Nvidia 320.18 driver warning

Hi guys, thought I'd put this here as it's around various posts but not well publicised.

This driver is causing tons of issues including blank screens (the M17x/680 has this problem) and cards burning out!

AVOID! NV have gone into CYA mode and are not even commenting anymore - still waiting for a fix. This driver should be removed but for whatever reason NV are still sending it out.

See https://forums.geforce.com/default/...-driver-feedback-thread-released-5-23-13-/67/

For over 1K of problem posts....

I would guess the AMD guys are happy, it's driving NV people away

Update: I am now seeing 580m's burning out - be warned!

Uodate 2: Now a 675m turns up burned over in the NV forum

Update 3: (6/19) Another two dead cards since the last update here

6/20: two more cards and the fanboys are in full swing defending NV. 'It's all coincidences' 'a driver can't destroy cards' 'people are making it up to get new cards'. The problem with the 680/120hz has been identified and requires a vBIOS update (both Dell and Clevo) so watch the dell/clevo sites for an official update some time soon hopefully.Edit: This appares to have been a delay tactic by NV as the vbios has not shown up but users are reporting that the latest BETA works fine.

New driver mooted for 'end of month' by NV mod...

6/22 Still no sign of a beta but the reports of cards dieing has dropped off - guess they got them all!

If you want to rollback and still use 'Experience' without it keep prompting you to update use these options. Game profiles will still get upgdated.

6/22: Ton of posts but no burned cards. There is a later driver floating around, 314.20 over in Laptopvideo2go but I'm not going near it as I haven't seen a single report yet.

6/23: Eight more pages of problems and about 4 damaged cards. Only comments from NV relate to specific graphic issues, in specific titles .
Seems there is an unreleased beta:320.39 floating around. Only two reports, both positive on the stuttering gaming problem.

6/25 quite a few more complaints and no official statement about when a better driver is going to be released. Today was mooted and the version number is 320.49. In two minds right now about trying it. Think I'll wait it out a couple of days just to see how it is going down...

320.49 beta is now on the NV drivers site - we will see

6/26: The new beta is getting a mixed bag of responses - seems not to have helped a lot of people but of course the ones it works fine for are not posting. This quote from the NV mod was particularly annoying: "I don't see any evidence that our drivers are frying GPUs from the previous feedback thread." Lost all credibility in my eyes - ignore all the reports then say they do not exist - really https://forums.geforce.com/default/...read-released-6-25-13-/13/?offset=285#3839356

6/26 320.49 is still getting panned for poor game performance and artifacting. I think that they (NV) will haver addressed whatever was burning cards as a matter of urgency and got this one out prior to fixing all the individual game issues.

7/1: 320.49 has now gone WHQL so expect auto updates to detect it. So far BF3 still seems to be a tricky problem but I didn't see any catastrophes

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...-driver-feedback-thread-released-6-25-13-/38/

7/11 the .49 release is still causing a lot of graphical issues and lockups. No comment at all from NV for about a week now - not even a 'we're working on it'!
There is a later driver out there somewhere that was released for win 8.1 specifically (so win update could see it) but no great reports on that one

7/18 326.10 beta has just been released. In tests I have not seen a voltage boost at ALL! Looks like NV have fixed the non-existent overvolt.

Quick BMAC benchmark:

stock clock no change (45fps)

700mhz overclock +3fps (53fps)

At least they didn't seem to cripple it to lower the stress

We shall see..

8/1 362.41 beta out (yesterday) getting seems not to be killing cards but it's early days and still some gaming issues. https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ay-driver-feedback-thread-released-7-30-13-/1

Edit: Forgot to mention, 5c lower temps (and others have seen it) with the latest beta! At last something positive - all the fanboys are congratulating NV for their good work - think I'm gonna throw up

8/4 Looking at the latest NV thread (above link) I'm coming to the conclusion that NV have fixed almost everything with 362.41. I base that on the fact that most of the people still having issues have been trying the post 314.22 drivers and having really bad problems. I think that right now all these people have damaged cards to some degree (like mine has gone now ) with their problems still occurring when rolling back to a driver that worked fine for them.
NV have never admitted the overvolt and are not going to so until all these people get replacement cards the thread is going to still have a lot of people having issues.
This is totally my own take on the situation and I am not recommending the latest beta, only saying that if your card is working fine right now then it will probably not cause any damage to try it - your call

8/13 Still a lot of problems but no dead cards. Quote from NV mod: 'Couple of updates. We have fixed the 36 hour TDR issue (35 hours, 47 minutes, 29.01888 seconds). The fix will be in the next WHQL driver release. Also we are adding a couple of fixes for the desktop TDR issue some users are experiencing.'

WHQL mooted for early next month. Somewhat worrying no new beta to test these fixes first (and all the other reported problems) but with the new cards still not working I guess they have to roll the dice again....

8/15 Seems NV are going to release a new beta while the next one is going through WHQL towards the end of the month, fingers crossed. https://forums.geforce.com/default/...read-released-7-30-13-/39/?offset=588#3890784

Dell replaced my dead 675 yesterday (good guys!) which I am sure was caused by the opening driver in this thread.

8/19 Fresh announcement from NV forum mod: "I have updated the post containing bug information which includes some of the fixes that will be part of the BETA driver which will be released very soon. A follow up WHQL driver will be released that will be based on this BETA driver:"

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...hread-released-7-30-13-/post/3878097/#3878097

8/20. New beta 326.80 just released NVIDIA DRIVERS 326.80BETA Said to be the same as currently going through WHQL.

Notebooks:NVIDIA DRIVERS 326.80BETA

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ay-driver-feedback-thread-released-8-20-13-/1

9/2. Still no WHQL that was supposed to be end of last month. Quite a few problems still being reported but also seeing a few 'it works just fine' so it appears that NV are getting there slowly. A couple of users here have also reported that it works fine (with very little improvement). When the WHQL arrives I will give it a test, post my results and then I think this thread can close out

9/13 Nv still having problems with getting a solid driver out. WHQL has now been pushed back 'awaiting the results of internal testing' so it still has to go to MS after that. Posted today by the NV mod: 'We discovered a few bugs during our testing and therefore it has taken us a bit longer than we had hoped but a WHQL driver is still planned and we hope to release it very soon.'

Most problems now seem physics related. No blank screens I saw on the latest beta, but since NV have now acknowledged that it still needs work probably best to stick with whatever good working driver you have.

9/18 And today's announcement from the NV mod: 'Just a few more days for our WHQL driver to be released.'...

9/19 NVIDIA DRIVERS 327.23WHQL Desktop: NVIDIA DRIVERS 327.23WHQL
https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ay-driver-feedback-thread-released-9-19-13-/1

9/30 Still a lot of people having issues and needing to roll back to 314.22. Another beta just released:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...lay-driver-feedback-thread-released-9-30-13-/

Notebook drivers

NVIDIA DRIVERS 331.40BETA

Desktop Drivers

NVIDIA DRIVERS 331.40BETA

Works fine for me with an improvement in DiRT Showdown. Now giving about 15% FPS increase over the 10% I got from 327.23. Keeping my eye on the NV forums to see how it's working out

10/15 Afraid this driver was not as good as I hoped. Started to see stuttering and pauses in some games so rolled back to 314.22 AGAIN . Not alone in this (see the NV forum link above) so still not a very sucessful driver. Although I'm sure it works for many, you just don't 'see' many successes, only the complaints .

10/21 GeForce 331.58 WHQL Drivers Released | GeForce

https://forums.geforce.com/default/t...sed-10-21-13-/

Let's see how this one goes....

11/19 Well last one was widely panned and a lot of unhappy customers. Now another one: 331.82 WHQL drivers.

XP/XP64

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/70185/en-us

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/70186/en-us

Win7/8/8.1

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/70183/en-us

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/70184/en-us

Notebook drivers

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/70188/en-us

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/70187/en-us

A bit hopeful with this one. Far less DPC latency than any driver since 314.22 . Should help the people with timeout BSOD's and stuttering, we shall see. In my quick tests it all works fine with a drop of 1 or 2 FPS in game benchmarks over the last one...

22/08/14 Thought I'd put this here. Seems that a problem may have crept into the latest WHQL 340.52. I am seeing a LOT of 580m's dying since this release. I no longer have one so I can't be sure but two reported in the last two days is suspicious. Could be just a little boost to performance is pushing them off the cliff?

 

I can't say if it was coincidence or not but after updating to this driver from 304.79, my 580 started acting up and Dell had to replace it. The card started doing this thing where the driver would stop responding and resetting itself, then the blank screens started happening after a week of the last problem, then the blank screens mixed with resetting the entire system, finally called and reported the issue and got a replacement.

 

Sounds exactly like a lot of people had happen with this driver. Too many coincidences for my liking. A guy has now posted pics of a component de-soldering and burning through the fan - another coincidence?

It would be helpful if you could register on the NV site and post in the link above with the same comment? Just for the weight of numbers, as well as let people know dell are honouring warranty ATM...

Thanks and glad dell sorted it for you

 

Just to be on the other side I haven't had any issues with the latest drivers so far. No black screens or high temperatures so far. I am going to keep an eye out though.

 

Glad to hear it man! I'm sure a lot of people will find they work but if you're a big BF3 gamer then this driver is bringing down whole teams. I undersdand the rush to get a WHQL out that supports their new cards but both previous betas reported most of the issues. To be fair the hardware issue only became obvious in the release version. It works OK for me but anyone with a 680/120hz gets the 'no display' problem. Probably because they are running windows on the NV card and it will not effect the iGPU.

For me all I got was the random hang in firefox. Easy fix so I'm still working with it.

I've been watching that thread since a week or two after release and once I saw other AW laptop owners getting serious problems I wanted to share. It does overvolt and I can confirm that, my card jumps to .92v briefly. A voltage that is known to burn my card (and 580m) when used in overclocking. Since it only happens for a few seconds at the start of a game I'm not too concerned. It looks like some factory OD'd cards are just giving up.

The poster above is the first laptop I've seen doing exactly the same as the desktop cards

 

I also have the same problems. Whats worse is that after upgrading to latest drivers and being unable to boot the machine into windows (just a black screen), I finally got it reverted back to 314.22, which was known to work before, and sometimes I get a freeze up and driver crash wehn I boot up the machine :-( I hope its not busted HW!!

 

I'm afraid it's not sounding good . For many (me included) a rollback is all that is needed. I didn't even need to uninstall anything. For a lot of people though the problem of driver crash continues and is now reckoned to be hardware. It got overheated/overstressed and the damage is permanent.

You might be lucky and a full uninstall, registry clean and fresh driver install (starting with the one dell publish for your card) could fix it but those that have tried have not had any success. A couple of people tried a clean windows install but still no joy. You can't argue that it's software at that point.

To get dell to replace you may need to restore the machine to factory so they can be sure the HW has failed but I'd say call it in ASAP. They may start to say that you installed a non-approved driver so you are SOL (of course if you mention it ) As this becomes an expensive problem for them this might happen

Good luck.

EDit: forgot to mention, on your setup connecting an external monitor gets around the blank screen so you can then fix it

 

thank god atleast the other display outputs are working
can save the display card quickly

too bad some people damaged their cards due to bad drivers

there should be a big warning in the downloads section!
i dont even know why they havent pulled it from downloads!

 

That's what really annoys me (and a LOT of others!). Nvidia do not want to acknowledge it is burning out cards and most of the other problems are not unknown in (poor) driver releases. I wouldn't be surprised if NV has already contacted the OEM's offering credit for replacing cards - to avoid a noisy and damaging law suit.

They could have fixed this (or at least mitigated it) by simply adding the new cards into the install of 314.22 and leave that one but then version numbers and autoupdate are a problem.

 

Hm, I've been running this driver for a while without any problems but now I'm worried. Should I revert back to 314.22?

 

I would say yes. It may well work fine for the majority but it IS pushing more volts through cards and that is not a good thing. All you loose is optimisation for a few new titles so no biggie to wait until a better WHQL hits.

 

... and here i thought my cards were dead..

first microsoft, now nvidia. gg guys.

 

Yeah, I haven't seen this level of driver crashes since the release of Vista - but no hardware damage back then. During that debacle NV (and AMD) where blaming MS for changing the HAL code after they had supplied them with reference copies of Vista for development. MS's word was that they (NV/AMD) used undocumented calls to get better performance and this was the cause. They claimed that their changes would not effect any well written (only using published API's) code. Went on for months until the card manufactures rewrote their drivers...

 

I wasn't seeing any higher temps with 320.18 so I don't think my card's been damaged from it. But, after reverting back to 314.22, I have noticed that games look smoother.

 

Sounds like you're fine, if you were getting BSOD's before and after rollback the prognosis is poor

I'm intending to bump this thread if it drops off the top page until NV comes out with a fix (or a mod tells me not to!)

 

I had problems with an earlier 320 version so I didn't bother with this until I read comments in many forums. Lots of people are having problems and I am surprised Nvidia hasn't addressed it yet. I remember an ATI driver a few years ago that bricked a lot of cards also. I like to install the latest and greatest but since I have a 580m and 6990's it isn't that important since newer drivers are usually optimized for newer cards. I'm going to stick with the 314.22 for now. Nice drivers for me.

 

That's literally what happened to me and my system, and I do mean literally, so I can confidently say it wasn't a coincidence.

 

Your sig says you have a 680m. From what I gather, some newer cards aren't badly effected by the driver. My 580m got crushed though.

 

Just read about this. I have been running the 320 driver for a couple of days now, but havnt noticed anything major yet. Tried logging voltages for my card (580m) after reading this thread, it seems to come down to .870v during the games. However performance seems to have taken a slight hit; might revert back to 314 due to that.

 

This driver is kind of a mixed bag. My system gets higher benchmark scores with it, but I have had issues with nvlddmkm.sys causing a BSOD a few times. What is strange about this is that the NVIDIA driver BSOD has never when the GPUs are being taxed. It has always been when they were not under any type of 3D load. My GTX 680M SLI has been overheating under strange circumstances and I could not figure out why, but I guess maybe this driver is the cause. Just to be safe, I will need to drop back to the previous driver. It was working just fine for me.

I posted in the NVIDIA Forums just for the record [ LINK]. Thanks for starting the thread. I am going to move it to the main forum so everyone has a chance to see it. It affects all systems.

 

I more than agree with that, and here's the reason : I continued testing after my last post, and sure enough, during 45 mins of skyrim in 3d, it stayed at 0.920 volts for nearly two minutes!!I I'm getting off this driver asap, and rolling back to 314. Nvidia should get their act together and get this driver off their site.
Good catch, micky! +rep

Edit : Need to spread more around, will give it to you when i can!

 

I just gave MickeyD a +1 from both of us.

 

Many thanks!
And Confirmed : smoother frames and no overvolts (while gaming) with the 314 WHQL!

 

Thanks for the input guys! BSOD's, artefacts, stuttering, all annoying driver issues but it happens - although not to NV for some time. It's the actual destruction of cards that has set me off on my crusade to get this driver removed.

It appears that damaged cards is mostly limited to the 5xx series desktop cards as the driver is also slowing down their fans along with the overvolt. If the card is factory OC'd then the 'boost' will move into dangerous territory. Now we've seen two 580m's die, I wonder if it is messing with the fans sometimes on older mobile chips as well?

@Mahesh, Thanks for the extra data - I was sure that was what is going on but on my 675m (same card as you know) it never goes back up to 0.92v after the initial few seconds.

@Mr. Fox, Yeah, the move makes sense, I'd only seen M17x posters in the NV forum (the 3D blank screen problem) but of course it's now obvious it's across the board. Thanks.

@All: If you have had any of these issues please post in the NV forum (especially if you still get issues after rolling back). A fix does not sound imminent but just to add to the numbers and let other people know

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ay-driver-feedback-thread-released-5-23-13-/1

 

Man, all these symptoms are the same stuff I had when my 580m flashed to 675m bit the dust! And I remember installing the 320 drivers together with Geforce Experience right before it happened

 

Sorry for your loss man . Another victim of Nvidia's inaction!!

Please post a rant over in the NV forum I linked, thanks.

 

Appreciate the heads up. I've been using this in my GTX 690 and haven't had any issues. Must be a mobile GPU related issue.

 

Was just looking at the update in the morning and tought ill update a bit later....thank god i did no if it effects the 500 series the most.

rep to you good sir

 

Glad to hear it but more desktop cards are failing than mobile (or at least reported)

Thank you. Yes it is looking that 5xx cards are having the most problems.

Anyone with a 675m should also heed the warning. Mine has been fine so far, but it is the same hardware as the 580m just with a different vBIOS.

 

i have a question. i rolled back to 314.22 from 320.18. the fan control on my gpu doesnt seem to work anymore and i have to use hwinfo to adjust the speed. also, evga precision as well as msi afterburner doesnt work for me anymore. it keeps on freezing my laptop. could all of these be related to 320.18???

i have a m17x r2 with 920xm (not overclocked), 260m, 4gb of ram.

 

My 680m has died. I called support and they are sending out a replacement. This will be the 5th 680m since April 2013 and second Motherboard. I was using the 320 WHQL drivers. I reinstalled win 8 and now the discrete card is not detectable in BIOS or comp management.

 

It does sound like it's related to the driver damaging the card. There have been fan failures on desktop cards so there is the potential there for this to be another symptom but I do know the fan control on the R2 can be a problem (from posts I've seen in the past). Try disabling hardware acceleration in firefox if you use that, it stopped the lockup for me but since it's hapening after a rollback for you I'm thinking you are another victim of this driver causing permanent damage

 

Thanks for the warning, Micky. +rep

 

Highly appreciated Micky +rep. I read through the nvidia forum you linked and it appears these drivers wrecked some havoc. Nvidia acknowledged some issues with certain games and said they're fixing them as well as working on a new driver release. A few of those who got their GPU damaged are saying that this driver is the culprit and talking about a class action vs nvidia. Even in case this driver randomly damages cards I believe nvidia would never admit so, since it would only attract legal issues. I can't recall well if in nvidia history there was another similar event, or was another brand?

 

Thanks, I completely agree about NV now being between a rock and a hard place. That's what I meant by saying they are going into CYA mode. They have tried to ignore the harddware failures and concentrate on addressing (in their posts) the transient issues. Now it's been going on for so long the damage issue is not in question, and admission at this point would be a very quick hit for a smart lawyer as 'criminally liable' having known the issue but continue to publish it.

I did hear that some time ago there was an AMD driver that was bricking cards but that is all I know about that one - no evidence. Nothing this bad with NV since vista RC1 and that did not break HW.

I've been a big NV fan for some years but their behaviour on this problem leaves me with no sympathy if a crippling lawsuit hits them!

 

Ok, I found it. It was in 2010 with the 196.75 drivers. Similar issues, although this driver affected the fan, slowing them down and causing the GPU to overheat and even die. I believe that having mobile solution we (hopefully) won't see many of our 6xxm frying, since several among us use hwinfo fan profile that forces fan speed, and all fans are controlled by the BIOS--they aren't affectec by whatever graphic driver we may install (correct me if I'm wrong on this).

Here's nvidia statement during the 196.75 driver issue, the big difference is that in that case along with recommending rolling back to a previous version they admitted the drivers caused the fan to slow down and most importantly, they pulled the driver out the download page: "We're getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to overheat on 3D applications... We are aware that some customers have reported fan speed issues with the latest 196.75 WHQL drivers on NVIDIA.com. Until we can verify and root cause this issue, we recommend that customers stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers. Release 196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our Web site in the meantime."

I also wonder about how much the OS version plays part in this. Quite a few of those who were running a 32bit system got their card damaged or experience BSOD and instability. That makes me think of some sort of native and unpredicted incompatibility with such system, but I'm only speculating here.

 

Good catch man, I was out-of-the-game for a period in 2010 and missed that one!

Fans slowing or stopping is a more obviously damaging problem where as this one seems more about older cards geting 'tricked' into using the boost feature and overvloting them. Only sheer weight of numbers is going to prove HW damage without a whole forensic examination.

As I understand it, in a civil case the judge has two types of damages to consider awarding. There are very strict guidelines around how much cash related to the scale of the problem and the impact on the individual. Then there is punitive damages. If the judge thinks the defendant has been 'cavalier' in the propagation of the issue damages are virtually unlimited.

Right now I couldn't care a hoot if they get bankrupted, at least AMD would have a much bigger user base to invest in their drivers (you would hope)
/rant_off

 

Yes, as of now nvidia has had the win-all card, also thanks to AMD's unreliability of their products. Ahhh, I miss the late 1990s and early 2000s when AMD was at the top of their game with their CPUs (great head to head with INTEL in a rush to develop the most powerful chipset) and shortly after when it bought ATI. Maybe nvidia has gotten over-confident/cocky. Even if I am an nvidia satisfied user, I wouldn't mind if AMD finally came back breathing on nvidia's neck as it was before. Users could only benefit from competition--quicker technology advancements and lower prices. Anyways, I hope that nvidia get this issue sorted out asap, since instability is one thing, but ending up with a fried card for installing a driver is way too much.

 

Ha ha, yeah I was building desktops around that time and did a couple of AMD CPU's. Cutting through tracks on the PCB to get at the multipliers was a hardcore method though!

We may be witnessing the revival of competition, AMD shares might start to look better as well...

 

I hear you man. I recall the Pentium III vs Athlon rush to be the first 1Ghz CPU! I remember way to well the nights spent trying plugging/unplugging jumpers combo, trying to get the max frequency or sometimes just to have the whole thing boot up and the customer coming only few hours later to get their new PC Those days anything could go wrong, but it was much fun. And Yes, let's hope AMD realizes that no one is immune from issues, not even nvida. This could be good a time for AMD to show they've still got something to show to the world of gaming tech.

 

Now that you mention temps, I did notice a higher temperature with my GTX 690 using this driver over others. Without manual fan control I was seeing over 80C at times while playing BF3 for less than 30 minutes. I've never had a desktop before, so I'm not sure if this is normal, but the moment I saw that I downloaded MSI Afterburner and put the fans at 70% and this kept both GPU's around 60C.

I can't imagine what would happen in a laptop...

 

I also have GTX 690 on my desktop and I'm using the nefarious drivers (I rolled back to 314.22 on my beloved M18x) and I haven't experienced anything alarming so far. Did you see such temps under overclock/boost or at stock clocks? I use evga precision x to keep fans at 70/75% with a 135% and +145 offset and never see temps going higher than 75~. If I set fans at 80% temps are 65 to 70C ~. As I mentioned earlier, forcing fans may actually override any driver mishandling of their speed.

 

Stock clocks. I literally played for like ten minutes to make a gameplay video to show my friend the FPS. Next thing I know, GPU 1 is over 80C and GPU 2 is going between 79C and 80C.

Ha, I just remembered, I uploaded the video: 2 minutes of gameplay and these are the temps I saw...

 

Yeah, something's off there. Better rolling back to 314.22 and see if there's any actual difference? After you rolled back and making sure temps are now under control, if you want to enjoy the gtx 690 full potential in game, you can enable k-boost and create a couple of batch files based on nvidia inspector. This way you can enable full boosted status when gaming--you can go back to stock clock right after-- which I realized gives better overall fps and smoother experience.

Sorry for this little off-topic post, guys.

 

Was having major problems on my m14x R2 with the whole driver or card crashing. Had to restart my PC for the card to be detected again. Worst part is, rolling back doesnt make a difference. had to reinstall windows and update to 314. STAY AWAY!

 

When this type of information comes out and you have a wife who is fond of gaming too. Then tell her aswell lol. Whent home yesterday and got news that the she had updated the driver for me as it poped up.
Lucky for me it is on a cooling pad. Temps at idle are near 45°C. Max in game i saw was 71°C but some games like max payne 3 and tombraider dont seeme right. MP3 i got a random crash and TR was laggy. Used all the tools at hand :driversweap and CClean to get rid of the 320.18 and installed the 314. Looks like its working normal again.

 

Thanks for the warning, I just installed a brand-new GTX680M in my m17x r3 last night and did a fresh Windows 8 install with the 320.18 drivers.

Thankfully I haven't run anything in 3D yet, I''ve just been on the desktop reinstalling things, so I'll revert back to 314.22 tonight. Cheers!

 

Glad to hear you got it sorted .

That auto-update, although a very nice feature that is now working well (too well!), is the biggest cause IMO of this driver ending up on machines of inexperienced people. A lot of people would be happy with whatever driver they are using and would not go hunting for a newer one. Now you get a popup telling you your driver is out of date and do you want to upodate - NO NO NO go away!

Sounds like you dodged a bullet. The 120hz display with the 680 has almost always resulted in no display as soon as windows starts. Either an external display or safe boot is needed to be able to uninstall it. The R3 though does not support 3D with the 680 unless you have found a BIOS (not vBIOS) that includes the card in the 3d certification list? Might be why yours did not have this happen?

Always just try installing the older version straight over the top before getting into all the uninstall and cleaning. Many (including me) have found that a rollback is straightforward but of course YMMV - good luck!

 

Mine's not the 3D version, just the 60Hz screen. By "3D" I just meant games, sorry for the confusion! Given the reported problems with 320.18 I'm going to use Driver Sweeper in Safe Mode to remove it.

 

Ahh, now I follow

I understand why you would go the removal route with such a dangerous driver but I've found the upgrade/downgrade just using the NV installer has had 100% success for me

Whichever you choose, best of luck