Latest Nvidia drivers crashing a lot

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MorgothPl

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Oct 13, 2008
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It seems I've a bit of problems with newest WHQL driver pack. It does not matter if my 970 runs on stock or is OCed , some of the games just crash. Sometimes I get the message that Windows recovered from drivers issue and game can be continued, and sometimes I need to switch to task manager and kill the game process.

That's really irritating, especially when you play MMO group content
 
It *could* be a driver problem, but that sounds like a possibly marginal card ... that's a TDR you've described.
 
Too much overclock, bad power supply or memory problems.

Troubleshoot is easy: Remove all overclocks. Run Memtest for a few hours. Try another power supply, even if the current one is new.
 
So far i've only seen it in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel.
Didn't get any crashes with the latest drivers while playing Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Currently have a GTX 970 (not overclocked other than whatever small factory OC it came with)
 
Honestly I had a few driver crashes with the latest 347.09 WHQL drivers. I think there might be something a little off with them. The 347.09 beta drivers for some reason were a little more stable for me. That said though, I'd be looking first at your power supply. I checked your sig and it looks like you have a 650w PSU. That sounds just a bit too close for comfort to the min PSU needed for a GTX9x0 card. If you are doing any kind of OCing to your processor and adding voltage to stabilize I can see you possibly exceeding it's limits while in game.
 
LurkerLito said:
Honestly I had a few driver crashes with the latest 347.09 WHQL drivers. I think there might be something a little off with them. The 347.09 beta drivers for some reason were a little more stable for me. That said though, I'd be looking first at your power supply. I checked your sig and it looks like you have a 650w PSU. That sounds just a bit too close for comfort to the min PSU needed for a GTX9x0 card. If you are doing any kind of OCing to your processor and adding voltage to stabilize I can see you possibly exceeding it's limits while in game.
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Seriously? 550W is enough for 970 - people do run pair of those on 650W, saw even guys running pair of 980s on 650. besides, crashes started when I was running old 1kw Corsair PSU, changing one didn't do nothing.

Windows is 8.1... I'd not blame the card too, because with earlier WHQL it was working okay, with 344.09 beta, they would go same crash way, but Windows was always able to recover after crash, and continue playing. Right now, after the crash game has to be restarted.

Also it doesn't crash in all games. FC4, Dawn of War Soulstorm, Elite or AC: Unity were working properly. But in Dawn of War 2, SW:ToR, CoH 2, they crash from time to time - so I'd blame the software, not hardware
 
MorgothPl said:
Seriously? 550W is enough for 970 - people do run pair of those on 650W, saw even guys running pair of 980s on 650. besides, crashes started when I was running old 1kw Corsair PSU, changing one didn't do nothing.

Windows is 8.1... I'd not blame the card too, because with earlier WHQL it was working okay, with 344.09 beta, they would go same crash way, but Windows was always able to recover after crash, and continue playing. Right now, after the crash game has to be restarted.

Also it doesn't crash in all games. FC4, Dawn of War Soulstorm, Elite or AC: Unity were working properly. But in Dawn of War 2, SW:ToR, CoH 2, they crash from time to time - so I'd blame the software, not hardware
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Yeah I always over provision power because I don't want to have to think about power requirements when adding more HDs or OCing or plugging in a bunch of USB devices. So for me 650 sounds low. ;)

It sounds like you know the solution already, so just downgrade to the more stable drivers.
 
I get crashes on mild overclocks (I am talking +50Mhz on GPU and MEM!) on my 980 SLI setup. I have EVGA 980 ACX 2.0 with custom fan curve set to a max of 50%. Things are cool and I can play hours of Far Cry 4 or NFS Rivals (Frostbite engine) without a hitch. Though normal browsing or doing some 3D modeling work crashes the drivers.
 
Went back to 344.75 - though had to install newest GF experience version, as the older one couldn't start. All crashes disappeared.
 
I haven't had a single crash. However, I'm limiting P00 power state minimum voltage to 1,2V to prevent crashing that would start after over 1415 MHz OC because the boost would drop the voltage too low when GPU utilisation is low. Without that it would be rather crash happy in SW:TOR for example (cpu bound situations).

It will work just fine in demanding games but in games where boost fluctuates, TDR's are likely to happen.

limit7gupj.png

I've used 1,2V (stock voltage is 1,206V in my case, use your stock voltage if you want maximum stability).
 
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I've got a 980 and it crashes for me on farcry 4. After a while of gaming, the driver will crash but Windows will save the system and restart the driver. I'm on Win8,1 64bit. I'm using the g1 gaming.
 
Tup3x said:
I haven't had a single crash. However, I'm limiting P00 power state minimum voltage to 1,2V to prevent crashing that would start after over 1415 MHz OC because the boost would drop the voltage too low when GPU utilisation is low. Without that it would be rather crash happy in SW:TOR for example (cpu bound situations).

It will work just fine in demanding games but in games where boost fluctuates, TDR's are likely to happen.

limit7gupj.png

I've used 1,2V (stock voltage is 1,206V in my case, use your stock voltage if you want maximum stability).
Click to expand...

I believe that could be exactly my issue. Normal load I get crashes but during heavy load, the card can take a beating. I suspected it has something to do with voltage changes as clocks go down at lower load and your post confirms it. Though, do note that things run fine at stock clocks, for me. I just get the normal load crashes when the GPU/MEM are OC'ed. Could it be possible that OC'ing affects the clocks in a way that heavy load stability might be fine but regular load stability could be affected?
 
I've had crashes with 347.09 also (980 sli). Never had them before and don't overclock. Definitely related to this driver.
 
Crashes for me as well on 347.09. I went back to 344.75. Smooth sailing.
 
im using nvidia branded 970 and ive had very similar symptoms. bioshock infinite would crash on the new drivers saying something about direct x crashed etc...massive pain in the ass. ive reverted back to 344.xx and no problems!
 
You know, i've been wondering why i've been having so many Far Cry 4 dump to desktops and Dragon Age crashes and I assumed it was my overclocking of my new 980 but now I wonder if its the drivers.....
 
If you underclock the gpu and vram, does it stop crashing per chance?
 
I have gotten a few random crashes since installing the latest drivers as well. Prior to them, never had any crashes with my 980.
 
xorbe said:
Right, so if that fixes it, then it's defective.
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Sir, if you go on guru3d and read the forum about these drivers you'll see people owning 500, 600, 700 and 900 series cards are getting crashing issues.

Guess everyone has a broken card. Couldn't possibly be the shitty drivers. :rolleyes:
 
HydroBudz said:
Sir, if you go on guru3d and read the forum about these drivers you'll see people owning 500, 600, 700 and 900 series cards are getting crashing issues.

Guess everyone has a broken card. Couldn't possibly be the shitty drivers. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Exactly nvidia drivers have been horrible for me for the last year.
 
HydroBudz said:
Sir, if you go on guru3d and read the forum about these drivers you'll see people owning 500, 600, 700 and 900 series cards are getting crashing issues.

Guess everyone has a broken card. Couldn't possibly be the shitty drivers. :rolleyes:
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Right, so down-clocking wouldn't stop the crashing then ... I don't know, maybe that connection is too big of a leap.
 
I thought it might have been the games or the new card causing crashes because I simply installed the latest (347.09) when I got this 970. Rolled back to 344.75 and things have been a bit more stable. Though, I haven't had much time to really test it out.
 
Hmm, I have 2 PC's set up with a 970 each and been getting crashes. Black screens in Far Cry 4 but the sound is still there. Both are Asus STRIX cards and using latest drivers.
 
Tup3x said:
I haven't had a single crash. However, I'm limiting P00 power state minimum voltage to 1,2V to prevent crashing that would start after over 1415 MHz OC because the boost would drop the voltage too low when GPU utilisation is low. Without that it would be rather crash happy in SW:TOR for example (cpu bound situations).

It will work just fine in demanding games but in games where boost fluctuates, TDR's are likely to happen.

limit7gupj.png

I've used 1,2V (stock voltage is 1,206V in my case, use your stock voltage if you want maximum stability).
Click to expand...

I have just done this BIOS flash. And it works for me. (Gigabyte windforce 970 non G1)

The only thing that changed now is that i can increase my voltage to 1.2750v instead of 1.262v.
 
wikidlad said:
Hmm, I have 2 PC's set up with a 970 each and been getting crashes. Black screens in Far Cry 4 but the sound is still there. Both are Asus STRIX cards and using latest drivers.
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So I am not the only one with STRIX cards that crashes with Far Cry 4 ? I knew it wasn't my fucking overclock when other games ran fine. Worthless unstable POS Ubishit games...
 
USAS said:
I have just done this BIOS flash. And it works for me. (Gigabyte windforce 970 non G1)

The only thing that changed now is that i can increase my voltage to 1.2750v instead of 1.262v.
Click to expand...

Yeah this fixes most of the TDR/Crashes for GTX 970s and I am willing to bet that this is what is going on here to most users. It was also much talked about at Overclock.net, a ton of users where experiencing it until they started using modded bios with fixed voltage boost bins.I was having this exact problem and flashed my vbios. Since then I have made my own custom bios with different voltages for certain bins. Not had a crash since I modded my bios back in November. The problem seems to pop its ugly face up in certain situations like; certain menus, cinematics/cut scenes anytime the GPU boosts down from it's higher 3D clock to a lower boost clock. The voltage table seems to mess up and it's like it uses the wrong voltage table for the core clock. Also modding the bios will more than likely give you a higher overclock as well. Ton of info over at Overclock.net about this and how to ''bake in'' your clocks/voltages, etc.

Here is a link to the problem; https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/784294/?comment=4345107
 
So is it the cards, or the driver. Because I took some heat here suggesting it could be the cards, but nobody came back after I suggested down-clocking to determine. So the 970 is the new 560?
 
xorbe said:
So is it the cards, or the driver. Because I took some heat here suggesting it could be the cards, but nobody came back after I suggested down-clocking to determine. So the 970 is the new 560?
Click to expand...

Going by memory here, back in Oct and Nov of last year this was affecting a large portion of 970 users. So much so that random crashing was a hot topic of debate whether it was early drivers for new hardware or the hardware itself. I am sure new reviosions of cards may have new VBIOS' that fixed the problem. But I have a first version Rev1 G1 Gaming 970 and I had this problem in many games ( Mordor, BF4,Evil Within) and it was always when I was in a menu, changing settings, etc. The boost clocks voltages borked out anytime you overclock past a certain core clock, but mine was doing it as stock as well. Since modding the VBIOS i have had zero crashes with my 970 and it hit 1550/8000 without touching the highest bin voltage -- I had to change the other bins voltages to 1.2v to fix the issue. If i hadn't had such a good overclocker out of the box I was considering RMA for a newer revision 1.1 G1 970.
 
naticus said:
Going by memory here, back in Oct and Nov of last year this was affecting a large portion of 970 users. So much so that random crashing was a hot topic of debate whether it was early drivers for new hardware or the hardware itself. I am sure new reviosions of cards may have new VBIOS' that fixed the problem. But I have a first version Rev1 G1 Gaming 970 and I had this problem in many games ( Mordor, BF4,Evil Within) and it was always when I was in a menu, changing settings, etc. The boost clocks voltages borked out anytime you overclock past a certain core clock, but mine was doing it as stock as well. Since modding the VBIOS i have had zero crashes with my 970 and it hit 1550/8000 without touching the highest bin voltage -- I had to change the other bins voltages to 1.2v to fix the issue. If i hadn't had such a good overclocker out of the box I was considering RMA for a newer revision 1.1 G1 970.
Click to expand...

I have the 1.1 OC 970 windforce. And i had to do the 1.2v bios flash.
 
I just rebuilt my entire machine with a new mobo/cpu/ram and fresh Windows install and im gonna go back to the November 18th 344.75 drivers on my 980 STRIX and hope to God it runs stable now. No overclocking atm just to see what happens.
 
USAS said:
I have just done this BIOS flash. And it works for me. (Gigabyte windforce 970 non G1)

The only thing that changed now is that i can increase my voltage to 1.2750v instead of 1.262v.
Click to expand...

Yeah that fixed my problem too, had lots of driver crashing in lots of games with my 980 SLi
Since Bios flash not a single crash for last 3 days straight now, amazing what simple flash can do... so happy now was really frustrated since day one with this cards made me sorry selling my TItans.
All good now :)
 
With such a recognised problem, why arent the manufacturer's simply shipping with a BIOS that supports the right voltages.

It certainly puts me off buying when people talk about frequent random crashes until they modify the bios and voltage settings...
 
I have every nv card ever, but I freakin' hate boost for desktop usage. Idle, half, max, that's all I want! There is no need for the speed to bounce around +/- 50 MHz on a desktop, complexity that ends in tears and no real benefit (beyond the marketing dept.) Well, that's not quite true, because FurMark. Oh well ...
 
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No way im gonna void my warranty by using a 3rd party flash, id rather RMA at that rate
 
I didn't have a single crash yet on my 980 SLI setup with the latest 347.09 drivers.

I am using the MSI Gaming 980's.

Games are: BF4, CODAW, FC4, Bioshock, NFS, Mordor and Evil Within.

I would say bad binned chips is to blame, I would add extra voltage to keep them stable.
 
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