Hello there.

Current tech specs:

  • R9 7950X3D
  • XFX 7900 XTX
  • 32GB Ram
  • W11 22H2

Summary

While playing games, it’s as if the display disconnects. Checking out the event viewer. I see “Display driver amduw23g stopped responding and has successfully recovered.”

Now, let me explain the background of this issue.

Context

Early last year, my PC looked very different. I was rocking an 8700K paired with a 1080 TI, and both parts were getting old. Fortunately I mainly play classic WoW, so it wasn’t the end of the world however, I had a 4K Dell monitor and jumping into newer games like Cyperpunk had the old 1080 TI really sweating, so I started upgrading.

My first upgrade was the screen. I decided to go big and picked up a Samsung Galaxy Neo G9. The problems began almost immediately. I’d be playing WoW and the screen would go black. I’d see the monitor UI flash up saying “no signal detected”. Within 30 seconds, things would come back. Checking the event viewer at the time, I could see a similar issue. “Display driver blah stopped responding.”. I figured it was just that my aging 1080 TI was to blame and it was not coping with the new screen. The issue was definitely worse in games with more demanding graphics. Additionally, it would sometimes happen when I wasn’t playing games watching video in a browser.

I pressed forward. Checked off all the low-hanging fruit. Replaced cables. Refreshed windows. DDU’d. Nothing seemed to fix it.

Late-2022, I picked up an XFX 7900 XTX thinking this would surely fix it. The cards great, and I don’t experience a problem for a few weeks then I’m playing WoW one day and it occurs out of the blue. Super tilting. AMD’s software pops up telling me my display driver stopped responding. Very cool stuff.

Present

Flash forward to July this year. The issue is still occurring. However, I’m really only playing non-demanding games so it’s not happening very frequently. I buy Baldur’s Gate and bam. The issue is occurring SUPER frequently. Sometimes, multiple times per hour. I seem to be able to partially mitigate the problem by playing the game in windowed mode? Unsure if this just makes it less graphically demanding or whether something else is going on. At this point, I think it’s the screen although, I have no idea why.

My birthday comes round and I upgrade the rest of my computer. CPU, motherboard, and RAM. The only parts in my PC that haven’t been replaced since this issue started occurring now is my NVME drive. I also upgrade to W11 and do a hard reset formatting my OS drive. Frustratingly, the issue remains. I stumble upon this post: https://gist.github.com/douglasparker/9439aa211c3f163e9390ba84db7f18bf thinking I’ve finally done it and found the solution. I for some reason experience the LONGEST period without the issue occurring to date. I have about 2 months with no problems before it reoccurs again.

Jump forward to the present. I’ve started playing AC Valhalla and am having a great time. Only problem, it’s triggering this issue pretty hard. Even more crazy, there’s a specific chest that I can’t seem to open in game without the issue triggering. Having something specific that triggers the issue presents a welcomed problem solving opportunity. After trying to open the chest about 7 times with the issue triggering and crashing the game each time, I decided to do some more heavy investigation.

  1. Remove all connected USB devices except the mouse and keyboard - issue remains
  2. Swap in my 4K Dell monitor - issue remains
  3. Disconnect my secondary monitor - issue remains
  4. Uninstall essentially everything else on my PC except what’s needed to run the game - issue remains

My levels of frustration right now are critical. I seem to be able to avoid the issue triggering by running the game in windowed mode at a lower resolution but it’s killing me. I feel like I’ve tried everything I can think of and I cannot work this out.

Any thoughts?