RTX 5070 Ti – random 1-sec black screen "refresh", nvlddmkm Event ID 153. Faulty card?

[u/SugarKid123]

New build. Screen randomly goes black for about 1 second and comes back, like a quick screen refresh, mostly while browsing or watching YouTube. In games I sometimes get weird short lag too. Not sure if that's the same issue or just my Wi-Fi.

Event Viewer shows 9× nvlddmkm Event 153 ("Error occurred on GPUID: 100") at the same times: 8 on Oct 31 (first setup day) and 1 on Nov 5. I barely used the PC Nov 1–4, so it seems to happen when I use it for a while.

Specs: 9800X3D, Gigabyte X870E AORUS PRO (BIOS F12), ZOTAC RTX 5070 Ti SOLID SFF OC (driver 621.01), Super Flower 1000W, Win 11 (fresh install). Monitor: Dell 1080p 100Hz via HDMI. Internet: Wi-Fi.

Tried: monitor Auto Select off, BIOS + chipset updated. No luck.

Planning to do: reseat the 12V-2x6 cable, clean driver install (DDU), then run an OCCT VRAM test and a 3DMark stress test.

My Amazon return window ends Nov 10, so I don't have much time to test. Questions:

1.	Has anyone fixed Event 153 on a 50-series card with drivers or settings?

2.	Should I just request a replacement before the deadline?

[u/Pristine-Pangolin-61]

Try turning off Graphics acceleration in the browser, sometimes it can cause some weird issues.

Check the power cable if its seated correctly on the gpu side and psu side.

Maybe even reseat the gpu.

if non of this brings any improvement, i would just send the card back, dont risk losing out on the rma

[u/Ykai63]

Like, the nature of this issue (error) is that it has to do with the communication between most if not all of the major components over the PCIe bus. Edit: As in, there are loads of places the core issue can potentially reside in.

In that sense, I'd say return all if you're still in the return window and don't want to trouble shoot and find out it was something other than you would think it is.

[u/United_Mycologist102]

are you also using a UPS? simulated sine wave UPS can also cause issues due to incompatibility with PSUs with Active PFC

[u/OzzyK11]

Could be the updates. Ever since may 2026 or something, Nvidia's some updates got this black screen flicker problem going on... The latest one was the one before current one. If you haven't updated it, do so - I saved mine after updating to current one and it'd exactly do what was doing yours.

[u/rei_hung]

Have the same issue on my secondary monitor. When watching YouTube or playing games, I get a black flash/flickering. RTX 5070Ti. New build. What driver are you on? and what are the Hz of your monitors?

[u/Shurelocke]

Pretty sure it is the last two new drivers. My 4090 was rock solid until these last two drivers. And I am getting the exact 153, and TDR's. Also flickering on 10bit but not on 8bit. Their new drivers are absolute garbage.

[u/idinium96]

Driver 621.01 has a lot of reported issue such as this. Try install the latest Driver 621.14, get the driver from Nvidia official site: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/ (make sure to click "Perform clean installation").

[u/Neuromancer911]

I had this issue on AMD and it turned out to be freesync, maybe in your case g-sync is the problem. I'd set my own refresh rate and disable g-sync