ranzware
Not long after the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 hit the shelves (and swiftly departed from them) numerous forum and online community reports of black screen issues started appearing. Thankfully, it looks like there will soon be an official fix rolling out from Nvidia.
An Nvidia rep on Reddit says (via Videocardz): “For users whose graphics card hasn’t received a VBIOS update, they can install the driver that will be releasing later this week that applies the same fix.”
The vBIOS update in question, if you weren’t aware, is something that might be already available from different AIB manufacturers. MSI, for instance, has released a vBIOS fix for the RTX 50-series black screen problem which can be installed from the MSI Center app. A vBIOS update fiddles with the GPU firmware, which makes it a lower-level fix than a driver update that makes changes on the software level.
It’s therefore a little strange that Nvidia suggests the driver and vBIOS update “applies the same fix”, but it’s possible the same fix can be tackled on different levels or via different angles.
Whatever the case, it’ll hopefully make for a better fix than the one our Dave discovered for the MSI RTX 5090 Suprim: to limit the monitor refresh rate to 60 Hz and game like it’s 2007 (sorry, 60 Hz gamers).
We have flashed one of the BIOS chips on our Suprim card, and after multiple attempts at getting the current release drivers to recognise the card, it is now booting correctly and not displaying any of the previous black screen issues we were having. So, hooray, the nigh-on $3,000 card is functional almost a month after launch.
There are still some funky things going on, such as 3DMark not being able to recognise the system, though that likely just needs a post-vBIOS flash update so that it is recognised by the software.
To be clear, we still have no idea what the underlying issue is that caused all these black screen issues. There’s been reports of issues being caused by refresh rate, heavy GPU load, and multi-monitor setups (a common cause for issues like these), but nothing confirmed. Hopefully Nvidia will offer some clarity over what this fix is actually doing over the coming days and weeks.
Any fix is better than no fix, but (to state the obvious) what’s better than that would be no issues to begin with. That’s especially true for this RTX 50-series generation which has thus far been light (weightless, perhaps) on stock, seemingly beset by melting power connectors, and in some cases even missing ROPs.
I know if I were hitting refresh on almost-always-stockless retailer pages, getting lucky and nabbing an RTX 5090 for likely well over $2,000, having it delivered only to discover it has less juice in it than advertised, and then worrying about its cable going up in flames, the least I’d want is for it to actually work and not turn my monitor into a pictureless void. I don’t think that’s too picky.
So hey, better late than never. Keep an eye out for the latest Nvidia drivers if you have a 50-series card and don’t already have a vBIOS fix installed
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Kurt Indovina
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