Nvidia has released a fix for issues with the new RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 graphics cards, which in some unfortunate cases showed a black (or blank) screen on startup.
This isn’t as bad as it sounds as the operating system still loads properly and eventually displays the desktop on the screen as normal – it just shows a blank screen on startup. However, this means that you can’t access the BIOS, for example, or see anything on the screen until you enter the operating system environment. And not being able to enter the BIOS can be a big problem in itself.
How Tom’s gear (opens in a new tab) however, it reports that Nvidia has released a GPU firmware update for the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 to cure this blank screen.
Please note that the issue only occurs on certain motherboards that run in UEFI mode.
Nvidia says, “The Nvidia GPU Firmware Update Tool will detect if a firmware update is needed and will give the user the option to update it if necessary.”
For those experiencing a blank screen when booting with the new Lovelace GPU, you can download relevant update here (opens in a new tab)where Nvidia also provides instructions on how to start the update.
Analysis: Another Lovelace GPU glitch for Nvidia – but this time the solution came quickly
By all accounts, this problem is rare, so that’s good news. Still, if you’re affected, it’s obviously going to be frustrating when you can’t get into the BIOS (although at least your computer will still boot to the desktop properly).
As Nvidia notes, don’t install the update unless you actually see a blank screen – of course, there’s no need to risk updating your firmware if you don’t have a tangible problem to solve.
Note that this gremlin in the works has nothing to do with another well-publicized issue that affected the RTX 4090 graphics card, namely the melting cable controversy. (By the way, we just heard an update from Nvidia about this issue, and it seems that the culprit, as was thought, is incorrectly connecting the power supply.)