EVGA GTX 980 SC constant crashing (factory overclocked GPU issue?)

[kyoobin]

EDIT/UPDATE: After trying many.. many.. drivers on Windows 10, I decided to fresh install Windows 8.1 with driver 350.12 (which I never had TDRs on before). With this, I have ruled out any issues with Windows 10 and its nvidia driver. So in theory on Windows 8.1 (as I have never had any TDRs on 8.1), I shouldn't receive any crashes. NOPE. I have crashed at least twice since downgrading to Windows 8.1. Before downgrading to Windows 8.1, I noticed my BIOS was also out of date, so I started a post on EVGA's forum (http://forums.evga.com/Will-a-BIOS-update-for-Windows-10-fix-nvidia-driver-TDRs-m2450785-p1.aspx)to ask if it might possibly fix my issue. I proceeded to update my Motherboard BIOS. Still experienced crashing. With Windows and nVidia drivers out of the picture, the issue can only be due to the hardware, or the game itself.

 

*TDR: Timeout Detection Recovery AKA "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

 

I searched around for info and I found these posts:

 

 

I indeed tested TERA Online as an alternative game, and the driver did crash after about 40 minutes of playing the game.. And the bottom post is on Blade and Soul, which.. I've been playing too much of. It seems these games might actually not be optimized for higher clock speeds. Maybe this explains why my cousin who has a reference GTX 970 doesn't get crashes since according to Nvidia's specification, the GTX 970 has a base clock of 1050MHz and boost clock of 1178MHz which is much lower than the EVGA GTX 980 SC (1266MHz/1405MHz boost). 
 
It might also explain why I didn't crash after 6+ hrs on The Division (which should utilize the higher core clock since it usually runs at about 70-80% GPU). 
If this is the case, then it's not really a GPU issue, it would be the games, correct?

 

It made a lot of sense, since TERA and Blade and Soul are pretty old games and as everyone knows, they are poorly optimized. I remember just walking into a town in TERA, the fps will drop from 60 to 30 easily; this applies in BnS as well. 

 

I have also found a bunch of posts on issues with the EVGA GTX 980 SC (factory overclocked card) in multiple games. 

Such as this: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3l95ct/to_gtx_980_sc_users_having_ctd_issues/

 

Is it really Blade and Soul not able to handle higher clocked GPUs or is there something wrong with my graphics card? Does anyone have a similar card or any GPU with high core/boost clock speed that has or has not experienced crashes?

 

 

If it is just the games' fault and not my GPU then I don't mind downclocking, but when I asked " What if I am able to run newer/more optimized games such as The Division, CSGO, League of Legends and maybe other single player games fine without an issue. Is it still due to a faulty card that it crashes on old games like TERA (which was initially released 2011) and Blade and Soul (2012) which may or may not handle higher clocked GPUs? "

 

Sajin, a very reputable EVGA forum enthusiast insisted that it is still the fault of my GPU 

" No games are specially built to support hardware overclocks. If you have to downclock your card to gain stability it's your gpu and not the game. "

" Yes, it's still your gpu as all games use the gpu differently. "

 

But I don't understand the logic. If it's only BnS/TERA crashing, why would it be due to faulty card.. And even if I RMA the card, wouldn't I just get the same thing (if it is indeed due to the game not being able to handle high clocked cards and not the card's fault)?

 

 

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Currently on windows 10, running on a EVGA GTX 980 SC and i5 4690k. I have tried nvidia drivers 355.82, 355.98, 358.50. They seem to run fine, until I play BnS.

 

On one of the drivers, my entire screen will freeze and crash, but skype/spotify and background processes seem to still be running. It will freeze for about 1-3 minutes and the game will give me the error saying I've been disconnected from server. Other times, it can even hard freeze and I would have to restart my PC. 

 

On another driver it will stop responding and restore itself after couple seconds, giving me the warning in event log: "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." But I will not disconnect from game server.

 

Also, on all of these drivers, I can get 120fps in a normal populated area, and then it sinks to 10-30fps and sometimes even 1-5fps in crowded 24man field boss fights (even with Ctrl-F on). When this is happening, my GPU usage goes down to 1-10%.

 

I'm not 100% sure, but the crashes and screen freezes only happen when I'm currently playing Blade and Soul. I remember clearly when I was on windows 8.1 with nvidia driver 350.12, I never encountered any crashes playing CSGO, League of Legends, and Vindictus frequently. So I'm fairly certain it shouldn't be problem in my hardware.

 

I suspect windows 10 nvidia drivers are somewhat unreliable at the moment, so I'm trying to look around and see what nvidia drivers people are using to play BnS and have never experience any crashes/screen freezes/driver-stop-responding-and-has-recovered issues.

 

I have done the "Prefer maximum performance under nvidia control panel>manage 3d setting>client.exe(BnS). I have disabled Razer Service Scanner and I've went into power options and changed the PCI Express>Link State Power Management to Off.

 

 

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TL;DR Update: Found out factory overclocked cards might have issues in some games, and Blade and Soul possibly, cannot handle high clocked cards such as the EVGA GTX 980 SC which has a core clock of 1266 and a boost clock of 1405MHz. I need to know if anyone else has the same/similar card but do not get any crashes. I'm planning to try playing another game (such as Bioshock Infinite) for a day and see if it crashes. 

 

 

[Sudako]

hey  are you by change over clocking at all?

im using 361.75 without issue as long as i turn off my overclocks when i enter into true fullscreen mode

 

[kyoobin]

3 minutes ago, Sudako said:

hey  are you by change over clocking at all?

 

No, everything is stock, both GPU and CPU.

[Sudako]

want to go into your system even view for me  and find the events when the game is crashing to see if it is the driver or some other hardware fault?

if you need instructions on how to do this let me know

[kyoobin]

So earlier today I was on driver 355.82, I've been getting the typical "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

 

I asked my friend today who is also on windows 10, with a GTX 960, and he told me he doesn't get crashes/screen freezes and he's currently on 358.50, so I uninstalled my driver with DDU, and did a clean install of 358.50. (The thing is, the driver doesn't crash like every 10min or so often. It crashes very randomly, sometimes in an hour, sometimes in 3 hours, and sometimes even 30 minutes, etc.) So it crashed during an arena battle, screen froze, but I was still smashing all my skill buttons and mouse, seems the duel was still happening while my screen was frozen. It restored after about 10 seconds.

 

With the 358.50, I checked event viewer and found these errors that I've never seen before.

 

Here's an album of some screenshots of my event viewer: http://imgur.com/a/ubM8m

 

But nothing out of the ordinary, screen just freezes, and recovers a while later. 

[Remlnx]

361.75 with GeForce Experience 2.9.1.22 on Windows 10 Pro x64 with a GTX760 Ti DirectCU

Never had a crash/freeze/stopped service

 

Edit: For the records, it's well known in many other games forums that the 355.60 are the latest drivers that give no problems on Windows 10, you can try those.

[stormfury2]

I've not had any crashes myself, on W10 x64 + most recent Windows updates as of last week. I'm not on my system right now but from what I remember I'm on the previous driver release but I am NOT using the GeForce experience module. I have also made a few changes to my default GFX profile to suit my system.

 

I have experienced some micro stuttering but I am putting that down to being on my HDD so I'll move the files tonight and test.

 

HW i73930K - 680GTX - MB P9X79 Pro - 32GB DDR3

 

Is your system a multi-monitor system? May be nothing but it isn't unheard of for this to cause intermittent problems.

 

EDIT: You may also want to check the GeForce forums for those types of event errors in case someone on their has had similar issues but with other titles.

[kyoobin]

Thank you guys for the replies. Whenever I change graphics driver, I uninstall it with DDU and perform a clean install but I exclude the Geforce experience software and the Audio drivers so I only install the display driver + the 3d/physx stuff. As for the latest drivers, I haven't had much positive experience with them. I will definitely try out 355.60 and test the game in true fullscreen mode as well. 

 

Edit: And oh yea, I do have two monitors, one being 1080p 144hz, the other being 1600x900 60hz.

[mihwK]

Same issues, sometimes you get lucky and actually get to see the bluescreen.

 

This is what the bsod sais:

_Exception_Not_Handled (dxgmms2.sys)

 

Tried to google as solution, but after a long while it just got tedious since there somehow is none...

[kyoobin]

Installed 355.60, played for about 1 hour or so and screen froze for 20-30 seconds on 6F of Mushin's tower http://imgur.com/I051LWj.

My nvidia drivers just seem to TDR whenever and wherever...

[stormfury2]

Have you disabled that second monitor? In the GeForce control panel disable it and then try it using single monitor performance mode under the global settings section.

[Jecnus]

Having same problem. FPS DROP and Lag. 

GTX 860M 8G

[kyoobin]

Tried 361.75, got a blue screen that lasted between 10-20 seconds. Haven't tried disabling monitor but, even with two monitors, if I don't play Blade and Soul, none of these drivers has ever crashed on me if not, rarely. I'm not entirely sure if it's caused by Blade and Soul, I will need to spend a day without playing BnS to see if the drivers still crashes.

[NWsoso]

I've  come to the conclusion, after several reboots, bsods, driver changes, driver profile changes.

 

The problem lies with the game client, it is so badly optimized that its a joke even to be released as anything but beta. This smells so rushed that someone gotto be smoking a fat one right now. And its quite obvious, there are plenty of people with these issues, fps spikes/drops, bad performance in general on alot of systems. So its really a tossup if the client likes your system, and it seems the newer your system is the worse the issues are.

 

It strikes me odd, when watching korean youtubers with their BnS videos, how void of "stutter" and "slugish" feeling it looks like they have when playing BnS, heck they can even record while playing without what looks like a instant bsod/crash. To end this rant, it looks like the NA/EU client got shafted... :/

[kyoobin]

Okay, I'm currently on 353.62. About an hour after installing the driver and playing BnS, I got a "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." in event viewer. Then I tried what stormfury2 suggested: disable my second monitor. So far it has been about 3 hours, game is running okay, haven't gotten a TDR ("Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.") yet. I will need to test this for a while longer.

 

At this point, I feel like it's not the drivers, since I have tried so many drivers and all of them had TDR issues when playing BnS. Like I said, the TDRs rarely if not, never happen when I'm not playing BnS. There might be an issue with nvidia drivers and multiple displays when playing BnS.

[NWsoso]

4 hours ago, kyoobin said:

Okay, I'm currently on 353.62. About an hour after installing the driver and playing BnS, I got a "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." in event viewer. Then I tried what stormfury2 suggested: disable my second monitor. So far it has been about 3 hours, game is running okay, haven't gotten a TDR ("Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.") yet. I will need to test this for a while longer.

 

At this point, I feel like it's not the drivers, since I have tried so many drivers and all of them had TDR issues when playing BnS. Like I said, the TDRs rarely if not, never happen when I'm not playing BnS. There might be an issue with nvidia drivers and multiple displays when playing BnS.

 

You are absolutely correct, it's not the drivers!

 

I bit my tongue and did a full format, and a clean win 7 install. This game runs amazing on win 7 with good specced PC's. For whatever reasons, at least in my case, it did not run good at all with win 10.

 

I tried just about anything before going backwards OS wise, as anyone would. I'm not saying this is a solution for everyone, but if its worth it to you, it might be worth a shot.

[rickchristine]

Kyoobin,

 

For the Windows 10 display driver stopped responding and has successfully recovered, it is happened above Windows Vista system. You can try do these:

1. Update the latest verion of graphic drivers (NVIDIA, AMD and Intel)

2. Reset the TDR time (adjust above 2 seconds)

3. End programs by using Task Manager

4. Update the system Package

5. Reset base clock offset (such as 25 MHz)

[xtclikeafox]

I'm on windows 10 pro using the same processor as you. I am on a 960 though. My fps never dips or has any performance problems. I would definitely keep current with driver updates though.  I'm on 361.75 for current driver and its old, been an upgrade waiting for me to download in Geforce Experience. Can try downloading one of the various gpu stress testers. As newegg reviews will indicate, some parts like those have a high factory defective rate. Furmark or Heaven Benchmark among others.

[Sothy]

No crashes here, but i had the FPS problem also, check out this link:

 

http://www.bladeandsouldojo.com/topic/19771-blade-and-soul-china-low-fps/page__st__20  <--- Check the 2nd post, the sodany's one. Hope that help you.

Edit: What solved my problem is the nvidia inspector part.

[kyoobin]

7 hours ago, xtclikeafox said:

I'm on windows 10 pro using the same processor as you. I am on a 960 though. My fps never dips or has any performance problems. I would definitely keep current with driver updates though.  I'm on 361.75 for current driver and its old, been an upgrade waiting for me to download in Geforce Experience. Can try downloading one of the various gpu stress testers. As newegg reviews will indicate, some parts like those have a high factory defective rate. Furmark or Heaven Benchmark among others.

 

What fps do you get when you do field bosses with around 20-50 people around you?

[OuchThatHurt]

347.12 was the last one that I could Nividia control pannle to save setting with so I stuck with that ...yeah it's been a while now but 99% of my games run great at 1080p with a flat 60FPS...BnS was like that until today when it dropped to 25fps after the update.

[kyoobin]

Update: Turning off second monitor did not stop the TDRs. Driver is still stopping and recovering.. It definitely only happens to me when I'm playing Blade and Soul. I spent a good 6-7 hours playing The Division and the drivers never crashed or TDR'ed. However, playing Blade and Soul, nvidia driver stops responding and recovers in matter of 30 minute to 1-2 hours.

 

 

[kyoobin]

Update 2: I updated to the latest nvidia driver (361.91) yesterday. Right after installing the driver, I played the game for about 4 hours without a single crash. I had my hopes up. Then today, been web browsing for 2 hours or so, no crash. Started up BnS and went on character creation screen, and driver crashed twice in less than 5 minutes. I have come to the conclusion it's the game that is causing my driver to crash. This is strange because I can play other games perfectly fine without crashes except Blade and Soul. What makes this even more frustrating is that there seems be a handful or people without this problem that runs on a similar system spec without having to tinker with anything. So I still have no idea how to fix this...

[xtclikeafox]

im on version 361.91.  It does dip down a lot if like 30 ppl are on one of those bosses. Only happens in this game though so pretty sure its a server issue. In gw2 in t1 ebg would be hundreds ramming into hundreds and I wouldnt get drops like during poh. goes down from 80+ to about 20 or 25. everywhere else is fine though.

[kyoobin]

Okay, I just played TERA for 30min-1hr and the driver stopped responding and recovered... Now I'm starting to doubt it's just BnS. Now it could be Windows 10, nvidia driver, or my GPU.. f*ckk so frustrating.