AMD Radeon "screen sleep" in powering off my PC

[Zak33]

Lo people

This has happened a few times but I thought it was a failing hard drive or similar.
Leave PC... screen goes to sleep.... click mouse to re awaken... BIOS posts!! and the age old "Windows was not shut down properly" screen is displayed.

So to test it I just dropped screen sleep to 2 minutes ... waited.. and about a minute after screen sleep .. the PC shuit down.

Shut down is SET to 3 hours... not 3 minutes.

And it's only done it since I upgraded to a 290 and new drivers.. the 6950 didn't do it.. so it's a card/driver issue

Any ideas please? My google fu has failed... got lots of Dell's with similar, although all are AMD graphics

[ChinesePate]

my 290 Tri-X have a different issue - it wont wake the screen up from being asleep. had to set the system to go to sleep instead

[kalniel]

Sadly, there seem to be problems with recent AMD drivers and power states. The AMD rep here said it would be fixed in future releases, and I've had some versions of drivers that seem OK. For now, disable ULPS (ultra low power state) using Sapphire Trixx or similar.

[Gerrard]

That's interesting. I have experienced something similar with my HD7950 after recently updating to the latest drivers. I just set the timer for the screen sleep for longer but hadn't really looked into it much more. I suppose its good to hear it's a driver issue rather than something physically wrong with my PC.

[Zak33]

Thank you all for your replies.... It's certainly a driver issue!

[AMDMatt]

Hello everyone,

The best fix is to disable ULPS and or the monitor sleep option within Windows control panel>power management. This will be fixed soon in a future driver, Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

One GPU, monitor in power save (blinking amber), GPU shuts down and fan stops.
Two GPU, user working with PC in non-3D app, GPU 2 shuts down.
Two GPU, monitor in power save, both GPUs shut down.

[kalniel]

Regarding ULPS that only affects systems using more than one Radeon Graphics card. ULPS turns off every gpu present in the system apart from the primary gpu. It will not have any effect on the issue mentioned above.

Even when external monitor is powered off? That's not what your website says! Or is ZeroCore different from ULPS? If so, how can we disable ZeroCore?

AMD ZeroCore Power technology leverages AMD's leadership in notebook power efficiency to grant our desktop GPUs the ability to power down when your monitor is off

[scaryjim]

Given several people here seem to be having this issue with only one GPU I'm not convinced, personally. I had it with a single 7750 and disabling ULPS in Sapphire Trixx fixed it....

[AMDMatt]

Even when external monitor is powered off? That's not what your website says! Or is ZeroCore different from ULPS? If so, how can we disable ZeroCore?

Hi Kalniel,

I double checked as your question made me doubt my initial answer, this is what happens.

One GPU, monitor in power save (blinking amber), GPU shuts down and fan stops.
Two GPU, user working with PC in non-3D app, GPU 2 shuts down.
Two GPU, monitor in power save, both GPUs shut down.

So yes, disabling ULPS for a single gpu may stop the gpu from shutting down and the fan stopping.

Hope that cleans it up for you and others.