Another day, another driver, and sometimes the solution is worse than the problem it’s aimed at solving, as NVIDIA’s recent driver issues continue. NVIDIA’s Blackwell-based RTX 50 series GPUs may’ve debuted over four months ago with the introduction of its latest flagship, the GeForce RTX 5090, but it’s been nearly three months since reports of black screen issues, or worse, began appearing from users online. Since then, roughly half a dozen other drivers have been released, followed by hotfixes, to address other issues. However, it appears that owners of RTX series cards using said latest drivers may not be out of the woods just yet.
NVIDIA rolled out its newest 57x.xx driver, specifically 576.02, last week. It was intended to provide support for the recently launched RTX 5060 series of GPUs and another fix for those still experiencing black screen issues with their graphics cards. Unfortunately, though, once again, things did not go as planned, as it also introduced a potentially hardware-damaging issue. This time around, users found themselves trying to understand why GPU temperatures stopped updating. While this may seem like an annoyance, this issue impacted software such as the popular MSI Afterburner overclocking tool, which can manage cooling profiles, and without an accurate temperature reading, it cannot ramp up cooling fans when the GPU is under load.
Stuck Temperature Sensor Readings
Given the power-hungry nature of some graphics cards, particularly the aforementioned RTX 5090, which can easily pull upwards and over, 600 Watts, thus producing a significant amount of heat, not to mention already having a shared reputation of melted power connectors, it’s understandable why owners were concernced over what they were witnessing. There was some suggestion that the bug could reside with MSI Afterburner, whose author replied that it was not only untrue but that the issue seemed to follow either rebooting from sleep mode or after a fast startup. The issue with the stuck temp sensor reading also affected Windows Task Manager and Open Hardware Monitor, ruling out any aftermarket software of being the cause and pointing towards the API being broken from 576.02.
Well, once again, and please remember this has been ongoing since January-February, NVIDIA had to roll out yet another hotfix to fix another driver intended to fix other issues. This time around, the GeForce Hotfix Display Driver version 576.15 will hopefully solve more problems rather than introduce them, and can be downloaded from here.
Driver 576.15 Changelog:
- [RTX 50 series] Some games may display shadow flicker/corruption after updating to GRD 576.02 [5231537]
- Lumion 2024 crashes on GeForce RTX 50 series graphics card when entering render mode [5232345]
- GPU monitoring utilities may stop reporting the GPU temperature after PC wakes from sleep [5231307]
- [RTX 50 series] Some games may crash while compiling shaders after updating to GRD 576.02 [5230492]
- [GeForce RTX 50 series notebook] Resume from Modern Standy can result in black screen [5204385]
- [RTX 50 series] SteamVR may display random V-SYNC micro-stutters when using multiple displays [5152246]
- [RTX 50 series] Lower idle GPU clock speeds after updating to GRD 576.02 [5232414]
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Yea saw a thumbnail by J2C basically saying... IS THIS INTENTIONAL?
I'm not sure what they'd gain by intentionally breaking cards that are all still under warranty.
Dude... J2C really had a full on rant at the end of his video. Just watched it. I feel lucky I didn't go in on a 5090 damn the costs. It would be SO pissed dealing with these successive driver and other issues.
Nvidia is the new AMD
Blame it on user error and sell another card.
Reference: 12VHPWR
Shouldn't that be the old AMD?
Too true. AMD's current GPU team deserves, if anything, a pat on the back.
It's funny for all the bad talk about AMD video drivers... I've had more issues over the years that are catastrophic requiring even reverting to a previous state of windows just to boot than I've ever had (knock on wood) with AMD drivers. Maybe I'm lucky or my timing on switching between AMD and Nvidia for my video card solutions has just been good for AMD. But I've never seen the rampant non function type of issues on AMD drivers that I have seen and helped people work around/solve on Nvidia based solutions.
I only experienced the past AMD issues back before them when it was ATI Radeon and that was brief due to the last GPU I dropped in my old Pentium IV build (still have in the closet-a lot of good times with that rig). Those drivers were a bit troublesome with games that had previously been stable with my NVIDIA cards before it. It was somewhat ironic too with that card since it was significantly more powerful than all before it.
I've mostly done alright with NVIDIA drivers except for when HDR started becoming more of a thing, also right around/after when Windows 10 came out, and it was close to six months before things seem to stabilize. So far though, 2025 has not been a great year for team green. I recently, by via purchasing a prebuilt with one, got a nice RTX 5090 and got a taste of this driver stuff but more specifically the temp sensor issue. Thankfully since I was doing extensive testing my eyes rarely left the MSI AB overlay and I noticed right away when things we not right. I tested this hotfix a bit last night and so far, so good.
It's a bummer and I seriously wonder if an intern got put in charge of the consumer GPUs recently. It's just sort of baffling the things have been going for the last couple of years.
Got a new monitor and after having zero issues with Nvidia drivers previously I now have issues with the new monitor. Now I see where the frustration has come from from other users.
Of course they got problems, people buy their cards pretty much no matter what, so no matter what is what you get.
Also still waiting for those AMD killing discounts everybody says Nvidia will do if AMD puts out a seriously competitive product... News flash, discounts aint coming, ever.
Never known NVIDIA to discount or lower MSRP on cards. AMD has done it before though.
If amd released a 9090 xtx with 24 or more gigs of vram that had better raster and on par rt with a 5080 I would buy it. Period full stop.
Me too. The 9070XT leaves a little to be desired. Which is why I'm eyeing a 5080 for my next build, even at the stupid prices. I think it'll last longer than the 9070XT.
Probably sampling bias; Nvidia outsells AMD in GPUs to such an extreme (like 10:1?) that there's simply much more opportunity to encounter issues; and that's if they're both introducing problems at about the same rate.
For another perspective, I've had two (!!!) successive review sample 5700XT GPUs self-delete. Also had an RX460 that would crash Photoshop, of all imaginable issues - and that was corroborated by reviewers at the time across multiple AMD GPU generations.
But I also have an RX6800 in my HTPC, which admittedly does not see creative work, that has not given me any real issues.