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My many problems with a Gigabyte RTX 3090 Gaming OC (long read).

Associate
Joined
2 May 2015
Posts
182
Location
Oxford
Hi guys!


I thought I would be writing about this to see if you have suggestions for me, because I am a bit desperate at the moment :).


I currently have a Threadripper 3960X in a TRX40 Arous Xtreme. The PSU is a Corsair AX1600i and the computer has two GPUs: a Gigabyte RTX 3090 Gaming OC and a Gigabyte Eagle 3070 OC. Before the 3000 series I used to have a 2080Ti and a 980Ti that worked flawlessly. My PSU was an old Seasonic X-1250, since the Corsair was installed just a few weeks ago.


The computer is used to run simulations (that require it to be under heavy load 24/7 for quite a few days), gaming when I finish work (working from home at the moment) and I also use it to develop my own games in Game Maker. All in all, it is working most of the time. The operating system is Windows 10 Pro and I have 3 screens: one is 4K, connected to the 3090, and the other two are 2K and normal HD, connected to the 3070.


I received the cards at the same time, the 10th of November. I installed both and they were running fine for around 15 days. Then, I started to notice that when the 3090 was under heavy load I could hear sound artifacts when using the motherboard audio out (crippling sound) and from time to time some USB devices (a hard drive in particular) were disconnecting. It started to smell like a power related problem (the Seasonic was already 9 years). Luckily, I had a sound card around, so I installed it, checked that the sound was fine, and I kept working with the machine.


Everything was fine for another 15 days, but suddenly the 3090 started misbehaving every time it was under heavy load: black screen and fans spinning at 100%. This started to become very frequent, with the card lasting no more than a few minutes working at full steam. In the event viewer you could see that these were proper crashes most of the time.


I started checking what was happening in GPU-Z and I found that the 3090 was receiving power mostly only through one of the 8-Pin connectors (150W) but the other one and the PCIe slot were not providing much juice at all. Therefore, I thought: "ah! the card is getting crazy because it is demanding lots of power and is not getting it".


At this point, I re-arranged the cables in my old Seasonic in order to use a single output from the PSU for each of the 8-Pin connector in the cards and I also decided to order the Corsair AX1600i. With the new cable distribution, the computer became stable again and I could see in GPU-Z that the right amount of power was provided all the time.


Three weeks later the Corsair arrived. I installed it and everything was suddenly great, no more crippling sound under heavy load, no USB disconnection, great stability... I was very happy because I was assuming that I had found the problem. Then, two days ago I installed the new Nvidia drivers (461.09) and every time I was trying to execute Game Maker the problem was coming back: black screen, fans at 100%... this was happening 2 seconds after clicking on the icon, with no GPU load at all. I made a post with the details in Nvidia forums, in case you want to have a look ( https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...screen-and-fans-spinning-at-100-with-my-3090/ ) but the long story short is that this failure was very consistent and easy to replicate. I could also see in the Event Viewer that, in this case, after failing the computer was still alive, with the DWM.exe trying to recover the Desktop to no avail time after time. Funnily enough, Game Maker seemed to be the only problematic app, the rest, including games, were fine. Things like this, I decided to roll back to my previous drivers (460.89) and this fixed the problem. The computer has been running a simulation for 24 hours under heavy load and it seems to be completely stable.


So... after all this rant... any idea of what is going on? It seems quite clear to me that the old PSU was struggling, but it is also obvious that even if new one solved many issues, it did not make the computer bullet proof either. I would be tempted to suspect that the GPU is at fault, but the fact that yesterday it crashed under no load in such a reproducible way, and also the fact that rolling back to the previous drivers solved the issue and it has been running a simulation for 24 hours without problems (with 320W of GPU power draw), makes me think that this may be well software related.


In any case, this is starting to get old, I am quite fed up and I don't really know what to do. If GPU availability was normal, I would try to RMA this one, buy another from a different brand and sell the RMAed unit for cheap, just to get rid of it. That is, sadly, not very possible at the moment. Moreover, I am not sure about starting the RMA process because it may well be that they try the GPU for a few days and everything is fine in their hands, or it is a software problem. Gigabyte is also reported to have a dismal RMA service, so I am afraid I would be without my card for a long time (I did not experience it by myself though, so I would like to give them a chance)


What do you think? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long read!


P.D: the 3070 has worked totally fine all this time, by the way.
 
Soldato
Joined
24 Jan 2006
Posts
2,525
Hi,

I notice you seem to have a two x 8pin connectors.
Gigabyte have quietly added a 3rd connector to one of the 3080's, which asks the question, how much different is the 3090 board design given they are both GA102.

https://videocardz.com/newz/gigabyte-adds-a-third-8-pin-power-connector-to-geforce-rtx-3080-master

Saw this first in my youtube feed where someone was having throttling/stability issues with their gigabyte 3080 and stated there was now a Rev 2 with the third connector. Unfortunatly I can't find it now, but did find the VC link above.
 
Associate
OP
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182
Location
Oxford
Clearly the nVidia driver? Rolling back solved the issue it seems.

Thanks! It could be, but I reached this point where I don't trust the GPU anymore, that is why I was explaining the whole situation to you guys in order to hear your opinions :).

Hi,

I notice you seem to have a two x 8pin connectors.
Gigabyte have quietly added a 3rd connector to one of the 3080's, which asks the question, how much different is the 3090 board design given they are both GA102.

https://videocardz.com/newz/gigabyte-adds-a-third-8-pin-power-connector-to-geforce-rtx-3080-master

Saw this first in my youtube feed where someone was having throttling/stability issues with their gigabyte 3080 and stated there was now a Rev 2 with the third connector. Unfortunatly I can't find it now, but did find the VC link above.

Yes, I just have two 8-pin power connectors in this card, but the fact that it was crashing under no load makes me think that power is not the problem this time. I am pretty sure that there was an issue with it in before, though, but since stability issues under heavy load disappeared after installing the new PSU and sound problems went away, I think it it is fine now in that regard.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Dec 2015
Posts
18,514
Gigabyte has one of the best in the uk, partly thanks to UK rep @GIGA-Man , think a lot of mobo and gpu owners on here can vouch for that one. If it wasnt for covid, you could have popped your GPU in personally if you lived close to Milton Keynes

pop open rma request and see how it fares

*** did you remember to register for 4th year warranty as well?
 
Last edited:
Associate
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Mondas
Are you using seperate power cables and not daisy channing them. I would also do the following. Update motherboard bios. Update chipset drivers. Reverting back to good known drivers is a good idea.
 
Associate
OP
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Location
Oxford
Thanks for your answers!

Gigabyte has one of the best in the uk, partly thanks to UK rep @GIGA-Man , think a lot of mobo and gpu owners on here can vouch for that one. If it wasnt for covid, you could have popped your GPU in personally if you lived close to Milton Keynes

pop open rma request and see how it fares

*** did you remember to register for 4th year warranty as well?

That is great :). Yes, I registered for the 4th year warranty, so I am covered in that regard!

Are you using seperate power cables and not daisy channing them. I would also do the following. Update motherboard bios. Update chipset drivers. Reverting back to good known drivers is a good idea.

Yeps, separate power cables. The BIOS is up to date (I will check the chipset drivers) and since I reverted back to the previous Nvidia driver I did not have more problems. It is a bit strange, all this, since the card was able to pass all the stability tests and everything after I went back to the old driver, and it was running totally fine again for weeks after changing the PSU. Maybe it was a driver issue, but I would prefer to have it checked. Another thing I did was to change the Nvidia driver to High Performance mode, since apparently lots of users are having TDR problems due to this.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Dec 2015
Posts
18,514
before covid and under extreme situations (normally poor resellers), gigabyte would take in the core system and test them - so your mobo/gpu/ram/cpu etc but guessing thats most likely stopped just to keep work flow going .

if you do open RMA. point out to this thread in it .
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Feb 2009
Posts
4,320
Looks like a basic driver issue, use the one that works.

As for not having 3 8pin power connectors, you don't really need them, the 3080 that does have them only really needs them with extreme overclocking as overclocking isn't very power efficient.

Given the workload I would assume reliability rather than getting every ounce of performance out of it is most important, so you won't be overclocking.
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Dec 2004
Posts
15,764
The 46X nVidia drivers are hot garbage for me, I nearly slung my PC out the window.....then I rolled back to the most recent 45X version and my PC has been 100% stable.
 
Soldato
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7,070
I think the issue here is the impression that Nvidia drivers could be anything less than perfect so it must be a hardware issue :D I'd much rather it be a driver issue, much easier to resolve.
 
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It maybe worth running the file system checker as corruptions can appear after a crash.

As others have said though, Nvidia do have some dodgy driver releases.
 
Associate
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Thank you so much all! I really really appreciate all your feedback and info :)

I did not have another problem since I rolled back to the previous driver... yesterday, after playing for a couple of hours, I also let Aida64 stressing the whole system overnight and everything was fine. However, it is great to have the RMA contact details and read your suggestions, just in case this happens again. As Sasahara mentioned, performance here is important, but stability and reliability are more important than anything else :).
 
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So... at the end I contacted the RMA service and they were as efficient as you mentioned :). They sent me all the info to return the card and I told them that since it could be a software issue I would be keeping the GPU at the moment but, if it happens again, I will let it with them :).
 
Soldato
Joined
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18,514
So... at the end I contacted the RMA service and they were as efficient as you mentioned :). They sent me all the info to return the card and I told them that since it could be a software issue I would be keeping the GPU at the moment but, if it happens again, I will let it with them :).

Seems hot fix driver update rolled out today
 
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I'll quickly chime in, in that i too rolled back to earlier drivers as I was getting a black screen and USB disconnects with a rift s. Hasn't happened since going back to earlier 45.. Nvidia drivers.
(Also a gigabyte 3090 card)
 
Associate
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I have to start a simulation with this guy today. If it glitches, the amount of profanity in this living room will be difficult to quantify :p Good that I am playing Ion Fury these days and it does not need more than a simple VGA card if you want.
 
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