Serious issues with a 5080, asking for advice

[Markbros]

Hi,

I'm sharing my experience with a MSI RTX 5080 Gaming Trio OC that I bought on the date of the official release. I'm seriously thinking on returning it to the retailer now that I still can for a few more days. I want to ask for advice to this community, and to see if you recommend me to do any more test before taking the final decision.

First of all, my basic pc specs:

• CPU Intel Core i5 13700KF
• Mobo ASUS Prime Z790-P
• Memory 2x16 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000 Mhz
• Monitor LG OLED 32GS95UE-B 2160p@240Hz
• PSU FSP Hydro GT Pro 80 Plus Gold 1000W ATX 3.0 PCIE 5.0

Second, It's important to know that I come from a RTX 4080 that was flawlessly working and never had similar issues like the ones I'll describe.

Third, I'm using the 12V-2x6 original power cable from MSI, which is compatible with my PSU.

Forth, the following happens without doing any OC, to obviously discard this from the equation.

The problems begun the first day after connecting the gpu for first time and testing the first game (KCD2) at 4k@240Hz. Seconds after have started playing, I suddendly suffered a terrible image stuttering, screen blinking, followed few seconds after by a total loss of video signal, having to reboot the computer to get it back to normal.

After few research, I realized that I was using a 1.4 certified DP cable, while the RTX 5000 series is now equipped with the 2.1 version. The 1.4 theoretically only arrives to 4K@120Hz (strange I thought, because that cable was working fine with my former 4080 at 4k@240Hz). Ok, let's buy a 2.1 one then. I did it and the day after, when it arrived I tested KCD2 again and f@ck... the same issues again.

I mentioned KCD2 as example but I tested many games. I'm using a fresh Windows 11 installation. I reinstalled the drivers several times (using DDU before). I tried whatever possible configuration under the Nvidia app settings.

The only thing that works is either to decrease the resolution or the frequency of the display output:

With the DP cable, at 4k I have to set the freq to 95Hz to avoid having issues, and the same at 2k. At 1080p, I have no issues at all regardless the frequency. Another anmoying issue happening with the DP cable is that at 240Hz I get no sound from the DP output, no matter the resolution. If I set 2K or lower resolution then the sound gets back if I'm below 144Hz.

With the HDMI cable, the situation is a bit better since I always get sound through that output, but the video issues are also always happening with 4K and 120Hz or above, and with 2K at 144Hz or above. No video issues again at 1080p.

I tried decreasing the PCIe x16 version in the BIOS, as I see it's being recommended by some users experiencing similar issues with these cards. In my case, it made no difference (I tried 4.0 and 3.0).

It seems to me that the problem is somehow related to the bandwidth of the display outputs, since the GPU can work at 1080p and 100% load at very high fps for hours and it won't crash.

I'm quite desperate so any suggestion you may have is welcome. At this point I see no other option than returning the card, which is quite disppointing after having had the luck to find one on the launch.

Do you think it could be a faulty unit? I didn't see anyone else on this forum suffering from the same.
PS: Can the use of the 3x PCIe 8-pin power adapter make any difference?

 

[Markbros]

Just send it back and, if you still have the 4080, just keep using that.

Not sure why you felt the need to "upgrade" from a 4080 to a 5080 in the first place, unless you specifically wanted MFG?

I sold the 4080 for a quite decent price just before the date the 5000 series was presented. My decision to move to the 5080 was for taking advantage of the MFG on my 240Hz monitor.

 

[Markbros]

Have you still got your 4080 to test?

Honestly sounds like you’ve done a fair bit of troubleshooting so don’t hesitate to get it returned or warrantied asap. It’s a premium bit if kit and should be flawless.

No, I don't have it anymore, I sold to in order to partially finance the 5080.

 

[Markbros]

There are very few of these. Did you check that it was certified? The longest certified cables are only 2m long.

I use a 1m lenght one, no need for more. About its certification... is not that a cable comes with a certification card expedited by Vesa.. they just put it on the advertise images and is also printed in the cable itself. At least it's german and not chinese.

 

[Markbros]

In which case it’s probably not a true 2.1 DP80 cable. It can be 2.1 without being DP80.

Definitely check its a certified cable or you are likely to run into DSC issues.

https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0CYQ7XLJB

The cable is made by KabelDirekt (I didn't know them but according to Amazon is a "top brand" with 96% of positive reviews)
The product advertises UBHR(DP80) as one of the main features.
The 19 user overall ratings average 5.0 stars.
Again, is a German brand (I would be much more doubtful if they were Chinese, for instance).
So... aparently nothing wrong or suspicious about it.

 

[Markbros]

Updated motherboard bios..?

Could also be the motherboard in general
I had an Asus Prime Z790 board at first and had no end of problems. Swapped it out for the Gigabyte I have now and all problems went away.

The Asus board kept trying to run demanding apps and games on the E-cores, wouldn't run my memory at XMP settings, would get black screens out of nowhere and would often just freeze for no reason.
Tried everything I could before replacing the board. But all problems just vanished and I wish I had done it sooner

The BIOS is updated the latest version available from Asus from the 4th of Nov. last year. No other BIOS released after, I already checked it.
I haven't had issues so far with this motherboard, and as I was commenting, the system was flawlessly working with my former 4080 at 4k@240Hz.

 

[Markbros]

Nvidia is investigating RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 instability issues

Some stopgap solutions exist while we wait for Nvidia's official fix.

www.tomshardware.com

This article made me take the thing a little bit easier, since it says these issues are acknowledged by Nvidia, are affecting to more users than I thought, so it seems there are big chances that they are gonna be fixed in future drivers.

Btw: I'm trying what the article suggested, DDU + fresh driver install after downgrading the PCIe bus to 4.0.

So far and through HDMI, the problem seems to have been mitigated quite a lot and during a game session I only got a random microstuttering in part of the screen but not very recurrent (btw I call it "stuttering" but it's hard to describe, it's like when you move a digital cable which connector is not perfectly doing contact with the display output and you get some horizontal artifacts in the screen without affecting the fps).

I still have to run more tests to correctly assess this workaround.

 

[Markbros]

Why would you want to swap out a 4080 for a 5080 makes no sense

It makes sense if you have a 4k@240Hz monitor and you want to max out its performance. Once you see that with games like Cyberpunk and MFG in action, you realize that you are playing another league.
In any case that deviates the focus from the main topic, which is the video output issue. I didn't expect that when I thought on the GPU replacement.

 

[Markbros]

Sorry to disappoint you but if you look in the details it's Chinese:



The best DisplayPort cable KabelDirekt offer is DP 2.0 UHBR10.

F@ck, you are right... and the ******** put German flags everywhere. At least I hope it's a German design, the little documentation coming in the package is in German and the contact information points there too. Things of the globalization I guess, these days you can also buy a pretended American Tesla that could be 100% made in China (lucky me, mine was made in Berlin xDD).

BTW the cable you posted is DP 2.0 and supports 4k@144Hz only. I guess that if the same brand advertises another cable featuring 4k@240Hz, it should reallly support a higher bandwidth.

 

[Markbros]

Sounds like cable issues to me

Make sure with the LG OLED 32GS95UE-B you are using a good HDMI 2.1 cable (Fibre one)

Don’t use DP.

Also check the monitor to set to use DSC with HDMI.

Settings > General > Input Compatibility Version is set to 2.1(PC)

Thanks, you seem to know what you are talking about, regarding this monitor.

The Compatibility Version was already set to 2.1(PC) on HDMI, and is set by default to 1.4(DSC) on the DP.


This is the cable I was using:
https://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B08CRN8357
It's HDMI 2.1, has a bandwidth of 48 Gbps, and is apparently compatible with 4k@120Hz. Maybe I'm forcing it too much at 4k@240Hz, but then why the hell was it working fine with my old 4080??

The series RTX 5000 specifies the HDMI output in the version 2.1a. All the cables I found on Amazon in this version 2.1a claim to support 4k@120Hz only, and have the same 48 Gbps bandwidth (I actually can't find any other HDMI cable on Amazon with a higher bandwidth). I found others simply 2.1 that claim to support 4k@240Hz and seem to have a checkable certification from HDMI.org. Check this one:
https://www.amazon.es/Ubluker-Certificado-Oficialmente-10k60Hz-4k144Hz/dp/B08TGBLLXY

Do you think it worth giving it a try? Or do you think it's better to try one 2.1a even if they don't claim to be compatible with 4k@240Hz?

 

[Markbros]

I'll give it a try. It arrives today, so I'll test it and will let you know if it makes a difference.
Thanks again for the advice!