Are the nvidia 196.21 drivers buggy?

Weird that I first saw this balloon message pop-up "your nvidia drivers quit responding, restarted successfully" on my Dell laptop (8400m GS) when I used version 196.21 as well. I just got the message today on my desktop rig running a 9800GTX+ with Windows 7 32 bit.

Are these drivers that buggy or is there a simple explanation?

 

All 19x.xx drivers are trash, imo.

 

The 196.34 beta drivers are working well for me, but that's just me, and I don't have that card to test on.

 

I get the same problem on my 195.62, and even on my laptop's modded 10.1, the version I had before that, and the version I had in Vista, all different.

 

Thanks guys so it looks like I wasn't imagining things. I sorta had a bad feeling about those drivers when both my Dell laptop and gaming rig running the same release drivers generated the same error message.

Here's the $10K question. I have an ATI 4670 card. Would it be worth going with the ATI card over the 9800GTX+ card and are the ATI drivers more stable than the nvidia ones?

 

For overclocking, the NVIDIA is technically going to be better. Since the ATI cards, when overclocked and the driver crashes, it crashes hard and sometimes a restart is required. Where with the NVIDIA it usually just recovers. I'd really like to know which will run cooler under stress.

 

I been using the 196.21 drivers on my i7 920 with dual gtx 260 55nm c216 and they actually improve stability on my system and improved sli compatibility.

 

I'd say between the ATI 4670 and the 9800GTX+ the 4670 runs much cooler under stress. Might be due to the chip die or fan on the 4670 but it idles at a cool 37c and under stress with a game like Need For Speed: Shift at 49c.

The 9800GTX+ idles at 47c and tops out at 60c with the same game. The one nice thing about the 9800GTX+ is the dynamic and variable speed fan that's hardware driven. So the harder it's pushed the faster the fan spins. I used to use RivaTuner just for that feature alone. Not anymore.

 

I was further researching the problem and some who have this same problem fixed it with a power supply. Some power supplies can't handle the load of these cards.

I have an Enermax P/S rated at 500 watts and the card requires a minimum of 450 watts with a 24amp 12V rail. Wonder if that could be the culprit?

OTOH my Dell laptop was giving me the same message when using the 196.21 drivers. So back to square one.

May have to roll with the ATI 4670 for now.

 

OK seems like I narrowed it down and it could be my P/S after all. The evga 9800GTX+ card requires at least 24amps on the +12V rail, well my card outputs 22amps max.

So I bet when the card is being pushed that's when the P/S sneezes (yes that's a technical term ) and drops communication to the 9800GTX+. Just a theory.

Here's my P/S I bought from Newegg sometime ago.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817194003

This is the one I just ordered:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371031