ASUS TUF A16 (2023) Black screen on login with AMD SmartAccess Graphics

[Alastor_8472]

Hi, I own the ASUS TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition with an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS and Radeon RX 7600S (using the latest AMD drivers).

Problem

When cold booting I see the bios, Windows starting up. And more often than not, the login screen will turn black while the rest of the machine is working fine (I can even login blindly). The same can happen when putting the machine to sleep by closing the lid. Opening the lid will show the login screen for 2 seconds before it turns black. Closing, opening will show the same thing until it randomly decides to not turn black and operate normally.

While playing games, and switching between the iGPU to dGPU, or back when exiting, everything works fine.

Workarounds

A working solution is to disable AMD SmartAccess Graphics and fully rely on the dGPU entirely (Armoury Crate: Ultimate).

When switching AMD SmartAccess Graphics off, and defaulting to Microsoft Hybrid Graphics mode (Armoury Crate: Standard GPU mode) it seemed to happen less (or not at all), but I haven’t tested this for long though.

Driver or bios issue?

I’ve filed a bug report with AMD’s bug reporting tool, and hope since it seems to be a general driver issue (and not brand related, as Alienware (M17 R5 AMD Advantage 6850M XT Screen goes black. : r/Alienware (reddit.com)) and Lenovo (Legion 7 Gen 7 AMD Advantage Black Screen Issues : r/LenovoLegion (reddit.com)) show similar issues) that a fix will be forthcoming sooner than later.

I hope AMD and ASUS acknowledge the existence of this issue, it seems AMD Advantage laptops with AMD SmartAccess Graphics are still quite uncommon.

[gaurmanan]

Exact same problem for me too. I am facing graphic corruption issues also. Asus support is of no help. They came for site visit, did some test and said everything is fine. I showed them the bug. They said it's not a hardware issue and left. I showed them images and recording of issue but they said we can't add those to our report.

[Alastor_8472]

Thanks for your reply. I hope more A16 owners will share their experiences to see some reaction from ASUS and AMD.

For others who don't know, why AMD SmartAccess Graphics is an important feature to be fixed:

• Microsoft Hybrid Mode: switches automatically between iGPU and dGPU, depending on the graphical load. However the iGPU remains responsible for the video output, thus there is an overhead where the dGPU always has to "talk" to the iGPU before it is rendered on the screen. Depending on the games it can be performance loss of up to 10+%.
• Dedicated GPU Mode: the dGPU is responsible for everything, the most performant setting, but also takes up a lot of power. When on battery the dGPU will most likely diminish your battery usage by 50% or more. Switching between dGPU and iGPU requires a restart of the laptop.
• AMD SmartAccess Graphics: mixes the best of above options. It automatically switches between iGPU and dGPU, but this time it doesn't render through the iGPU, instead the dGPU takes over like in dedicated mode on-the-fly. This results in the best of both worlds, energy saving when the load is low for maximum battery life, and high performance with games, without any performance overhead loss.

[bigbear345]

I also have a similar issue. I a new owner of this exact model, I even exchanged the laptop at my local retailer thinking it was defective. Seems to be driver related. I also found out that it very much depends on what game I played. If I play starfield, then shut down and turn on later it’s perfectly fine. However if I play rocket league, then shut down, on my next boot up I will get a black screen

[Alastor_8472]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the A16!

I've updated to the latest AMD Adrenalin drivers from this week, and while Starfield runs remarkably well (I use high settings with FSR2 in hybrid mode), I would love to get that extra performance of using AMD SmartAccess Graphics.

I still hope for a quick resolve, other than this I'm so far satisfied with the machine itself.

[ShadowEyes]

Same issues here. Been diagnosing this issue for months now. With the new adrenalin update. This is still a problem

[Ivo]

Exactly same issue. When i close the lid and open it i get black screen, only work around is to hold power button to restart PC. Also if you put your computer to sleep before closing lid it works after opening. Ive also read that it helps to disable integrated graphics wich i dont want to do yet.

Also i am pleased to see the overwhelming response from Asus team. Applaud!

[SleepyDiver]

Hi! Just wanted to share what worked for me. 

I was switching between GPU modes, eventually my screen went black. On restart I'd see the ASUS logo but then the screen would go black and I would hear the startup sound (so I thought we might have similar issues).

Just saw a comment on youtube to unplug the laptop, shut it down with a 15 second press of the power button (laptop should be fully off).

Next, you do a 40 second press of the power button (it should turn on initially, then off) 

After that press the power button a final a 3rd time and it should boot up.

Hope this helps!

[skyfast2023]

i tried your method, sadly i didn't work. my laptop first boot stuck at black screen after windows starting, i think the issue between iGPU and dGPU still persist. on 2nd boot, it eventually allows me to see login screen.

[SSGKano]

The AMD software will auto run on computer startup. The up-arrow button in the bottom right corner will show the Red AMD software symbol.

Have you tried turning off the advanced settings under the graphics tab in the AMD software. This goes for both GPUs listed under the graphics tab.

To my surprise there weren’t many settings to go through under each GPU as mine were mostly disabled by default.

The issue stopped. I left the smart access on.