I recently upgraded from an RTX 3080 10GB to a Radeon RX 9070 XT. Games run normally at first, but they consistently crash after a few minutes, usually within 20 minutes. This has happened in Alan Wake 2, Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and Dragon's Dogma 2, both with and without ray tracing at 1440p and 4K. I used DDU in Safe Mode and reinstalled the graphics drivers, including trying an older driver version, but the crashes continue. My system has a Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and a Gigabyte P850GM 850W power supply. What should I check to determine whether this is a driver, temperature, power, memory, or defective-GPU issue?
3 Answers
Don’t rule out system stability just because the problem appeared after installing the new GPU. Unstable RAM, especially an aggressive XMP/DOCP profile, can show up as game crashes. Test with the memory profile disabled, run a memory test, and try a GPU stress test separately so you can narrow down which component is failing.
Since you already tried a clean driver installation and an older driver, check the GPU temperature and hotspot temperature with HWiNFO64 while gaming. An unusually high hotspot reading could indicate a cooler or thermal-paste problem. Also try completely removing any GPU overclock or tuning settings. If temperatures look normal and the crashes happen across several games, an RMA or replacement may be appropriate.
I tried both the newest driver and version 25.12.1 after using DDU, but the games still crash. I’ll monitor the GPU and hotspot temperatures next.
The exact power-supply model matters, not just the wattage. You’re using a Gigabyte P850GM, so check its condition, cabling, and power connectors carefully. Use separate PCIe power cables rather than daisy-chaining if possible, and test with default GPU settings. If temperatures, memory, drivers, and power delivery all check out, the card itself may be faulty.
The crashes only began after I installed the new GPU, so I’m not sure whether the RAM could still be involved, but I’ll test it.