nVIDIA Graphics Drivers v361.43 Findings & Fixes

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NVIDIA continues to work closely with VR headset and game developers to deliver amazing VR games and applications. This Game Ready driver includes the latest GameWorks VR tweaks, bug fixes, and optimizations to ensure you have the ultimate VR gaming experience.

Gaming Technology
Support added for GameWorks VR 1.1 including VR SLI support for OpenGL applications and support for the latest Oculus SDK

 

about 5% increase in scores here. Stock clocks for both CPU and GPU

3DMark11



3DMark

 

Seems like n game performance improvements (at least nothing about it in release notes).
Looks like this week will go by without an nVidia driver update .

 

Strange issue with this driver.
Install without problem but after reboot to make install complete, my fresh Win7 say an error (software or hardware change) and i can only boot with safe mode to delete the drivers.

With 359.12 it´s all ok!

 

You use version 395.12 ?

 

yes i come from the future!

thx i edit it

 

hmmm....no game related stuff: pass!

 

I got blue screen everytime i open photoshop using this driver, installed from GFE though so no clean install.

 

hahaha
i´m not alone with the problem.
Look in the Nvidia Forum there some Guys with the same ****!

 

Not that I'm complaining, but I thought Nvidia was going to start hiding drivers behind GFE this month.

...glad if this is not gonna become a thing.

 

I actually found that drivers released with no game-related ties seemed to be the most stable this year. 355.60, 355.98, 359.00 are all among the most stable drivers since 350.12 began the screwup.

But of course this could be "one of those".

 

Just lauanched Photoshop CS6 on Windows 10 just fine. Such problems are usually caused by user error. In your case, you didn't use Display Driver Uninstaller to get rid of the old driver and all its remnants.

 

Well this one has no issues. No GPU at max clock speed during idle times or in Windows desktop, no crashes, seems like a stable driver. As you said, since this driver wasn't rushed out just to be a Game ready Driver for some game, this is why it's good. Additionally, this driver took them almost 1 month to release unlike others which were released on a weekly basis.

 

The only issue is that it doesn´t work with Win7 and 980m
And it damaged my Win7 so far that system repair/restore and even a backup don´t work anymore.
First i though that the new driver has killed my 980m but my other SSD with Win8.1 and 359.12 driver works.

I tried the driver 2 times.
First win7 fresh and clean install.
Second with 359.12 and DDU.
But everytime after installation of the new driver windoof must reboot and *bang* boot error.

At the moment i don´t update the driver on 8.1 because my fear of broken windows again is to big

 

My experience with installing this new Nvidia 361.43 was odd this time too.

I used GFE to download, and did a Custom/Clean install, and didn't reboot right away.

Everything was working fine, games, video, desktop, etc.

After a few hours I needed to reboot, when I restarted Windows started finishing an install - it didn't say what it was - I had no Windows updates scheduled or installs other than the Nvidia driver.

After reboot the install continued completing, which took a worryingly long time, I almost gave in to impatience, but after 5-10 minutes of waiting I came back to see it complete boot into desktop.

So far everything still seems fine

I am running Windows 8.1.

 

That's why I never install a driver without using DDU first. Never had any issues.

 

Yep, I'm gonna try to do fresh install first. If it's the same then it could be the driver or since my system is optimus so everytime i open photoshop, on splash screen my gpu keep changing until everything is loaded. It could be that optimus is the culprit.

 

I had long running batch jobs going at the time, and good luck without DDU in the last 2 releases... testing... just did a DDU and reinstall of 361.43 and it went smoothly

 

Interesting.

Well, here's to hoping the issues here are somewhat... isolated.

 

worth the install?

 

I had a boot loop when I tried to install. And yes I tried using DDU.

 

i hate boot loops but i do like fruit loops!

 

I'm on 358.87... Seems to work fine for me.... Personally would wait a few days before changing anything..

 

i reverted from 359.06 to 359.00 since the NCP kept breaking and i wasn't able to access in the right click menu. not sure why if it is because the monitor goes to sleep or if it is a bug in that driver version.

 

Same here. I also used DDU, but every time I clicked install I got black screen reboot. Went back to 359.00

 

Same

 

Same here on Win8.1. Screen goes black and Win reboot.
Tryed it on a other ssd with my 8.1 backup.
So i can say this is a realy sh+t driver

 

i had the same problem with the early win 10 drivers. 359.00 i don't have that problem.

 

Tried to install these drivers on my Clevo P150sm-a with Windows 10 and got the bsod whilst installing and ended up in a boot loop. Thought it could be a problem with Windows 10 so did a clean install of Windows 8.1 and same thing happened. Thankfully managed to uninstall Nvidia drivers, boot in to safe mode and use display driver uninstaller to clean files. Installed previous Nvidia driver and laptop has been fine.

 

i'm sticking with 359.00 till this has been resolved.

 

How did these drivers get WHQL? With a small pool of users on this forum, these drivers aren't even installing, nevermind any bug issues.

 

My GFE doesn't show me new drivers. I'm running 359.06.

 

Agreed, these drivers are super dodgy..

 

are they still doing their release drivers on GFE only thing?

 

No, not yet you can still download drivers direct off the website for the time being.

 

Interesting... try enabling Beta driver/gfe downloads... I always enable mine.

For the 2nd install, I ran DDU first then manually installed the Nvidia 361.43 driver I downloaded the drivers.

I recommend doing that instead of GFE download/install, based on my experience posted about my first GFE installation of 361.43.

 

I wonder if having modded drivers will stop you from getting the latest drivers?

 

I already have beta downloads ticked and nothing. Anyway I downloaded them manually and did an express install.

No issues whatsoever, I played about 4h of bf4 afterwards and all went smoothly.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

If you couldn't update with GFE the first time, there was something wrong with your install.

The best path would have been to use DDU to clean it all up, and do a fresh install with 361.43.

You aren't proving anything by showing that Express install worked for you this time, it will fail at some point, and so will Custom=>Clean install, as will DDU under some circumstances.

Did you reboot yet after the express install?

Myself and others didn't run into trouble until after the first full boot - if you have Hibernation enabled you are doing soft shutdowns and Fast Startup.

Try turning off Hibernation and do a full shutdown / boot sequence.

Run As Administrator a cmd shell, and run this to turn off Hibernation:

powercfg /h off

or if that has a permission failure:

powershell -Command "Start-Process 'powercfg.exe' -Verb runAs -ArgumentList '/h off'"

Please come back and let us know if it eventually fails, and what works to fix it.

 

@hmscott you are right, last night after the express install I did not reboot.

I already have hibernate turned off and after reboot today there were still no issues. All seems to be running fine, at least until now. It's true i've had my share of unfortunate events with dirty installs of nvidia drivers, but so far, this one runs fine.

Last clean install (ddu and all that) was for 359.06. I was running 359.12 but somehow gsync wasn't functional, even though it was enabled in NCP, so I had to revert to 359.06.

If I do run into troubles with 361.43I will report back.

 

It's interesting, everyone is having trouble with the first install, but the re-install is working... all in different ways

With luck there will be a new driver package coming soon, if Nvidia keeps up the current release cycle

 

This driver gives me severe artifacts, while 359.06 didn't. I even get artifacts on the GPU-Z Render Test, which is barely intensive on the GPU, as well as KSP. Rolling back to see if that helps.

 

seems like I'm the only one who loves this driver reading all these comments.

I've had 0 artifacts, no high GPU clocks in the desktop, nada, not one bug

 

After the initial install problems were resolved, it's working fine for me now as well.

 

You're right - it isn't a driver problem. My VRAM OC was apparently too high (2505 + 295 MHz = 2800 MHz). Dropped it down by 50 MHz, while increasing core clocks by 50 MHz, and all the artifacts disappeared, and I get a constant 4470 score in Fire Strike, give or take 20.

That Fire Strike Score seems low, though... I've seen GTX 860Ms get 4700 and more. Compared to the P870DM (with GTX 980), it's peanuts.

 

It does, at least in my experience with the R4..

Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk

 

getting 30-50% of the phoenix fs score is nothing to sniff at buddy, especially in such a small form factor

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Another one here with boot loop problem under Windows 10.

I used DDU from safe mode.
Installed new drivers
Boot loop
Recovery
Safe mode
Installed previous drivers
Everything went back to normal.

No idea how this drivers went through the WHQL, really no idea :/

 

meaning manual driver updates...can live with that!

 

Oh that's simple. WHQL means nothing anymore.

Microsoft will do NOTHING to help you if your PC or anything is damaged by WHQL-signed drivers/programs. Either that, or Micro$haft have changed their WHQL testing to a small selection of hardware and bare installs of Windows OSes, and their OSes (with recent updates) are vastly changed by simply installs of programs. I even would go so far as to say it's both.

Their entire Window Support has changed greatly. When I had my shutdown issues and I couldn't isolate it, I tried using their support to find out if Windows itself was capable of that function, and how to fix the freezing on boot. What I discovered was that for any issue beyond "basic" help (can't uninstall their program, can't reinstall the os, etc) you need to pay. And the reason you now need to "pay" is because Windows is cheaper. So while Windows 8/8.1 has been significantly cheaper than Windows XP, Vista and 7, it's support depth has dwindled unless you're willing to fork out cash. I lodged an official complaint that their unwillingness to help broke WHQL's standards, since I did not break the OS or modify it, and I couldn't even get confirmation of the OS's capability to do anything without having to pay for the POTENTIAL that I might've gotten a fix. But obviously that did nothing.

Now look. Windows 10 is free, and they're basically treating it like this:

WHQL means nothing. We're not paying for it, we're not getting it. Support has already ended for Windows 7, and will end soon enough for Windows 8. People will be almost forced to use Windows 10 soon, and WHQL won't protect anyone. Maybe, maybe somewhere along the line they might actually FIX Windows 10 and make it a halfway decent OS for end-users that isn't designed to re-enable its spying features every time it reboots or updates. Maybe they'll fix the turbo boost bug hogging CPU power from certain games and programs. But going by their current directions? That's of little concern to them, and when there's no choice for a user like myself who "just does too damn much" on their PCs to use Linux or OS X, nobody will be able to tell them off anymore.

Since I went on a slight bit of a rant there, here's a TL;DR for you: WHQL means nothing, the support based on WHQL won't help you anymore without paying $$, and there's no obligation to fix drivers or the OS for the end-users as long as the masses continue to buy into it and say it's ok.