A lot of owners of the RTX 40 and RTX 50 series GPUs have been reporting black screen issues while playing games. And, under certain conditions, the NVIDIA RTX 20 and the RTX 30 series GPUs also suffer from black screen issues.

You see, right now I’m benchmarking four upcoming PC games. Everything was working fine on the RTX 40 and RTX 50 series GPUs I own. However, things got really weird when I installed the NVIDIA RTX 3080. While benchmarking Assassin’s Creed Shadows, I got a black screen. The GPU fan speed suddenly went to 100% and the monitor lost its signal. The only solution to this was to do a hard restart/reset. Otherwise, I could not get back to Windows.

Before continuing, here are the specs of our PC system. I’m listing them because things may be different on other operating systems, like Linux or Windows 11.

• AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
• Corsair CPU Cooler H170i iCUE Elite
• G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 32GB DDR5 RAM at 6000Mhz
• Corsair PSU HX Series 1200W
• Corsair 7000X iCUE RGB TG Full Tower
• Gigabyte Motherboard X670E AORUS MASTER
• Windows 10 64-bit

So, what was going on and why were we having those black screen issues? Well, you see, I completely forgot to re-install the NVIDIA drivers when I installed the RTX 3080. For those unaware, both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs can work fine with the drivers you have already installed on your system. However, there might be some glitches or issues if you don’t remove and re-install your drivers. And that’s precisely what was going on.

I was able to replicate this multiple times. Our PC system was randomly crashing with black screens when running games (without re-installing the drivers). The moment we removed them (via DDU) and re-installed them, all of the games were working the way they were meant to.

Now I know this is not a universal solution. As I said, I was able to replicate this multiple times on the RTX 20 and the RTX 30 series GPUs. The RTX 40 and RTX 50 series GPUs did not suffer from this (they were stable even without re-installing the driver). Still, if you are facing black screens while gaming, I suggest trying this solution.

And I know. It’s a no brainer to remove and re-install your drivers. However, you might get distracted by something and forget to do it. It happens. So, the purpose of this article is to remind you to completely remove and re-install your drivers. It’s NOT a universal solution. However, it does work on the RTX 20 and RTX 30 series GPUs.

Before closing, I also suggest monitoring your GPU temperature. If your GPU hits above 90 degrees Celsius, it might be crashing due to overheating issues. Even if you don’t see such high temps, you can try this. Launch MSI Afterburner, limit Power Limit to 85%, and set your fan speed to 100%. By doing this, you should stay below your GPU’s max temp. If you are not crashing after these tweaks, you most likely have GPU temperature issues.

From what we know, NVIDIA is actively working on identifying and fixing the black screen issues that players have reported. A few days ago, the green team released a new Hotfix driver. So, make also sure to try it.

Stay tuned for more!