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Both Intel ARC A380 and A770 crash my Windows 11 system frequently

oviano
Novice
17,883 Views

My system:

Dan A4 v4 Case
MSI Z690I Unify
i7-12700
Corsair CMK32GX5M2B5200C40
NVIDIA 3070
Seagate Firecuda 530 2TB x 2
Noctua NH-L9i-17xx Chromax Black
Noctua NA-FD1
Corsair SF600

System perfectly stable for months.

A few weeks ago I replaced the NVIDIA GPU with an ARC A380. Straightaway it became unstable, with the screen freezing and the only way around it being to power-cycle the PC. I doubt it would last an hour before this occurred, sometimes sooner. It didn't appear to be related to anything the PC was doing, often happening when idle. I turned off display/system sleep, but the issue still occurred. It happens when using both the DisplayPort and HDMI outputs.

I then RMA-d the A380 and left it a few weeks. In the meantime, I re-fitted the NVIDIA GPU and the system was stable again.

Yesterday I took delivery of an ARC A770 to see if that was any better. Sadly not, the exact same issues are occurring again.

In both cases I used the latest GPU driver, including I have tried the latest BETA driver.

What is going on here, Intel?

I'm particularly interested in the AV1 encoding capabilities of this GPU, which is why I am persevering, but this is testing my resilience.

Is there anything I can do to help diagnose and solve the problem for you?

Resizable BAR is enabled on my motherboard. Anything else I can try? I want to help. I'm a developer, I'm technically proficient, if you need some logs or something just tell me where to find them/how to enable them.

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46 Replies
oviano
Novice
8,974 Views

Attaching results of System Support Utility scan.

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LuisGustav_A_Intel
8,952 Views

Hello oviano,  

 

Thank you for contacting Intel Technical Support for graphics.  

 

We are sorry to hear you experienced problems freezing with Intel® Arc™ A770. We are glad to assist.  

 

Please consider for testing


Check latest bios updates, MSI website shows 7D29v191. Set BIOS default values, then modify the corresponding configuration for this graphics card and optimal performance


Perform Clean Installation of Intel® Graphics Drivers in Windows* with latest drivers.


Set RAM to Up to DDR5 4800 MT/s based on your processor


Reset this PC Windows option which allows you to keep the media, or fresh Windows reinstallation.

 

Best regards, 

 

Luis A. 

Intel Customer Support Technician. 


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oviano
Novice
8,938 Views

In response to your suggestions:

 

BIOS - I already updated this, yesterday, and it is still unstable

BIOS defaults - I already did this. In fact, the only non-default settings are that I enabled VMD for RAID. Resizable BAR was already enabled by default.

Clean install of GPU driver - done this numerous times

RAM speed - I just checked, and it's set to 4800 in the BIOS by default

Reset this PC/fresh Windows install - done this several times now, with both the A380 and now the A770

 

I seem to be able to force the freeze to occur more quickly by running a batch file of AV1 encodes using FFmpeg. It will still crash eventually if I don't do this, but this seems to guarantee the freeze. I've yet to have it complete this sequence of AV1 encodes.

 

I was hoping to run this test after starting in Windows safe boot mode, but unfortunately the full GPU driver isn't loaded in the scenario, so the AV1 encodes fail. Is there a way of forcing the proper GPU driver to be loaded in this scenario? It would be a useful test.

 

Finally, I have also tried disabling as many of the motherboard devices as I can, e.g. onboard Audio, wifi, bluetooth, thunderbolt etc. basically anything I'm not using right now but it still froze this morning after doing that.

 

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powerarmour
Valued Contributor II
8,935 Views

@oviano wrote:

My system:

Corsair SF600


Could potentially be a PSU issue, although the power draw between the Arc A770 and RTX 3070 is very similar overall, the Arc card does noticeably draw more power in idle (like +30W more easy) and can occasionally spike a tad higher (I only know this as I've done the same swap myself, and my Fractal Ion+ 660W Platinum is fine thankfully).

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oviano
Novice
8,937 Views

Thanks. I considered this but I had the exact same issues with the A380 (TDP 75W)....

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powerarmour
Valued Contributor II
8,931 Views

@oviano wrote:

Thanks. I considered this but I had the exact same issues with the A380 (TDP 75W)....


Of course, absolutely fair point!

Normally the first culprit to check though with these intermittent hardware related issues unfortunately.

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oviano
Novice
8,928 Views

Yep....I just monitored the power draw of the card while it was doing the AV1 encoding and it hovers around 70W, from an idle 30W or so.

Obviously these cards work for most people otherwise this place would be full of similar complaints and I can only find which looks similar https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Intel-Arc-A770-LE-Freezing-Computer-and-Causing-Crash-When-Not/td-p/1426301

and that person appeared to have just RMAd the card.

The only multiple complaints appear to relate to in-game glitches, and there seems a fair amount of media coverage of those sort of driver issues, but less so of actually freezing the entire system.

I may try plugging it into another PC I have which has similar spec but not the same. This one has a Z690I Strix Gaming and an i7-12700K, but otherwise pretty much the same. I suppose that might tell me something (or nothing)?

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powerarmour
Valued Contributor II
8,923 Views

@oviano wrote:

The only multiple complaints appear to relate to in-game glitches, and there seems a fair amount of media coverage of those sort of driver issues, but less so of actually freezing the entire system.


Indeed, I've been using mine as a daily driver since Oct 14th, and I've honestly had no major issues with it other than a couple of game bugs, it's been stable on a hardware level for me luckily (no freezing or display connectivity problems) both in Linux (my main system) and in Windows.

 

I've genuinely been pretty impressed with it so far otherwise, it's not perfect for sure (high idle power draw, lack of VRR over HDMI, lacklustre PCIe bandwidth, high CPU driver overhead etc), but it's definitely not the hot garbage some would have you believe.

I hope you manage to find the root cause of your problem here, it'll certainly be helpful data to the support team I'm sure.

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oviano
Novice
8,921 Views

I guess if someone bought it for gaming/are a gamer and you've come from NVIDIA you're probably going to notice glitches etc.

I'm actually only interested in evaluating for AV1 encoding for a hobby project (A Slingbox-replacement style system). At the moment its the only dual-slot hardware AV1 encoding option, although I presume NVIDIA will release less-chunky 4-series cards next year.

I will take this as far as I can anyway, and even if I don't solve it at least it'll serve as a reference for what is not the cause!

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LuisGustav_A_Intel
8,889 Views

Hello oviano, 


Thank you for the information provided. Let me check this further. I will post updates soon. 


Best regards, 

 

Luis A. 

Intel Customer Support Technician. 


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oviano
Novice
8,912 Views

So I've now put the A770 into the following spec PC:

Dan A4 v4 Case
ASUS Z690I ROG Strix Gaming
i7-12700K
Corsair CMK64GX5M2B5200C40
Seagate Firecuda 530 4TB x 2
Noctua NH-L9i-17xx Chromax Black
Noctua NA-FD1
Corsair SF600

So the same spec except it's an ASUS motherboard and slightly higher-spec CPU.

Early signs are that the GPU is now stable in this configuration. For the first time I have been able to complete all the AV1 encodes without it freezing.

Would someone in your support team @LuisGustav_A_Intel  be able to try one of these Arc cards in another MSI MEG Unify Z690I?

It's quite a rare motherboard for an mITX in that it has 2 x DIsplayPort IN ports which allows a DP signal from a discrete GPU to be passed back into the motherboard for output via TB4. This lets you do cool stuff like link the PC up to an Apple Studio Display, for example. Although I wasn't using this functionality at the time of my testing, I wonder if this additional functionality is something the Arc cards find objectionable for some reason? The ASUS motherboard does not have this feature.

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat, I have noticed that this person ( https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Intel-Arc-A770-LE-Freezing-Computer-and-Causing-Crash-When-N...) who RMAd his ARC has the following motherboard (from the ssu.txt that he/she posted):

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z590I-VISION-D-rev-10/sp#sp

This also has a DisplayPort IN port.

Coincidence...?

I don't think there is much else detective work I can do. I'm happy to provide my FFmpeg source files and commands if that helps as that seems to guarantee the freeze occurring.

Bill_Mars
Beginner
8,729 Views

Sorry for jumping in but I got a little confused herre from reading this thread.

Oviano:

To clarify , that Z690 is a nice board.

It has it's own integrated graphics.

So before you plug a graphics card in on that board there is a lineup of stuff you have to do at Acer with that Mboard  before it will accept the 770.

I don't know if you did this. I'm just making sure we're on the same page.

 

OK so you plug the 770 in. Good call, and there's a surprise waiting for you.

Go to Intel:

And please do this first; Make the account and log into Intel.

LET INTEL IDENTIFY YOUR SYSTEM.

And the rest will be smooth sailing... except for the half-dozen re-boots you might have to make.

 

Get:

Driver updater assistant.

Graphics command Center

Those two should be enough

 

But if you are ambitious or into gaming.

ARC

Optane

And the System support app.

Everything should be fine when done... except for one thing:

By the way: I did scroll up to the beginning;

and just to let you know... you never successfully got rid of all the Nvidia stuff left behind (if you even deleted the Nvidia software)

before you plugged in the 380 or the 770.

It's why they could never configure.

Now you set it all on a new board... but if you are using the same hard drive

it still has the old Nvidia stuff installed in registry, in config, in system, and the driver file repository.

If anything Nvidia loads at start up it will interfere with anything you do.

Manually it took 3 hours work to get rid of it all. 

 

Logging into Intel and letting them identify the system helped alot!

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oviano
Novice
8,702 Views
Bill - appreciate the input.

On at least a couple of attempts to get the A380/A770 working I did a clean install of Windows so there would be no trace of the NVidua files.
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oviano
Novice
8,709 Views
So since I have moved the A770 into my other build, where encoding bugs-aside it is stable I have taken delivery of a new A380 which I am going to clean install into the problematic MSI build.

Bill, can I clarify what you suggest, is it this:

- turn off, unplug existing card (currently Nvidia again), plug in new A380
- boot from Windows 11 installer USB stick
- in setup erase HD and perform fresh install
- once booted into Windows go to Intel Driver Setup Assistant and verify it has correctly identified my MB and install the ARC driver and any other drivers it recommends.

It’s basically what I’ve already done on at least two occasions but I will try it again.
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Bill_Mars
Beginner
8,693 Views

Hey Oviano, please read Luis's reply first.

 

OK what board is in the MSI build?

I hate thinking someone has to re-install windows so my reply is based on it.

Most of the MSI boards and Asus boards are built with Nvidia in mind.

You asked to get the 770 on a MSI MEG Unify Z690I board.

Correct! Because that board is built for Intel. That Unify already has Optene in it!

Did you see his reply?

The Tomahawk is built for Ryzen and Radeon, not Intel.

Ok I'll just let the dust settle after reading that one.

 

You said the MSI build; I assume then it is not the Strix board but it is the Unify board.

If it is the Unify board then that A380 will kick some serious butt when it's done.

If it isn't ... well you get the idea... make sure the board is configured to let the A380 move in.

 

Reinstalling Win 11

 

I've seen guys delete all the partitions on a hard drive and let windows do the reformatting.

That's a bit extreme. But based on sound reasons.

If windows finds an existing version of windows it the installer might archive it instead of erasing it.

And you get to re-boot to find a brand new  windows-old folder.

It's rare but it has happened.

But lately with Win 11 you shouldn't have a problem; the installer will tell you it's going to reformat the drive.

 

So windows gets installed;

Here's where it gets tricky.

And where you probably had trouble.

I'd suggest you let Windows do all of its own updates first.

Windows Updates has a nasty habit of overwriting installed stuff unless it came from them.

Then get to Intel when windows is all settled in. 

PLEASE let Intel identify the system and update everything.

Their process is quite thorough and if they prompt you to install the Graphics Command Center and the Driver Update Assistant say yes immediately.

Memory management and the System management are both cool apps that are worth grabbing.

But you don't need to leave them running as background apps all the time.

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oviano
Novice
8,689 Views

Yes the MSI build is the build described in my original post.

In the Windows installer there is always an option to erase the partitions (quick) so it's down to one large empty partition, and then let it re-do it so there is no chance of any files/folders being left over from any previous installation.

I'll do it exactly as you suggest in terms of waiting for Windows updates, etc.

Once I've done all that, if it still freezes (I'm confident it will) I will then look again at enabling crash dumps etc and see if I can figure that out.

 

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AlHill
Super User
8,682 Views

@oviano One thing @Bill_Mars left out of his ramblings is that after you install Windows, the first thing you should do is to install the chipset inf provided by the manufacturer of your board.  Do this before any other installs and windows update.

 

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]

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oviano
Novice
8,679 Views

Ok, so from the MSI website you mean?

 

I'm often unsure whether I'm meant to install any of that stuff from the motherboard manufacturer. A lot of it seems duplicated/automated by Windows, and now by Intel's Driver Setup Assistant, so you basically have three different sources of drivers and sometimes even with their own version numbering system....

That said, I can't recall this ever being an issue, stuff has generally just worked until now.

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AlHill
Super User
8,664 Views

Yes, MSI will have in their downloads for their board a chipset inf.

And, before you install windows, make sure the bios is updated.  Follow the instructions from the MSI site for your board.  If you are unsure about updating the bios, seek support from MSI.

 

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]

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Bill_Mars
Beginner
8,665 Views

Ok I am so sorry... thought it was a given.

According to the MSI manual (page 29) "download and update the utilities and drivers from MSI" before you install Windows.

 

Ramblings LOL cool .... so pretend i'm in a rocking chair and 90 years old.

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