News of the card’s sudden death syndrome started cropping up via NVIDIA’s official forums since a few days ago, before being picked up by multiple tech sites, such as Digital Trends. Many users complaining that their RTX 2080 Ti were beginning to show signs of artifacting or just outright BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Weeks after they had purchased the card.
Regarding the artifacting; owners who experienced this issue report that reintalling the drivers doesn’t seem to help the issue. It should be made clear that this issue seemed to primarily be affecting PC gamers who purchased the Founders Edition of the RTX 2080 Ti. Although, reports of custom cooled RTX 2080 Tis – from brands such as ASUS, Gigabyte, and Zotac – have cropped up on the aforementioned forums. In some extreme cases, some threads highlighted black screens, or the cards just failing to work or even boot up entirely.
NVIDIA has been recommending gamers to RMA their card, which usually results in a replacement of the card or a refund. That solution doesn’t seem to work for everyone, with one particular gamer saying that he had been through the RMA process twice. While another users has returned three different AiB versions of the card times, due to excessive coil whine and artifacting. One possible reason that is leading to the demise of the card is the RTX 2080 Ti’s GDDR6 memory packages. According to an analysis conducted by Tom’s Hardware, the tech site found discovered two particular GDDR6 memory modules – which were made by Micron – were shown to be reaching temperatures beyond 78.3°C while working under a full load. NVIDIA did release a statement to Digital Trends, stating that the brand was “working with users individually,” but was not “seeing any broader issues”. (Source: NVIDIA Forums via Digital Trends, Forbes, Tom’s Hardware)
