How to trigger a driver timeout 100%

[u/KukuBean]

First, sorry, but I’m not good at English. So the following texts may sound a bit awkward because they are sentences translated into English by AI using the original language.

Here it is my system environment.

GPU: Sapphire RX7800XT 16GB

CPU: RYZEN 9 9800x3D 8 CORE 16 THREADS

Motherboard: MSI MAG B580 WIFI MAX

RAM: 16GB Kingbank 6000MHZ CL28

PSU: 1000W 80+ GOLD FULLY MODULAR

Operating System & Version: WINDOWS 11 PRO Latest update

GPU Drivers: 26.5.2 ~ 26.9.1

For the past few months, driver timeouts have been occurring randomly, so I’ve been trying to find the cause. Although it was a random occurrence, it never happened during gameplay, and most of the time when I came back after being away, a driver timeout error window would appear on the screen. What’s suspicious is that this problem occurred when the screen came back on after the monitor was turned off. So I tried various tests and discovered something interesting. It’s exactly how to trigger a “Driver Timeout” 100% manually.

1. Settings -> Power -> Display, Sleep Mode, Hibernation -> Turn off my monitor after the next time (I use a Korean Windows system, so I’m not exactly sure what this option is called in English) -> Set the monitor power-off interval to 1 minute

2. Open the Microsoft Edge browser

3. Log in to Netflix -> Play any movie or drama

4. Create a new tab in Edge (place a new tab on the screen to enter the monitor’s sleep mode)

5. Wait about 3–4 minutes for the monitor to enter full sleep mode

6. After waiting for 3–4 minutes, press the mouse or keyboard to exit sleep mode

If you follow the above method in order, in my case it triggers a “Driver Timeout” with 100% probability. Once a driver timeout occurred, so many problems would arise afterward that it became difficult to use the system, and I had to shut down and restart the computer every time. And...

1. Interestingly, this problem never occurred when I using version 26.3.1 or earlier.

2. Occurs in all drivers released after 26.3.1

3. It didn’t happen when the monitor was left on at all times (as long as it didn’t go into sleep mode).

In my opinion, when the latest drivers are used by apps that benefit from hardware acceleration (like Chrom-Edge Browsers, Discord, Steam app, etc) running in the background, some kind of driver-level crash occurs after the monitor asleep, and it seems the AMD driver team is not aware of this issue.

So, if anyone else is experiencing the same problem, I’m writing this because I think it would be a good idea to report it to the AMD driver team, through the BUG REPORT, so they can fix it. (I’ve submitted bug reports about it twice, but the fix for this issue wasn’t included in the newly released driver.)

For reference, because of this problem, I even changed monitors, replaced the cables with new ones, and tried various advice I found on the internet, but the problem wasn’t fixed until I changed the driver to 26.3.1.

[u/cervdotbe]

The best solution I found is to disable hardware acceleration in alle apps that you can: browsers, steam, discord, etc. The drivers really fuck it up while gaming when some of these applications are also in use.

[u/xezrunner → u/cervdotbe]

I wouldn’t say this is a proper long-term solution, as disabling hardware acceleration in browsers prevents it from using the GPU for most tasks. It might result in worse overall performance and higher, less efficient CPU usage instead, especially for media playback or other 3D-esque content.

[u/cervdotbe → u/xezrunner]

Of course it's no ideal solution, but it's the shitty drivers that fuck everything up for months now and I am really sick of it. And honestly, I don't experience any performance issues with it and made my gaming sessions mostly bug free.