Need For Speed Unbound Blinking Bug Needs Motherboard Bios to Fix [UPDATED]

[UPDATE] EA updated the support page to clarify that users should actually update their motherboards’ BIOS, not their graphics card, to fix this Need for Speed Unbound bug.

[ORIGINAL STORY] Need for Speed Unbound has a problem with NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 graphics card that cannot be easily fixed with things such as graphics drivers or updates.

So, let’s start with the basic question. What’s the issue itself? According to Electronic Arts, the game has display flashing/blinking issues when running on a machine powered by the RTX 4090. The good news is that there’s a fix to this issue. The bad news is that it takes a little bit of work to get the fix going.

The RTX 4090 requires a firmware update in order to run games like Need for Speed Unbound properly. NVIDIA has released a fully-automated Firmware Update Tool that can be run from within Windows. This tool will allow you to perform a video BIOS update on your RTX 4090 card, and then you’ll be able to play Need for Speed Unbound without an issue.

The tool also doesn’t break the factory overclock or custom power limits set by NVIDIA’s add-in card (AIC) partners for custom-design cards. TechPowerUp confirmed this with their own investigation by running the tool on a Palit RTX 4090 GameRock OC and the NVIDIA Founders Edition card.

According to the article, the tool is seemingly designed to work on all RTX 4090 cards. It also is somehow able to update a specific area of the video BIOS without changing the BIOS version, its build date, or custom settings by AICs. While the BIOS checksum is definitely changing, it is somehow not affecting its digital signature.

This firmware update should also fix an additional issue where graphics cards in certain motherboards that are in UEFI mode could experience blank screens on boot until the OS loads. So, if you’re experiencing blank screens on boot, this tool should help you.

Another smaller issue that’s been found in Need for Speed Unbound on PC is with Dualsense controllers. While Electronic Arts doesn’t have a fix for this particular issue, they suggest using DS4Windows to work around it. Need for Speed Unbound is currently available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC; stay tuned for our review coming up soon.