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Nvidia 3090 artifacting

Nosveratau

Nosveratau

Nosveratau

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Joined
23 Sep 2025
Posts
8
Location
UK
Hi All

I have been running Windows 10 on my PC fine since I got it 3 years ago, my GPU is an Nvidia 3090, however I run out of space on my PC and decided to do a clean up and reinstalled my OS with Windows 11, everything was fine until I had to install the latest Nvidia drivers for a game from the default Windows 11 drivers, since then I can barely use the PC, for no reason my screen flashes purple, green square artifacts and after a few minutes hangs the PC as I can still here sound from the PC, this happens playing a game, on the internet, even logging into windows or doing nothing. I also dual boot this PC into Ubuntu which does not have any issues whatsoever, so I thought instead of Windows 11 I would use a gaming friendly Linux Distro (Bazzite), however Bazzite also suffers from the same issues with artifacts and crashing the PC. I have no idea what is going on, looking for advice.

Cheers

Nos
 
Grim5 said:
overheating memory
Click to expand...
that literally was my first thought only reason i mentioned drivers is because they said it was ok until they installed drivers but yeah memory issues is what usually causes the artifacting from my previous vague searching and reading
 
Hi All

Thanks for the replys.

I will try an older driver see how that goes, the card has never artifacted in the BIOS, Windows Safe Mode or Ubuntu, I can be literally logging into Windows 11 or Bazzite and it artifacts, but using Ubuntu for 8 hours straight has no issues and I am using that for GPU rendering in Blender. When I say clean out I just mean OS wise, drive wipe and reinstall.

Cheers

Nos
 
Nosveratau said:
I will try an older driver see how that goes, the card has never artifacted in the BIOS, Windows Safe Mode or Ubuntu, I can be literally logging into Windows 11 or Bazzite and it artifacts, but using Ubuntu for 8 hours straight has no issues and I am using that for GPU rendering in Blender. When I say clean out I just mean OS wise, drive wipe and reinstall.
Click to expand...
What monitor are you using? It is possible you have something turned on that is causing problems with Windows/Bazzite and not Ubuntu, because Ubuntu's driver does not support it.
 
@Tetras I use a 4k Projector for a monitor, however everything was fine in Windows 11 until I updated the graphics drivers. I have reverted back to the suggested driver above and it has made a massive difference however its still artifacts occasionally, I think it did 3 times in 4 hours, however thats better than 30 times. It must be a driver issue as Ubuntu is fine, however I will also strip the card down and replace the thermal pads and check the cooling.
 
Hi all, quick update, still getting the artifacts, however I have worked something out Ubuntu is using the Nouveau drivers, while Windows 11 and Bazzite are using the nvidia drivers, looks like any official nvidia drivers are causing my graphics card to artifact which is now driving me insane.
 
thats why my initial first comment was to try an older driver
this isnt my area of knowledge [by several country miles lol] but ive read that basically 2025 has become the year of nvidia drivers becoming the latest subject of internet humour
ie a lot of people grumbling that they are well not so great as they usually are
i think its pre 50 series release that work but really not my area at all
fingers crossed you get to the bottom of this it must be incredibly frustrating to say the least
 
Hi All

Another update, so I stripped down the card and replaced all the thermal pads and grease and reapplied everything, all the pads were actually still in good shape, but I replaced them anyway, I also put a heatsink on the backplane. However doing all this made no difference whatsoever.

I did discover something weird, when I finally got into the system without it artifacting, I tried to do some basic things but it artifacts, tried various games and it did the same, however when I loaded up GuildWars 1 the system became stable, closed it tried other things artifacts came back, loaded up GW1 again everything was stable, as long as I run GW1 in the background I can use the PC as normal even play games that were causing artifacts albeit at lower fps, this works on the newest drivers and the older ones, I have no idea whats going on, I can only assume that there is something that the drivers are doing to the graphic card but being that GW1 is so old the card is doing some form of throttling to accommodate the game. Its weird and frustrating, NVIDIA support are no help whatsoever and Zotac (GPU Manufacturer) are slow to reply.

Cheers

Nos
 
While running GuildWars1, did you monitor the memory clocks? And the core clocks too.

This all mostly sounds like a hardware problem. The software problem of Ubuntu vs Bazzite might be that they use different drivers however even that might be that the drivers run different clocks. Still that Blender in Ubuntu is stable suggest that either the Ubuntu drivers are stable, of Blender + Unbutu runs something at lower clocks.

If the card's default memory clock is 1219MHz (3090 default) but that causes artifacts but at a lower memory clock it does not then the card may still be usable - at least for some time.

I guess if card is unstable at 1219MHz but stable at 1200MHz I'd call it a day. If it is only stable at 800MHz or something low like than then you now have a far slower card :(

Unsure how slow or not a 3090 with 2/3 memory speed would be. Probably load dependent. It would still be the full 24GB though!
 
@KompuKare I didnt monitor anything, will try tonight after work. If its a hardware problem, could the newest drivers cause the issue or something in the newest drivers just exposed the issue, as I say everything was fine until I installed the latest NVIDIA drivers then everything went to pot.

Ubuntu doesn't use the nvidia drivers it uses the Nouveau drivers which could potentially underclock the GPU as they are old drivers I beleive
 
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