Question Display Driver Crash On ZOTAC RTX 3080?

Dec 30, 2020
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I recently got a new ZOTAC RTX3080 TRINITY OC for my build and it's been a pretty awesome, save for one recurring issue.

Whenever I watch a video on one screen (I have 2 monitors), my display drivers crash randomly.
At least I think that's what's happenning. Both my screens go black and I can still hear the video, but my mouse clicks and keystrokes don't register, and after about slightly under a minute or so, my display comes back. More often than not my video would be gone or paused.
This happens on Youtube, Netflix, VLC.. anything that plays video. On youtube it comes back a blank paused video, on VLC the video turns completely white and I have to restart it.

I tried reinstalling my graphocs card drivers multiple times with DDU, and also updated my card's firmware with ZOTAC's Firestorm. Which is also what Zotac's support suggested I do before they just told me to RMA the card.
However, I don't have high confidence that, in today's market, if I RMA the card I'd get one back anytime soon..

I'd like to make sure this is a problem with the GPU.. Because it's been holding up really well while gaming and benchmarking.

Here's the rest of my build:
CORSAIR 750w gold PSU
ROG STRIX z490-F ATX Motherboard
i10700K CPU
16GB CORSAIR RAM
 
Jan 25, 2021
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I have the same problem, only I have the 3070 FE. Have you found a solution yet? By any chance, do you have 3rd party PSU extension cables to your GPU (rather than the included 12 pin micro-fit adapter)? I noticed mine happening only after I installed the 3rd party extension cables, although I didn't use the included adapter for too long.

I read a related fix on another forum, which was to use High Performance energy settings on Windows. I'm not sure if that will fix it, but you can try that. I myself am on Balanced settings, and just installed the latest VLC update and the latest Nvidia drivers. So, I'm waiting for it to happen again, then I'll switch to High Performance to see if that fixes it for me.

Edit: I re-read the forum and they actually suggested to choose High Performance on the Nvidia Control Panel, not Windows. I'm trying that to see if it fixes it.
 
Last edited:
Dec 30, 2020
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Yeah I posted this in the Nvidia forum and I set my card to run in performance mode in the NVIDIA control panel, and set it in the firefox app settings too to be sure.
This actually worked for me. I haven't crashed in over a week.

This is my other thread:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/427385/display-driver-crash-on-zotac-rtx-3080-when-playin/?topicPage=7/

Hopefully this gets fixed in future driver updates since this feels like a workaround to the actual problem.
 

Dijky

Prominent
Dec 6, 2019
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I think I have the same problem with VLC in full screen playback right now. Sometimes all screens go black, the sound keeps playing, and when the displays come back after a few seconds the VLC full screen is transparent (seeing W10 task bar and background image) until I exit full screen and get the normal VLC screen with a white video until I restart playback.

When it happens, all screens go black (one via HDMI directly, one via HDMI through a matrix, one via DP). I believe which display VLC is on doesn't make a difference.
For now, it's only happening with VLC, about once every few hours of playback or so.

I'll update VLC to 3.0.12 and the driver to 461.40 later.
I'd rather not return the card if it's a software (driver) issue because I'm otherwise really happy that I got it recently.

System:
RTX 3070 (Gigabyte EAGLE OC)
Ryzen 7 2700X with X470 board
be quiet! Straight Power 10-CM 800W
Geforce GameReady Driver 461.09 WHQL
Windows 10 Pro Build 19041
VLC 3.0.11 Vetinari
 

ahmadmob

Reputable
Jul 4, 2018
8
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I am shocked this hasn't been fixed yet. I just got the same issue with a 3090 while watching a 4K movie in MPC HC. The video crashed and the whole PC restarted by itself to write the memory dump (silent BSOD 0x0133). Sometimes it's just a black screen and then comes back with a paused distorted video like mentioned in this topic. I have been having this issue since OCT 2020 when I first got my 3090, the issue happens only with video playback (MPC HC, VLC, youtube etc..) and games are perfectly fine.

I have been following this EVGA forums thread since the beginning: https://forums.evga.com/RTX-30803090-Black-screen-possible-solution-m3137072.aspx
and so far it's all guesses, the only way this can be fixed is if nvidia cared a bit more about their broken drivers.