Graphics cards based on the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and 5090D appear to be dying, according to user reports from across the web, particularly in China. The problems appear to be the result of a recently released driver and the cards’ use of the PCIe 5.0 bus, with users no longer able to use their graphics cards.
We praised the performance of the new GPU in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review, but criticized the high price. The MSRP for Nvidia Founders Edition cards is already a massive $1,999, with some manufacturers’ cards based on the new GPU clocking in at $3,000 or more.
With such an expensive PC part in people’s machines, it’s no wonder those affected by the issue started lighting up forum threads. A driver that was released last Thursday also appears to be a problem, with users claiming that their cards simply show a black screen when the driver is updated, or in some cases, the cards can’t be detected any more.
A user on the Asus Reddit forum (subreddit) is one example. The user’s rig, which is based on an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, reportedly can’t detect the RTX 5090 in Windows any more, and even Asus’ BIOS on the motherboard doesn’t show the card, but all the fans and lights are on.
On Baidu, a Chinese forum, one user urges potential buyers to stay away from the first batch of 5090D and 5090 GPUs. The D model is specific to China to skirt around US blocks on exporting the card to the country. The user claims that, after updating the driver, the screen now shows nothing.
A user on another Chinese forum, Chiphell, also claims that their RTX 5090D is running into the same issues. So far it’s been identified that cards from Nvidia, Colorful, Gigabyte, and Manli appear to be affected by this driver bug, but one fix is apparently to force the slot on the motherboard to use PCIe 4.0 rather than PCIe 5.0, although the aforementioned user on the Asus Reddit forums says this didn’t work on their machine.
However, one report from Goofish – sourced by Wccftech – another Chinese social media site, claims that a batch of 5090s might have a “burned core.” Nvidia’s release of its first RTX 5000 cards has been labeled a “paper launch” by several people, with some online saying that the company should have delayed the GPUs. Stock is tight, and now it seems there could be potential hardware issues too. We’ve reached out to Nvidia for comment on the situation.
While RTX 5090 stock might be hard to find right now, we’ve yet to see where the rest of the RTX 5000 series will land. So far, there have been thankfully no reports about hardware issues with the RTX 5080, which is currently the best graphics card under $1,000 on our buying guide.
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