Owners of cards or notebooks with NVIDIA’s 1060 GPU were surprised to discover last week that the company’s latest drivers had major issues of the constant rebooting kind. NVIDIA has just released a hotfix, version 397.55, that claims to address this. Oh, it’s also pulled the plug on its much-maligned GeForce Partner Program.
First, let’s cover the hotfix drivers. They’re available for download via NVIDIA’s customer support site, with links for the 64-bit flavours of Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 (32-bit being discontinued last month).
Here’s what the new drivers address:
- After driver installation, Device Manager may report Code 43 error on a few GTX 1060 cards models.
- Netflix playback may occasionally stutter.
- Added support for Microsoft Surface Book notebooks.
- Windows 10: Driver may get removed after PC has been left idle for an extended period of time.
Note that you should go to the linked support page for the updated drivers, as NVIDIA’s usual site is still offering the borked ones.
Alright… the GeForce Partner Program. Put simply, it reportedly discouraged vendors from selling hardware with non-NVIDIA GPUs (read: AMD), lest they get placed on the bottom of the pile in NVIDIA’s marketing and promotional efforts.
One guess as to how this was received.
Now, just a few months after its debut, the GPP has been put to pasture. John Teeple, NVIDIA’s Director of Partner Marketing, wrote a somewhat pointed post yesterday announcing the shut down:
A lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program. The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program … Gamers want the best GPU tech. GPP was about making sure gamers who want NVIDIA tech get NVIDIA tech.
The post goes on to say that the company is “pulling the plug” to “avoid any distraction from the super exciting work [NVIDIA is] doing to bring amazing advances to PC gaming”. Which is all good and well, I suppose.
Putting a lid on all the backlash was probably an incentive, too.
GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 397.55 | Pulling the Plug on GPP, Leaning into GeForce [NVIDIA]
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