Hey all, just got a Geforce 5070 to replace my 2070 from years ago. Ubuntu’s been pretty smooth sailing for me until now, and I’m not exactly the best at navigating this stuff.
When Ubuntu starts to boot, the GPU stops outputting display to my monitor. As though it doesn’t detect the new GPU. I tried putting the 2070 back in and downloading the 570 drivers but it didn’t change anything. I found a tutorial for what seemed to be my issue that asked me to change the kernel, but halfway through the tutorial, commands that worked on their machine started failing on mine. I wish I’d documented what the error messages were because when I went to poke around more today, I got a message about kernel panic and can’t even boot with the 2070. Where do I go from here?
You fucked up by buying Nvidia first off. But you have to use the open source drivers Nvidia doesn’t officially fully support their newest cards on the closed source ones.
Should be a simple switch over and your good to go.
In the future never buy Nvidia if you are going to use their newest generation they always lag a full generation behind for proper support. It’s absurd.
Your second fuck up is using Ubuntu. If you want to use the most recent generation of hardware your option is basically arch or get fucked over to some degree.
Ubuntu lags behind by sometimes over two years in hardware support. This is true of every Debian and Ubuntu based os. Mint and popos and some fedora distros have the same problem. Tho fedora tends to be far better with this. They just are all over the place with how fast they push things. So very case by case basis.
You basically need to be on bleeding edge kernel and packages for proper support.
This is the biggest reason gaming focused distros are all arch with the expections of bazzite which is at least based on fedora which also tends to push things really fast.
Simply put. You want nice hardware support for new harder? Pick arch and stick to AMD. Or at least go with fedora.
Stay away from Debian/Ubuntu/mint/popos. They are great till you want hardware support for anything newer then 1 to 2 years old depending on where in the release cycle you are.
One thing that comes to mind is that the 50series is only supperted by the open version of the proprietary Nvidia drivers. The closed version doesn’t support your new GPU, but would work with your old GPU. Do you know which version you installed?
return to stock kernel, uninstall and completely purge the old drivers through another TTY. make sure to delete nvidia configs and files from your home directory, then install the new ones with
ubuntu-drivers install.this usually does it for me when it comes to nvidia weirdness.
It’s a bit of a conundrum, because if you cannot figure out how to force update the kernel on Ubuntu, then it’s likely rolling release will cause your endless pain, but that’s what you need for Blackwell right now. Maybe try Tumbleweed or even one of the Arch installers such as Endeavor OS.
I hate to be the jerk but it’s because you got Nvidia. Intel and AMD cards enjoy significantly better graphics card support.
I would also try a different distribution that’s known for having more recent kernels and faster development. Something like Manjaro is actually a pretty good fit for this situation.
Would suggest cachy over Manjaro if you are explicitly looking for video card support since it’s focused very heavily on making sure gaming is supported.
I’ve run into a lot of cases where things that get kind of iffy on endeavor or Manjaro work just fine on cachy because of their extra work they put in for this use case.
I hate to be the jerk but it’s because you got Nvidia
No its not. The nvidia 5070 works on linux and has for a while now.
I would also try a different distribution that’s known for having more recent kernels and faster development. Something like Manjaro is actually a pretty good fit for this situation.
We really need to avoid just suggesting a different distro as the solution. In this case it makes no sense, they’re running kernel 6.14 and the Nvidia driver is out of kernel. Phoronix benchmarked the 5070 running an older version of ubuntu and still got good performance and it worked well. That means their version of ubuntu which is new enough to support it. Im not sure what the issue is but I think switching distro’s is a last resort once you’ve tried everything else.
In this case, a different distro is the exact thing to be suggested. They are looking for out of the box support functionally speaking.
Which case if they want something that is newer than they really should be on a distro that is focused on newer support. Such as Arch or Fedora. Ubuntu, mint and other distros based on Debian all share the same problem of depending on where you are in the release cycle, you can be wildly out of date. Even if you have a newer colonel, there can be weird. Incompatibility and funky problems that occur.
Generally speaking, there is a very good reason why every single distribution that is focused specifically on video card support, gaming modern hardware is Arch or fedora based.
Frankly, for a lot of normal users who aren’t used to Linux or just want things to work out of the box with no fiddling and good documentation. Then they really should just be avoiding Debian and Ubuntu base distributions.
They’re great if you have newish but a couple years old hardware and you just want something that is Rock solid out of the box and you don’t plan to ever fiddle with it.
But for someone running a 5080 and likely is gaming, they should just be on cachy or bazzite. We’re installing your drivers setting up proton setting up steam, setting up everything. A gamer or someone trying to do any sort of advanced graphical s*** is quite literally a one-button process. With the dev team working on the distribution explicitly going out of their way to make sure the support for new hardware is as seamless and stupid proof as possible.
“it works on Linux” isn’t black and white. My 2070 would not work with freerdp in full screen and nouveau drivers. It works with Nvidia drivers, though.
Great but it’s not working out of the box and clearly that was the expectation.
AMD has built in support so no extra steps needed.
Ubuntu has a history of not having the latest kernels and having spotty support for new hardware.
Sure you can fix it but again the out of the box expectation.
We can agree that it should work and can work and I don’t disagree that always suggestions a different distribution is not generally helpful but watching people suffer trying to get Ubuntu working is a sore spot for me.
Its not an out of the box installation. He has an existing ubuntu installation and is upgrading the GPU. We can always be like oh you ran into a single issue, just get rid of your hardware and swap to an entirely new distro. Thats a worst case solution to the problem.
AMD has built in support so no extra steps needed.
Doesnt matter, he isnt asking about an AMD card.
Ubuntu has a history of not having the latest kernels and having spotty support for new hardware.
Its actually the opposite, ubuntu generally has very good hardware support. Cannonical work with vendors to test hardware works on their platform. The 5070 phronix benchmarks were done on ubuntu. Suggesting its a distro issue is ignoring the problem
I don’t take any offense to that. If I can’t get the 5070 to work I’ll see if I can take it back and get something from AMD or Intel.
I would live boot or install side by side another more modern distro before dumping the card. It’s a fine card it just requires effort to get working unlike AMD/Intel.
My 4070 ti has worked flawlessly with Linux mint
Good to know that your different distribution works well with your different GPU.
4070 Mint Mate 22.1 here and have had no issues with that or my 1050ti cards. Nvidia has had strides in linux compatibility the past 10 years or so.
My 2080 has issues and cuts off part of the screen on Linux mint. My 6700xt and amd setup would never. I switched and tried every driver. I’ve never used nvidia. Anyone have advice?
cuts off part of the screen
this happens to me if i use nouveau. i solve this by installing the driver and setting the correct refresh rate.
When Linux boots, it does not always use the first port on the video card. Sometimes the bios will display on the onboard video, then when the kernel boots, it will change to a different video port. I find with multiple video ports, its best to plug in all of them till you figure out which ones work. Nvidia is not well supported, and most video cards have problems in Linux. Generally, if you have to use a proprietary driver, it will have specific issues. The free drivers will just be buggy. Best is to see what cards are known to work well. There are maintained, well there used to be, lists of hardware that works well. If you installed proprietary drivers, they are often difficult to remove. There is not always instructions on how to uninstall. So part of your problems might be the drivers.
Not to sound like a smartass, but did you check BIOS to make sure it’s everything is running properly?
try a live usb
It might just be a card issue rather than a linux issue. I bought a new CPU a few months ago that was dead on arrival. Had to return it. Bought it brand new. So it’s something to double check.
Definitely a worthy advice. Many times it’s just bad hardware, not OS.
Is it sending HDR to a screen that can’t display it
The monitors have high enough resolution. The one I have connected now is 2560x1440.
HDR = High Dynamic Range. It’s a different color format that non-HDR displays can’t speak and output no input/blank screen/whatever the monitor does for a malformed video stream
You did plug in the GPU power cables as described in the manual, right?
Yeah lol the GPU is observably receiving power. Lights and fan come on as everything starts up and they stay on. The green safety light is on. I don’t think it’s a power issue.
Most GPUs will have fan spin & lights if only on pcie power (the pcie slot provides 75W without external connection), but then misbehave during display; I know it sounds stupid but make sure the 12V power connector on the top of the card is firmly plugged in, that connector in particular has a reputation for being unreliable.
That doesn’t exclude a power issue. A lot of cards will light up and spin up even without enough power, then stop responding once something actually tries to use its capabilities.
Fair enough then, I’ve just checked the recommended wattage. My PSU is 650W and that’s exactly what the GPU recommends.
If you have at least Ubuntu 24.10 and the NVIDIA 570.133.07 driver installed with the 2070, it should be plug and play with the new card.
If you put the 2070 in are you able to get a working system?
I was able to boot on the 2070. I’ll try on a newer version of Ubuntu.
Can you run nvidia-smi and confirm you’re on the 570 driver?
Also after you do a failed boot with the 5070 put the 2070 back in and try run this command
journalctl -b -1 -p 0..2to check the log from the previous boot and filter for only high priority issues. This should give some insight on whats failing when you try and boot with the 5070.Another dumb check but have you got the display cables plugged into the gpu?
Yeah the display cable is definitely plugged in. It displays the TUF logo on startup and I can get into BIOS settings while the monitor is plugged into the GPU. I only get ‘no input detected’ once I try to boot.
Nvidia-smi output:
Mon Aug 11 19:17:03 2025
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NVIDIA-SMI 570.158.01 Driver Version: 570.158.01 CUDA Version: 12.8 | |-----------------------------------------±-----------------------±---------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | | | | MIG M. | |=========================================+========================+======================| | 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 … Off | 00000000:09:00.0 On | N/A | | 0% 37C P8 18W / 235W | 481MiB / 8192MiB | 2% Default | | | | N/A | ±----------------------------------------±-----------------------±---------------------+±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | ID ID Usage | |=========================================================================================| | 0 N/A N/A 2099 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 143MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2358 G /usr/bin/gnome-shell 105MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2950 G …exec/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome 10MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5684 G …/6565/usr/lib/firefox/firefox 167MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 8244 G /usr/bin/nautilus 13MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 8333 G …tcher-linux-x64/balena-etcher 20MiB | ±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Can you run Journalctl and take a look at the logs from one of the boots with the 5070? You can use journalctl -b -0 for current boot -1 for the previous boot -2 for two boots ago etc. -p 0…2 to limit the output to events from critical to severe priority.
I think I’m on 24.04.3 LTS. May I ask what is in 24.10 that would make a difference?
24.10 is a minimum. If you’re on 24.04 that means you are very up to date and have the 6.14 kernel which is new enough. So we can rule that out as an issue.
6.14 is 25.04, not 24.04
My bad, I got it from this website and assumed it was correct. https://linuxiac.com/ubuntu-24-04-3-lts-released-with-bug-fixes-and-security-updates/
Which tutorial were you following?
Which version of Ubuntu are you using?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o5deOXLDpZw
Installed it new only a few months ago, it should be 24.04.3
You sure your PSU can handle that card? Sounds like you may not have enough wattage.
Yes, I have a 650W PSU which is the recommended wattage.
Run ‘nvidia-smi’ and post the output
Mon Aug 11 19:17:03 2025
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NVIDIA-SMI 570.158.01 Driver Version: 570.158.01 CUDA Version: 12.8 | |-----------------------------------------±-----------------------±---------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | | | | MIG M. | |=========================================+========================+======================| | 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 … Off | 00000000:09:00.0 On | N/A | | 0% 37C P8 18W / 235W | 481MiB / 8192MiB | 2% Default | | | | N/A | ±----------------------------------------±-----------------------±---------------------+±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | ID ID Usage | |=========================================================================================| | 0 N/A N/A 2099 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 143MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2358 G /usr/bin/gnome-shell 105MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2950 G …exec/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome 10MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5684 G …/6565/usr/lib/firefox/firefox 167MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 8244 G /usr/bin/nautilus 13MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 8333 G …tcher-linux-x64/balena-etcher 20MiB | ±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Well the driver is loaded, and you have processes engaged with it, so it’s functional.
If you’re losing output, maybe you have a conflict with the nouveau driver. Have you blacklisted it?
Honestly I haven’t even heard of a nouveau driver. I sure haven’t blacklisted it.
To be clear I got this output with my old GPU. Not sure how I would get to the command terminal with the new one.
You need to run these commands on the machine having the problem. Giving output from another machine doesn’t help solve anything.
If you’re getting dead output on your 5070, it means the driver is more than likely NOT loaded, so the output will be different.
Boot the 5070, and when you get a black screen, hit ALT+F2 to drop to a console shell. Login, and run ‘nvidia-smi’, and you should get something that confirms it’s loaded, or something that says it is not loaded.
If it’s not loaded, it means you haven’t installed the drivers (you sure you did?). Check your packages, make sure the driver is properly installed, then do this to blacklist the nouveau driver which may be in conflict.
Reboot. See if it works.
They didn’t run it on a different machine, they ran it with the old GPU is installed instead of the new one.
