For what it’s worth and because I had an AMD account since 2020, I summitted a comment on their forums for them (AMD techs) to come and check out what might be the issues. But as I told them in the past the catalyst/adrenaline software tend to bog down the system by loading way too much stuff amd I’ve asked that they allow just for the drivers. Which in my case in one of my post on the AMD site, came true a few yars ago. However even with just the drivers loading… the Catalyst/Adrenaline software will continue to show up in your task manger. Simply open the task manager and close all the AMD/Radeon add-ons. if you need a detailed list of what needs to be closed I can work one up for those requesting this list.
Sounds like you need to do a DDU reinstall of the drivers and disable Windows from automatically installing stuff over overriding your drivers due to repeated crashing.
If Windows detects that your drivers have crashed more than some certain amount of times or in some certain type of way, during some time period, it will reinstall the drivers for you and it’s usually some older version of the drivers. I don’t know the exact triggers and limits, but they are a thing. You have to go through some hoops to make sure it doesn’t, meaning your average user isn’t going to be aware that this can happen or that it can be disabled. I actually dealt with this recently on my nephew’s PC and had to DDU+reinstall his drivers because of it.
Nvidia had an issue with this a while back, well multiple times actually, where the store DCH part and the user installed versions of the drivers were overwriting each other causing headaches galore.
Reporting in: I have a 7900xt on the 24.1.1 drivers and the game runs perfectly for me, and I have zero performance or crashing issues. The only issue I have is the well-documented hang on first-run due to the shaders being compiled, but since that only happens once after a driver update, it’s not too big of a deal.
FWIW, for many of the people I have spoken to who have “constant driver crashes” or “Windows Update keeps overwriting my driver” the issue is that they’re running a Windows Insider build. Windows Insider builds are not compatible with the Adrenalin drivers that you download from AMD, and for Windows Insider builds you need to use the driver that was built explicitly for that version of Windows (usually it’s the one Windows keeps trying to install using Windows Update). Lots of people subscribe to the “Release Preview” track in Windows Insider, and then forget they have done so. I was one of these people and it took an AMD dev to point out my mistake. Since reverting to the stable release of Windows I haven’t had any driver crashes, black screens, or times where Windows Update overwrote my driver. Take this anecdote with a grain of salt, but it solved all of my issues.
Also, for those recommending that the fix for this issue is replacing Windows with /insert obscure Linux distro/, as someone who exclusively develops software on and for Linux, this is DEFINITELY not the solution. Please stop recommending people reinstall and replace their operating system to fix something like a driver crash. Like, cmon… really? I love Linux, people should definitely use and enjoy Linux, but this is neither the time nor the place.
Source: I previously worked at Canonical on the Ubuntu Desktop team. I have sat on the board of directors for The GNOME Foundation. I currently develop imaging research software for Linux HPCs.
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Are you on DX12?
I’ve had the issues on a 7900xt since 10.1.5 (was running beautifully prior to that time).
The recent drivers ‘may’ have lessened the occurrence but it’s still there.
I’ve triple checked the Insider consideration and i’m not signed up. Glad it’s helped others, but not the whole issue.
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my wow classic crashed today after 2 weeks of no crashing they’re back.
so i switched back to dx11 and am about ready to give up on amd ever fixing there problem.
Yeah, I was wondering why the hell someone here were trying to reccommend to replace Windows with Linux. I know it wasn’t an appropiate solution but that one’s ridiculous. Replacing OS doesn’t fix anything either.
Speaking of fix…I MIGHT have found a fix. Just set your AMD graphic profile to HYPR Eco and I hasn’t gotten any timeout yet. But I can let you know if it works.
I tried the underclocking it didn’t work for me, I was so damn hopeful lol.
I imagine the only fix would come from massive litigation. This has been an issue for over a year… imagine how many bug reports have been submitted and they “can’t” fix this… I bet theres a good chance this is a hardware issue and there is no fix we need replacements but nothing they make right now works as I RMA’d already and every one else who got replacement cards as far as I know never got a fix for any problem.
Whos getting the class action together?
Not sure if this will help or not (maybe an isolated case), however while running the adrenalin overlay and looking at the Graphics API I found it was forcing DX11 even though I was retesting DX12.
I had removed the bnet -d3d11 changes and restarted both PC and WoW. Logging into WoW I updated the graphics settings to use DX12 (not auto). However, adrenalin was only detecting DX11 as the active mode.
I restarted again thinking it was a bug, but it played out the same. According to Adrenalin WoW was running as DX11, not DX12 as per in-game settings.
And, of course, crash.
I’m experimenting with a -d3d12 command. This update in the bnet settings is now showing correctly in the Adrenalin drivers - both game and the overlay shows DX12 as the Graphics API.
Is WoW running DX11 when it thinks it’s running DX12 causing issues?
Good so far on a number of M+ runs. Raid tonight, so i’ll know more then.
After everything, probably wishful thinking, but fingers crossed.
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Ill test this too, its been a while since I did these you just add the “-d3d12” at the end of the target box when you right click the shortcut?
right now mine says “C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\World of Warcraft Launcher.exe” --productcode=wow
so would it be “C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\World of Warcraft Launcher.exe” --productcode=wow-d3d12
Or should i delete the productcode=wow part and make it
“C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\World of Warcraft Launcher.exe” -d3d12
?
And does this work when using the bnet launcher or do you have to use that specific shortcut then?
I made the change in the bnet launcher. Under game settings and ‘additional command line arguments’
Early update - raid went without a hitch. No driver issues.
That’s because if the game tries the DX12 API first and fails, it will attempt to do a fall back to DX11 instead of hard crashing.
can confirm that the preview drivers and the command line parameters DO NOT WORK for me at least. Same freeze up and crash in arena 
one other thing I saw that was interesting is the Optimization for windowed games option in windows 11 - seems like it could be relevant to wow and dx12 as well as reports of this option causing some issues for people since 10.1 at least
Wow this one is close to a deal breaker wow looks amazing with the auto HDR - this is a struggle playing with out it
still no fix, still crashed ugh
edit:
So i found out vsync doesnt really work with dx11 you can at least get smooth frames in dx11 if you turn that off… sadly dx11 on min settings gets about the same FPS as dx12 on max
Not a fix, was three months ago.
Updates please.
I have an i7 and a G-force 2060 and this fixed WOW51900319 for me. 2-13-24 UPDATE: Nevermind still having an issue.
my new computer is having this problem also
I7 13700k
Z790-p Prime
32GB ram
2TB mvme drive
16gb 7800 xt
its not as bad as some of you guys are talking about for me i only crash once a day maybe if i am lucky 1 time every 2 days but i dont play wow most days for more then 1-2 hours
have the game set on max everything seems to run fine untill it crashes
7900xtx here. Here’s is what I’ve done so far and I’m at 2 days no crash’s. Windows 11 latest updates. Using dx12 until I get a crash. Yes still had black screen for first launch after driver install.
-Ddu the driver and let windows install default drivers for gpu.
-Installed msi afterburner and clocked gpu to 2200mhz. Everything else is still default.
-Wow graphics are set at setting 7. Turned on low latency mode.
-locked frame rate in game to half my monitors refresh rate 144hz=72fps locked.
-installed framegen from lossless scaling app. I left vsync on. There’s instructions how to use it on their site.
It’s still early to know yet. As the week goes on I’ll learn if it works or not. Game is smooth with no hiccups so far. I was sharing this now Incase I’m onto something and someone can try and see the results as well. I’ll update in a few days.
dont know if the optimization has a bad impact on dx 11, i think it was dx 12 that it was messing with it. I dont really notice a difference with it on or off right now
Update so far. Stopped using framegen and frame rate lock after day Maybe it’s the driver that working? I’ve had 0 crashes so far. So I’m using the default windows update driver and afterburner locked at 2200mhz right now. Dx12. After today I’ll run default clocks and see if it crashes.