PGL Investigating GeForce RTX 4080 GPU Driver Crash, Following Esports Event Disruption

[T0@st]

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):

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[blacksea76]

Nah, did not happen. Experts around here are saying Nvidia drivers are perfect.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

For the past decade I've had it pounded into my head that Nvidia drivers are infallible...what gives?

 

[Vya Domus]

Does anyone actually unironically believes Nvidia drivers never crash ? Are people that fried ?

 

[dgianstefani]

The new tournament rigs were "meticulously optimized"

Found the problem.

Also odd they went with 7800X3D for a counter strike tournament when the Intel counterparts are about 10% faster for that specific game.

Then again we're talking 750 FPS vs 650 so it's not super important.

 

[Daven]

Another day, another AMD driver crash! That’s why you buy nVidia. Oh wait…

 

[SAINT ENZO]

Ive had nothing but issues trying to get games to launch on my 14900k using stock settings in bios on my MSI MAG z790 mobo. i switched MOBO to a asus rog strix mobo and its a little better but i still have to underclock before i can get games to run, especially if its an unreal engine game. happens with overwatch 2 and cod MW3 as well.

This is on a clean windows 11 install, windows management engine updated. latest bios. stock bios settings. and nvidia driver is not to blame for my issue.

 

[sLowEnd]

The new tournament rigs were "meticulously optimized"

Found the problem.

Also odd they went with 7800X3D for a counter strike tournament when the Intel counterparts are about 10% faster for that specific game.

Then again we're talking 750 FPS vs 650 so it's not super important.

Did something change between this video and now?

 

[dont whant to set it"']

hypothetical of couse: Tertiary software in the hopes of an edge over... ? Giving the testers the benefit of the doubt, but they might of not tested with "cheats"in slang.

 

[SpartanM07]

Ive had nothing but issues trying to get games to launch on my 14900k using stock settings in bios on my MSI MAG z790 mobo. i switched MOBO to a asus rog strix mobo and its a little better but i still have to underclock before i can get games to run, especially if its an unreal engine game. happens with overwatch 2 and cod MW3 as well.

This is on a clean windows 11 install, windows management engine updated. latest bios. stock bios settings. and nvidia driver is not to blame for my issue.

Your issue(s) could be because of memory instability. Do you have any "WHEA" errors in the Event Viewer?

 

[Pepamami]

The new tournament rigs were "meticulously optimized"

Found the problem.

Also odd they went with 7800X3D for a counter strike tournament when the Intel counterparts are about 10% faster for that specific game.

Then again we're talking 750 FPS vs 650 so it's not super important.

Its true for old CS:GO, but not for CS2, 7800X3D has way better <1% lows and way better power consumption in CS2.

 

[redeye]

well A formula F1 one car suffered at least a million’s damage in the vegas race, (due to a man hole/ sewer vent) and all they got is a “ha ha, sucks to be you”… so why should the gaming tournament be any different… sue Nvidia lol

 

[Pepamami]

Ive had nothing but issues trying to get games to launch on my 14900k using stock settings in bios on my MSI MAG z790 mobo. i switched MOBO to a asus rog strix mobo and its a little better but i still have to underclock before i can get games to run, especially if its an unreal engine game. happens with overwatch 2 and cod MW3 as well.

This is on a clean windows 11 install, windows management engine updated. latest bios. stock bios settings. and nvidia driver is not to blame for my issue.

can be anything: overheat, memory errors, bad contacts in sockets (cpu, memory, gpu), PSU fault, potatoe bios, that cant handle XMP profiles.

well A formula F1 one car suffered at least a million’s damage in the vegas race, (due to a man hole/ sewer vent) and all they got is a “ha ha, sucks to be you”… so why should the gaming tournament be any different… sue Nvidia lol

its also can be faulty 7800X3D or faulty memory, if someone just did not test new Game Rigs at all.
For example I have a faulty 5800X, bought in 2022.
It has 2 faulty cores, that throw an error if perform a CoreCycler test.
I had manualy to set +5 CurveOptimizer (on these 2 cores) to fix these cores. (it did not effect on performance)

 

[sephiroth117]

Well we don't know what triggered it

Nothing is perfect, the choice is all about statistics, you choose the most stable configuration and software combination and hope it goes all well...people who believe otherwise never owned a computer or worked in IT.

Few months ago AMD drivers used to ban people from those very games, because of a DLL injection for the anti-lag+ feature. Those drivers hold more lines of code than most other frameworks

 

[Cheeseball]

The key factor here is it was just one rig that suffered the crash. The teammates and the other teams PCs didn't seem to suffer the same problem.

It's the configuration of that single PC to blame.

 

[cellar door]

Actually there is theory going around - there was a heavy solar storm event that day and the peak of its effects was reaching earth exactly around that time in Copenhagen.

The wild guess from is that it was a bit flip in the memory on Jame's 4080 that caused this crash to occur.

NOAA Satellites Detect Severe Solar Storm

From March 23–24, 2024, NOAA’s GOES satellites, and others operated by international partners, observed numerous flares erupt from the sun,

www.nesdis.noaa.gov

Edit: there is an inside joke to this as well, that God themself turned Jame's pc off, because they call him Jesus of CS.

 

[Guwapo77]

The new tournament rigs were "meticulously optimized"

Found the problem.

Also odd they went with 7800X3D for a counter strike tournament when the Intel counterparts are about 10% faster for that specific game.

Then again we're talking 750 FPS vs 650 so it's not super important.

Are you sure about that? Looks like the 7800X3D is the top CPU both in top FPS and 1% lows and it isn't even close.

Actually there is theory going around - there was a heavy solar storm event that day and the peak of its effects was reaching earth exactly around that time in Copenhagen.

The wild guess from is that it was a bit flip in the memory on Jame's 4080 that caused this crash to occur.

NOAA Satellites Detect Severe Solar Storm

From March 23–24, 2024, NOAA’s GOES satellites, and others operated by international partners, observed numerous flares erupt from the sun,

www.nesdis.noaa.gov

Oh thank you! I just knew it couldn't be a problem with Nvidia's drivers. /wipesweatfromforehead

Its true for old CS:GO, but not for CS2, 7800X3D has way better <1% lows and way better power consumption in CS2.

I guess if I scrolled down further, I wouldn't had needed to post.

 

[efikkan]

…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."

Whenever my PC crashes, I always call Jensen Huang personally, and demand he tells me why it crashed. And that he brings his leather jacket and fixes it immediately!
(sarcasm)

So a PC crashed during a tournament, this happens all the time…

The key factor here is it was just one rig that suffered the crash. The teammates and the other teams PCs didn't seem to suffer the same problem.

It's the configuration of that single PC to blame.

Depends on whether the problem is reproducible or not. If it is, and only on this particular PC, then it's a hardware issue. The organizers must be professional enough to have an image for the software setup for all the tournament PCs, so configuration issues should be eliminated. And they probably have spares if one fails.
If the hardware is not at fault, then it could be either the driver or a bug in the OS.
Either way, if this is an obscure and hard to reproduce bug, then I doubt the dumps from the BSOD is going to result in something useful.

 

[Camm]

Also odd they went with 7800X3D for a counter strike tournament when the Intel counterparts are about 10% faster for that specific game.

CS2 is not CS:GO, the cache is generally more beneficial in CS2 than faster ST.

The key factor here is it was just one rig that suffered the crash. The teammates and the other teams PCs didn't seem to suffer the same problem.

Two other players in Virtus also experienced issues that resulted in a serious drop of FPS similar to Jame, but didn't get the full CTD that Jame did.

 

[R-T-B]

Does anyone actually unironically believes Nvidia drivers never crash ? Are people that fried ?

No. It's a strawman argument. People saying nvidia drivers are better quality are not claiming they never crash.

 

[Daven]

No. It's a strawman argument. People saying nvidia drivers are better quality are not claiming they never crash.

Actually that’s exactly what they are saying. The delusion is high.

 

[Hakker]

So? Shit happens. It literally is just that just like race cars breaking down. Broken bats, helmet malfunction, shoe malfunction etc etc it's part of the game.

 

[Zareek]

Oh, the irony...

Too funny, PCs being PCs.

Am I the only one who thinks the teams should bring their own PCs that have to meet regulations? Kind of like Formula 1. That way, a hardware/driver failure is on their own team and it's choices.

 

[Camm]

Oh, the irony...

Too funny, PCs being PCs.

Am I the only one who thinks the teams should bring their own PCs that have to meet regulations? Kind of like Formula 1. That way, a hardware/driver failure is on their own team and it's choices.

Its mostly to prevent cheating.

Honestly I'm somewhat surprised that there isn't a Valve issued spec for tournament PC's running a stripped out version of SteamOS in Gamescope.

 

[Zareek]

Its mostly to prevent cheating.

Honestly I'm somewhat surprised that there isn't a Valve issued spec for tournament PC's running a stripped out version of SteamOS in Gamescope.

Right, but there could be rules put in place that allow for it. In the same way that F1 teams build their own cars but adhere to technical rules. The software is loaded at the event ahead of the tournament. I'm talking OS, drivers and the game/s. Only approved drivers are allowed and provided on-site. The teams get to choose their hardware and choose from approved drivers. The team's PCs are subject to inspection at any time, including following a match, to check for possible rules violations or cheating.