techsupport Sapphire Nitro+ 5700XT FreeSync black screen issue

[Teknoist]

Hi everyone,

 

I've recently upgraded to a Sapphire Nitro+ 5700XT and dual Acer Nitro VG271UPbmiipx 144Hz FreeSync enabled monitors and I'm having a strange issue regarding FreeSync and black screen stuttering, although seemingly not uncommon I've yet to find a solution which works for me.

 

Whenever opening a game from a cold boot (by cold boot I mean full power off and left off for a few minutes) the black screen stuttering will occur with any interaction (occurs with CS:GO and WoW). If I turn FreeSync off, the problem goes away. Also this did not seem to occur when the monitors were set to 60Hz.

 

The problem is always resolved on a reboot (reloading GFX drivers does not seem to work). But this solution is annoying at best... and particularly after my first PC component upgrade in quite a while

 

I've tried a number of v19 and v20 Radeon drivers and the problem persists (with and without the bloated software). DDU''d several times both nvidia and AMD. I've also installed the monitor drivers from the Acer website.

 

Edit to add some more details:

Windows 10 64bit

Both monitors connected via HDMI (issue occurs on both monitors)

ASUS P8Z68-V PRO mobo with i7-2600K (Yes old, this was step one of upgrading my PC whilst improving my working from home experience..)

850W Corsair PSU

 

Does anyone have any suggestions? Many thanks

[Vishera]

Sounds to me like AMD's drivers,

AMD's handling of their drivers is chaos,Their recent driver shenanigans caused many to refund their cards and go NVIDIA.

[5x5]

Have you tried display port? This usually happens when the monitor OEM does a poor job of implementing Free Sync

Just now, Vishera said:

Sounds to me like AMD's drivers,

AMD's handling of their drivers is chaos,Their recent driver shenanigans caused many to refund their cards and go NVIDIA.

Not remotely true. This is a monitor firmware issue, not a driver issue. The second part is also rather false as there is no data to back it up. Drivers have been stable, the issue is Acer's poor Free Sync firmware

[Teknoist]

2 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Sounds to me like AMD's drivers,

AMD's handling of their drivers is chaos,Their recent driver shenanigans caused many to refund their cards and go NVIDIA.

I'm not ruling it out and I have until the end of May to request a refund from Amazon at least so buys me some time...

[5x5]

Just now, Teknoist said:

I'm not ruling it out and I have until the end of May to request a refund from Amazon at least so buys me some time...

Same thing happens on Nvidia with certain free sync displays. That's why Nvidia disabled Free Sync on some monitors and not on others.

[Vishera]

1 minute ago, 5x5 said:

Have you tried display port? This usually happens when the monitor OEM does a poor job of implementing Free Sync

Not remotely true. This is a monitor firmware issue, not a driver issue. The second part is also rather false as there is no data to back it up. Drivers have been stable, the issue is Acer's poor Free Sync firmware

The monitor firmware part is possible,and many people indeed refunded the cards due the drivers,It's possible it has been fixed since - but the bad rep of their drivers won't go away that easily.

[Teknoist]

3 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

Have you tried display port? This usually happens when the monitor OEM does a poor job of implementing Free Sync

Not remotely true. This is a monitor firmware issue, not a driver issue. The second part is also rather false as there is no data to back it up. Drivers have been stable, the issue is Acer's poor Free Sync firmware

I have not, unfortunately I don't have any lying around so would need to invest in a couple to rule that out.

The thing that baffles me is that it is fine after a reboot of the PC...

[5x5]

Just now, Vishera said:

The monitor firmware part is possible,and many people indeed refunded the cards due the drivers,It's possible it has been fixed since - but the bad rep of their drivers won't go away that easily.

Well by that logic you're actively admitting to spreading wrong I formation. Mindfactory data shows that in March 2020 the 5700 series were top sellers. And drivers aren't the issue. With select free sync monitors, the same thing happens on both Nvidia and AMD hence why Nvidia disabled Free sync via drivers

 

1 minute ago, Teknoist said:

I have not, unfortunately I don't have any lying around so would need to invest in a couple to rule that out.

The thing that baffles me is that it is fine after a reboot of the PC...

Firmware, especially on lower end monitors like the Nitro model, is Hank and buggy. Software glitches are very odd and usually require competent developers to sort. Those are reserved for Acer's G Sync premium devices that coat 500$ for working adaptive sync. Hence why I usually avoid Acer's displays

[Vishera]

Just now, 5x5 said:

Well by that logic you're actively admitting to spreading wrong I formation. Mindfactory data shows that in March 2020 the 5700 series were top sellers. And drivers aren't the issue. With select free sync monitors, the same thing happens on both Nvidia and AMD hence why Nvidia disabled Free sync via drivers

The drivers are maybe fixed but are they completely fixed?,Can you really trust AMD with drivers?

What i say is not unreasonable,It could be the drivers and it could be the firmware of the monitor.

[5x5]

Just now, Vishera said:

The drivers are maybe fixed but are they completely fixed?,Can you really trust AMD with drivers?

What i say is not unreasonable,It could be the drivers and it could be the firmware of the monitor.

I've had GeForce experience corrupt my operating system two times. I've had Nvidia GPU memory leaks. I've dealt with random shadowplay shit when it was disabled. I still use Nvidia AND AMD because drivers on neither end are perfect. My current Nvidia drivers push high voltage to my card. Idk why, but I'm using March drivers rather than April sue to that. Do you see me saying Nvidia drivers are bad? No. Because I know bugs happen and get fixed.

[Vishera]

14 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

I've had GeForce experience corrupt my operating system two times. I've had Nvidia GPU memory leaks. I've dealt with random shadowplay shit when it was disabled.

That is strange...Never heard nor seen such a problem,it could be only in Windows 10,I use Windows Server 2019.

It could also not happened to me because i hacked GeForce Experience to stop doing whatever it wants and stop auto updating itself too.

 

But as someone who was hit hard with the AMD drivers the difference is night and day,

With AMD i was afraid to update drivers and had to test them extensively for stability.

 

14 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

Do you see me saying Nvidia drivers are bad? No. Because I know bugs happen and get fixed.

AMD had catastrophic major problems with their drivers,black screens,driver crashes,You can't compare it to a little bit higher voltage and a memory leak.

[5x5]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

That is strange...Never heard nor seen such a problem,it could be only in Windows 10,I use Windows Server 2019.

It could also not happened to me because i hacked GeForce Experience to stop doing whatever it wants and stop auto updating itself too.

 

But as someone who was hit hard with the AMD drivers the difference is night and day,

With AMD i was afraid to update drivers and had to test them extensively for stability.

Me with Nvidia last year.

But yeah - you've obviously fixed Nvidia's drivers and utilities for them AND you're using a far more stable OS with more redundancy - Windows 10 Enterprise isn't as robust when submitted to torture tests.

Anyhow, my point is - both companies have good and horrid drivers. Currently, both are stable but both can have issues at any point in time.
Remember this gem? http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-nvidia-whql-drivers-are-killing-alienware-and-clevo-lcd-panels.779449/
 

Or this? https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/discover/279284/permanent-memory-leak-can-t-find-a-permanent-solution/

 

I've been hit hard by the second. But I never warn people against Nvidia drivers simply because I've had issues - it's really not fair to use old problems (launch drivers for AMD for example) when talking about a product years later.

[Teknoist]

So I've ordered a couple of DP cables, lets see if that is any help at all, and if it doesn't at least I will be able to hook both monitors up to my Macbook for work now with 1 less dongle....

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

Me with Nvidia last year.

But yeah - you've obviously fixed Nvidia's drivers and utilities for them AND you're using a far more stable OS with more redundancy - Windows 10 Enterprise isn't as robust when submitted to torture tests.

Anyhow, my point is - both companies have good and horrid drivers. Currently, both are stable but both can have issues at any point in time.
Remember this gem? http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-nvidia-whql-drivers-are-killing-alienware-and-clevo-lcd-panels.779449/
 

Or this? https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/discover/279284/permanent-memory-leak-can-t-find-a-permanent-solution/

 

I've been hit hard by the second. But I never warn people against Nvidia drivers simply because I've had issues - it's really not fair to use old problems (launch drivers for AMD for example) when talking about a product years later.

You maybe right,but the problems i had with the AMD drivers i will never forget,and it will take a lot for AMD to repair their rep.

But as i said:

9 minutes ago, Vishera said:

AMD had catastrophic major problems with their drivers,black screens,driver crashes,You can't compare it to a little bit higher voltage and a memory leak.

From time to time bugs happen i get it,but how can i trust AMD with their drivers after months of black screens,driver crashes and a lot of troubleshooting?

I could not use the card at all with those problems,occasional driver crashes and black screens are too major since they make the card unusable.

Finding a stable driver was not easy and even then it was not perfect.

[5x5]

3 minutes ago, Vishera said:

You maybe right,but the problems i had with the AMD drivers i will never forget,and it will take a lot for AMD to repair their rep.

But as i said:

From time to time bugs happen i get it,but how can i trust AMD with their drivers after months of black screens,driver crashes and a lot of troubleshooting?

I could not use the card at all with those problems,occasional driver crashes and black screens are too major since they make the card unusable.

Finding a stable driver was not easy and even then it was not perfect.

Same thing has happened to me with Nvidia - again, you're acting as if you're personal experience is definitive of everyone else's. It's not. I've been using both brands for the past 10 years. I've had equal amounts of anger, lost time, lost profits and headaches with both. It's just an ebb and flow. One month my Nvidia system is having issues, the other my AMD - just accept that drivers are a VERY dynamic aspect and no comment on them will age well past a month.

[5x5]

7 minutes ago, Teknoist said:

So I've ordered a couple of DP cables, lets see if that is any help at all, and if it doesn't at least I will be able to hook both monitors up to my Macbook for work now with 1 less dongle....

To be honest, I'd just disable Free Sync for now and drop Acer an email asking for support.

[Vishera]

Just now, 5x5 said:

Same thing has happened to me with Nvidia - again, you're acting as if you're personal experience is definitive of everyone else's. It's not. I've been using both brands for the past 10 years. I've had equal amounts of anger, lost time, lost profits and headaches with both. It's just an ebb and flow. One month my Nvidia system is having issues, the other my AMD - just accept that drivers are a VERY dynamic aspect and no comment on them will age well past a month.

I had NVIDIA GPUs for 7 years and AMD for 9 years,

I have never had problems with NVIDIA,with AMD i started having problems since 2016 with the R9 380.

Any way our experiences seem to differ,but you are probably right.

[5x5]

3 minutes ago, Vishera said:

I had NVIDIA GPUs for 7 years and AMD for 9 years,

I have never had problems with NVIDIA,with AMD i started having problems since 2016 with the R9 380.

Any way our experiences seem to differ,but you are probably right.

Let's just say, when you are supposed to hand in your thesis in two days and GFE decides to update and you gotta reinstall the OS and barely save your papers - you really start to see why blindly trusting a brand is never a good idea. I've had shit with both companies - in more or less equal measure.

[pstarlord]

@5x5 THANK YOU! For bringing some logic and reason into the whole AMD Driver topic.  I've gotten so annoyed with people constantly blaming their issues on the AMD drivers that have been perfectly functional for months.  I've had my 5700xt since September with no issues what so ever aside from some older titles taking a little time to be compatible.  Maybe I'm just not as educated on the topic as others, but if I haven't had a single issue regarding their drivers like other people have had and blamed their drivers for, then how can it be the fault of the driver?  I mean, logically speaking, it can't be the fault of the driver right?  Its not like the code that makes a driver can change from customer to customer right? 

 

 

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, 5x5 said:

Have you tried display port? This usually happens when the monitor OEM does a poor job of implementing Free Sync

Not remotely true. This is a monitor firmware issue, not a driver issue. The second part is also rather false as there is no data to back it up. Drivers have been stable, the issue is Acer's poor Free Sync firmware

Nope. Black screen issues was a known problem with the Adrenaline 20.1 & 20.2 series drivers, AMD finally fixed it with 20.2.3 It was 20.2.2.

[Master Disaster]

17 minutes ago, pstarlord said:

@5x5 THANK YOU! For bringing some logic and reason into the whole AMD Driver topic.  I've gotten so annoyed with people constantly blaming their issues on the AMD drivers that have been perfectly functional for months.  I've had my 5700xt since September with no issues what so ever aside from some older titles taking a little time to be compatible.  Maybe I'm just not as educated on the topic as others, but if I haven't had a single issue regarding their drivers like other people have had and blamed their drivers for, then how can it be the fault of the driver?  I mean, logically speaking, it can't be the fault of the driver right?  Its not like the code that makes a driver can change from customer to customer right?

It was an issue, I was experiencing it myself. You run a game, the screen flickers (like you Alt Tabbed when you actually did not) then you get stuck at a black screen and have to Alt & F4 to get back to desktop, you can still hear the game audio playing and some people were saying ALT & Enter fixed it though this did not work for me. What did fix it for me was running in windowed mode rather than fullscreen. Personally it happened with almost every game I ran, off the top of my head GTA v, RDR 2, AC Odyssey, Forza Horizon 3 and Jedi Fallen Order all suffered from it.

 

They fixed it in Adrenaline 20.2.2 (along with a boat load more driver specific issues).

 

Heres a note from the 20,2.2 release notes...

Quote

Although Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.2.2 resolves many black screen issues, AMD is aware that some users may still experience black screen or system hang issues during extended periods of gameplay. AMD will continue to monitor and investigate reports of these issues closely.

 

[Teknoist]

Just to note I've also just found that reinserting the HDMI cable into the graphics card fixes the problem in the same way a reboot does.

 

Trying to be observational. there also definitely seems to be some notable difference between a WIndows start up from full power off than a reboot. Notably its slightly quicker (start up) and WIFI takes longer to connect on reboot, where as its already connected by the time the desktop loads from a power off scenario.

 

I've disabled hybrid sleep to no avail, so I'm wondering if there's some other setting I need to poke around with to get the same start up behavior. Perhaps this is incidental, but it seems worth a quick pursuit.

[Teknoist]

16 minutes ago, Teknoist said:

Just to note I've also just found that reinserting the HDMI cable into the graphics card fixes the problem in the same way a reboot does.

 

Trying to be observational. there also definitely seems to be some notable difference between a WIndows start up from full power off than a reboot. Notably its slightly quicker (start up) and WIFI takes longer to connect on reboot, where as its already connected by the time the desktop loads from a power off scenario.

 

I've disabled hybrid sleep to no avail, so I'm wondering if there's some other setting I need to poke around with to get the same start up behavior. Perhaps this is incidental, but it seems worth a quick pursuit.

So I also discovered the disable fast start up option. This appears to have fixed my issue, but I'll leave my PC off for a while and see if it has truly worked.

[Master Disaster]

22 minutes ago, Teknoist said:

So I also discovered the disable fast start up option. This appears to have fixed my issue, but I'll leave my PC off for a while and see if it has truly worked.

That behaviour is one of the quirks of fast boot. TBH I don't know the reason why but yeah, fast boot only works after a full power cycle. Its not a problem and there's no need to worry about it, just leave it on.

[Teknoist]

56 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

That behaviour is one of the quirks of fast boot. TBH I don't know the reason why but yeah, fast boot only works after a full power cycle. Its not a problem and there's no need to worry about it, just leave it on.

I disagree, I've been unable to replicate the problem described in my OP since turning this feature off and instantly replicated it when turning it back on. Whilst I suspect it's not the root cause, something about the fast start up is causing freesync issues for my configuration. Given the start up speed difference is negligible I'll just leave it turned off.

 

Thanks everyone for input.