Nvidia confirms it is investigating RTX 50-series BSOD and black screen troubles, no timeline for a fix

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Staff members don't know if the fix will come through a driver update or a VBIOS update.

RTX 5090 HERO
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Crashes and instability issues relating to RTX 50-series GPUs continue to rage on, and Nvidia still doesn't have a fix ready for the public. Manuel provided an update on the Nvidia forums, noting that the RTX 50 series issues are still being investigated. The Nvidia staff member clarified that they don't know if the fixes will arrive in driver form or in VBIOS form.

The update addressed users in the Nvidia 572.47 driver feedback thread complaining about the incessant black screen and crashing issues occurring on the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and even some RTX 40-series GPUs. To everyone's disappointment, the latest 572.47 drivers (which enable RTX 5070 Ti support) arrived with incredibly few bug fixes, only one, in fact, relating to driver stability issues when waking up a monitor from sleep mode.

Nvidia originally announced its investigation into these problems over a week ago when GeForce driver 572.16 had just been released. Issues regarding GPU stability and black screen crashes began when the 570 branch of drivers first launched. Issues with these drivers range from "minor" stuttering issues in games to full-blown BSODs that make the GPUs unusable.

Most of the major issues revolve around Nvidia's RTX 50 series GPUs, but RTX 40- and allegedly even RTX 30-series GPUs are also experiencing issues. One user on the 572.47 feedback thread revealed BSOD errors running 572.47 on their RTX 4060—another with an RTX 4090 reports full system crash reboots whenever frame generation is running in-game.

While the issues appear to be driver-related, not all appear to be driver-specific. Manuel's statement suggests there could be flaws in the RTX 50 series firmware, which the buggy 570 branch drivers exacerbate. This is compounded by other user reports stating that they got their GPUs working by downgrading PCIe functionality below Gen 5 speeds and or lowering monitor refresh rates down to 60Hz. By contrast, there have been no user reports (that we know of) where switching down PCIe speeds and monitoring refresh rates fixed issues on RTX 40-series or older GPUs while using drivers in the 570 branch. (This is a theory; take it with a grain of salt.)

We've also seen our fair share of issues with these newest drivers, including the aforementioned frame-generation crashing bug and black screens. We've also done a critical analysis of Nvidia's latest driver branch, noting that it feels half-baked, particularly relating to DLSS 4 frame generation.

The RTX 50-series launch has been one of the rockiest launches for Nvidia to date. The new GPU lineup is plagued by non-stop availability issues, sky-high prices, the legitimate risk of melting 16-pin power connectors, not to mention the ongoing stability issues. The icing on the cake is the latest report of several RTX 5090 GPUs found defective, sporting fewer ROP units than advertised.

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Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thisisaname
    Given the low stock available at launch there will not be very many to replace.
    Reply
  • SomeoneElse23
    For $2000 MSRP, I would expect any piece of computer hardware to be rock solid and problem free.

    Crashing, burning, and missing pieces is unbelievable.
    Reply
  • Kentmos
    They look into only this?? What about the shitty 12VHPWR connector that keeps burning (and will continue to do so!), and the missing ROPs??

    CALS should be in order here..
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    SomeoneElse23 said:
    For $2000 MSRP, I would expect any piece of computer hardware to be rock solid and problem free.

    Crashing, burning, and missing pieces is unbelievable.
    It's a gaming card who brought first is only a beta tester. If you want a trusted device and drivers you need to get workstation graphics.
    Certified hardware is expansive as hell...
    Reply
  • txfeinbergs
    SomeoneElse23 said:
    For $2000 MSRP, I would expect any piece of computer hardware to be rock solid and problem free.

    Crashing, burning, and missing pieces is unbelievable.
    If you expect that, then you shouldn't buy cutting edge HW when it first comes out. Probably stay away from games too when they first release. That said, yes, you shouldn't expect a product that is completely unusable, missing components, and catches on fire.
    Reply
  • Devoteicon
    I feel bad for the tens of people this is effecting.
    Reply
  • Alex/AT
    Amdlova said:
    It's a gaming card who brought first is only a beta tester. If you want a trusted device and drivers you need to get workstation graphics.
    Certified hardware is expansive as hell...
    Yeah, or just an AMD card. Yes, it would be a bit lower in performance, sadly AMD stopped releasing top grade cards. I got lucky with 4090 last time - and had just mere tolerable issues of terrible drivers (which never was the case with AMD) and lacky multi-monitor support (which is always never the case with AMD), but no, my next one would be lower grade but AMD card again. From nV, I touched 5200, GTX 570 and now 4090. All cards were good for times, but everytime the drivers were absolute mess. On the contrary, no one AMD card - and I had many - had that number of driver/stability issues. Yes, there were numerous (not overwhelming number) major bugs in beta and not driver releases, but they got fixed rather quickly. Yes, they all were slower than top nV cards of the time. But they were totally usable. I still can't call 4090 totally usable as it has numerous FPS loss issues, some browser rendering issues requiring restart of video driver, huge multimonitor issues (yeah it can't do 8K + 3x4K which AMD did just great), DSC disables DLDSR, DSC disables ability of tweaking EDID, some games have weird shadowing issues in the latest drivers (year old 537.58 is still the most solid one), and so on. Should be renamed to BetaForce 4090. In the end, for this card I'm satisfied with the performance, but totally not satisfied with the product, and that matters.
    Reply
  • CaptRiker
    it's things like these why I switched over to studio drivers years ago. studio drivers do not get updated alot and also get all the bug fixes from the game rdy drivers. studio drivers are usually WAY more stable then game ready.
    Reply
  • jkhoward
    Hmm.. and here I am thinking my 4060M GPU was dying on me. Mad stutters every 30s or so, then back to normal. I’ll try downgrading.
    Reply
  • VizzieTheViz
    Yeah but you have to get a NVidia card because AMD driver are always so horrible. Just goes to show issues with drivers can happen with whatever brand you pick.
    Reply