Follow-up on ticket #83707651. Want to share the solution so that your techsup knows about it.
First of all, my description was a little misleading, sorry for that. The issue is not a PSU reset but a so-called “hard hang” (this is the technical term for it).
The screen randomly goes black and the GPU hyperventilates. Caps Lock key doesn’t respond (this is why it’s a hard hang), however the machine still receives power (therefore the PSU is fine).
You might have noticed that I unsubscribed from WoW for a few weeks as I thought that the issue is long-term and happened only with WoW. Well, it turned out that it’s not the only game that triggers it.
Lego SW: The Skywalker Saga also triggered it, the only difference being that sound continued in the background. So it became obvious that I had to look for GPU-related solutions (AMD Vega 56/64).
Eventually I found a reddit thread (link below) which discusses the exact same problem. What I learned from it is that:
- the Vega series had issues from the beginning
- AMD recently messed up something in the driver
- the problem is triggered by the driver’s low power mode (this explains why it only happens in less GPU-intensive games and not in those where the fans actually spin up)
- it only happens with the “normal” (red) driver; the “pro” (blue) driver is unaffected (this ended up being the jackpot)
The thread talks about a lot of other stuff like undervolting the card, putting a lower cap on the memory frequency, updating the BIOS, etc. I didn’t try these as they are all risky stuff.
So here’s how I solved the problem (can’t be 100% sure, but did enough testing to say that it’s fixed for now):
- download the pro (blue) driver from AMD
- disable antivirus, restart the PC
- extract the driver, then install it with factory reset checked
- restart the PC and re-enable antivirus
- (optional sanity check) sfc /scannow in the administrator command prompt
I started the testing with Lego SW: 8 of 9 episodes without issue, so I did a thorough cleanup on my hard disks and reinstalled both Battle.net and retail WoW onto the SSD this time (as I read that it will be mandatory in DF).
Continued testing for 3 days in mythic+ with HWMonitor open, installing addons every 2nd run or so. More than 14 runs (key level +12-17) without problem, eventually got KSM and I take it as a verification that indeed the pro driver solves (or at least severely mitigates) the problem.
Link to the reddit thread:
For other players: in case the pro driver alone doesn’t solve the issue, I recommend reading through the entire thread and making a priority list (for example checking the cables is less risky than a BIOS update).
Undervolting and/or memory limiting should be the last resort.
Update #1: Iron Docks last boss seems to be a fix repro. I’m gonna continue testing in the prepatch/DF, but the pro driver is definitely more stable. Also, the SSD helps to get back into the game faster, so it’s less risky to join a group with this potential drawback.
Update #2: no issues since Dragonflight prepatch, however I avoided both Iron Docks and Grimrail Depot (both can trigger the driver panic). An important thing tho (which I found out the hard way) is that Windows Update likes to replace the pro driver with whatever he thinks is better. This can be avoided by setting a registry key (not gonna explain it here).
Update #3: since Dragonflight, the hyperventilation randomly happens during ingame cinematics (last one: tasting the community feast soup). Driver is 22.Q4.