How to fix TDR driver timeouts on Sapphire RX 7800 XT Polar OC?
The visuals were stunning when the Polar OC hit 2500MHz, but the constant driver crashes were a total heart-attack. VRAM temps were fine at 70 - 78℃, but when rendering massive geometry, the driver response time would exceed 2 seconds, triggering the Windows TDR protection. I first tried downclocking to keep it stable, but the render speed became painfully slow—basically a snail's pace—which was completely unacceptable. I eventually went into the registry and bumped the TdrDelay from 2 seconds to 10 seconds, then flashed the latest VBIOS firmware. In my stress tests, the render pipeline stopped interrupting and started delivering a steady 55 - 62 FPS. I was actually paranoid that the registry edit would make my OS unstable, but after 4 hours of continuous rendering without a single error, I finally relaxed. Core temps are now between 64 - 71℃ with fans at 1400 RPM. Switching render backends confirmed the stability is way better now.
