Sapphire Rx 480 freeze with games (yeah me too)

[AlanSlade]

Good morning everyone. Until yesterday morning, I was very happy waiting my new Sapphire Rx 480 8gb, but sadly, when I installed the drivers and tried a game, everything froze. You know, coloured screen, sound loop coming from speakers, and the only way to proceed is reset the pc. I've read of other people with the same problem, and I wanted to know if there is a solution or not, because after 3 hour I'm really beginning to hate this card.

I tried to put Wattman at 50% power limit etc. but nothing changed. Here is my pc PSU: Antec 520w Chip: I5 4670K Mobo: Asrock Z87 Extreme 4 Ram: 16gb HDD: various

Please help! Thanks in advance

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, AlanSlade said:

Good morning everyone. Until yesterday morning, I was very happy waiting my new Sapphire Rx 480 8gb, but sadly, when I installed the drivers and tried a game, everything froze. You know, coloured screen, sound loop coming from speakers, and the only way to proceed is reset the pc. I've read of other people with the same problem, and I wanted to know if there is a solution or not, because after 3 hour I'm really beginning to hate this card.

I tried to put Wattman at 50% power limit etc. but nothing changed. Here is my pc PSU: Antec 520w Chip: I5 4670K Mobo: Asrock Z87 Extreme 4 Ram: 16gb HDD: various

Please help! Thanks in advance

Which game/s? Have you noticed anything else weong before the 480 arrive?

[AlanSlade]

1 hour ago, FTL said:

Which game/s? Have you noticed anything else weong before the 480 arrive?

Until yesterday I used a Gigabyte GTX 760, that is still fine after 3 years of usage.

The I installed the 480 and the drivers provided in the cd, and tried some games like Doom, The Witcher 3, Dirt 3 ecc. and all of them after 4 or 5 seconds freeze the entire system with a coloured screen. 

If you search "Rx 480 game freeze" on google you'll find many users with the same problem.

[Guest]

 

46 minutes ago, AlanSlade said:

Until yesterday I used a Gigabyte GTX 760, that is still fine after 3 years of usage.

The I installed the 480 and the drivers provided in the cd, and tried some games like Doom, The Witcher 3, Dirt 3 ecc. and all of them after 4 or 5 seconds freeze the entire system with a coloured screen. 

If you search "Rx 480 game freeze" on google you'll find many users with the same problem.

Tried updating the drivers to the newest version? The CD has a really old one.

[Starelementpoke]

48 minutes ago, AlanSlade said:

Until yesterday I used a Gigabyte GTX 760, that is still fine after 3 years of usage.

The I installed the 480 and the drivers provided in the cd, and tried some games like Doom, The Witcher 3, Dirt 3 ecc. and all of them after 4 or 5 seconds freeze the entire system with a coloured screen. 

If you search "Rx 480 game freeze" on google you'll find many users with the same problem.

Get the new drivers off the site. CD drivers always are out of date usually.

[Carclis]

You might want to try removing the old drivers using DDU as is always good practice when changing cards or simply updating drivers. I would also recommend going to AMD's website and getting the latest drivers (currently 16.11.5) from there which will be far more relevant.

[AlanSlade]

Yeah, I tried the new drivers too, and unistalled the previous one with DDU, but nothing changed. 

I also updated the bios of my motherboard, undervolted the card as said on this video, but nothing has changed.

When I start every game in my library, the system will freeze and I have to restart it.

[ivan134]

Don't use wattman. Use afterburner or trixx.

Use drivers from the site.

Your PSU is probably due for changing.

[AlanSlade]

4 hours ago, ivan134 said:

Don't use wattman. Use afterburner or trixx.

Use drivers from the site.

Your PSU is probably due for changing.

I used Afterburner with the 760 (I'm still using it, in fact I've put again the 760 in the pc), but I don't know how to undervolt a gpu, because I always used it to overclock.

However, today I noticed a thing. If I choose a low resolution for a game, like 800x600, the game starts and I can play. But if I choose an higher resolution, like 1400x900, everything freezes.

Is this an advice of what's happening?

[ivan134]

35 minutes ago, AlanSlade said:

I used Afterburner with the 760 (I'm still using it, in fact I've put again the 760 in the pc), but I don't know how to undervolt a gpu, because I always used it to overclock.

However, today I noticed a thing. If I choose a low resolution for a game, like 800x600, the game starts and I can play. But if I choose an higher resolution, like 1400x900, everything freezes.

Is this an advice of what's happening?

That's really strange. It seems like it might be a software issue. At this point, I would try reinstalling your OS.

[AlanSlade]

9 hours ago, ivan134 said:

That's really strange. It seems like it might be a software issue. At this point, I would try reinstalling your OS.

My Os? Why? 

[ivan134]

1 hour ago, AlanSlade said:

My Os? Why? 

Process of elimination. Rule out everything else to know if the problem really is your GPU.

[xAcid9]

23 hours ago, AlanSlade said:

If you search "Rx 480 game freeze" on google you'll find many users with the same problem.

If you search "<insert any popular card> game freeze" on google you'll find many users with the same problem too.

15 hours ago, AlanSlade said:

However, today I noticed a thing. If I choose a low resolution for a game, like 800x600, the game starts and I can play. But if I choose an higher resolution, like 1400x900, everything freezes.

Is this an advice of what's happening?

At low res the GPU will be less stressed so that probably related to PSU not able to supply ample power to the card on high load.

[AlanSlade]

I finally tried the card in a friend of mine pc, with an 850w psu. The result was the same. Total freeze after 2 seconds, even with an "old" game like Skyrim.

I contacted the reseller to send the card back, and bought a Gigabyte 1060 G1, hoping that this will work fine.