High ACPI.sys DPC Latency (>34,000µs) on new ASUS ROG Strix Scar 16 (2025) - Causing 0x7E NVIDIA BSO

[Slytha]

Hello Intel Team & Community,

I am performing a deep-dive analysis of a critical BSOD on a new ASUS ROG Strix Scar 16 (2025) laptop, and all evidence points to a massive DPC latency stall in ACPI.sys. I am posting here to see if this is a known issue with the platform's chipset/firmware interaction and to request an investigation from the Intel side.

System Configuration

• Laptop: ASUS ROG Strix Scar 16 (2025)
• CPU: Intel Ultra 9 275HX
• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5090 Laptop GPU
• BIOS: ASUS v327
• OS: Windows 11 Pro (Fresh Install)
• External Monitor: 4K 240Hz (via HDMI 2.1, using DSC)

The Problem: BSOD & Latency

The system is experiencing SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (7e) BSODs, pointing to nvlddmkm.sys (NVIDIA driver).

The minidump shows the crash is an Integer divide-by-zero (c0000094). This is happening because a driver function (div eax, r12d) executed while a required register (r12d) was still 0. This indicates a severe race condition.

The root cause of this race condition was found using LatencyMon:

• ACPI.sys (ACPI Driver for NT)
• DPC Routine Execution Time: ~34,665 µs

This 34,000µs stall in the ACPI driver is the core problem. It is freezing power-state transitions long enough to cause other kernel-mode drivers (like nvlddmkm.sys and dxgkrnl.sys) to fail.

Analysis & Question for Intel

This ACPI.sys latency is directly related to the system's firmware (BIOS) and its interaction with the platform's power management. The crashes are most frequent when:

1. Switching between iGPU and dGPU.
2. Driving a high-bandwidth external 4K 240Hz monitor that uses Display Stream Compression (DSC).

My hypothesis is that the ASUS BIOS (v327) is improperly handling an ACPI power-state request (perhaps related to the P-cores/E-cores, the Intel chipset, or the Thunderbolt/Display controller) when the dGPU is active, especially with DSC.

My question is: Is the Intel team aware of or investigating any ACPI.sys latency issues on this new platform, especially in conjunction with ASUS firmware? Could this be related to Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology (DPTF), chipset drivers, or the platform's handling of GPU power states via ACPI calls?

Any insights you can provide or any data I can collect to help you investigate would be appreciated. This appears to be a platform-level firmware bug that is causing downstream driver crashes.

As I am an IT Architect myself, I have tried everything to mitigate or resolve the issue.

A post about my issue: ROG Strix Scar 16 / RTX 5090 – nvlddmkm.sys Crashe... - Republic of Gamers Forum - 1120221

Might be related to a global issue, detailed post & confirmed by Asus: Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive: A deep dive into the ACPI.sys DPC latency problems on Asus ROG laptops

Alot of other posts about these issues can be found

Hopefully you can read the posts and try and make sense of the issue.

If you need anything i'll try to help.

Kind regards,

KS

[JedG_Intel]

Hello Slytha,

Thank you for posting on Intel Community Forum. I appreciate your insights and the detailed description of the issue. At the moment, we haven't received any similar reports but we can look into this to identify the root cause.

Also, please be informed that product you are reporting is an OEM original equipment manufacturer device. Kindly take into consideration that our support may be limited since we are not familiar with the technology, settings and customizations that the OEM has designed on your system, However I will do my best to assist you with your concern.

To better address this issue, please share the information below.

1. When did this issue start? Is it out of the box issue?

2. Do the crashes happen during specific activities?

3. Does the crash occur when using the internal laptop display only?

4. What's the exact monitor model and connection type?

5. What triggers the iGPU/dGPU switching?

Additionally, to have a better understanding of your system configuration and components please generate a complete copy of the System Support Utility (SSU) report. Please follow instructions here and send the report - How to get the Intel® System Support Utility Logs on Windows*

I look forward to your response.

Best regards

Jed G.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Slytha]

Hello JedG,

When did this issue start? Is it out of the box issue? Yes, this has been an "out of the box" issue. It has occurred since the beginning, starting on October 14th, 2025. It persists even after two separate fresh installs of Windows 11.

Do the crashes happen during specific activities? Yes, the crashes are strongly linked to GPU power-state changes, especially when the external monitor is connected. Specific triggers include:

• Using the external monitor while browsing (especially in Edge or watching Netflix). I had it 3 times in a row when browsing to Netflix (via Edge browser).

• Immediately after closing or alt-tabbing a game (which likely triggers the switch from dGPU back to iGPU).

• In a 3DMark Timespy benchmark when a next phase is loading (might also trigger dGPU back to iGPU for a brief moment)
• During a game (Battlefield 6 or Apex Legends) no issues, so its prolly not temp related.

To mitigate the issue, I have already tried all the standard workarounds, none of which are a permanent fix:

• HAGS (Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling) OFF

• G-Sync / VRR OFF

• DSC ON (Turning it Off only gets me 4K at 120Hz)

• NVIDIA GPU: Optimus + Dynamic in Bios (dGPU + Ultimate mode was even more unstable and gave me many black screens)

• PCI Express Link State: Max performance

• CPU: 100% performance mode in power plan

• Turned off hardware acceleration in all browsers/apps.

Does the crash occur when using the internal laptop display only? This is unknown. I have not tested the internal display enough to confirm, as my primary use case involves the external monitor.

What's the exact monitor model and connection type?

• Monitor: ASUS ROG XG27UCDMG

• Connection: HDMI 2.1 (running at 4K 240Hz, which requires DSC to be active)

What triggers the iGPU/dGPU switching? The laptop is set to Dynamic mode in the BIOS and Optimus (Standard mode in Armory Crate). The switching is handled automatically by NVIDIA Optimus. It is triggered whenever a GPU-intensive application (like a game) is launched (which switches to the dGPU) or closed (which switches back to the iGPU). 

The evidence in my report points to the exact bug documented by the community:

1. The Minidump: Shows a 0x7E BSOD in nvlddmkm.sys caused by a c0000094 (divide by zero) exception.

2. The LatencyMon Report: Shows a catastrophic DPC latency stall in ACPI.sys of over 34,000µs.

Think of it as a domino effect, which LatencyMon is showing:

1. Domino 1 (The Culprit): ACPI.sys (the firmware driver) stalls for a catastrophic 34,000+ µs. It is holding the CPU hostage and not letting other critical drivers do their work.

2. Domino 2 (The Victims): Other drivers like dxgkrnl.sys (the DirectX graphics kernel) and nvlddmkm.sys (the NVIDIA driver) are waiting in line. They have extremely time-sensitive jobs related to managing the GPU.

3. The "Pop": When ACPI.sys finally finishes, these other drivers "pop up" with high latency because they were starved of CPU time. LatencyMon report showed this: dxgkrnl.sys and Wdf01000.sys also had high execution times, all caused by the main ACPI.sys stall.

The NVIDIA driver "getting stalled" is the symptom. The ACPI.sys stall is in my eyes the disease.

This data confirms my laptop is most likely suffering from the well-documented ASUS ACPI firmware bug. The ACPI.sys stall causes a race condition in the NVIDIA driver, leading to the "divide by zero" crash. My crash symptom (the 30-60 second black screen before reboot) perfectly matches the watchdog timeout described in this deep-dive:

GitHub - Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive: A deep dive into the ACPI.sys DPC latency problems on Asus ROG laptops

ROG Strix Scar 16 / RTX 5090 – nvlddmkm.sys Crashe... - Republic of Gamers Forum - 1120221

I am also in talks with Asus and trying to get to Nvidia. I am also reporting this to you guys to investigate if these "Display-External" errors or the ACPI stall are in any way related to the Intel iGPU or platform chipset so that everyone is involved. You can see my public-facing bug reports here:

• My ASUS Forum Post: https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/gaming-notebooks/rog-strix-scar-16-rtx-5090-nvlddmkm-sys-crashes-with-external/td-p/1120221

• Other Users with Similar Issues: https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive/issues

Hereby i have also attached the requested report.

I report this issue here because I noticed thousands of 

Kind regards,

Kevin

[JedG_Intel]

Hello Slytha,

Thank you so much for providing the additional information. Your cooperation and effort are truly appreciated and play an important role in helping us investigate this issue thoroughly. I’ll review this matter internally and keep you updated. You can expect to hear back from me as soon as possible.

Best regards

Jed G.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[JedG_Intel]

Hello Slytha,

I'm getting back in touch to provide you with an update. To further troubleshoot the issue, please try the latest driver from OEM website-V32.0.15.7665. Additionally, kindly provide the complete crash dump to help with our investigation.

I look forward to your response.

Best regards

Jed G.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Slytha]

Hi JedG,

I ofcourse already tried all recommended drivers from Asus, i have been trying to mitigate and or resolve this issue for weeks now. Now im just trying recent drivers hoping the issue gets resolved. And also some games require recent Nvidia drivers to optimaly work.

My initial problem was a nvlddmkm.sys BSOD, which I traced to a catastrophic ~34,000µs DPC latency stall in ACPI.sys.

Besides the black screen BSOD, I have two major issues to report, both of which seem to point to this same ACPI/firmware root cause:

Issue 1: Chronic Intel-Gfx-Display-External Errors

Even when the system was "stable" (i.e., not hanging), I have been logging thousands of Intel-Gfx-Display-External errors in my Event Viewer. These errors have been happening constantly, even when the system would eventually crash with the NVIDIA driver BSOD. This suggests the underlying problem has been affecting the Intel iGPU driver all along.

The description for Event ID 10 from source Intel-Gfx-Display-External cannot be found... The following information was included with the event: 32.0.101.6790 (This is the Intel driver version)

I have also tried recent intel drivers, no resolve.

Issue 2: The New System-Wide "Zombie State"
Today, I experienced a new, more severe failure that confirms the problem is a total platform stall.

I started a benchmark. The dGPU (NVIDIA) on my external monitor engaged. The external monitor instantly went black.

I waited 60 seconds, but this time, I did not get a BSOD.

I pressed Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and my internal laptop screen (connected to the Intel iGPU) successfully turned on and showed the Ctrl+Alt+Delete screen. 

After the system was in a "zombie state." The external dGPU screen remained black, and the internal iGPU screen was active but non-functional. Any attempt to run a program failed. Taskmgr.exe hung. Browsers would not load. The PC would not reboot. I had to force a hard power-off.

The Event Viewer Evidence (From the Hang)

This hang filled my Event Viewer with errors, proving a system-wide collapse of the hardware communication layer (WMI).
Complete WMI Service Collapse: I am seeing hundreds of WMI query failures with ResultCode = 0x80041032 (Call Canceled) and PossibleCause = Throttling Idle Tasks.

Applications are trying to query basic hardware information and the system is failing to answer:
• Operation = Start IWbemServices::ExecQuery - ROOT\CIMV2 : SELECT Caption FROM Win32_VideoController
• Operation = Start IWbemServices::ExecQuery - root\cimv2 : SELECT SerialNumber FROM Win32_BIOS
• Operation = Start IWbemServices::ExecQuery - ROOT\CIMV2 : SELECT Name FROM Win32_Processor
• Operation = Start IWbemServices::ExecQuery - root\WMI : SELECT InstanceName, VideoOutputTechnology FROM WmiMonitorConnectionParams

System Hangs as a Result: This WMI collapse directly caused the "zombie state" I experienced:
• The program Taskmgr.exe stopped interacting with Windows and was closed.
• An error occurred when transitioning from DesktopLocked... (ErrorCode 0x8007139F)
• ...

Conclusion

This single, chronic stall is:
• Causing the Intel iGPU driver (Intel-Gfx-Display-External) to log thousands of errors.
• Periodically causing the NVIDIA dGPU to hang or BSOD.
• Causing a complete Windows WMI service collapse, preventing it from querying platform hardware like the CPU and BIOS.

At your request I will collect a full memory dump on my next BSOD. Hereby I'll share the minidumps that I still had backupped:

MemoryDumps.zip

Kind regards,

Kevin

[JedG_Intel]

Hello Slytha,

Thank you for the feedback and detailed description of the issue that occurs. I'll continue to investigate this matter and I'll let you know once I have an update.

Best regards

Jed G.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[JedG_Intel]

Hello Slytha,

I’m reaching out to provide you with an update regarding the issue. After thoroughly reviewing the crash dump files, our analysis indicates that the problem is related to the operating system. Based on these findings, we strongly recommend performing a clean installation of Windows to ensure system stability and prevent further occurrences.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Best regards

Jed G.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Slytha]

Hi JedG,

As stated before after the problem occured for the 1st times I already did 2 complete formats and reinstalls...

Which evenidence suggests the problem is the OS?

Clearly the problem is alot deeper than this, I cam name tons of people with the same issues.

One of them is on your own forum: https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Intel-Gfx-Display-External-error/td-p/1721977

I can link you tons of other users with the same or related problems...

As i said im a senior IT Architect, the issue is not my OS, scratched that from my list after reinstalling Windows 2 times...

Have you even read the post I have linked? Have you read the deep dive on github?

Enjoy ur weekend...

Kinda frustrating that everyone gets the same response, check driver, try OS format... Clearly the issue is deeper than that.

Regards,

Kevin

[Slytha]

Hi JedG,

Thank you for your continued correspondence.

I'm following up on our investigation. To ensure we have exhausted all possibilities on my end, I have just performed another complete format and clean installation of Windows 11 (v25H2).

To be clear, this was:

1. A complete format of the system drive.

2. A fresh OS install using the official Microsoft Media Creation Toolkit to build a brand-new, clean ISO.

3. I have attached proof of the OS install date from the command prompt.

Unfortunately, this has confirmed that the problem is not a software or installation issue.

Within the first hour of this brand-new, clean installation—before all drivers had even finished setting up—my Event Viewer has already logged over 819 errors from the Intel-Gfx-Display-External source (Event ID 10).

This definitively proves that the issue is not caused by a corrupted Windows installation, third-party software, or a bad driver conflict. The errors are systemic and present from the moment the OS is installed.

All the evidence I have collected (the nvlddmkm.sys crash dumps, the ACPI.sys latency stalls, and now these immediate Intel-Gfx-Display-External errors on a clean install) points to a deep, underlying platform-level bug.

Please escalate this case. This is not a standard software problem that can be fixed by reinstallation. I am happy to provide any logs you need, but we must move past troubleshooting a "corrupted OS."

Kind regards,

Kevin