Radeon Wattman still causing black screen problems?

[xdantespardax]

System: Win 10 64-bit, AMD Radeon 7950 OC Windforce (Gigabyte 2012), Intel i7 3770k

OK, so my system is a bit long in the tooth and my graphics card *could* be dying, but I have lately been getting black screen crashes in various games (especially Dark Souls 3), with the latest AMD drivers (19.5.2). I've been reading about lots of people having the same problems with Wattman the likely culprit. The screen just goes black and you can't do anything but shut down and reboot. Even then it doesn't restart properly first time. I get the useless "Wattman has been reset due to system failure" message most times. Are people on here still getting this or is it only with older cards? I have read RX 580 owners having this issue too. I did have MSI Afterburner which apparently clashes with AMD, so I uninstalled it but the crashes still happened. I also did a clean install of the driver but no luck. This also happened with earlier versions of the driver (like 17 and 18 versions).

But here's the thing, I have wiped my drivers with the AMD clean uninstall utility, and downloaded driver version 16.6.1 (yes from 2016!), and it has FIXED the black screen crashes! This was the last driver before the cursed Wattman was introduced with 16.6.2. And now Dark Souls 3 runs fine (I hope I don't speak too soon as many people get the crashes back later). But has anyone else bypassed Wattman like this and solved the crashes?

Is this because my card is factory overclocked and apparently Wattman doesn't like ANY overclock happening? Which is ridiculous because lots of cards are sold as boost versions like Sapphire Nitro etc. so are they no longer fit for purpose? What's the deal here, can anyone explain the situation with Wattman?? As I may consider Nvidia for my next card because of all this. Thanks.

 

[Panos]

System: Win 10 64-bit, AMD Radeon 7950 OC Windforce (Gigabyte 2012), Intel i7 3770k

OK, so my system is a bit long in the tooth and my graphics card *could* be dying, but I have lately been getting black screen crashes in various games (especially Dark Souls 3), with the latest AMD drivers (19.5.2). I've been reading about lots of people having the same problems with Wattman the likely culprit. The screen just goes black and you can't do anything but shut down and reboot. Even then it doesn't restart properly first time. I get the useless "Wattman has been reset due to system failure" message most times. Are people on here still getting this or is it only with older cards? I have read RX 580 owners having this issue too. I did have MSI Afterburner which apparently clashes with AMD, so I uninstalled it but the crashes still happened. I also did a clean install of the driver but no luck. This also happened with earlier versions of the driver (like 17 and 18 versions).

But here's the thing, I have wiped my drivers with the AMD clean uninstall utility, and downloaded driver version 16.6.1 (yes from 2016!), and it has FIXED the black screen crashes! This was the last driver before the cursed Wattman was introduced with 16.6.2. And now Dark Souls 3 runs fine (I hope I don't speak too soon as many people get the crashes back later). But has anyone else bypassed Wattman like this and solved the crashes?

Is this because my card is factory overclocked and apparently Wattman doesn't like ANY overclock happening? Which is ridiculous because lots of cards are sold as boost versions like Sapphire Nitro etc. so are they no longer fit for purpose? What's the deal here, can anyone explain the situation with Wattman?? As I may consider Nvidia for my next card because of all this. Thanks.

19.5.2 are not latest drivers.
So use DDU in safe mode, wipe them out, use Ccleaner to fix registry and install 19.7.1

 

[xdantespardax]

Hi, I think they are optional drivers? It looks like 19.5.2 are the 'certified' ones for now, but I don't think it will make much difference according to other threads I've read on AMD forums, Reddit etc. AMD don't seem to be acknowledging the issue at all or say do a clean install, which people are doing and still getting the problem. But I suppose if they don't have the problem then they don't know what else to say. I didn't touch DDU, registry or Ccleaner, just the AMD utility and it fixed the issue with the old drivers, which suggests it is the wattman to blame that was introduced afterwards.

 

[xdantespardax]

So from the almost total lack of responses, can I assume that most people are doing fine with wattman and the latest drivers? Or are most people using nvidia cards now? Some feedback from happy radeon users (i.e. with 19.5.2 and no black screen crashes) would enlighten me somewhat, I thank you. (And even by some ultra longshot maybe there are 1 or 2 HD 7950 owners out there somewhere in the wilderness??). Again, I sincerely thank you for your assistance in enlightening my humble confusion.

 

[Vince]

So from the almost total lack of responses, can I assume that most people are doing fine with wattman and the latest drivers? Or are most people using nvidia cards now? Some feedback from happy radeon users (i.e. with 19.5.2 and no black screen crashes) would enlighten me somewhat, I thank you. (And even by some ultra longshot maybe there are 1 or 2 HD 7950 owners out there somewhere in the wilderness??). Again, I sincerely thank you for your assistance in enlightening my humble confusion.

I think you might struggle finding many 7950 owners on the forums but ill throw you a bone as I have quite a few 7970's out there in friends PC's also running haswell chips and can confirm that none of them have been moaning at me about crashing to black screens. One was even over last week and bought his machine round for a windows 10 (from windows 7) and I stuck a couple of bigger sticks of ram in there for him overclocked his 7970 a bit in wattman and sent him home a happy chap. Sounds very well like something could be dying. Tried a different psu?

 

[Panos]

So from the almost total lack of responses, can I assume that most people are doing fine with wattman and the latest drivers? Or are most people using nvidia cards now? Some feedback from happy radeon users (i.e. with 19.5.2 and no black screen crashes) would enlighten me somewhat, I thank you. (And even by some ultra longshot maybe there are 1 or 2 HD 7950 owners out there somewhere in the wilderness??). Again, I sincerely thank you for your assistance in enlightening my humble confusion.

I replied to you but you didn't replied back if you followed the steps.

 

[xdantespardax]

Well thanks for responding guys, ok so there are some people with older cards using the wattman ok, at least I know that now. But please don't say that I'm a lone voice here, if you do a google search (which I don't expect you to waste time on if you don't have the problem yourself of course), but there are a lot of people with the black screen/wattman message on AMD forums/Reddit etc. So I'm sure there IS an issue somewhere. Weird though why many/most people are ok but many aren't.

Panos, I did a clean uninstall with the AMD utility so does that not clean the registry? It should do, and I don't see why we should have to resort to 3rd party programs to do it. But anyway many people have done DDU, Ccleaner, and even reinstalled Windows and STILL get the problem back! I don't want to go to all that trouble to still have the problem.

Anyway my card is working fine now, not 1 SINGLE crash/black screen/Wattman has been restored blah blah thanks to the 16.6.1 driver (PRE-WATTMAN). Also temps are stable. So I am hopeful my card isn't dying just yet! PSU is 850w and must be ok as system now stable. HWMonitor shows good temps everywhere. Maybe it's just a fluke and gpu failure will still happen but I will see how it goes, thx.

 

[Paul51]

Hi.
I will bring this threads back to live as i am having the exact same issues as the op.
It is 100% to do with the card all be it still working fine in games, must be with all the new cards about these days and our cards being made from like 2012 i think it was.
I will try an older driver package although amd only go back a few months.
Will have to route the web.
But to the op, you are not alone on this issue lol.