Acer Predator Triton 500(Predator PT515-51) with 2080RTX - nvidia driver problems

Hi everyone,

I bought this amazing small beast 2 weeks ago and since then I have been having some issues when updating Nvidia drivers. When i first got it, it came with a pre-installed driver that was working just fine, but I thought that i would install a newer version yesterday from geforce experience and i have been experiencing issues ever since. While playing cs go, i got an error which got me our of the game,(had to do with some vector error) and i could not get it back on after.(the process itself is running but does not open up) After a restart, my Nvidia control panel was gone and under device manager my Nvidia card was recognized as microsoft display adapter, but lets get to the point:

The main problem is I cannot install the uploaded official VGA drivers on the acer website. The issue I have with them is when i unzip the file, start the setup(I noticed the driver itself does not come in a single application package as opposed to the drivers you download from the Nvidia website), the verification of system requirements takes like milliseconds to complete and when I go to custom install it does not detect any components to install(neither graphics driver, 3d vision driver, Physx, etc), which apparently means nothing happens when I do a clean/express install - it finishes in seconds and the nvidia control panel is still missing, as well as the display adapter in device manager still shows Microsoft Display adapter instead of showing the Nvidia GPU.

I managed to install a previous but still pretty recent version of Nvidia driver from the Nvidia website, and the GPU is now detected, but it does not detect Gsync and is missing the options I had when I first got the laptop in Nvidia control panel.
Any thoughts on how to install the official Nvidia driver from the official acer support website? Has anyone had a similar problem. All I am trying to do is get the official Nvidia drivers from the acer support webpage to work, since I believe they are custom for my laptop, without having to reset windows.

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance!

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Aleksandartg

Fireplug said:

Posting this just to let you know someone else had a problem installing the driver at the Acer website. When I got the laptop one of things I did was upgrade to latest Nvidia driver. I had a crash during a VR game in which computer would not restart until I held down power key for ages. Checking event logs I had a crash related to the graphics driver. So I also tried to go back to the original driver as you did. I had same issue where it uninstalled my latest driver but then would not install the old one nor would it even recognize gpu was there to be able to install. So I just reinstalled the latest Nvidia one and am crossing my fingers it was just a one time crash (so far so good.)

So to me it seems like this is more of a software issue with the drivers rather than a hardware one. Same as youI updated the drivers almost immediately after I got it and ever since I have been having those issues. After the reset of windows(+formatting the windows drive) I managed to install the official driver through windows update - it downloaded some very old driver from December which was recognizing the gpu as 2080 rtx(as opposed to the new ones which recognize it as Max-q). After this I started the official driver, it looked like it was not working, but then somehow after a restart it installed and so far is going well. I still have not played any games after the preinstall, but should you do the windows reset, keep in mind I was using the external gpu option in Bios. Now that everything went well, I have switched back to the hybrid mode. Keep me posted if you are having further problems.

JohnCena

But if you have unoffical driver you will have better DLSS and better FPS with DXR on

Red-Sand

Just set your laptop to Hybrid Graphics (option in BIOs) then use IOBit Uninstaller to completely remove the Nvidia driver and all residual of those drivers and do a fresh install from Geforce Experience.

Aleksandartg

UPDATE: The problem has not been fixed.
Today while I was playing cs:go I got the same error message: fatal error loading vertex shader weapondecal_vs30 and then all of a sudden my nvidia drivers and gpu are gone.
In the event log I get this warning at the same time of the crash and gpu disappearing: Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
Could it be that my nvidia gpu is bad or do you believe this is software related, because I am really not willing to give my laptop for service after two weeks of use

JohnCena

How much bans do you totally get from exiting in competitive mod lol?
When its gone, does the intel UHD go too or it is staying?(sorry for bad english)

I said before "laptops are laggy"

Aleksandartg

JohnCena said:

How much bans do you totally get from exiting in competitive mod lol?
When its gone, does the intel UHD go too or it is staying?(sorry for bad english)

I said before "laptops are laggy"

Well I have a very high trust skill level, so I don't have any problems with that but yeah this is not the main problem.

The intel UHD stays, no problems there. I read that this Display driver nvlddmkm stopped working error can be fixed with this.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/lk/nelvo3y3i3gl.png

In the meantime as Red_sand suggested, I am uninstalling the drivers with IObit and installing again through geforce.

Aleksandartg

Fun fact: I get this when I try installing GeForce

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/yb/3z4zhtf20urj.jpg

I didn't wanna say I am frustrated, but I truly am

Red-Sand

Did you reboot after uninstalling the Nvidia driver?
If not do so

JohnCena

Make a clean install of Windows 10 if you cant find any solutions. But do not reset,make a clean install

Commodore_1995#

@JohnCenaPlease, do not ask for it to do a clean installation using an iso of windows 10, because of the hidden recovery partition of Acer! In addition, the original system is already optimized for that model!

JohnCena

egydiocoelho said:

@JohnCenaPlease, do not ask for it to do a clean installation using an iso of windows 10, because of the hidden recovery partition of Acer! In addition, the original system is already optimized for that model!

Recovery partition?! I did the iso thing with my Acer. Did I do something wrong?

JohnCena

Acer does not optimize I think.

Commodore_1995#

All notebook models provide a hidden recovery partition so that the original factory system can be reinstalled! Also, removing this hidden partition violates the software warranty!
This does not prevent a user from installing windows 10, using an iso from microsoft! However, certain programs work better with the operating system optimized by Acer!

JohnCena

egydiocoelho disse:

All notebook models provide a hidden recovery partition so that the original factory system can be reinstalled! Also, removing this hidden partition violates the software warranty!
This does not prevent a user from installing windows 10, using an iso from microsoft! However, certain programs work better with the operating system optimized by Acer!

When I reset I did not know there is a hidden recovery. WHAT WILL I DO NOW NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I AM SO STUPID

ven98

This clearly is a hardware issue(I suspect it is an issue with the GPU core, buggy VBIOS is also possible). If it was software related, the driver would never disappear like that and then show that there is no Nvidia GPU present.

Commodore_1995#

@ven98On the Acer website, a firmware is provided for the 2060rtx video cards! Is there any firmware for the 2080rtx video card?

ven98

egydiocoelho said:

@ven98On the Acer website, a firmware is provided for the 2060rtx video cards! Is there any firmware for the 2080rtx video card?

It seems to be a VBIOS for the RTX 2060 only. I don't think there is any VBIOS for RTX 2080(mobile) yet, not even on techpowerup's VBIOS archive.

Maybe OP can try to backup the VBIOS using GPU-Z and then reflash it, but that isn't recommended and I wouldn't bother, as the machine is new and if it is within the return period, I would just ask for replacement or contact Acer support. Flashing the VBIOS has a risk of voiding the warranty.

Red-Sand

I've seen a couple times where a Nvidia update makes the driver disappear.. Though it's not often and usually a sign of something worse.

JohnCena

Help me my nvidia control panel only shows 3d settings

Aleksandartg

Guys update from today. I strongly doubt it is a hardware problem. I managed to install the driver by switching to dGpu and even though it was not booting for a while, I got a successfully installed nvidia driver from GeForce Experience.
I believe the issue with the drivers only persists when I am using the hybrid mode from BIOS. I decided to switch back to external gpu only and I have changed the PCI saving power settings as stated in one of my posts above and i have been playing for around two hours without an issue.

I am a bit frustrated by the fact I can't use hybrid cause the battery life is terrible with the dGpu option in BIOS on. Hopefully Acer will release a firmware for 2080 rtx as well, so we can use the hybrid mode without any issues.
In any case if the error in the event log comes up again and my drivers disappear again, I will definitely ask for replacement.

JohnCena said:

Help me my nvidia control panel only shows 3d settings

If it shows only 3d settings, probably you have hybrid mode on. Turn on dGpu only and the G-sync and all the other advanced monitor settings will show up.

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