Black Screen 😢

Support Technical Support
1

Good evening!

So, I had this problem with Black Screen appearing randomly while playing WoW and nothing like it happens while I’m playing other games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Sims, Guild Wars 2, etc. or other offline games.

I think it started happening at the end of February and I still haven’t fixed the problem. Basicly, my screen just goes black randomly and you can still hear the music in the background playing continuously (feels like the character is running in place) and then I’m forced to reboot my computer (via big button).

I want to point out that my graphics settings are all set to High (I adjusted them a bit, but I don’t think it means anything). The black screen can happen a few times in 1 hour so I’m not relaxed while playing because I can’t stop thinking how it might go black again. Also, I tried setting all of the graphics settings to LOW to see if there is any difference. I was wondering if Ultra Particle Density setting is causing this, but it’s not since it was still happening, but not as often as while the settings are on high and ultra. It happens at random places and time, whether I’m fighting bunch of mobs, or just flying mid air with nothing being seen on my screen except my character or even clicking the objects during the memory game world quest.

I’m not a Computer Wizard so please forgive me for my ignorance. I told my brother about this and showed him what happens. I went to ToS and pulled bunch of shiny Night Elf mobs and it crashed like I described. He downloaded 2 different programs that show how fast my computer’s fan is and how high the temperature of GPU is. Apparently, it was normal - around 70 to 80 which I heard is supposed to be fine? I don’t know. We did some kind of test, too.

I googled WoW Black Screen problem and the wowwiki page exactly described what’s going on:

  • The screen/monitor goes into a permanent ‘sleep’ mode, turns black, and cannot be removed from this state. Sometimes the cursor can still be seen and moved.
  • The sound effects, background music, or any other audio in the game comes out of the speakers, but repeats itself in a choppy manner (sometimes.)
  • A reboot is necessary to unfreeze the game, causing the player to most likely be killed if he is in a battle.

I want to point out that I bought the computer at the end of October 2019 and everything was fine until the end of February 2020. I always kept my Windows version and Graphics drivers UP TO DATE.

Here is a VIDEO I filmed today:

  • imgur .com/a/b0qgEXm :desktop_computer: :skull:

Graphics Card name: Radeon RX 590

:arrow_down: DxDiag :arrow_down:

  • easyupload .io/xbnzbs

(Sorry I can’t post links)

Different solutions I tried so far that didn’t help:

  1. Uninstalled and Installed WoW again.
  2. Deleted Cache
  3. Deleted all Addons I had (not just disabled)
  4. Repaired multiple times
  5. Checked if there was a virus maybe
  6. Downgraded my Graphics Driver to one of the earlier versions

Everything leads to the point where you’d think it’s obviously the graphics card issue, but the computer is really new and everything was fine until the end of February. My brother suggested me to try reinstalling whole Windows system and start over. What should I do?

Thank you for reading :smiley:

2

I have same video card and same issue.
This is game issue.
Lower your video settings and you will not have problem.
Do tweaks to your Radeon software. Mine are:

https://imgur.com/a/J8J1Imp

Also in your bnet launcher in general settings disable HW/A.
When your screen goes black, try to press CTRL+ALT+DEL and open task manager, then the game is back to normal. This is how I resolve my issue without restart (most of the time).

PS: Not allowing us to post images here via imgur is very stupid decision.

1 Like
3

I will try this. It’s a relief that someone else has the same card and problem. Thank you so much!
Do you think lowering in-game graphics settings is necessary? Having nice looking stuff and views was kinda my main goal when I was buying a new computer. If it’s a game issue, I hope this is resolved in Shadowlands & with new Radeon driver update.

4

It’s a must.
Do the radeon software settings and test without lowering the video settings in-game and you’ll see.
SSAO is so hungry.

5

imgur .com/a/avsxu1l
This is what it looks while the game is on.

Update:
It happened again and ctrl+alt+delete didn’t work.

I guess I’ll have to play with low settings and hope the issue will get resolved in SL or next Radeon update.

6

The temp is too high. Change some settings in-game, especially the effects.

7

71° is not high, it is normal, or even rather low for a 590.

Should not be on any half-decent gaming GPU.

8

It is high.

From ADM community, confirmed by many users:
The RX 480, 580 and 590 seem to begin throttling on some cards in the upper 70’s.

But it is. Even on in-game in the tooltip says: Decreasing this may GREATLY improve performance.

Again from community:
SSAO was a bit too much to handle for a lot of GPUs

9

So is this something that can be resolved by Blizzard in SL or (and) with Radeon driver update?

10

Yes. They both should do improvements. Blizzard to the game and AMD to the driver.

One more thing to do in radeon software under settings → general → Disable In-game overlay.

1 Like
11

This is just bad…

It literally makes no difference for me on a 2070 Super.
Even on my GTX 970 it had it on max.
But maybe it performs worse on AMD.

The drivers is one reason why i hardly recommend an AMD GPU.
AMDs CPUs are fine now (got a Ryzen 3900x myself) but GPUs are still having alot more problems then Nvidia.

12

There are a lot reports by users from nVidia too.
In my opinion, the game is not optimized more than the drivers.

In conclusion, I want to say that the game is the main problem here. Too many video issues. No one can convince me that hundreds users have same issues with their video cards (faulty how you call them) but the game is ok.

13

If it is a driver issue, what is Blizzard supposed to do about it?

14

I mean the game need more optimization and not the driver.

1 Like