For the past month, owners of GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards have had to contend with black screens spoiling the splendour of their new graphics card. Thankfully, following Nvidia’s investigation into the issue, the company has identified a fix that requires a VBIOS update.
Some manufacturers, like MSI, are already publishing new VBIOS for users to download. In response to this new version resolving black screen issues for one owner of a GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio, an Nvidia representative confirmed that it does indeed contain a fix for the issue. Better still, Team Green is conveniently deploying the patch as part of an upcoming driver update.
Club386 experienced black screens while testing GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 Founders Edition for review. Switching to PCIe Gen 4 kept the issue at bay, while others found more luck shifting down to a 60Hz refresh rate. This isn’t the experience you expect from $1,000+ graphics cards and I’m glad to see an official fix is on the way.
In addition to addressing black screen issues, the Nvidia representative has also confirmed the driver will contain other fixes, meaning VRR should work correctly on Linux among other improvements. Some issues remain, such as stuttering in VR games with GeForce RTX 5080, but they are at least on the company’s radar.
This should be one less headache for Nvidia and consumers to endure prior to the launch of GeForce RTX 5070 on March 5. Fingers crossed the midrange card doesn’t suffer the same fate as its siblings, with missing ROPs or melting cables. Even overcoming prior stock shortages would be a welcome improvement over prior launches.
The team will be keeping watch to see if the driver update does indeed rid GeForce RTX 50 Series of these dreaded black screens. You can also expect a review for Nvidia’s upcoming pixel pusher in the coming weeks so keep an eye out.
