Thursday, March 28th 2024
PGL Investigating GeForce RTX 4080 GPU Driver Crash, Following Esports Event Disruption
The Professional Gamers League (PGL) showcased its newly upgraded tournament rig specification prior to the kick-off of their (still ongoing) CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 esports event. As reported, over a week ago, competitors have been treated to modern systems decked out with AMD's popular gaming-oriented Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards, while BenQ's ZOWIE XL2566K 24.5" 360 Hz gaming monitor delivers a superfast visual feed. A hefty chunk of change has been spent on new hardware, but expensive cutting-edge tech can falter. Virtus.pro team member—Jame—experienced a major software crash during a match against rival group, G2.
PCGamesN noted that this frustrating incident ended the affected team's chance to grab a substantial cash reward. Their report put a spotlight on this unfortunate moment: "in the second round of a best of three, Virtus Pro were a few rounds away from qualifying for the playoffs, only for their aspirations to be squashed through no fault of their own...Jame experiences a graphics card driver crash that irrecoverably steers the round in G2's favor, culminating in Virtus Pro losing the match 11-13. Virtus Pro would then go on to lose the subsequent tie-break match as the round was not replayed. In effect, the graphics card driver crash partly cost the team their chance at winning an eventual $1.25 million prize pool." PGL revealed, via a social media post, that officials are doing some detective work: "we wish to clarify the situation involving Jame during the second map, Inferno, in the series against G2. A technical malfunction occurred due to an NVIDIA driver crash, resulting in a game crash. We are continuing our investigation into the matter." The new tournament rigs were "meticulously optimized" and tested in the weeks leading up to CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024—it is believed that the driver crash was a random anomaly. PGL and NVIDIA are currently working on a way to "identify and fix the issue."
HLTVorg conducted a post-match interview with Jame (Virtus Pro):
Sources:
PCGamesN, Wccftech, PGL Tweet
PCGamesN noted that this frustrating incident ended the affected team's chance to grab a substantial cash reward. Their report put a spotlight on this unfortunate moment: "in the second round of a best of three, Virtus Pro were a few rounds away from qualifying for the playoffs, only for their aspirations to be squashed through no fault of their own...Jame experiences a graphics card driver crash that irrecoverably steers the round in G2's favor, culminating in Virtus Pro losing the match 11-13. Virtus Pro would then go on to lose the subsequent tie-break match as the round was not replayed. In effect, the graphics card driver crash partly cost the team their chance at winning an eventual $1.25 million prize pool." PGL revealed, via a social media post, that officials are doing some detective work: "we wish to clarify the situation involving Jame during the second map, Inferno, in the series against G2. A technical malfunction occurred due to an NVIDIA driver crash, resulting in a game crash. We are continuing our investigation into the matter." The new tournament rigs were "meticulously optimized" and tested in the weeks leading up to CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024—it is believed that the driver crash was a random anomaly. PGL and NVIDIA are currently working on a way to "identify and fix the issue."
39 Comments on PGL Investigating GeForce RTX 4080 GPU Driver Crash, Following Esports Event Disruption
It sucks it might have cost them the win but shit happens, it's consumer hardware what were they expecting!?
But no, the selection of hardware is just another ad space.
But when money (potential) is involved..............stuff gets real!! ;)
Sounds fairly far fetched compared to other risks.
But what they could do is at least run the games on Linux (for the games which supports it), which is a much more stable OS than Windows, not to mention Nvidia's Linux driver is in all seriousness even more solid than their Windows counterpart. :cool:
But the chances of ECC preventing crashes like this in this time frame is very unlikely.
There are much that could be hardened on the software side though, including drivers, the OS and how drivers work in Windows, and of course the games themselves (speaking generally, not this case specifically).
Of course a computer can crash for many and any number of reasons, but if they're doing a live event with money involved they should be using enterprise workstation gear, not consumer grade gaming stuff. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
It would be different if the article were phrased in a way to excuse Nvidia, but it isn't, in fact it only focuses on the possibility of the driver being responsible. So again, no hypocrisy.
There are three factors that could make the driver crash; the driver, the hardware or the OS. And this holds true for all GPU vendors. Notice I'm not listing the game, as a driver should handle a "misbehaving" application, so if a driver crashes due to a game bug, it's still a driver bug.
And I also still think this isn't newsworthy regardless, a PC crashed randomly during gaming, wow!
(If it happened during a special presentation, it would have been a little funny though.)
But that's the thing, when there's money involved the stakes are much higher
The way consumer hardware and software is designed, bugs are an annoyance, not a mission critical event.