Another oddity with my 7900xtx/system.

[djkav]

Last time I had my PC randomly dropping to a black screen, with fans ramping to 100%, keyboard lights on, no response, Had to force shutdown and reboot.
The only error in the logs was WDM or Windows Desktop Manager stopped, and an odd few nVidia driver stopped.

My problem?
The PCIE power connections had worked a fraction loose. I pushed it back in the little it would go. No problems since.
I have a gtx1080.

 

[fizzy]

Further digging tonight and found that there is actually a newer bios available - 5.50 - so installed that, loaded defaults etc. Tried file copy again several times and all fine. Thought I might have cracked it. However just tried again and it's done it again. Was watching a video at the time too, and could still hear audio etc so not locked up. This is in PCIE 4 mode. Was able to shutdown windows cleanly using power button press.

On loading windows, once again it was reporting gfx card as down as disabled (yet it was still working) in device manager. Tried reenabling it and got an error from AMD adrenalin about not being able to load driver. Rebooted windows and all ok again once more.

All I have in the windows event logs are a couple of these driver alerts warnings, which don't point to much.

Log Name: System
Source: Display
Date: 16/01/2024 21:48:57
Event ID: 4101
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: MainPC
Description:
Display driver amduw23g stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

It's all rather frustratingly annoying. Especially as it didn't recover at all, just sat on black screen with gfx fans full blast.

 

[djkav]

Further digging tonight and found that there is actually a newer bios available - 5.50 - so installed that, loaded defaults etc. Tried file copy again several times and all fine. Thought I might have cracked it. However just tried again and it's done it again. Was watching a video at the time too, and could still hear audio etc so not locked up. This is in PCIE 4 mode. Was able to shutdown windows cleanly using power button press.

On loading windows, once again it was reporting gfx card as down as disabled (yet it was still working) in device manager. Tried reenabling it and got an error from AMD adrenalin about not being able to load driver. Rebooted windows and all ok again once more.

All I have in the windows event logs are a couple of these driver alerts warnings, which don't point to much.

Log Name: System
Source: Display
Date: 16/01/2024 21:48:57
Event ID: 4101
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: MainPC
Description:
Display driver amduw23g stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

It's all rather frustratingly annoying. Especially as it didn't recover at all, just sat on black screen with gfx fans full blast.

Have you tried reseating all the GFX card power connectors to the card and PSU?

 

[fizzy]

Have you tried reseating all the GFX card power connectors to the card and PSU?

Yes, and double/triple checked that I have seperate power cables for all 3 PCIE power connectors.

I've been playing games recently with no issues, which is when I would expect issues with high power draw etc... but when copying between NVME drives on desktop?? The draw must be miniscule is comparison, unless the file transfer progress bar takes far more power than it should.....

I've just downloaded and run the AMD cleanup tool, which cleared out all AMD related files. Then reinstalled latest chipset drivers and latest gfx driver again. Will see if that makes any difference.

Copied big file across again (about 45GB - at about 2,500 MBs).... and worked ok for the couple of times I tried it. Will see if this stability persists as it lulled me into a false sense of a fix earlier this evening too...

Still can't understand why copying a large file between NVME drives is causing the gfx card/driver to wig out. It doesn't make sense to me. Would expect possibly a file error message if it was a drive fault etc.

 

[fizzy]

Nope, still doing it. I've been copying from the WD Gen 3 to the WD Gen 4, so tried the other way this time and screen went off pretty much straight away. Same issues with gfx card disabled in device manager on reboot. Had to re-enable in device manager, reboot (after adrenalin said couldn't load driver) and all was ok.

It's so repeatable and same thing happening every time, I can't see it being a random fault now.

edit: This is crazy. Issue occurs - and on reboot device manager has card as disabled. Even if I do a proper power switch off it stays that way. I have to enable it again in DM. Windows says enabled but still problems, message pops up from Adrenaline that it can't load driver but then on reboot again everything is fine. I can't understand why it would stay disabled after a cold start etc.

None of this is making any logical sense. Will see if I can figure anything new out tomorrow.

 

[eeii]

Did you try your old card.

 

[fizzy]

Did you try your old card.

Not yet, I'll dig it out tomorrow.

 

[fizzy]

Hmm... just had a thought. When did AMD start supporting Windows 11 direct storage?

 

[tommybhoy]

Wouldn't automatically put the blame straight onto a faulty GPU, could be a mb pcie lane problem due to 3 onboard nvme drives.

 

[fizzy]

Wouldn't automatically put the blame straight onto a faulty GPU, could be a mb pcie lane problem due to 3 onboard nvme drives.

I'm not specifically - just trying to figure the issue out and why the gfx drivers/card keep playing up when there is an issue.

As far as I recall, the top NVME slot is directly connected to the CPU, and the other two are connected to the X570 chipset. So moved my OS drive NVME into the top slot, and the two WD NVMEs into the middle and lower slots.

Tried copying file between the WD drives again.... and same issue. At least it rules out an issue with the top M2 slot and cpu connection to it. Again, card was disabled in Windows DM on reboot and had to enable and reboot again to bring it back to life. I believe top PCIE slot is also directly connected to CPU.

Done crystal disk benchmark on each WD drive and that was fine and got expected read/write speeds. Disk checks are all ok too.

I think it's getting to the stage where I'll have to start doing parts swaps to isolate cause - don't have any other board or cpu to try though. OCUK don't seem to have X570 boards listed anymore, so would probably need to go for a B550 board if I was to buy a replacement.... which only has 2 M2 slots anyway.

 

[Tetras]

I think it's getting to the stage where I'll have to start doing parts swaps to isolate cause - don't have any other board or cpu to try though. OCUK don't seem to have X570 boards listed anymore, so would probably need to go for a B550 board if I was to buy a replacement.... which only has 2 M2 slots anyway.

You might want to email the manufacturer. I know it is unlikely, but it is possible there's some kind of compatibility or setting issue and they might have the stuff on hand to test it for you.

 

[eeii]

I'm not specifically - just trying to figure the issue out and why the gfx drivers/card keep playing up when there is an issue.

As far as I recall, the top NVME slot is directly connected to the CPU, and the other two are connected to the X570 chipset. So moved my OS drive NVME into the top slot, and the two WD NVMEs into the middle and lower slots.

Tried copying file between the WD drives again.... and same issue. At least it rules out an issue with the top M2 slot and cpu connection to it. Again, card was disabled in Windows DM on reboot and had to enable and reboot again to bring it back to life. I believe top PCIE slot is also directly connected to CPU.

Done crystal disk benchmark on each WD drive and that was fine and got expected read/write speeds. Disk checks are all ok too.

I think it's getting to the stage where I'll have to start doing parts swaps to isolate cause - don't have any other board or cpu to try though. OCUK don't seem to have X570 boards listed anymore, so would probably need to go for a B550 board if I was to buy a replacement.... which only has 2 M2 slots anyway.

Fizzy put your old card in and retry.

 

[fizzy]

You might want to email the manufacturer. I know it is unlikely, but it is possible there's some kind of compatibility or setting issue and they might have the stuff on hand to test it for you.

I built the system myself, a few years ago so all out of hardware support now. I've built my own PCs (and plenty of other peoples too) for years.

 

[Tetras]

I built the system myself, a few years ago so all out of hardware support now. I've built my own PCs (and plenty of other peoples too) for years.

I don't mean as general tech support, more like a possible BIOS issue that they need to address.

 

[JediFragger]

If it's within DSR I'd send it back, wait for the pricedrop to happen and try again with another brand (or the Pulse, had that excellent card).

 

[fizzy]

I don't mean as general tech support, more like a possible BIOS issue that they need to address.

Will be lucky getting tech support from ASRock on this, or any really on a board this old. I believe most of the bios is based on the amd AGESA component that they have no say over, and their latest bios is already using 1.2.0.B. The previous bios I was using used AGESA 1.2.0.8, so tried at least 2 different bios/agesa versions with same issue.

Used 2 PCIE3 nvmes for ages without issues, and added in a 3rd PCIE4 NVME later. Only started noticing this issue when moving large files between nvmes at high speed. I also have a couple of SATA SSDs and no issues moving files between them and the NVME drives. It's all very odd and a pretty specific scenario, just complicated by the strange behaviour of the GFX.

 

[tommybhoy]

I'm guessing 3 healthy nvme's on X57 may be the culprit, try and remove 1 nvme-if it's easier than replacing the GPU to test.

I think the more nvme you add the slower the pcie lanes run on X57 unless manufacturers added a custom chip like Asus did on the very top end boards.

 

[fizzy]

If it's within DSR I'd send it back, wait for the pricedrop to happen and try again with another brand (or the Pulse, had that excellent card).

The GFX card I've had several months now. Stress testing, playing games etc is fine. It's only on this specific scenario I'm seeing this odd issue.

More testing I think - although individual components so far have all been testing ok.

 

[fizzy]

Ok, some further testing. Curious to check whether the issue is with the NVME drive locking up or just something relating to GFX drivers.

So, cleared the WD Gen4 drive, and kicked off a robocopy job in command line to copy all contents from WD Gen3 drive (both 1TB drives, source about 80% full). Off it started and within a few seconds, display off and GFX fans ramp up full. Left it for a while until disk activity light stopped. Power cycled pc and checked..... all contents copied, so disks were operating fine whilst the display was off. Had to renable card in windows device manager again and reboot to get it fully working again. Still no idea why the GFX card is being affected like this.

I've dug out my Radeon VII which I will try - but it's a PCIE Gen 3 card rather than 4, different arch etc so likely uses a different subset of drivers in the package. Will give it a go for the sake of it.

 

[fizzy]

Ok - turns out that the radeon VII driver is in a completely different driver set (vega-polaris rather than RDNA), and latest is 23.11.1. Uninstalled existing drivers, installed the Radeon VII ones.

Tried robocopy job again and looked like it had completed. Checked and the dest drive had dissappeared. Restart and checked - showing as half full so didn't properly complete. Tried again and after a while robocopy started reporting "A device which does not exist was specified". Drat. GFX stayed fine though. Drive temps didn't change much either in hwinfo. Strange that copy completed ok before.

Ok - at least this seems to have rulled out a few things. The other NVME drives are PCIE3 models, so either I've a fault on the PCIE4 nvme, or there's an issue with PCIE4 on my machine for some reason. Will have to dig through the bios and see if I can force the NVME and GFX modes to PCIE3 and see if problem persists then.

If it does turn out to be somehow related to PCIE4 modes, I'm guessing that's going to be a cpu or board issue. Oh the joys of PCs and fault finding.