- Nvidias RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards experience ugly problems
- This can be tied to the latest drivers, given problems apparently also affects the RTX 4000 GPUs
- Nvidia “examines the reported problems” and hopefully we hear more from Team Green soon
NVIDIA is investigating reports of problems with its new RTX 5000 GPUs that cause some graphics cards to go down. The problems appear to occur repeatedly for some in different circumstances, which potentially leaves Team Green with a larger headache around its new card.
The problems began when Nvidia pushed out of a new graphics driver (version 572.16) and people started experiencing crashes with some PC games. Then came reports of the RTX 5090 misfire poorly, including crashes happening, or GPU was not recognized by the host -PC. (And even the strange tale of a Blackwell flagship that is walled, but we must be very careful about the rare claims).
The problems now seem more widespread and apparently affect both the RTX 5090 and 5080 models, with repeated crashes that occur as mentioned – often freezes that you stare at a black screen.
Part of the difficulty here is the wide range of circumstances in which these various problems manifest themselves. From seemingly non-functional GPUs to problems with multimonitor setups, there is a confusing series of shades for the individual complaints from RTX 5090 and 5080 owners.
Nvidia told PC Gamer that it is now “investigating the reported problems with the RTX 50 series”, and I have a feeling that this presumably deep dive into what is going on here will take some time.
Analysis: Clean installation to cure driver blues?
Obviously, the amount of reports across the usual forums (Reddit and Nvidia’s own bulletin board) has led Nvidia to tell us that it really intervenes on this front. Until we hear further feedback from Team Green, all we can do is trawl through a whole pile of suggested corrections, some of which work for some people, but not for others.
However, this seems to be related to the latest driver, an idea that is backed up by a spread of reports of RTX 4000 graphics cards and this latest GPU driver. As a PC Gamer theory, these Gremlins may relate to old driver files that kick around the background and clash with the new setup somehow after the user has installed this latest driver.
Therefore, our sister website advises a full driver wiping (using Display Driver uninstalled or DDU to full up your shiny new RTX 5000 GPU.
So, in terms of driving, your choices are to roll back to the previous NVIDIA graphics driver before this latest release or do a full wiping (using DDU as mentioned) before reinstalling the latest driver and holding your fingers firmly crossed.
Or just live with your game -PC as it is – if the crash is not very annoying in your particular case – hoping that Nvidia exposes a hotfix fast enough. It is possible that this could happen when you recently arrived to solve the broken down problems with a few games in the latest driver.
Meanwhile, if you are in ‘Live with It’ mode, there are some common solutions you can try that are simple and have done the trick for some people. They include turning off HDR in Windows 11 (assuming you of course are wearing it) and reducing the update speed on your screen to 60Hz.
The latter seems to have worked for a few few people to solve some, if not all, of the crash. So it’s one to have a shot with, determined. It can also help explain why multi-monitor setups are apparently potentially more wonky, as if there are monitor-related problems in the driver, then of course it is more likely to happen in this scenario.
Remember that as recommended earlier, some RTX 5090 owners have found a solution in going into BIOS and dropping their graphics card from using PCIe 5.0 to PCIe 4.0. It will mean that the GPU is running slower but not in a larger way, and if it means a crash -free experience, it is clearly a much better path forward for now as a temporary solution until NVIDIA comes out with its report ( And hopefully a solution).
As already mentioned, I have a feeling that the solution may be a difficult solution here, so I’m not too optimistic about a quick hotfix – but you never know.
