Unique 3080 ti problem?

[Samhawkes86]

Hi

So I’ve been building rigs for years. I recently upgraded my 3070 to a palit 3080 ti and have a unique problem. The drivers won’t install.

So I always like to do a fresh install with a new gpu, using ddu to remove previous drivers, and this new palit 3080 ti just hangs and errors when attempting to install drivers.

I’ve tried everything, making sure windows is up to date, doing it as an admin, disabling windows live protection, safe mode, using device manager, tried installing drivers with the 3080 ti across 4 different systems, everything.

When I put the 3070 back in the drivers install perfectly fine, and the weird thing is when I put the 3080 ti back into the machine after using the 3070 to install the drivers, the card appears to function fine. If I uninstall drivers and attempt to do it install them again with the 3080 ti installed they just didn’t install, again trying everything including trying it on 4 different rigs.

Ive had bad gpus before this the first time this has happened.

Just wondering if anyone else has had a bad gpu relating to a software problem with the card instead of a hardware problem?

 

[Samhawkes86]

Yeh really strange. I’ve sent it back for rma now, just really odd problem with it. I think it’s also some sort of bios problem and reflashing it would probably fix the card but obviously I’m not guna risk it. But yh odd

 

[Samhawkes86]

Then reinstall the latest nvidia driver again. Then benchmark test it

Never used DDU for years not necessary. Dont like to trust a 3rd party app to clean up drivers.

Yeh I did that and it appears to run fine. But, just incase, I’ve done rma. Obviously it just doesn’t detect the drivers

 

[Samhawkes86]

Have you tried the drivers from Palit website ? I had the same with Gainward many years ago... only drivers from their website worked for me, when official Nvidia ones couldn't detect GPU...

One thing I didn’t try to be fair, although the driver on the website was the same version as the latest nvidia driver at the time

 

[Samhawkes86]

thing is they will blame Windows. Did you tick the clean installation option when you reinstalled though ?

That’s my worry. I did spell it out to them the problem and to test in a machine that doesn’t have the drivers already installed, then attempt to install them to duplicate the problem.

yh tried clean install, tried everything, it just won’t detect the card and install no matter what I do. Like I said, I take it out and chick my 3070 in, it detects and installs drivers straight away.

even tried on 4 other machines, 3080 ti just doesn’t detect and won’t install drivers. Really weird. Must be a bios problem or some other software issue with the card

 

[Samhawkes86]

Is it detected in Device manager?

No doesn’t show up. It only shows up after I’ve used my 3070 to install the drivers. Without the drivers installed the 3080 ti doesn’t show up in device manager or anywhere

 

[Samhawkes86]

Should show up there regardless as a generic display device. I'm wondering if it could be something as trivial as a dirty pcie, have you had a look at the pins to make sure its all good? If its not that then i'm gonna pin it to being a dodgy bios.

Have a look around the card to see if there's any missing capacitors etc as well but without taking it apart you can't really do a thorough inspection so RMA is probably your best bet unless you want to try a bios flash.

Is it a Gamingpro card?

Yh I had a look around the card. It was a brand new card so pristine, no dust, then pcie on it looked good, all the pins there. Yeh was a gaming pro.

annoying as back in the day I once brought a palit card and one of the fan blades broke off by itself. I told myself I’m never buying a palit again. So years later with the gaming pro the only 3080 ti I could pick up I thought I’d give them another go, big mistake.

I’ve been building rigs for years. I’ve had 2 gpus mess up, both plaits. Never had a dodger msi, gigabyte or asus one before.

has to be some dodgey bios or something

 

[Samhawkes86]

Just had a look on Palits website for a Bios file with the installer together but there isn't one. Only for the 3090 which i can see right now.

Oddly ive had a few palit cards and they've always been solid haha, pot luck i guess. My current 3090 is a palit too on the day 1 bios still.

If you're up for it i would chance a bios flash via techpowerups collection as im sure they have it there in the archives. Just not sure if sending it for RMA they would be able to replicate it unless they followed your instructions, you know what testing can be like to find faults. Too quick to blame something else and you end up getting the card back unfixed.

Yh I’ve had a look and the bios is on tech power ups, same as what’s installed on the card. If I get the card back and they try arguing the toss with my then I might try and flash the bios to see if that helps.

thing is I know I can use the card by using my 3070 to install drivers, but I can’t help have that niggling thought In my head of what if not getting all the performance expected of a 3080 ti, what if I’m getting 5% less performance or something, something that wouldn’t be too obvious. S hopefully they just replace it for me. It’s within the 30 days so we’ll see

 

[Samhawkes86]

Delete the competitor name before mods see it, its not allowed on here. Saves you getting suspended mate.

They can be abit of a pain in the arse, i've had some rough dealings with them. Good idea though, if they do argue you can just flash the bios, there's no loss to you either way i suppose provided the flash fixes the issue.

Oh whoops didn’t realise that was a problem. I’ll remove it

 

[Samhawkes86]

Another thing to check is if your PCIE connection is good, some riser cables can ruin your day (try without one).
Have a look in CPU-Z and check you are getting Gen3/4 @ x16 speed. I've seen dodgy connections causing it to fall back to x4 speed and causing weirdness.

I don’t use a riser cable. I checked gpuz, shows as gen 4 x16 as expected once it’s in a system that has nvidia drivers already installed

 

[Samhawkes86]

Ah didn't realise you was using a riser, there was no mention of it?

I’m not mate, not sure where that’s come from

 

[Samhawkes86]

Just ruling it out.

Arh ok cool