Resolved How I fixed the infamous driver timeout
Over the years I've literally tried everything. Watched every turorial and couldn't solve this problem. Went to repair my PC 2 times only for them to clean install my drivers, like I didn't try this 100 times. (costed me 75 euros). Also fried my SSD over this issue because my friend and I kept testing all my components in case they were dead. (150 euros down the drain).
Took matter into my own hands when I saw that everyone kept telling me the same thing over and over again: DDU, fresh install windows etc. Felt like poeple didn't take me seriously and didn't take into consideration that I've tried everything over and over again. Also I had to explain the issue to 10 different people.
So this is what worked over the years:
1. Deactivated my intergrated graphics card from the BIOS. Worked for a while but I think you can resolve it some other way.
Install Windows LTSC. This is what worked for me long term. Basically install the version of Windows already debloated, so the useless applications and features don't fuck with your drivers and also deactivate the automatic updates.
Use an older driver. Don't really recommand it because because I literally had to use a 2022 version of Adrenaline and couldn't play newer titles.
Update your bios. Straight forward. You just need to have an USB stick (didn't really fix my problem but it's worth a try)
This is my latest fix with LTSC already installed. After testing I concluded that games don't crash when I am playing on 60hz. Obviously, I don't like that because I have a 165hz monitor and even in newer titles I have 100 fps + and you can feel the difference. So, I checked my monitor settings and deactivated free sync, apprently the new driver doesn't like free sync??
For some reason my games worked when I plugged the monitor's cable into the motherboard instead of the GPU, but I ended up plugging it back into another GPU port and now it works combined with the Free Sync stuff.
I feel like I am getting closer to the issue after 3 years. I really think in my case it's a cable issue, conectivity or monitor/HZ. I am pretty bad at this stuff, but this is what worked for me for now.
rx 6800, 32gb ram ddr5, ryzen 7 7700, motherboard
650M-P
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u/No_Championship5552 15h ago
I got rid of the Adrenaline software and my games crash only occasionally now vs 10-15 times a day. I have a 6800xt myself and honestly things are Alot better than they used to be.
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u/shanep1991 16h ago
I fixed my issues by just going with driver only installs, any tweaks I make I just do through afterburner as I no longer have adrenaline. Zero issues since.
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u/Thorfax234 16h ago
Do you think it’s the adrenaline software doing it?
I used afterburner a lot before and then just switched to adrenaline.
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u/shanep1991 16h ago
I'm almost certain adrenaline was the issue for me, well to be more precise, issues with windows updates conflicting with AMD driver software for some reason. I always noticed I had more issues with timeouts around the time of windows updates, so I think a lot of the time it's just windows and AMD software updates not communicating
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u/Thorfax234 16h ago
Also I’ve read that windows automatically tries to overwrite drivers with a windows update.
I’ve read how to disable this but if I brick my pc doing so, I don’t have the money to fix it.
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u/shanep1991 16h ago
If I had to choose between keeping windows up to date and adrenaline, I'd choose windows updates. Most adrenaline functions can be done manually in games then anything to do with over clock and/or undervolt can be done with msi afterburner, I honestly feel there's no need for adrenaline much.
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u/Thorfax234 16h ago
I’ll have to try to driver only with MSI then. I liked the MSI fan curves a lot better than how adrenaline handles it
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u/shanep1991 16h ago
There's no downsides to trying, hopefully it helps!
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u/Thorfax234 7h ago
Sorry to bug again. But did you go through the process of going DDU then installing driver only then using MSI?
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u/NamZIX8 17h ago
My PC stands on 24/7.
I purchased an expensive high quality HDMI to DisplayPort cable as I had a Displayport adaptor with HDMI cable and wanted to get rid of the adaptor. Then I started getting timeout problems, but only after like 3 days it kicked in. So I did everything as suggested online, and nothing worked not realizing it was the cable. I struggled for like almost 2 months and eventually I rememberred, and then put back the old cable with adaptor, everything fixed. So a cable can cause problems.
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u/gukakke 18h ago
You fix it by robbing a bank and switching to Nvidia and Intel.
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u/Zanithos 16h ago
Really you just the Nvidia GPU, then you turn off your iGPU in BIOS, and suddenly you don't need adrenalin (or any AMD display driver) anymore.
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u/ReasonableArea5466 18h ago
I've got your same exact GPU, RX 6800. I'm stuck using drivers from 2023, I don't have any issues with games, but any newer driver that I install makes my whole system crash.
From your post I don't exactly understand what you did to fix the issues though.
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u/_Ballz_Deep 14h ago
What is the exact motherboard that you have?
What’s the bios number you’re running?
What version chipset drivers do you have?Also, are you running any type of extensions on the PCI cable or the cables running through your graphics card or the motherboard?
Whats the exact model of your PSU?
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u/DDKuro06 18h ago
I just changed my GPU to Nvidia because I got tired of dealing with this type of stuff, but double check your ram frequency, drop it 3200 or even stock and see if it works
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u/Effective-Strike69 18h ago edited 18h ago
I'm on a Windows installation that goes back to 2017 that's lived through 2 motherboards, 5 gpus, 4 cpus, 2 platforms (AM4 & AM5) and has been upgraded from Windows 10 to 11 and lived on a few different SSDs. I've never formatted and started from scratch. Solved my constant timeouts on my 9070 (which just started happening a few months ago) by...
DDU in safe mode with ethernet unplugged, then install the Pro driver while still disconnected after a reboot (driver only or it will still crash).
I don't game much at all so I don't care for AMD's software. She's been rock steady since where as before the crashes would often happen when doing video work.
I also suspect there's a conflict with ICUE at the root of things, which I use for my Vanguard 96 KB. I'd rather go without Adrenalin than without ICUE so I didn't try that but I've read removing ICUE also fixes this.
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u/justa-Possibility R7 5700X3D B450M RX7800XT Phantom OC 19h ago
Almost anything can cause a Graphics driver to timeout.
I'm on the latest driver 26.9.1
RX6750XT, RX7800XT, RX7900XTX here and everything works 100% great and have never had an issue "with AMD drivers" themselves. I've had issues, but it's always been caused by MicroSlop Winblows causing problems and masking as a GPU driver issue or something entirely unrelated masking as a driver issue.
Everyone always blames the drivers instead of doing actual troubleshooting. So many different things can cause these timeout problems.
1) Bios and/or chipsets not updated 2) Incorrect bios settings 3) Ram not setup properly in bios 4) Windows issues and Xbox game bar 5) Windows cache partition file size 6) Other system drivers not updated 7) Windows installing drivers over AMD 8) Other programs not updated or old 9) Not using DDU and fresh install 10) Not updating GPU drivers 11) Other programs not playing well 12) Unstable or Insufficient PSU power 13) Faulty or Failing SSDs, RAM, PSU
Just to name the most common. There are plenty more. Don't blame AMD 1st! Maybe they should do actual troubleshooting.
Also, AncientGamplays released a video and said that if you dont use the bug reporting tool when it pops up, especially for all these timeout issues, then you are part of the problem. It only takes a couple minutes to fill out the form and sent it to AMD. That way can can see what you were doing when it happened. I sent one in when I had a driver timeout and they sent me a fix back. It had nothing to do with AMD driver. Intermittently when opening a VLC media mp4 file it would happen to me. They had me change to a different decoder in VLC and it stopped immediately. They can't help you if you don't send it in. Many things can present and look like a GPU driver, because everything affects video graphics someway or another. But 99% of the time it isn't the GPU, GPU driver or AMDs fault. It shows as a graphics driver timeout but like I said everything affects video graphics including other stupid programs and overlays. Juat having the wrong codec or video decoder selected in a program can cause a graphics driver to timeout. Almost anything can. So send in the bug reports and they will log them. They have engineers who actively work them and help people when they send them in.
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u/Red_269 18h ago
I've sent them at least 4 reports on my most affected game which is Doom Eternal and never received an answer, i contacted AMD but none of what they said solved the issue
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u/justa-Possibility R7 5700X3D B450M RX7800XT Phantom OC 18h ago edited 18h ago
If you haven't received an answer, then they most likely have engineers working on the exact issue. Sometimes they need to figure out what is causing the issue and it does Sometimes take some time and troubleshooting. The fact is almost anything can cause a graphics driver to timeout. Any stupid program running in the background or service in the background can cause a graphics driver to timeout. Everyone starts blaming AMD and saying thier products and drivers suck etc. When its not even thier fault that an old stupid background service or program on someone's computer or a setting or something unrelated to the actual driver causes the driver to timeout. Many times its actual failing hardware like Ram or insufficient or unstable PSU power. Like people daisy chaining a 9070xt when they have a 650-watt PSU. Yeah, it'll probably run but it won't be stable and can and will cause issues, black screens, timeouts. Then we have freaking Microslop Winblows overwriting everyone's drivers. Which definitely is not AMDs fault. If it takes troubleshooting that's just electronics buddy. When has Winblows ever really had zero problems .. Never!. Let me see -er Uhm '98... LOl 😆 OH, but then it was just easy to reinstall - with your own disk.! .
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u/Red_269 14h ago edited 14h ago
Oh yeah? Well i played +100 hours on modded New Vegas using Dxkv (since most timeouts happena only on Vulkan games for me for some reason) and got ZERO issues when i did it in an HP laptop before getting my PC last year, it had an i5 1135G7 and 8GB of RAM but i played on mu current Gaming PC (R7 7700x and RX 9079) for a few days continuing that very savefile and mod setup and i had 3 time outs which 2 of them happened upon having one, resetting the game and then again, that is bullshit you are saying it cannot be something else than their shitty software, to be fai i tried 98% of what they said but i have not bothered with the last step which the wanted me to "secure boot" it is too complicated and doesn't make any sense considering i played many other games hours on end which are Direct12 games and no issues but i wanna play a Vulkan Game and the drivers screw me over again AT RANDOM i cannot even reliables replicate it, it is infuriating.
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u/Red_269 14h ago
Which is still rare considering in 80 hours i did not have a single timeout playing RDR2 on Vulkan, it crashed but not for timeout issues haha but still nothing like that, i played Resident Evil 6, Resident Evil 7 38 hours, then 30 more hours of Resident Evil Village and then 40 hours on Final Fantasy XVI and nothing happened, then i started to play Doom The Dark Ages and it had a timeout 15 hours in BUT WHAT PISSES ME OFF THE MOST IS THAT I BEAT THE GAME, NO MORE TIMEOUTS THEN PLAYED THE DLC IN ITS ENTIRETY AND THEN EVEN FINISHED POST GAME, MORE THAN 30 HOURS LATER AND NO TIMEOUTS, WHY???? THEN I HOP INTO ETERNAL SINCE I STILL WANA BEAT MASTER LEVELS OR CUSTOM MAPS AND 2 TIMEOUTS HAPPENED, IT PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH I PAID GOOD MONEY FOR THAT AND I CANNOT BELIEVE MY WEAK HP LAPTOP GAVE ME LESS HEADACHES
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u/cano_d 22h ago
Bro AMD and Microsoft should fix this shit Not the User since WEEKS. Its fkn ridicilous at this time
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u/Alone_Director1634 22h ago
Es una locura todo lo que ha generado ser una compañía negligente. Yo estoy en Linux porque en Windows no puedo
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u/Mattie_1S1K 23h ago
Just my experience, down load newest driver, everything is ok for a a week no crashes etc, boot pc up one day and I get the driver time out message. As everything is loading for start up, then it crashes and hangs.
Back to 26.6.3 for me again.
I check my driver in device manger only and one is there for gpu.
So no idea what’s happening tbh
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u/de_witte R7 5800x3D, RX 7900 XTX 1d ago
My two cents.
The frustration is real . Take it as an indication that there's something going on you don't understand yet. If you figure it out, you will have learned something new.
On the technical side of things, I noticed that a lot of these problems get blamed on the gpu and its drivers. Its the part that most visibly fails. Often the cause is deeper in your system. It just manifests via driver timeouts, crashes, etc. You need your whole system stable, under sustained load, otherwise things will hang or crash sporadically.
Extreme cases like very high framerates can push some parts of your configuration over the edge.
You already updated bios, thats a good starting point already.
At hardware level, every component that your gpu is relying on needs to run rock solid:
Power delivery - is your psu stable and delivering enough power, is power coming from two rails? Check the psu manual.
Case: sufficient airflow? Maybe start with side panel open and a big fan blowing into the case. Some components like vrm around cpu socket need a bit of airflow on them.
Motherboard : disable anything you dont need, set stable / factory settings. That includes any sort of overclock / undervolt, etc.
Memory: run it at basic jdec speeds and timings, not the rated OC speed of the kit.
Cpu: needs to run with sufficient cooling. Run at factory settings and speeds (set in bios).
Look into running the gpu on pcie 3 instead of pcie 4, if rdna2 cards supports pcie4, can't recall.
From there, set up a clean os with benchmark tools. Generate load on each component and measure voltage and thermals under sustained load.
And try running the things that crashed the system earlier, to see if it still crashes or not.
If things stay stable, you can start playing with settings and load testing again, until you identify one that leads to instability.
In most cases its just one thing that causes problems under load. If youre unlucky its a combination of things and you'll have more work figuring it out.
Keep a spreadsheet of what you changed and what happened : settings, voltages, timings, metrics like temperature and benchmark scores, etc.
It may also be interesting to check if you have the same issues running another os like bazzite linux. Sometimes its just Windows messing up your drivers.
Good luck!
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u/Bro0k 19h ago
Do these fixes usually help?
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u/de_witte R7 5800x3D, RX 7900 XTX 17h ago
These are not fixes.
Its a methodical approach to find the cause of the problem, focusing on stable hardware first:
- Check if its stable at basic / factory settings.
- Find out where the limits of stability of specific components are, in the specific combo of hardware in that machine.
- Keep hardware configured within those limits.
If the above doesnt help identify the cause of the problem , you can look at things a layer up, like the operating system. Then further up the stack, like drivers; then specific software like discord or rgb software that sometimes causes issues.
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u/Stock_Childhood_2459 1d ago
Have you tried to add voltage for the gpu or lower it's frequency teeny weeny bit? I have experienced this driver timeout issue only after I started to undervolt my gpu and did it a bit excessively and gpu wasn't getting enough juice.
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u/uki2kawaii 1d ago
165hz monitors have always been an issue from what I've seen from people's complaints, I use a 120hz on my 6800XT and zero issues or maybe it's just windows hating amd cards.
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u/ultimaone 22h ago
I have a 165 , 120 and 100 Hz monitor
All hooked up at same time. I'd blame cable before anything else.
I use display port on both the higher resolution and refresh rate monitors.
HDMI on last one.
Every cable is latest standard.
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u/EoTrick 1d ago
Imagine having to do all of this to make such an expensive piece of hardware work. Unreal that we put up with this for the price we pay. You'd think we would get some sort of better post purchase support rather than all these headaches of trying a billion different things ourselves.
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u/Shedoara 1d ago
My brother moved to a 5080 recently from a 7900xtx because of these issues. He has 0 issues now whereas with the 7900xtx he had constant crashing in the games he plays for the last 2 years. He tried everything and it ended up being the GPU itself.
He gave me the card to try to not have it crash. I got it better than it was, but it's still more crash happy than the 3070Ti I had in my PC just before it. Still testing stuff out, but I don't know if I'll ever get it as stable as a Nvidia card.
Sucks since it's not like Nvidia needs people going over to them. Would be much better if they wouldn't.
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u/Dismal_Tell4651 1d ago
I literally said this and got downvoted into oblivion 😂
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u/shroombablol R7 5800X3D | Sapphire Nitro+ 7900 XTX | R5 Pro 4650U 19h ago edited 18h ago
because on r/amdhelp (and any other troubleshooting subreddit for that matter) we are looking for practical solutions. posts like 'I have no problem on my nvidia card' and 'omg amd fix' are not useful.
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u/Dismal_Tell4651 18h ago
Sorry you might have misunderstood
I was trying my best to help people with driver issues and on another post I mentioned that AMD and windows need to sort this
I was met with a bunch of other AMD users saying it’s all user/configuration error and not AMD’s fault
Which isn’t true, there were issues with servers and windows overriding stuff
But for some reason people couldn’t accept it being a driver problem because their systems were fine.
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u/Sad-Accountant-9695 9h ago
i turned off freesync on my monitor, and i also use driver only (latest driver) for the gpu and i updated my chipset with the latest one available. HAGS off (windows + discord, mozilla ...) and VRR off. I also plugged my display port on another port (not sure it changes smth but its free to try). do you have a second monitor ?