Beware: Latest Nvidia GeForce Driver Thoroughly Borked

[Newage]

Wow, I actually saw the GeForce Experience notification yesterday, but was too lazy and didn't go through with the download. Bullet dodged. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[The White Hunter]

You know, Microsoft's bright idea was to install GPU drivers for users without their knowledge as well in Windows 10. I'm glad that idea died before it could become reality. Nvidia drivers have been shit for well over a year now. Meanwhile AMD drivers just keep getting better. Strange times we live in.

It can't be too hard to essentially make good drivers for the same silicon after what, 4 years now? I want to love AMD but they just can't provide what I need

OT: Hmmmm nope i'm still on 361.something

 

[weirdee]

since, as far as i can tell, they keep releasing drivers for my old gtx 560 ti that never resolved a several year old issue where any of their newer drivers past a certain point (314.22) would cause extreme failures to occur increasingly frequently, any further screwups on their part don't have any bearing on me unless they bother to fix it, which they won't, because it's an older card

the fact that they keep releasing drivers for this card that don't work makes me question what they do in order to make them

 

[Darth_Payn]

My laptop's running Windows 10 and the Nvidia GeForce driver is version 353.84, same as it was when I pulled it out of the box, and it never updates. Now I'm sure if that's good or bad.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

From what I'm reading [https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/921332/geforce-drivers/official-364-47-game-ready-whql-display-driver-feedback-thread-released-3-7-16-/post/4825588/#4825588], the driver seems to eat itself if you install it with more than one monitor hooked up.

This driver apparently shipped with Vulkan support, so that might be at least part of the reason there's issues now.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Do nVidia not have quality control or testers working for them? Seems a pretty big mistake to miss.

 

[Deathfish15]

Nvidia - Great hardware, software that makes you want to scream.

Amen to that!

However it is AMD that is the exact opposite: Hardware that makes you want to scream, great software.

 

[BoogieManFL]

It's not all about the express installation. I did a custom install as I always do and it instantly bluescreened my computer, I could only get in to safe mode and the installers could not be uninstalled by windows "not a valid win32 application" so basically I had to treat the drivers like a virus and use a tool to wipe it clean.

 

[Fappy]

I just rolled back to the previous driver. I think I'm okay now. Apparently most of the people having issues were on Windows 10, so I am not even sure I'd see any serious problems that wouldn't get fixed in the next patch.

I'll be sure to wait on patches for now on though. My OCD usually makes me want to patch ASAP.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

It's looking like the 364.51 hotfix drivers aren't actually fixing the problem [http://wccftech.com/nvidia-users-beware-latest-drivers-damage-pc/]. I just checked GeForce Experience and it's only offering the 362.00 drivers.

 

[MercurySteam]

Random BSOD is the most pressing issue but nobody really is reporting physical GPU damage. Better to just wait for the next driver. Though that being said, I'm surprised 364.47 was given WHQL approval.

 

[otakon17]

Huh...makes me glad I put off that GeForce GPU upgrade I originally planned on doing with my tax refund... oh well my crusty AMD Radeon HD 7800 will have to do for now...

 

[Magmarock]

Strange, I installed those drivers and hadn't had any issues, but to be safe I think I'll downgrade.

 

[Excludos]

NVidia releases botched drivers. I'm surprised this can even be considered news.

I wish NVidia would stop "optimizing" their drivers for specific games and instead just make the damn thing work reliably without "NVidia display driver has stopped responding" popups, hard crashes and other fun times.

Here's news for you: The Nvidia drivers are rarely updated at the core and works perfectly. The reason they are forced to keep updating them is because game developers are fucking lazy and don't always feel like optimizing their code for the Nvidia drivers. And why should they? Nvidia patches it up anyways. And Nvidia is forced to do it, because they want costumers to use their software (and in turn, hardware) instead of their competitors.

Obviously, it's a tad more complicated than that, but that is the general tl;dr of the situation.

 

[Damian Porter]

I installed that driver already, but never experienced an issue. Should I still downgrade?

 

[MCerberus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this MS certification's one job. YOU HAD ONE JOB. Also shame at Nvidia for releasing a test candidate as a stable.

 

[sesbiosfv]

I installed it express with geforce experience and it happened to me... I had to use the driver cleaner utility to uninstall them in safe mode (not easy to get into in Win10), download the full driver pack and run the full with clean install checked...

That's a nice 2 hours of my life wasted. I had to find another keyboard because the menu to select safe mode in Win10 borked with my wireless one...

 

[Kross]

This is literally the first critically bad Nvidia driver issue I can remember seeing in over 15 years of various kinds of tech support and other kinds of computer involvement. Not that it doesn't happen, but it's FAR from common to have this level of breakage from Nvidia in my experience.

That being said, I'm not a fan of the "Geforce Experience" always-on management program, as it's more moving parts / things to cause breakage, and not a great lesson for them to take away from other, less stable driver projects. Though I suppose with the history of graphics drivers not having clean uninstalls/re-installs, and people never updating on their own when new games need updates to work properly because of what is discussed in the link below... ugh

ATI/AMD graphics cards on the other hand, I've almost never had a "good" or even neutral experience dealing with their software - and when working as support staff for various video games, one of the primary crashing issues was specifically ATI/AMD drivers.

For those wondering why this stuff gets through, or more specifically why the drivers are constantly being tweaked for new games, please read the following on graphics card driver development to see what the state of the art is: http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver-quality.html (A/B/C = Nvidia/AMD/Intel)