Imagine you purchased this wonderful Navi GPU, plugged it into PC, installed latest available driver and started using it. Sooner or later your screen became black and you are wondering what is going on. You are not the only one, there is many people wondering what is going on with it. Root of this issue and if it is a real thing at all is polarizing community all over the world.
All editors and youtubers whom I’m following altogether keep saying they never faced that issue on their cards and are unable to or find it extremely difficult to reproduce black screen issue. Ok, editors and youtubers may have their own interest in such claims (free pre-release hardware samples for reviews, etc.) but there are also posts from 5700/XTs users who also never seen black screens on their cards so we can say community is split in half on this topic. Some users even went that far and claim they returned their Navi GPUs only to replace them with nVidia’s GPUs.
Most people claim it is a driver issue and AMD’s fault. At so many reports worldwide AMD confirmed problem exists and is going to fix it. Weeks and months passed, AMD released driver labeled with number 20.2.2 claiming it is supposed to fix these black screens. Fortunately many users report it indeed fixed the issue but there is still a bunch of people claiming black screens are still happening on their PCs.
If driver didn’t fix it for you and you keep claiming black screens are still present on your PC then problem is not caused by the driver but by something else, hardware issue, other software issue or usual factor, that one between display and chair.
There are few things you need to rule out before proceeding with posting on reddit and other forums “amd suxxx”. First of all confirm if your PC is properly built, by this I mean make sure your choice of components was done properly. Prepare list of your components, especially CPU, Power Supply Unit (PSU), RAM (preferably exact model of sticks but amount and frequency should be enough), drives (SSDs and HDDs), GPU, motherboard, PC case model, cooling solutions details (CPU cooler, PC case fans). If forum users will confirm there is nothing wrong with your PC setup then proceed to next step.
This should be to update (if available) BIOS/UEFI/Firmware of all possible components, especially: motherboard, GPU, display. Firmware updates often fix incompatibility issues and black screens might be caused by such circumstances.
Once all this is sorted out download latest version of GPU driver, latest versions of drivers available for your: chipset, soundcard, networking card (either wifi/wireless or ethernet) and one more thing: the tool called Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU). Use DDU in recommended way, from Windows’ safe mode and after it is done install all downloaded drivers. Finish it with PC reboot.
If you are still experiencing black screens check for software conflicts. These are real pain and sometimes hard to figure out as nowadays we have so many “tools” and panels for our devices, especially RGB stuff it is ridiculous. Uninstall all software you are not using, either some odd searchbars for web browsers (these you shouldn’t have installed at all in the first place), all device and RGB tools which you do not use on daily basis and any other software which for some reason you have installed but you do not need or you are not using. If you have something install but its name doesn’t seem familiar first google it to find out if it is something useful or required by programs to run or just some virus or other kind of crapware. After removing all useless things perform a reboot, clean contents of TEMP and Prefetch folders, reboot again. Just in case, after reboot download and install free version of Malwarebytes Antimalware and scan your PC with it.
Still black screens? Well, let’s go with something what you should have done on FIRST DAY when you installed your new GPU: clean OS reinstall, not recovery, not system refresh from its recovery options, just clean install. Obviously do not go that far and remove files from all your drives and partitions on your PC, only C:/ partition should be formatted during install. Before you start I recommend you to move (a.k.a. backup) games files, savegames, config and other important files and folders from C:/ to other partition. Another tip which is extremely useful is to label your C:/ partition and give to it a name, for example “Windows”, this way during installation process you will be 100% sure which partition you should to format. Now download and prepare your Windows installation media either it is USB stick or DVD disc and once you make sure you backed up all important data from C:/ partition proceed with installation. After installation apply all available OS updates and install these fresh drivers you downloaded earlier. Now you can restore your games from backups so you do not even need to redownload them.
Some people say clean Windows reinstall is something they shouldn’t be doing, that’s not true. You are buying new graphics card once per few years, this is something you are not doing every day so once you do it first thing you should do after plugging it into PCI-Express port (or whatever future will bring sooner or later, definitely you will not be using PCI or AGP anymore, at least I do not since 2004) is to clean reinstall OS. Even using tools like DDU sometimes is not enough. With clean install you make sure all possible software conflicts are if not gone completely then limited only to things you just installed and this makes easier to narrow potential cause of potential problems. Let me say it again and short: After few years you did buy new GPU, you can afford these few hours to reinstall OS and save yourself bunch of headaches, it is most worth it.
If you did all these things and for some reason still having black screens then you are fully privileged to go online and spam around “AMD suxxx, imma go buy nVidia!!!!!!!”. Also please be so kind to other Navi users and help them by reporting your issue to AMD, they will fix it sooner or later. Your GPU works as good as much you care about it.
spectatorx 