NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Crashes During Million Dollar CS2 Tournament Despite Being Selected As The GPU Of Choice

Eshelmen

Eshelmen

Supreme [H]ardness
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Feb 3, 2004
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Ooof - Not the first time, but won't be the last.


https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce...9r9E8Xfi4QhUOxxp0HxxEyEQpUHNb6zODjAeszFccfN1c


"A few weeks back, PGL announced its hardware of choice for its upcoming CS2 Major Tournament which included systems with AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPUs and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 GPUs but it looks like things didn't go as planned as a driver crash associated with the GPU became the very reason of one team's chances of going into the playoffs being washed away.

Technical Malfunction Leads To One PGL CS2 Major Tournament Team Being Knocked Out, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 GPU Driver Crash Cited As Main Reason
PCGamesN explains that the issue occurred during a match between Virtus Pro and G2. Virtus Pro's player, James, was up against his opponents in the second run of a best of three when his PC ran into a major malfunction. G2 was able to win that round and proceeded to outbeat Virtus Pro by 11-13 which squashed their opportunity to enter the playoffs. James put out a very positive video in which he stated that these hiccups are part of the game and that he remains hopeful for the next tournaments."


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwSNWMsscq8&t=7s
 
It once again reminds me even more of the good ole' days where you used your own computer in these sorts of tournaments. Choosing your hardware and making sure that your system was stable was all part of the process. These seem like computers that were purpose-built for the tournament. On pretty much any freshly-built system, there is always a greater chance of quirks at the very beginning until you have a chance to iron things out. It could be something as simple as a cable that wasn't plugged in all the way, or maybe even RAM that isn't 100% stable at it's default XMP profile, etc. Do you really think they did thorough tests on all of these systems when they built them for the tournament, the same way a person would on their own system? Who the heck even knows what driver they decided to install...
 
GotNoRice said:
It once again reminds me even more of the good ole' days where you used your own computer in these sorts of tournaments. Choosing your hardware and making sure that your system was stable was all part of the process. These seem like computers that were purpose-built for the tournament. On pretty much any freshly-built system, there is always a greater chance of quirks at the very beginning until you have a chance to iron things out. It could be something as simple as a cable that wasn't plugged in all the way, or maybe even RAM that isn't 100% stable at it's default XMP profile, etc. Do you really think they did thorough tests on all of these systems when they built them for the tournament, the same way a person would on their own system? Who the heck even knows what driver they decided to install...
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Yeah there is a lot that matters and that we have no idea about here. I also got no clue about that game specifically so I can't say if it's known or anything, but it's a popular title and nvidia has the vast majority of the market so I presume we would hear about it if that was widespread.

It's not like there were AMD and nvidia machines there, side by side, for all we know they might have crashed too. Could also have been factory overclocked cards or something too.

And we only know the symptoms, not the cause. Many ways you can crash GPU drivers but that does not mean we should always point the finger at them.
 
I don't get it, if the organizer provided the hardware that crashed, then the only fair thing would be repeating the match. This is questionable practice and opens the door to manipulating matches. Oh, sorry, your HW accidentally crashed, the other team wins!
 
M76 said:
I don't get it, if the organizer provided the hardware that crashed, then the only fair thing would be repeating the match. This is questionable practice and opens the door to manipulating matches. Oh, sorry, your HW accidentally crashed, the other team wins!
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I agree, but on the other hand, once you make it known that a computer failure basically gives you a do-over, then you can bet that there will be at least one idiot that will intentionally try to make his computer crash once it's obvious that they are losing the match. Seems like a lose/lose situation to me.
 
GotNoRice said:
I agree, but on the other hand, once you make it known that a computer failure basically gives you a do-over, then you can bet that there will be at least one idiot that will intentionally try to make his computer crash once it's obvious that they are losing the match. Seems like a lose/lose situation to me.
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I assume their inputs are recorded anyway to prevent cheating. What could you even do to deliberately create a driver error or HW crash?
 
M76 said:
I assume their inputs are recorded anyway to prevent cheating. What could you even do to deliberately create a driver error or HW crash?
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All you have to do in order to force reset the video driver is hit Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + B, something you could potentially do with just one hand if you wanted. Not all games react well when you do that during a game. I'm sure there are other things that an innovative cheater could come up with also.
 
GotNoRice said:
All you have to do in order to force reset the video driver is hit Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + B, something you could potentially do with just one hand if you wanted. Not all games react well when you do that during a game. I'm sure there are other things that an innovative cheater could come up with also.
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That would clearly show up as input, even if you claim to have done it accidentally that is still user error.
 
M76 said:
That would clearly show up as input, even if you claim to have done it accidentally that is still user error.
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You're assuming that these people are actually smart enough to know the difference between a video driver crash and a forced reset, never-mind be able to actually prove which one occured. It's possible, but then again, these are the same people who couldn't even put together a stable system in the first place. And for a player who was going to lose the match anyway, they don't really have anything else to lose by trying to game the system.

My point was just that all of this would be avoided if people were responsible for their own systems. This isn't rural Nigeria, anyone in a CS tournament should be able to afford a computer.
 
GotNoRice said:
It's possible, but then again, these are the same people who couldn't even put together a stable system in the first place.
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A single driver crash does not mean a system is unstable. It's a game being played on gamer-grade hardware.

GotNoRice said:
My point was just that all of this would be avoided if people were responsible for their own systems. This isn't rural Nigeria, anyone in a CS tournament should be able to afford a computer.
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This practice was stopped a decade ago because of the rampant cheating that it encouraged. Tournament after tournament was being won by teams utilizing various hacks, cheats, and exploits. All of these issues were discovered after the tournaments had ended and prizes had been paid out, of course.

"If tournament organizers want to stop the cheating, they need to be the ones who provide the systems." And here we are.
 
Are they peddling the new Nvidia settings app with the driver now? Because that thing had some memory leaks, as I later found out. I think their latest few drivers also have not been terribly stable, unfortunately. Hopefully they get it back on track later, but my 4090 had some device not found issues at random, leading to kernel issues. I DDU'd and then installed fresh and that stopped, but I had some crash to desktop in other games. But that sort of also hasn't been a thing lately.

DukenukemX said:
Clearly an AMD CPU issue. ;)
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I wouldn't say a CPU issue, but I wouldn't put a RAM issue past it. The AM5 platform has been finicky with RAM configurations, and I could definitely see some issues if they sourced large amounts of, say DDR5 6000 speed ram without doing some stress testing to make sure the motherboard doesn't reject it. I don't know if you've noticed, but that's kind of an actual ongoing issue, though later BIOS updates made compatibility a little better. There's also no telling if they actually did the BIOS update. Or if they're running ASUS motherboards, then honestly god help them, I've only heard bad shit about that. I say this as someone that is running a 7800X3D myself.

They would have probably saved money and had better stability if they just used 5800X3D chips, which are on a very, very mature platform at this point.
 
GotNoRice said:
You're assuming that these people are actually smart enough to know the difference between a video driver crash and a forced reset, never-mind be able to actually prove which one occured. It's possible, but then again, these are the same people who couldn't even put together a stable system in the first place. And for a player who was going to lose the match anyway, they don't really have anything else to lose by trying to game the system.

My point was just that all of this would be avoided if people were responsible for their own systems. This isn't rural Nigeria, anyone in a CS tournament should be able to afford a computer.
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If they are too incompetent to monitor for cheating, they are too incompetent to organize an event period.

As for people bringing their own systems this is not a freaking lan party, who is going to comb through all of their systems to find where they hid the trainer / exploit / etc.? You think they can do that if they are incapable of installing a keylogger?
 
M76 said:
If they are too incompetent to monitor for cheating, they are too incompetent to organize an event period.

As for people bringing their own systems this is not a freaking lan party, who is going to comb through all of their systems to find where they hid the trainer / exploit / etc.? You think they can do that if they are incapable of installing a keylogger?
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I would assume a major factor for NOT using personal computers during these events is for sponsorship/marketing purposes.
It's highly probable that Nvidia and AMD chipped in a few bucks toward this million dollar pool in lieu of being nominated as the "preferred" choice.
 
Eshelmen said:
I would assume a major factor for NOT using personal computers during these events is for sponsorship/marketing purposes.
It's highly probable that Nvidia and AMD chipped in a few bucks toward this million dollar pool in lieu of being nominated as the "preferred" choice.
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Correlation is not proof of causation. I think for a fair competition it is a necessity to have standardized hardware. Just because nvidia or amd is sponsoring an event doesn't mean that's the only reason to have official hardware.
 
Intel is the only one left out here lol

Drivers crash, it happens. My own 7900XTX had the driver crash 3-4 times this week just watching a youtube video but it games just fine so I haven't bothered to investigate that much
 
M76 said:
Correlation is not proof of causation. I think for a fair competition it is a necessity to have standardized hardware. Just because nvidia or amd is sponsoring an event doesn't mean that's the only reason to have official hardware.
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I never said only reason, I said it's a MAJOR reason.

You think Nvidia would sponsor personal machines for being in a tournament? Potentially in the past and or with not being marketed as the go to product for that specific game.

Crashes like this can occur all too frequently and unexpectedly and then they end up looking unreliable.

Unless Nvidia or whomever entrusted physically checks everyone's personal hardware, that's a liability toward their marketing campaign within the event.
 
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LigTasm said:
Intel is the only one left out here lol

Drivers crash, it happens. My own 7900XTX had the driver crash 3-4 times this week just watching a youtube video but it games just fine so I haven't bothered to investigate that much
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Are you undervolting or OCing at all? Because I could not get away with any undervolting on my 7900XTX and maintain stability. I reverted to default and I’ve not had a single crash since.
 
Thunderdolt said:
Games crash sometimes. News at 11.
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Clickbait-slime is the only thing keeping the lights on for a lot of these tech sites. Nvidia drivers aren't infallible, but all the other systems at the tourney were on identical hardware including GPU. If anything, people jumping up and down about one exception during one game kinda proves the rule.

If this did expose something that can be improved in-driver that's great, but at the same time, getting this popup doesn't mean the crash is caused by the driver or GPU hardware, the game crash is obviously only expressed in this way. Finding root cause needs a little more than "the popup says Nvidia driver crashed so the driver must need a fix." It's possible the driver *does* need a fix, but OTOH I've gotten this during a game when I've run CPU or memory OC too close to the edge like a dipshit, I've gotten it when a USB gamepad or VR headset got unplugged midgame. Lots of reasons. It's a minor miracle that the three decades of accumulated spaghetti code in Windows works at all.

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