Question 6900 XT black screen crashes, screen tearing & stuttering ?

[rice0209]

Hoping for some help from all the experts out there, thank you in advance!

I built a pretty nice setup here about 9 months ago. Here are the specs:

Asus x570-e mobo
Asus Tuf 6900 xt OC card (changed to liquid cooled - EKWB)
Ryzen 5900x CPU (Also liquid cooled)
32 gb G Skill Trident Z RGB (16gbx2) running at 3800mhz, FCLK 1900 (passed multiple memtests with 0 errors
2 TB Corsair M600 NVME
Corsair RM850x PSU (2 separate 8-pin cables connected to the 2 power inputs on GPU)
Windows 10, also was on Windows 11 with issues, before reverting to windows 10
Fully water cooled with fantastic water temps at all times - water is generally in the 23C to 26C range
GPU temps are generally around mid 40C with highest temp on card around mid 50C
CPU generally around mid 50s Celsius at worst

For 3 - 4 months or so, until around November 2021 or so, I never had any issues. Very stable. I mostly play Warzone but have experienced the crashes on other titles like Halo and COD Vanguard, but the bulk of my time is on Warzone when I play. Never had a crash outside of gaming.

What will happen, is at completely random times, my screen may start to flicker image, audio begin to cutout and then the screen goes black (lost signal). My computer will then try and reboot 2 times (i can tell by the noises, and led lighting transitioning), the monitor never regains signal. On the 3rd time, my computer will reboot back into windows. I was initially running some stable GPU overclocks for a long time. When the issues started happening, i have slowly dialed back any overclocks, including radeon settings in an attempt to isolate the issue. All i have done is been able to slow down the occurrences of black screen crashes, but have not yet eliminated them. As I posted above, I initially was running widows 10 when i first built, went to windows 11, started experiencing issues, did a couple complete wipes/installs back to windows 10 in attempts to clear any issues. Have tried every new AMD driver, including wiping with DDU, etc.

I have scoured the internet for this, finding similar problems and trying their solutions, but have not fixed it yet. Turned off practically all Radeon enhancements like sharpening, anti lag, enhanced sync. My GPU is running back at stock values, no OC. I will attempt to run my memory at 3600mhz, 1800 FLCK as my last OC setting left, but even at my current values (3800/1900) i get zero errors with memtest and multiple passes.

I am running out of ideas. I have seen posts recommending a higher wattage PSU but then also seem posts with a nearly exact build who tried a bigger psu but still had the crashes. I hooked up a watt meter to my PSU cord and never went about 600w at 120v, leading me to believe i haven't pushed any higher than that.

My event viewer has not been helpful at all with any critical errors other than the errors that seem to point to the failure in the past, not when it happened (like - The previous shutdown was unexpected).

If you have any suggestions for things i can look for to find what is causing this error, I would love to hear them. Hoping I do not have a faulty GPU. Would love t find a way to induce this problem and test it.

Thanks for your help!

 

[rice0209]

+1 for count statistics with a lot of problems in RX 6900 XT and COD Warzone 🙁

My setup #1:
Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Elite AX
12900K
RX 6900 XT Sapphire Nitro+ SE

My setup #2:
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master
Ryzen 9 5950X
RX 6900 XT Sapphire Nitro+ SE

I both setups, same problems. COD Warzone crash, freeze, reboots.

I noticed that the problem started a few months ago, because before it worked perfect.

Apparently it only happens in COD Warzone (the only game I play), but I use the GPU in Hackintosh but never had any problems.

I tested it on two monitors, with different DP cables (monitor's original, ugreen 8k and Vention 8k) - Samsung G9 49" 240Hz and Alienware 34" 120Hz.

I've formatted a few times, Windows 10, Windows 11 and several AMD drivers, all without success.

I primarily play Warzone only on this computer. Almost every single crash I have ever had was while playing Warzone. Only once I had a crash outside of warzone, and I think it was on Halo. I played a lot of Valheim a while back and may have had one crash during that time. Never had a crash in the desktop.

Sounds like our situations and attempted remedies are very similar.

 

[iTRiP]

You shouldn't say it magically started randomly crashing, if you had played with the bios, most probably the cause of updating a bios when it wasn't called for, always best to remain on the bios version that the parts come out on from the factory. Just a thought, I have never updated my bioses of either my gpu nor mb and funny thing, I had never had any crashes or such, just smooth gaming all the time.

Buy new hardware parts, then don't play with settings or drivers or bioses, Instead go play some games if that was the objective.

 

[rice0209]

Asus released a new Vbios for my Asus Tuf Gaming RX6900 XT OC card in late July. I am still testing and waiting to see if it crashes, but the early results are promising. My video is running super smooth at the moment, no heavy or micro stutters, and things feel crisp. I cannot find any patch notes for the vbios update. The only thing the Asus website says in the description of the gpu bios update is:

Version -
2022/07/28 4.98 MBytes
TUF-RX6900XT-O16G-GAMING VBIOS Update Tool
BIOS update tool to improve stability of the graphics card.

Usually when my black screen crashes happened I was getting these super tiny micro stutters. It was basically a constant micro stutter that never really quit. I kind of got used to it and they were very small, so it didn't feel super jarring, but you just knew it wasn't smooth like it should be. Sometimes the stutters were heavier and really annoying. So far in about 4-5 hours of gaming, its been as smooth as it was a year ago when I first built the computer, before the crashes started happening.

Really hoping this is the fix. The internet is inundated with reports of 6900xt cards like mine with crashes and stuttering. I noticed in the last two AMD release notes for their drivers that a known issue is stuttering on 6900xt cards as a not resolved issue.

Known Issues

• Stuttering may be experienced while playing Call of Duty®: Warzone™ on the Caldera map with some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon™ RX 6900 XT Graphics.

I will report back if the crashes come back or not. For everyone experiencing issues, maybe check out your manufacturer and see if they have a vbios update. Even if my card still continues to crash, its at least playing better than it ever has.

 

[J20Joe]

Hi Chris,

I'd like to say I'm sorry to hear that yours having issues but I'm really not, you've given me hope because I'm having EXACTLY the same issues and I feel like I've tried everything. Crashing comes and goes to the point where I couldn't even download drivers and now it's currently sat benchmarking without issues, the resolution, I have no idea. Everything is reset to default, and upped the power only by 15%, I can't be bothered risking using MPT again incase I have to do everything all over again.

How is yours running?

One thing you may not have tried which I have seen an improvement (may be pot luck at this point and I'm sure you understand this) but have a look through your monitor settings and make sure it's not trying to sharpen the image, by the sounds of it AMD is very particular with settings and being influenced.

Have you managed to get PBO working again?

 

[rice0209]

Hi Chris,

I'd like to say I'm sorry to hear that yours having issues but I'm really not, you've given me hope because I'm having EXACTLY the same issues and I feel like I've tried everything. Crashing comes and goes to the point where I couldn't even download drivers and now it's currently sat benchmarking without issues, the resolution, I have no idea. Everything is reset to default, and upped the power only by 15%, I can't be bothered risking using MPT again incase I have to do everything all over again.

How is yours running?

One thing you may not have tried which I have seen an improvement (may be pot luck at this point and I'm sure you understand this) but have a look through your monitor settings and make sure it's not trying to sharpen the image, by the sounds of it AMD is very particular with settings and being influenced.

Have you managed to get PBO working again?

So for the good news (so far), I have been running smoother than ever and have not had a crash in at least a week. For the previous couple months, I had dialed back any and all overclocks to both the GPU, CPU and the ram was running at 3600mhz instead of the previous 3800mhz which had worked for months before the crashing started. After updating my vBios from Asus for my card, i have been very happy. I am not sold yet, as I have been tricked before, but as I said in my previous post, even if I still get crashes from time to time, this is the smoothest it has ran since the first couple months after I built my PC.

I only briefly messed with PBO settings, for maybe like a couple days before realizing I needed more time to tinker and learn about it. So I stopped for a while. This was before the crashes. Once the crashes started, I have only been dialing things back to try and find the culprit.

Before this vBios update, my most stable condition for the computer was Ram down to 3600mhz, no overclock on CPU, no overclock on GPU, and no AMD enhancing features turned on. Even had the AMD SAM (resizeable bar) turned off which gave me a bit of improvement in terms of smoothness but still felt like i had a constant micro stutter that never fully quit. With these settings, I was getting a crash every 2-3 weeks. When I overclocked and changed these settings, i would get crashes multiple times a week.

Now withy the vBios update, I have OC'd my GPU back up pretty good. I have my vRAM OC's to 2150 mhz (standard is 2000), Fast Timings enabled, my GPU clock is up to around 2400 or 2500mhz max, and 100mhz less for minimum, my power allowance is maxed out. My system is watercooled and has 3 radiators so my temps stay right around mid 50s for cpu and mid 40s for GPU. I have not had a crash yet with all these overclocks.

So if I am lucky / correct, and this vBios did the trick, it must have removed an instability. I always felt it was more linked to the GPU talking with the rest of the system, almost like a communications instability that would result in so much confusion it would eventually crash.

Take a look on your cards manufacturer website, see if they released any bios updates. Might be worth a try.

I will keep reporting back as time passes.

 

[J20Joe]

So for the good news (so far), I have been running smoother than ever and have not had a crash in at least a week. For the previous couple months, I had dialed back any and all overclocks to both the GPU, CPU and the ram was running at 3600mhz instead of the previous 3800mhz which had worked for months before the crashing started. After updating my vBios from Asus for my card, i have been very happy. I am not sold yet, as I have been tricked before, but as I said in my previous post, even if I still get crashes from time to time, this is the smoothest it has ran since the first couple months after I built my PC.

I only briefly messed with PBO settings, for maybe like a couple days before realizing I needed more time to tinker and learn about it. So I stopped for a while. This was before the crashes. Once the crashes started, I have only been dialing things back to try and find the culprit.

Before this vBios update, my most stable condition for the computer was Ram down to 3600mhz, no overclock on CPU, no overclock on GPU, and no AMD enhancing features turned on. Even had the AMD SAM (resizeable bar) turned off which gave me a bit of improvement in terms of smoothness but still felt like i had a constant micro stutter that never fully quit. With these settings, I was getting a crash every 2-3 weeks. When I overclocked and changed these settings, i would get crashes multiple times a week.

Now withy the vBios update, I have OC'd my GPU back up pretty good. I have my vRAM OC's to 2150 mhz (standard is 2000), Fast Timings enabled, my GPU clock is up to around 2400 or 2500mhz max, and 100mhz less for minimum, my power allowance is maxed out. My system is watercooled and has 3 radiators so my temps stay right around mid 50s for cpu and mid 40s for GPU. I have not had a crash yet with all these overclocks.

So if I am lucky / correct, and this vBios did the trick, it must have removed an instability. I always felt it was more linked to the GPU talking with the rest of the system, almost like a communications instability that would result in so much confusion it would eventually crash.

Take a look on your cards manufacturer website, see if they released any bios updates. Might be worth a try.

I will keep reporting back as time passes.

Thats good news anyway, it really seems that I've had the same issue as you, I have a stable OC on with power up to 350w and all the frequencies and PBO but then all of a sudden it crashed and I couldn't even download drivers without crashing and screen flickering in most games, I've currently got 300W power and SAM on without issues but I think it's pot luck,

My card has duel bios and if I put it in performance mode it flickers like mad, I've emailed sapphire about a bios update, I'll see what they come back with

Do you have discord? In case the forum gets forgotten about, I'm sure we may encounter this again.

I did have a malware that was visible on task manager which when googled caused BSOD and my processor to struggle with heat and power consumption, I thought that's got to be it, re installed Windows with a brand new SSD and didn't change anything, that was surely my biggest chance

 

[rice0209]

Since the vBios update to my card that I mentioned previously, I am still running with no crashes since that time. Its been about 7-8 weeks (can't remember the exact date I installed the vbios update, but i can see when i posted about it).

I know these 6900xts had different problems across the board, and somehow the top of the line amd cards seemed to have more problems than the lower cards in the line. So i recommend getting into your card manufacturers support/downloads site and looking for any vbios updates if you are struggling like I was. I will keep the thread updated if I have any issues or changes.

 

[dream637]

Since the vBios update to my card that I mentioned previously, I am still running with no crashes since that time. Its been about 7-8 weeks (can't remember the exact date I installed the vbios update, but i can see when i posted about it).

I know these 6900xts had different problems across the board, and somehow the top of the line amd cards seemed to have more problems than the lower cards in the line. So i recommend getting into your card manufacturers support/downloads site and looking for any vbios updates if you are struggling like I was. I will keep the thread updated if I have any issues or changes.

I'm glad to see you updating this topic regularly. Please keep us updated. Thank you so much!

 

[rice0209]

Just another small and positive update:

About two weeks ago, I restored the last of my previous overclock settings that I had a long time ago before the crashes started happening. I put my memory overclock back up to 3800 mhz with a 1900 mhz FCLK. Everything has continued to be stable and running very well.

During the crashes period, while trying to test and troubleshoot, lowering my memory overclock had reduced the frequency of the crashes, but did not eliminate them. So it was the last setting I wanted to put back in place until I felt confident that I was more stable all around. When the frequency of crashes was reduced but not eliminated, I started to believe that the higher overclock was causing more instability in communications with the GPU. So it wasn't that the memory was the problem, but that it made the real problem more exaggerated.

I think this vBios update from Asus was my real answer, fixing an instability within the vbios code that caused the stuttering and other issues between the GPU and the rest of the computer. Now that the vBios update has fixed that problem my memory overclock is back to where it was and operating like it was before all these issues popped up. It took a long long time but I am back to the stable running speeds I was originally getting for month after I built the computer.

 

[EzioWolf]

I know Im finding this a whole year later but I just wanna say thank you. I've gone through all the highs and lows and all the false hopes just like you have. Between reverting back to old drivers and repairing every single driver and file on my computer, to replacing hardware. Until this article I was not even aware VBIOS was a thing for GPUs. I have updated my VBIOS and I will now conduct my testing while having my adrenaline software metric up at all times to see if i see any changes. I've even gone as far as replacing the thermal pads and paste inside my GPU and on my CPU. Temps are looking amazing now, but they didn't resolve any issues with the black screen crash either.

I literally made this account just to respond to you lol. I will do my best to remember to update in about a month or 2s time. If i update before then, then you know that sadly this did not work for me.

 

[rice0209]

I know Im finding this a whole year later but I just wanna say thank you. I've gone through all the highs and lows and all the false hopes just like you have. Between reverting back to old drivers and repairing every single driver and file on my computer, to replacing hardware. Until this article I was not even aware VBIOS was a thing for GPUs. I have updated my VBIOS and I will now conduct my testing while having my adrenaline software metric up at all times to see if i see any changes. I've even gone as far as replacing the thermal pads and paste inside my GPU and on my CPU. Temps are looking amazing now, but they didn't resolve any issues with the black screen crash either.

I literally made this account just to respond to you lol. I will do my best to remember to update in about a month or 2s time. If i update before then, then you know that sadly this did not work for me.

Yes, I feel for you. I went through all the things you mentioned. When I bought my Asus GPU during the crazy pandemic pricing/availability, I was only able to find an air cooled Tuf version of the 6900xt and then paired it with an EK water block. I used the standard thermal pads from EK that come with the kit. I too went and got some expensive pads with great thermal conductivity, took my card out, removed the waterblock, cleaned everything, drained the entire water loop, etc. Did not fix my issues. The vBios literally saved me from going insane. A side effect of all this is now, I too, have great cooling ability!

I hope you got yours fixed. It was probably one of the most frustrating computer issues I have ever dealt with. Especially after all the money I paid for the hardware and the fixes!

 

[EzioWolf]

Yes, I feel for you. I went through all the things you mentioned. When I bought my Asus GPU during the crazy pandemic pricing/availability, I was only able to find an air cooled Tuf version of the 6900xt and then paired it with an EK water block. I used the standard thermal pads from EK that come with the kit. I too went and got some expensive pads with great thermal conductivity, took my card out, removed the waterblock, cleaned everything, drained the entire water loop, etc. Did not fix my issues. The vBios literally saved me from going insane. A side effect of all this is now, I too, have great cooling ability!

I hope you got yours fixed. It was probably one of the most frustrating computer issues I have ever dealt with. Especially after all the money I paid for the hardware and the fixes!

So, It has been a full 5 weeks after me finding this thread. After installing this VBIOS for my GPU I have had zero issues out of my PC since then. I will have to say that my PC as a whole is more optimized and doesn't put out as much heat even compared to when I replaced my thermal pads and paste which knocked my temps down by near 20C. I shall update again in another month or 2 to let you all know if anything has changed or if it still runs great.

Thanks again OP for addressing this issue.

 

[rice0209]

So, It has been a full 5 weeks after me finding this thread. After installing this VBIOS for my GPU I have had zero issues out of my PC since then. I will have to say that my PC as a whole is more optimized and doesn't put out as much heat even compared to when I replaced my thermal pads and paste which knocked my temps down by near 20C. I shall update again in another month or 2 to let you all know if anything has changed or if it still runs great.

Thanks again OP for addressing this issue.

Glad to hear you have been seeing such good results!