A few weeks back, we discussed ongoing reports of a new black screen bug that was hitting AMD GPU owners. While there were scattered reports going back some time, the situation appeared to have gotten worse with the release of AMD’s 2020 Adrenaline drivers. We talked to AMD about the issue and the company assured us it was working hard to fix the problems. AMD has now released the Adrenaline 20.2.2 driver, and believes it has fixed the black screen issues that were plaguing customers.
The patch notes for this driver are extensive, so we’ve focused on the specific issues that refer to a black screen bug. All of the issues listed below are the issues AMD says it has fixed in the 20.2.2 driver. For a full list of fixes and known issues, see this Reddit post.
Black Screen Fixes
- Performing a task switch with some Radeon Software features enabled or some third-party applications with hardware acceleration running in the background may cause a system hang or black screen.
- When Instant Replay is enabled, a TDR or black screen may occur when launching games or applications.
- A black screen may occur when toggling HDR on in the game settings of Battlefield V.
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt may experience an application hang or black screen during certain parts of the game or intermittently during gameplay.
- Some video content in Chrome may appear as a black screen or be unresponsive on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics products when hardware acceleration is enabled.
Known Issues
Again, I’m only hitting the issues that specifically refer to the black screen issue.
- Enhanced Sync may cause a black screen to occur when enabled on some games and system configurations. Enhanced Sync has been temporarily disabled from the gaming profile and any users who may be experiencing issues with Enhanced Sync enabled should disable it as a temporary workaround.
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.
Reading through user reports on the forum thread, a lot of people are sounding off and saying the numerous issues they’ve seen in previous games are now resolved. It’s too early to say that this driver fixes literally every black screen issue, but multiple people are reporting that the specific places they tested before to produce a black screen error are no longer doing so with the new drivers.
If you’ve been waiting for AMD to fix this issue, head over and grab the drivers from AMD.com. Let us know if it does or doesn’t solve your problems.
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