If you’re paying any degree of attention to the gaming world, you’ll probably be aware that Dark Souls 3 comes out today. And if you’re a PC gamer, you’ll probably be abreast of the fact that the GPU manufacturers like to push out new patches to coincide with major game launches.
NVIDIA’s Game Ready driver for Dark Souls 3 is version 364.72, and it’s also the latest release with Microsoft’s WHQL certification. Problem is, lots of gamers are having issues.
If you go back a couple of years, drivers used to be one of NVIDIA’s best attributes. Their drivers were solid, the performance gains were good, and there was always bigger and better improvements to be found.
But things have been prickly of late, and 2016 has been marked by a string of spotty releases that have led to some frustrating bugs for players. Some of those bugs have been small issues, like delayed SLI support or flickering in older titles. And then some of those have been downright problematic, with users complaining that new releases were responsible for crashes or blue screens of death (BSODs).
Issues began earlier in March when the first Game Ready drivers for The Division were released. Users took to social media and NVIDIA’s GeForce forums to report memory leaks and poor performance with SLI setups in Ubisoft’s FPS-MMORPG.
“Whenever a game starts my mouse will continue to work but but my built in keyboard and my [Corsair K70 keyboard] work sporadically, all my programs stop functioning correctly and trying to plug in my mouse or keyboard causes the whole computer to be delayed for 2-3 seconds,” one user posted about the March 28 release.
“Everything works fine if I never launch anything that needs my GPU, this never happened until I downloaded the March 28 drivers.” Another wrote that they were experiencing shocking screen tearing simply scrolling web pages in Chrome with their GTX 970 after updating to the 364 class.
And then there are the higher idle temperatures reported by those on multi-monitor setups. “Now, however, my multi-monitor setup is pissing me off and something about my 144Hz monitor (DVI) and 60Hz monitor (HDMI) is making my GTX 970 stay at 935MHz instead of idling down to 135-150MHz like it used to.”
“I’m not even kidding, this isn’t some bullshit ‘oh it just does that’ thing — THIS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE this last update.” This fellow early this morning also had the same issue.
Users across the board are still having issues.
Thanks for the awesome graphics driver @nvidia pic.twitter.com/1DmNOq0tw6
— Myth Buzz (@BuzzVFX) April 10, 2016
Reports of artifcating have been spreading around as well, with this being perhaps the most extreme I saw over the last day or so. Being a GTX 570 though, there’s always the chance that the card was on its last legs — although this is a bit of a horrific way for a fine card to go.
@nvidia with the new NVIDIA driver. Yea i got the hint. R.I.P GTX570 ?#Gforce #PlannedObsolescense pic.twitter.com/f3ysshfFGM
— xus espin cosme (@xusspin) April 10, 2016
Mind you, if you see someone coming out saying a driver update has bricked their card, it’s probably bogus. NVIDIA engineers have already publicly warned that there is nothing in the drivers that could cause that to happen, although that’s not much consolation for users who find themselves locked in reboot loops or BSOD hell.
The March 28 release is the latest available driver on the GeForce website at the time of writing, although another patch is expected before too long. The latest Vulkan beta driver for developers (364.91) was released a couple of days ago.
As a bit of public advice: if you are having problems, get yourself the Display Driver Uninstaller program, clean the drivers out, restart your computer and then reinstall to the last version of drivers you used without incident. (Alternatively, if it’s been a significant amount of time since you last updated your GPU drivers, maybe just avoid the 362.xx family altogether.)
Comments
22 responses to “NVIDIA’s Dark Souls 3 Game Ready Drivers Still Causing Issues”
The GE Experience pop-ups wouldn’t go away but I stayed well away from updating during last month’s reports of catastrophic buggy updates (I have a GTX Turbo 970). Over the weekend I finally relented and while I cannot remember the exact version number for the update, there seems to be vulkan software in my start menu under Recently Installed.
I’m somewhat less concerned but no less confused.
I’ve been pouring time into other games so I actually haven’t had time to run any intensive strenuous games I have on PC to test the new software, either.
I’ve stopped using GE Experience entirely now because it caused too many weird issues for me. If I want the functionality of Shadowplay, I can get it through OBS. It takes some more setting up to get it the same way, but it doesn’t mess with other applications and makes me a happier gamer.
It’s probably no use to me /now/. At first it was like getting behind the driver’s seat of a new car but now I feel I can better control the customisables myself, as ‘OPTIMISE THIS GAME’ wizard is not as smart as I thought it was.
I’m also not a huge fan of any optimisation that says “HEY VSYNC HAVE YOU GOT VSYNC ON HEY YOU SHOULD REALLY TRY VSYNC”. It’s not handy when you’re trying to get 100+fps to keep up with your monitor.
Unless it’s programmed incorrectly, vsync is based on your monitor’s refresh rate as recognised in Windows. If you have a 144Hz monitor, vsync should be targeting 144Hz as well. Is there a particular game you have a vsync issue with? Some of them can be configured even though it’s not in the settings UI.
I’ve got NVIDIA Inspector as well if I want to get hardcore and force settings for individual programs. But it’s more a case of there’s no point trying to force 144hz when it’s too difficult for many (particularly newer) programs to hit that frame rate especially with SLI support being increasingly limited with modern releases. So I prefer to have vsync off, I’ll deal with the tearing, and the frame rate can wax and wane as it will.
Fair enough. I’m the opposite, I hate tearing and prefer the framerate to be stable even if it’s not peak. As long as it’s never below 60, of course.
yeah its even worse with farcry 4 because the game loves to CTD after 15mins if everything is set to max level all because of shit ubisoft are at optimisations. its bug that been in since release and has never been fix.
the Auto DSR is also a pain in the arse for the likes of Diablo3, Starcraft, HotS, and Skyrim due to the amount of HQ texture mods i use
That’s something I am actually looking into right now (with several of those games), any I should check out in particular? RealVision ENB or whatever it was called seemed very involved so I think I need to spend a long weekend sorting that one out.
i dont actually use ENB for its graphical ability, but for the extra Stability that it brings ( its needed when running a shitload of 2k and 4K texture mods)
I dont use an body mods or nude mods or anything thats not lore friendly, i basically play the game as vannila as possible but with better graphics
SMIM, Skyrim HD 2K textures, Anything by aMidianBorn, Skyrim Flora Overhaul, Automatic Variants, Improved NPC clothing, Deadly Dragons, the Ruffled feather mod pack, all Unoffical patches (these are a must)I was like you, but then they started pushing updates (like Sli flags/profiles) via GFE, so you were forced to install it :/ Unless that’s changed, I have to keep installing it – but you were right, I had far less issues when I didn’t have it installed. A lot of it is the background processes.
Not quite NVidia related, but I bought a Xbox One wireless adapter for my computer a few weeks back. It had the amazing feature that when you power off the controller that the computer freezes. I returned it already, but it could’ve been fixed in a recent windows update.
I had the exact same issue. It was a Windows update that caused it. Uninstalling KB3140743 was the fix.
PC master race my ass
Not sure you understand why ‘PC master race’ is a thing. No system is flawless, consoles included.
It keeps crashing a-bit into ds3’s starting cutscene, you have to skip it and miss the cutscene. Nice one nvidia.
That’s nothing. I can’t even leave the main hub area because the game keeps crashing at the bonfire. I’ve lowered the lightning to Low. It worked for a bit, but not any more!
yeah not been too happy with nvidia’s drivers this year – I’m running 353.54 and killed off any attached updaters like GE and Nvidia Update because it’s the last driver version which gives me stable SLI support under Windows 10 so far
Guess I must be lucky or something, I haven’t had any driver issues with any version of the drivers (even beta ones), pretty much install anything new as soon as its available and its been smooth sailing on my 980ti. Never had any issues with GFE either *knock on wood*.
Now I’ve said that, watch me get home and turn on my PC to a blue screen
I have the same experience, never had a problem. Overclocked 780Ti here.
On Windows 10? 32/64bit?
I don’t know about Khel (guests don’t often respond to replies here) but I’m on Win10 x64.
I haven’t updated my drivers yet because of this, but everything seems smooth sailing so far even on old drivers. Only glitch is occasionally a slight pause when a message box pops up.