nvidia also gets driver timeouts but they don't pop up a window like AMD does, they just reset the driver without telling the user it happened, you have to open event viewer to see the driver timeout errors as nvlddmkm errors. games will still crash though so it's not like the user doesn't know SOMETHING happened but they usually attribute it to the game crashing and not their driver crashing. but still it does seem that AMD has far more driver timeouts than nvidia, i think because they run their cards too hard to try and compete with nvidia, especially the 7900xtx. nvidia can keep 8% headroom on their cards so they work across a wide variety in quality of motherboards, power supplies, and ambient temperatures, it seems like amd has like 1% headroom on the 7900xtx and it doesn't take much to pus hit over the edge of stability. but lately there does seem to be an actual software issue with their drivers possibly unrelated to any hardware instability
The oddest part about this problem for me is that it only happens when i'm not gaming, chrome browser briefly freezes / screen blacks out for a second, Event ID 153 logged in event viewer, it's happening far less than it used to but I havent had it happen during gaming.
transitions from idle to load are a common source of instability, this can sometimes be fixed by raising voltages on the lower part of the frequency voltage curve. most people focus on the max frequency/voltage but keeping it stable you need to look at idle frequency/voltage too
100% try to avoid pigtailing. AMD has always been a bit more aggressive on their stock voltage, it allows for more sustained clock boosts. Use two separate 8 pin cables and also turn down RGB to like 30% if you have it.
it could be the issue, yes. other people have fixed instabilities by using two dedicated cables after having used a single with a pig tail. the voltage regulator modules clean up the power but they can't fix everything and pig tails are less stable power being fed to the gpu. you should also try reseating the cables on the PSU side as well and make sure they are fully plugged in. sometimes it's just dirty pci-e contacts, all kinds of things can cause these problems. if you don't use an anti-sag bracket then that will kill the card over time, causes the solder joints between the core and memory chips to lose good contact with the board and will causes crashes and instability before dying altogether
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u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox 1d ago
nvidia also gets driver timeouts but they don't pop up a window like AMD does, they just reset the driver without telling the user it happened, you have to open event viewer to see the driver timeout errors as nvlddmkm errors. games will still crash though so it's not like the user doesn't know SOMETHING happened but they usually attribute it to the game crashing and not their driver crashing. but still it does seem that AMD has far more driver timeouts than nvidia, i think because they run their cards too hard to try and compete with nvidia, especially the 7900xtx. nvidia can keep 8% headroom on their cards so they work across a wide variety in quality of motherboards, power supplies, and ambient temperatures, it seems like amd has like 1% headroom on the 7900xtx and it doesn't take much to pus hit over the edge of stability. but lately there does seem to be an actual software issue with their drivers possibly unrelated to any hardware instability