h264/HEVC hardware accelerated encoding/decoding causes GPU to crash

[Abbottoklus]

Posting this to see if anyone else has had this issue, and to solve the mystery if you've been trying to fix it.

I got my hands on Zotac RTX 3080 last July, and while I reaped obvious benefits, it came with one huge, irritating drawback - Premiere and Media Encoder started crashing my GPU. There was a 50% chance my GPU would crash whenever I clicked/tabbed away from Premiere or AME during specific situations:
- loaded new footage
- waited for footage/thumbnails to process when opening an existing project
- sent a video to export
- started rendering an export

My PC would lock up for ~30 seconds, then the screen would go black, GPU would reboot and anything that was open and relied on GPU (Adobe apps, vimeo/youtube tabs, etc.) would need to be closed and restarted. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot it, changing various cache settings, reinstalling the apps and drivers, switching between studio and game drivers, tweaking GPU settings, etc. I was determined not to give up on my $1300 monstrosity and go back to my 1080, which never had any of these issues, and was now installed in my media server machine anyway.

But after months of this, I was ready to give up and RMA the damn thing. That's when I had one last realization, that the crash never occured when loading footage that wasn't h264/HEVC. So I disabled hardware accelerated h264/HEVC decoding/encoding and like magic, all my problems were solved. Hasn't been a single crash since, though it comes at the cost of slower exports and no longer being able to smoothly playback certain flavours of mp4, which unfortunately makes up about 80% of the footage clients send me.

If anyone else has dealt with this and found a way to leave hardware acceleration on please let me know. The only step I didn't try was a full system reformat. That's on the horizon in the next couple weeks when I upgrade to a 5900X so at that point I'll turn it back on and see how it goes.

System specs:
- Zotac Gaming RTX 3080 Trinity OC (stock speed)
- Ryzen 3900X (stock speed)
- G.SKILL Trident Z Neo Series 64GB RAM
- Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite WiFi MB

[petrop · Accepted solution]

I think i found the Problem on my PC. I deactivated HAGS in Windows and its looks like no Problems anymore.

[demoncamber]

what is HAGS and how do I deactivate it?

[demoncamber]

Update, this doesn't fix my issue.

[Sargon25267631tged]

hi there is nothing wrong with your Gpu or Cpu the issue is somewhere else take your Gskill out of your rig and put something else and update your bios and you good to Go it took me a month to find out the the Gskill trident was all my crashing problems its very stupid to measure because of that crashing i thought my gpu is damaged or mainboard but after replacing the ram i actually can work again

[Sargon25267631tged]

oh yeah and i forgot to mention there are many issues with using xmp or Docp for many video editing programs like powerdirektor adobe and davinci i prefer to use stock ddr4 like 2666mhz or 2133mhz than everything is fine you should work than for endless hours without crashing next time if someones mashine crashes should check the ram chips by touching them with finger they might be hot as hell next thing is i find out that dual rank chips are very bad on heatsink so check out some 16gb single rank chips like 4x16gb is better than dual rank 32gb i hope this will be helpful for many people here. i took the temperature by an digital measuring tool and find out dual rank was going over 86 degree Celsius in my case gskill trident 2x32gb dual rank docp 3600mhz while my new LPX vengeance 4x16gb only goes above 40 degrees and docp 3200mhz 

[Abbottoklus]

edit - double-posted by mistake

[Abbottoklus]

I forgot to check back in on this thread so can confirm that petrop's tip about disabling HAGS made an enormous difference for me. It works almost flawlessly now.

I say almost because sometimes in Premiere, when switching to colour correction mode with Lumetri, every once in a while now I get a BSOD instead..sigh. I'm testing out if this is related specifically to the scopes panel being open, which I rarely use anyway so not a big deal. If not then I guess I'll be living without Nvidia decoding in Premiere. Have had no issues with it being on in Media Encoder though.

Sargon's advice about the Gskill might be correct as well, but I'm not willing to go that far to solve this issue. I would rather just leave Nvidia decoding off in Premiere than drop money on all new RAM. But if I do a new build in the future I'll take his notes into consideration.

[tulib281206927uh3]

Hardware accelerated encoding and decoding of video codecs like h264 and HEVC can greatly improve the performance of video-related applications, such as video playback and video streaming. However, in some cases, it can also cause the GPU to crash or become unstable. There are several possible reasons why hardware acceleration can cause GPU crashes. One common cause is an outdated or incompatible driver for the GPU. Make sure that you have the latest driver installed and that it is compatible with your hardware and operating system.

[Tower of29928591hpk4]

I'm sorry to hear that you're experiencing issues with hardware-accelerated encoding/decoding causing your GPU to crash. While I can't provide a definitive solution, I can offer some suggestions that may help you troubleshoot the problem:

1. Update your GPU drivers: Make sure you have the latest drivers installed for your Zotac RTX 3080. New driver updates often include bug fixes and improvements that can help resolve stability issues.

2. Check for software updates: Ensure that you have the latest version of Adobe Premiere and Media Encoder installed. Software updates sometimes address compatibility issues and provide fixes for known problems.

3. Adjust hardware acceleration settings: In Adobe Premiere and Media Encoder, you can try adjusting the hardware acceleration settings. You may have options to enable or disable specific hardware acceleration features or choose different levels of acceleration. Experimenting with these settings might help identify the specific cause of the crashes.

4. Test with different media formats: As you mentioned, the crashes occur specifically when working with h264/HEVC footage. Try testing with different media formats to see if the issue persists. If the crashes only occur with h264/HEVC files, it could indicate a compatibility issue with those codecs and your GPU.

5. Monitor GPU temperatures: Overheating can sometimes cause crashes. Use monitoring software to keep an eye on your GPU temperatures during encoding/decoding tasks. If the temperatures are excessively high, you may need to improve your system's cooling.

6. Reach out to Zotac support: If you haven't already, consider contacting Zotac support for assistance. They may be aware of similar issues reported by other users or have specific recommendations for troubleshooting the problem with their RTX 3080 graphics card.

7. Consider a clean system installation: While you mentioned it as a last resort, performing a clean system installation after upgrading to a new CPU (5900X) could help rule out any software conflicts or lingering issues that might be causing the crashes.

Remember to back up your important files and data before making any significant changes to your system. If none of these steps resolve the issue, it may be worthwhile to continue pursuing the RMA process with Zotac to address the problem.

[Abbottoklus]

I have two different workstations now and the issues still exist. One is using the previously mentioned Zotac 3080, another is using a newer EVGA 3080. Both systems are also using G-Skill RAM, so I strongly suspect this is an issue related to G-Skill/Nvidia/possibly AMD CPU incompatibility. GPU temperatures are fine as well.

My software and drivers are always up to date, and one of the PCs is a completely fresh install and is only used for video editing work, so no other software/utilities etc. are installed.

There are no hardware acceleration settings that can be adjusted, you can either choose to enable or disable them. There is a box for "Nvidia" but it's always greyed out, I assume only relevant for laptops with built in GPUs having an external Nvidia card attached instead:

This only occurs when dealing with h264/HEVC footage. I have one client who always provides ProRes which never has problems, and other clients who provide h264, and theirs is the footage which inevitably leads to a crash.

Leaving decoding off in Premiere has been the permanent fix for me. It's just frustrating because sometimes my laptop edits faster than my much more powerful PC towers because it handles decoding with no issues. As mentioned in the future I'll avoid using G-Skill RAM for sure.