580M drivers?

So yea, i've been having nothing but effin headaches with Nvidia Drivers lately, pretty much everything from 314 on has sucked nuts. im rolling back to 314.22 (last i used before nothing but crashes and random turn offs).

tried flashing to 675M and had issues there too.

im seriously about to ditch nvidia for ATI again.

anyone else out there running into issues with the 580m's drivers? what is your solution?

 

rolled back to 314.07, more stable no issues cept random reboot, probably due to heat...

probably (well, not probably, but most definately) need to replace the thermal pads/paste. anyone know what size thermal pads are needed for the 580m? probably gunna go with 7w/mk phobya OR i was thinkin, what about thermal PUTTY? its like 11w/mk? or even copper shims?

i'm even thinking of upgrading to a 7970m if i can get my hands on one for a decent price.

 

Sounds like another victim of poor NV drivers damaging cards. Yours is the 4th 580m I've seen doing exactly the same. My 675 also did it, and after a replacement - and only using the latest two drivers that do NOT overvolt the card, it has performed perfectly (hate to say it!).

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/721878-nvidia-320-18-driver-warning.html

 

i purposely skipped all those drivers i was on 314.07 for a long time simply because i was getting annoyed with how crappy each iteration was getting, i was constantly losing FPS and getting stuttering with every release it was getting worse and worse. i went straight to 331.82? and it was nothing but a nightmare. i could get maybe 2-5 minutes in a game before it would just shutdown due to overheat. i'm running A12 modified bios, with turbo turned OFF.

also, if my card has been damaged, how would i tell? i bought the card "aftermarket" and my R3 is not in warranty anymore, so getting it replaced basically means me probably just handing out the cash for a new one cheapest i've found 7970M's is 399 :/

also, im considering rolling back even further to the 29X.xx series

 

As you can imagine, I only tested the later drivers and as soon as I saw the voltage boost I rolled back to 314.22. It still went bad on me. Locking up constantly and finally I could only use it for more than a few minutes in safe mode.

Fact is, ALL the NV drivers post 3xx do this. It was only at 320.xx that cards started to show up in numbers having sporadic lockups and game crashed.

Those that had the BSOD's with 'driver stopped responding' should see an immediate improvement on the last two drivers. The latency is the lowest I have ever seen in years!

Of course you could try a complete wipe down and reinstall but I really think you will be wasting your time . Just too many people with the same issues that a replacement fixes.

Never thought I'd ever say this but the AMD is your best bang-for-buck, and the driver problems I hear about pale into insignificance against NV blowing up cards then denying that the overvolt even exists /rant_off

Edit: have you tried this one? http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...new-nv-driver-just-notebooks.html#post9480263 , aimed at fermi cards still locking up

 

yea. the 7970M performance increase to my 580m is huge just based on passmark scores, and from what i can tell, ZERO heat issues, altho still crap drivers, but better than Nvidia at the moment.

everything seems fine for me right now, my ONLY issue is heat i think, which is why im going to replace my thermal pads/repaste, maybe even get a cheap cooler mat. i've tried propping up on a book and it helps, but im still sweating after a decent gaming session.

with 331.82 i was getting "driver failed" about every 10 minutes while not idle.

on my current 314.07 im getting around 60 deg C idle on my 580m.

 

That's nowhere near hot enough to cause an issue. I did have a 580m that would lockup the machine every time I saw 72C, (so for the longest time I just made sure I never pushed it for that to happen) but the total shutdown will not be related to temp, That occurs at temps above 78C when the full power throttle of 75mhz (totally unusable) cuts in.

have you checked your in-game temps?

 

no, i havent. i run hwinfo to max both fans out, but i can tell you i know i am throttling, because i get random FPS drops even on lower graphics settings, as well as random flickering black screens. not running any OC's either.

im going to see if i can log some in-game temps to see, but im pretty sure im hitting at least mid to high 80's, maybe even 90's.

and for some reason it looks like during my last reboot, it just automatically updated me to 331.65. ...

 

Ahh, we might get lucky then

Get msiafterburner. Set it for OSD and check; temp, clock, voltage, and anything else you might like to see. Start a game and it should be on-screen in realtime. If you get stuck on the setup I'll post a pic or two

You could just be one of the 580'm that had a bad paste job from the factory. Did you see the '580m throttling - conference call' thread?

 

I know the 580m throttles at something like 73?

ran a few games, noticed temps were gettin pretty high. most notably, my CPU max core was hitting 96! and that was LIGHTLY loaded w/ just Natural Selection 2 & Contagion... not exactly high loading games. GPU was hitting 77.

so i just opened her up again, looked at the fans, man were they pretty nasty. cleaned it out, fans dont even run at idle anymore. i'm running them for now just to see how low of a temp i can get, i went from ~60-62 at IDLE to 38!

my CPU at idle was approx also around 60-65 or so, and its down to 48, with nothing but cleaning out the fans/heatsinks and repasting the CPU quickly. i'll repaste and repad the GPU once i get the pads. i'll go and test load here in a minute.

 

Oops, guess I need to start with the simple stuff .

Your GPU is still too high on stock clocks, you shouldn't see much above 70c. I also found a quick CPU repaste made quite a difference for me. No more fans spinning up just opening windows.

I'd suggest a repaste on the CPU. Just reuse the pads and make sure you have a pic of the layout to be sure what you see is correct. Missing pads and misplaced putty is not unknown.