As if getting an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 wasn't hard enough, those lucky enough to get one are running into problems with third-party models.

It all started last week when someone at Linus Tech Tips reported a game crash with a Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 Trinity. Since then, the problem has grown to the point where owners of the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ventus 3X OC have reported crashes on the Overclockers UK forum. Many of these crashes involve being thrown out of the game and back to the desktop, and so far there is no clear explanation as to the cause.

ComputerBase has flagged reports of the problem, but has yet to reproduce the same issue with the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition, a graphics card supplied directly from Nvidia. However, the desktop seems to crash when the graphics card's clock speed exceeds 2.0 GHz.

Third-party versions of the RTX 3080 are often factory overclocked, so this problem seems to be particularly pronounced.

"I would like to point out a possible problem for all (not happy) owners of the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ventus 3X OC," said ComputerBase forum user R-47. For example, in the [Assassin's Creed: Origins] benchmark, it goes up to 2040 MHz after a few seconds, which of course causes the game to crash."

Solutions to this include offsetting the GPU clock speed by as much as 100 MHz, undervolting the graphics card using MSI Afterburner 4.6.3 BETA 2 utility software, and using Windows 10 It looks like disabling hardware accelerated GPU planning. However, these are hardly ideal solutions to the problem of a brand new and very powerful $699 graphics card.

There is currently no official fix, but unless it is a fundamental hardware flaw, Nvidia will no doubt be working on a driver update to address this issue. Nevertheless, this is not good news for those who were able to get their hands on an RTX 3080, and with the AMD Big Navi just around the corner, Nvidia would be wise to move quickly to address these issues with the RTX 3080.