Blank screen randomly when gaming? (Nvidia)

[paradigm]

So in the last few months I’ve been having an infuriating issue with my PC (Spec: Xeon E5-1620 v3 | X99-SOC FORCE | 32GB DDR4 | GTX 1070 | 960 EVO M2 Polaris NVME) whereby when gaming (most of my Steam catalog seems to exhibit the same behaviour, not just a single game or even game engine) both my displays will go blank, but typically different pastel colours (can be pink, purple, blue, green, etc) on each screen, so for example one screen goes off white and one goes green. During this time, audio typically continues, and sometimes (though not often) the machine recovers with the Windows popup about recovering from a display/graphics failure. More often than not though I’ll need to reboot.

This can be anywhere from 5 minutes into a game, up to hours in, with seemingly no pattern that I can discern. It does appear to be more frequent if I switch back from the game to Windows (alt tab etc), but again, not always.

Interestingly when VR gaming (HTC Vive) I’m yet to experience the problem.

I’ve tried cleaning out the drivers and reinstalling fresh, I’ve tried updating from 1809 to 1903 and then to 1909, I’ve also tried closing literally anything unneeded before gaming, no difference.

The machine is custom watercooled, and the GPU temp has never exceeded 55c. For clarity, the machine ran for over a year on this loop without issue.

Any ideas on what to check next?

 

[scubes]

did you update your geforce drivers sometimes i get black screens after a driver update .

 

[paradigm]

I’ve tried many versions between mid 2018 releases (that used to work for me) and the most recent release.

Historically I’d updated every time GeForce experience told me to, but as I don’t always game on this machine (it’s also where I work from home when I do), I can’t remember/narrow down to a particular update that introduced the problem.

 

[sewerino26]

Hey paradigm. I am very pleased to this forum. All peoples always helped me here when i had problem. So i will try help now to someone here.
I think your card is just not stable. If its not overclocked just try to RMA if you can. Also revert to stock all bios settings uefi.

 

[paradigm]

No overclock on GPU or System itself, well outside of RMA window (I’d assume at least as it was bought in Summer 2016), and with the waterblock installed I’ve likely forfeited any implied warranty anyway.

I’ve just updated the card’s BIOS to the latest available, and am tempted to do the same for the motherboard.

I’m wondering if it’s plausibly related to the PSU, as I’ve been watching the rails in hwinfo and the 12v rail has dipped to 11.9v during gaming.

 

[paradigm]

Decided I had nothing to lose, so hunted down the latest BIOS for my MSI card and gave it a flash.

Not crashed since.

 

[b00merang69]

From another thread I posted in.

"NVIDIA "Maxwell" and "Pascal" graphics architectures introduced support for modern display connectivity to keep up with the breakneck pace at which display resolutions are scaling up. The two introduce support for DisplayPort 1.4 and 1.3, however the implementation is less than perfect. Some of the newer monitors that leverage DisplayPort 1.4 or 1.3 standards don't function as designed on "Maxwell" (GeForce GTX 900 series) and "Pascal" (GeForce 10-series) graphics cards, with users reporting a range of bugs from blank screens until the operating system loads, to frozen boot sequences.

Unfortunately, these issues cannot be fixed by driver updates, and require graphics card BIOS updates. Luckily, you won't be at the mercy of lethargic AIC partners looking to limit their warranty claims by going slow on BIOS updates, or NVFlash rocket-science. NVIDIA released a tool which can detect if your graphics card needs the update, and then updates the BIOS for you, from within Windows. The app first unloads your driver, and flashes your graphics card BIOS (a process which must not be interrupted, lest you end up with an expensive brick)."


https://www.nvidia.com/content/Driv...ter_1.0-x64.exe&firmware=1&lang=us&type=Other


Just to be clear, this does not update your vendors GPU Bios (it will remain MSI's and same Build #), it is a Firmware Update for the DisplayPort black screen issue.

My 1080Ti needed it (I never had the issue AFAIK) but Titan Xp already had it.