GeForce RTX 50 Series hotfix driver for black screens and OC cards not running 'at full speed'

Typically, we don't associate driver issues and serious bugs with a GeForce RTX launch; however, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series debut has seen many problems and controversies emerge. For early adopters of the GeForce RTX 5080 and GeForce RTX 5090, one issue that users have flagged is GPU crashes, resulting in a 'black screen.' Without an image, the only course of action is a reboot.

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The good news is that the driver team at NVIDIA has been engaging with users reporting this issue and has released a hotfix driver to resolve it, which made its way into the GeForce RTX 5070's launch-day Game Ready Driver. However, the 'black screen' issue seems challenging to fix as NVIDIA has just released GeForce Hotfix Display Driver Version 572.75 to address the problem - again.

The latest Hotfix Display Driver targets GeForce RTX 50 Series owners and builds on the March 5 release of Game Ready Driver 572.70. Interestingly, it resolves another issue related to the overclocking performance of the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090.

According to the release notes below, there was an issue with them not running "at full speeds" after overclocking the GPUs and rebooting. All NVIDIA GeForce RTX Hotfix drivers are opt-in and treated as beta releases, so they're only recommended for users experiencing the issues outlined in the notes.

GeForce Hotfix Display Driver version 572.75 is based on our latest Game Ready Driver 572.70.

• (GeForce RTX 5080/5090) Graphics cards may not run at full speeds on system reboot when overclocked (5088034)
• (GeForce RTX 50 series) GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs crashes with black screen (5120886)

A GeForce driver is an incredibly complex piece of software, We have an army of software engineers constantly adding features and fixing bugs. These changes are checked into the main driver branches, which are eventually run through a massive QA process and released. Since we have so many changes being checked in, we usually try to align driver releases with significant game or product releases. This process has served us pretty well over the years but it has one significant weakness. Sometimes a change that is important to many users might end up sitting and waiting until we are able to release the driver. The GeForce Hotfix driver is our way to trying to get some of these fixes out to you more quickly. These drivers are basically the same as the previous released version, with a small number of additional targeted fixes. The fixes that make it in are based in part on your feedback in the Driver Feedback threads and partly on how realistic it is for us to quickly address them. These fixes (and many more) will be incorporated into the next official driver release, at which time the Hotfix driver will be taken down. To be sure, these Hotfix drivers are beta, optional and provided as-is. They are run through a much abbreviated QA process. The sole reason they exist is to get fixes out to you more quickly. The safest option is to wait for the next WHQL certified driver. But we know that many of you are willing to try these out. As a result, we only provide NVIDIA Hotfix drivers through our NVIDIA Customer Care support site.