AMD driver timeout causing random black screens while gaming
My PC has started randomly freezing during games. The image locks up for a second, both monitors go black, and the audio sometimes keeps playing in the background. After a few seconds, the desktop may come back, but the game is usually crashed. In other cases, the screens stay black and I have to force-restart the PC.
When Windows loads again, AMD Software shows a “driver timeout” notification.
It seems to happen more often in demanding games or during busy scenes, but there is no obvious FPS drop before the crash. GPU and CPU temperatures look normal, and I am not using any manual overclock. I updated to the latest AMD driver, but that did not fix it.
I am trying to troubleshoot this without randomly changing everything at once. What would be the best testing order?
Should I:
Use DDU and install the driver again from scratch?
Disable browser, Discord, and Steam hardware acceleration?
Turn off Radeon features such as Anti-Lag, Enhanced Sync, and overlays?
Reduce the GPU clock or power limit slightly?
Test the RAM and power supply?
Disable MPO or hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows?
Is there a reliable way to tell whether this is a driver issue, unstable GPU boost, RAM problem, or a failing PSU?
System:
GPU: AMD Radeon
OS: Windows 11
No manual overclock
Dual-monitor setup