# GPU-Z Black Screen Problem - Is this an issue of the past or still relevant?



## bobbyhatesmacs (Aug 15, 2020)

I saw a few posts and a colleague had made me aware that GPU-Z can cause black screens if installed on a machine? can someone give me more information on this and does it affect current builds? thanks.


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## W1zzard (Aug 15, 2020)

A few years ago there were some issues with certain ATI/AMD cards during video playback in browsers, this has been fixed for a long time.

What's your underlying question?


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## Naki (Aug 15, 2020)

I know there is a notorious, random black screen issue with certain newer AMD Radeon cards, such as 5700/5700XT. Some people never or almost never get it, some get it more often.
I don't know if it is GPU-Z related though. 

I am getting a Google Chrome black screen occasionally here, but it is unrelated to GPU-Z. Leaving the PC unattended for 10-20 mins often shows me a completely black screen, but this is just Chrome, not the whole PC display getting black. Closing Chrome and running it again fixes the issue.
(And card here is quite old - AMD Radeon R9 390.)


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## W1zzard (Aug 15, 2020)

Naki said:


> I don't know if it is GPU-Z related though.


Not GPU-Z related to the best of my knowledge. On Reddit I only see reports from people that they will just crash randomly, no matter what they do


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## Arkz (Aug 24, 2020)

Naki said:


> I know there is a notorious, random black screen issue with certain newer AMD Radeon cards, such as 5700/5700XT. Some people never or almost never get it, some get it more often.
> I don't know if it is GPU-Z related though.
> 
> I am getting a Google Chrome black screen occasionally here, but it is unrelated to GPU-Z. Leaving the PC unattended for 10-20 mins often shows me a completely black screen, but this is just Chrome, not the whole PC display getting black. Closing Chrome and running it again fixes the issue.
> (And card here is quite old - AMD Radeon R9 390.)



I'd use DDU and install fresh drivers. But also check event viewer to see if it shows a DLL crashing in the log when it black screens.


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## Naki (Aug 24, 2020)

The issue is too rare for me to "take out" my drivers this way.
Also, only Chrome is affected - all my games are fine, other web browsers are fine so tinkering with drivers is a bad idea and overkill. Thanks anyway. 
The looking at Event Viewer may help, but again - issue happens too rarely for me to worry about it.
Also, no data is lost when this happens.


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## Arkz (Aug 24, 2020)

Naki said:


> The issue is too rare for me to "take out" my drivers this way.
> Also, only Chrome is affected - all my games are fine, other web browsers are fine so tinkering with drivers is a bad idea and overkill. Thanks anyway.
> The looking at Event Viewer may help, but again - issue happens too rarely for me to worry about it.
> Also, no data is lost when this happens.



Have you tried turning off HW acceleration in chrome? But yeah I wouldn't worry bout it.


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## Naki (Aug 24, 2020)

So-called "Gnome", weak Intel Core i3 Haswell CPU here, with just 2 cores/4 threads so disabling GPU acceleration not an option. 
The GPUs are fairly decent, so they at least make online videos/Facebook/my work websites/etc better with this quite weak CPU.
(I have the Intel CPU-built in GPU enabled as 2nd one, main GPU being AMD Radeon R9 390 8 GB discrete card - quite old now, but still powerful for many tasks/games.  )


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