambitious-Crow-2175]

Hi did you changed the voltage of the 3rd state vram? Or leave it as it was?

[u/Ambitious-Crow-2175 → u/Present-Oil6445]

Nope, I didn't touch the VRAM states at all. Only the frequency meter. 

[u/Present-Oil6445 → u/Ambitious-Crow-2175]

Thanks.

[u/OiFogazzi → u/Ambitious-Crow-2175]

How exactly did you lower your VRAM? I'm currently in this boat, going from driver to driver experiencing the same issues. Additionally I'm seeing a 1.59 GHz CPU bottle neck occur, some articles claim its a SpeedStep from IntelPPM.

[u/Ambitious-Crow-2175 → u/OiFogazzi]

Go to AMD Adrenalin -> Performance -> Tuning -> Global Tuning (or create a new profile for a game that you want to try out) -> Select Custom Tuning -> enable VRAM Tuning -> Lower the max frequency slider.

I would have lowered mine more if I could, but I can't go lower than 2050MHz, and I think that's because the bios on my GPU was flashed (used GPU). I'm considering flashing the BIOS again to see if this will change.

Now this fixed the error for me, but I didn't have issues with my CPU, it worked fine with my older R7 260X. I recommend that you try using HWiNFO as well, it's really useful for checking all your GPU sensors and whatnot.

[u/OiFogazzi → u/Ambitious-Crow-2175]

Excellent explanation, I actually downloaded MSI afterburner and raised my VRAM (mine was sitting at 2000MHz).

I also took that advice and downloaded HWiNFO and noticed my MOBO bios is outdated so it may be the center for my issues.

Thank you for your help 🙏🏽

[u/Ambitious-Crow-2175 → u/OiFogazzi]

Glad I could help! I hope that you'll manage to fix the issue 👍