Game developers warn GeForce RTX 4000 and 3000 owners to roll back Nvidia drivers

[midian182]

A hot potato: With black/blue screens of death and system instability still affecting owners of GeForce RTX 4000 and RTX 3000 graphics cards, some game developers are now advising users to avoid Nvidia's latest drivers or roll back to the December release.

Since updating to Nvidia's 572.xx drivers, several RTX 40 and 30-series users have experienced problems with some new games, especially Inzoi and The First Berserker: Khazan. Issues include crashes, freezes, stuttering, and sudden frame drops.

Inzoi developer Krafton wrote in its notes on graphics drivers that while it recommends RTX 50-series owners use the latest 572.83 driver, the same driver could cause frame drops and stuttering when playing the game on an RTX 40-series card.

As such, it recommends using driver version 566.36 from December 2024. Any RTX 30-series owners experiencing issues are also recommended to use the older driver version.

The First Berserker: Khazan developer Neople wrote an identical recommendation in its notes for the best gaming experience.

The fact that developers of two very big recent games have been forced to issue these warnings illustrates just how widespread the problems have become.

It was back in February when we first heard of issues impacting cards from Nvidia's RTX 50, 40, and 30 generations, with the Blackwell line being worst affected. They seemed to originate from Nvidia's 572.16 driver release, which enabled RTX 50 support. There were reports of some users getting around the problems by capping their display's refresh rate at 60Hz.

One person wrote that rolling back to the 566.36 driver was the only way to fix the problems impacting his Asus RTX 4070 Ti Super TUF card, the symptoms of which included Cyberpunk 2077 crashing his entire PC.

Nvidia confirmed that it was investigating the issues and would be releasing driver updates to address them, several of which have since been pushed out. While they seem to have fixed most of the problems impacting the RTX 5000 line, they haven't been as effective for older graphics cards. It led to several users accusing Nvidia of prioritizing its latest cards while ignoring issues affecting the Lovelace and Ampere series.

With no sign of a fix on the horizon, those with previous-generation graphics cards experiencing the problems are becoming increasingly frustrated.

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Game developers warn GeForce RTX 4000 and 3000 owners to roll back Nvidia drivers

 

[stewi0001]

I don't play those games but I have had some crashes using stable diffusion. I'm curious if it's because of the driver.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Couldn't be, AMD is the company with the trash drivers not Nvidia!

 

[Jarvi5]

Lies, lies and damn lies…
Everyone knows only AMD have driver issues

 

[Jarvi5]

Couldn't be, AMD is the company with the trash drivers not Nvidia!

Got there before me

 

[bandit8623]

Nvidia has to catch up to Intel in some way.

 

[arrowflash]

I thought everyone knew to NEVER update Nvidia drivers for their previous gen GPU after new generation GPUs launch, unless you really need to (I.e. if some new game or software refuses to run demanding a newer driver, even then have a rollback procedure ready). Because Nvidia deliberately nerfs performance of old gen GPUs in newer drivers. This has been known since the 2000s.

 

[AnilD]

This is a good reminder that "latest driver" doesn’t always mean "best" driver. I’ve had fewer issues sticking with a stable version until something really needs the update.

 

[airbornex]

Game devs are now doing driver QA for Nvidia by telling players which versions actually work. Nvidia should just bundle a time machine with their cards so we can roll back drivers and our expectations.

 

[Hellbishop]

I always update as soon as a new driver comes out mainly for security reasons and also to get the best performance out of my current RTX 3080 12GB. I play all my games at 60 fps since at least 2006 which I heard also prevents the issue many people are having with their cards lately. Still I can see the reasoning with sticking with a stable driver for as long as possible as my brother inlaw who just retired from thirty five years in I.T. work has told me many times.

 

[yukka]

Nvidia market their drivers as Game Ready and list optimisations for individual games along with specific performance profiles for each new driver.

I’ve got used to installing the new driver each time but one of the issues that has arisen recently is that the newest DLSS model (transformer model over the older cnn model) is only available with the new drivers. It doesn’t exist in the drivers that these developers are recommending and the new model improves image quality and is compatible with older series.

But I got the black screen a couple of times on my 4070 ti super and ended up going back a couple of driver revisions. It isn’t good. And nvidia are in damage control. Or just not saying anything and hoping it goes away. Who knows. Be interesting to see if those expensive 6000 cards going in the AI datacentres have issues with their power connectors.

 

[lonetac]

This is a good reminder that "latest driver" doesn’t always mean "best" driver. I’ve had fewer issues sticking with a stable version until something really needs the update.

Been living with that mantra since 1996 and it hasnt let me down.

 

[aplomBomb]

I thought everyone knew to NEVER update Nvidia drivers for their previous gen GPU after new generation GPUs launch, unless you really need to (I.e. if some new game or software refuses to run demanding a newer driver, even then have a rollback procedure ready). Because Nvidia deliberately nerfs performance of old gen GPUs in newer drivers. This has been known since the 2000s.

the new drivers introduced new features for the 40 series cards, so there was very good reason to update

 

[deathspeed]

I had to roll back to that December driver on my 2060 because framerates in Forza Horizon 4 occasionally dropped to single digits, and it would crash after 10-15 minutes of play with newer drivers.

 

[Squid Surprise]

I thought everyone knew to NEVER update Nvidia drivers for their previous gen GPU after new generation GPUs launch, unless you really need to (I.e. if some new game or software refuses to run demanding a newer driver, even then have a rollback procedure ready). Because Nvidia deliberately nerfs performance of old gen GPUs in newer drivers. This has been known since the 2000s.

I think you have Nvidia confused with Apple…

 

[umeng2002]

I've been having stability issues on these drivers with my 40 series card too; although I was force-updated to 24H2 at the same time along with a few game updates all happening within the same week, so pin pointing the cause was hard.

Now, it seems to be nVidia's drivers.

 

[kiwigraeme]

I thought everyone knew to NEVER update Nvidia drivers for their previous gen GPU after new generation GPUs launch, unless you really need to (I.e. if some new game or software refuses to run demanding a newer driver, even then have a rollback procedure ready). Because Nvidia deliberately nerfs performance of old gen GPUs in newer drivers. This has been known since the 2000s.

Not saying you are incorrect , never heard this before, so citation needed - Heard it about phone companies etc

 

[Eldrach]

Looks like they have some issues with making both the 5xxx series and 4xxx and 3xxx series work on the same drivers. Maybe they should just release two versions of the driver

 

[Loadedaxe]

I thought everyone knew to NEVER update Nvidia drivers for their previous gen GPU after new generation GPUs launch, unless you really need to (I.e. if some new game or software refuses to run demanding a newer driver, even then have a rollback procedure ready). Because Nvidia deliberately nerfs performance of old gen GPUs in newer drivers. This has been known since the 2000s.

This is a common conspiracy theory, but there's no solid evidence that Nvidia intentionally nerfs older GPUs through driver updates. In fact, many driver updates include optimizations, bug fixes, and security patches that can improve performance and stability for older cards.

That being said, sometimes newer drivers are optimized more for the latest GPUs, and older ones might not see the same level of attention. In rare cases, specific updates may cause issues or unintended performance regressions, but Nvidia usually addresses these if they’re widely reported.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

This is a good reminder that "latest driver" doesn’t always mean "best" driver. I’ve had fewer issues sticking with a stable version until something really needs the update.

- 100% my main is an AMD system and my secondary is my old Nvidia system. I only ever update drivers if there is a new feature, or if a game I'm playing is having stability issues. Otherwise I can go a year or more often times without ever touching my driver install.

Lo an behold I'm one of those unicorns with a stable system that never has any issues with either Nvidia or AMD.

Performance is fine and stability is rock solid.

 

[arrowflash]

This is a common conspiracy theory, but there's no solid evidence that Nvidia intentionally nerfs older GPUs through driver updates. In fact, many driver updates include optimizations, bug fixes, and security patches that can improve performance and stability for older cards.

That being said, sometimes newer drivers are optimized more for the latest GPUs, and older ones might not see the same level of attention. In rare cases, specific updates may cause issues or unintended performance regressions, but Nvidia usually addresses these if they’re widely reported.

It's not a conspiracy theory, which is a derogatory term. Just a theory. I've personally experienced it first hand enough times over the last 20 years with Nvidia GPUs to take it as fact, though.

Many times, updating a driver brought me worse performance across most games (I.e. 3 - 10 fps on average, more in a few games). Uninstalling the driver and rolling back to the version I was previously using, always restored performance back to what it was. This, of course, has always happened with outdated GPUs. Never happened with current gen GPUs at their time.

Not saying you are incorrect , never heard this before, so citation needed - Heard it about phone companies etc

If you want proof / evidence in shape of an actual investigation and test with benchmarks by some independent review site such as TS or some Youtuber, I don't know of any. Only anedoctal evidence. However if you search around in forums, Reddit, etc. I'm far from being the only person who has experienced and noticed this. It's an issue that's been discussed plenty of times over the last 20 years in several forums and communities, over several generations of Nvidia GPUs. People have been noticing and discussing this since the Geforce 4 Ti/Geforce FX days.

But, anyone who has never heard about this, feel free to think I'm just full of s***.

 

[KwazyIvan]

A month ago, had the worse issue on my 9800X3D/RTX4090 system, to the point that I thought it was a virus, malware or system hack, couldn't do practically anything, turned out it was the latest nvidia drivers.

Went into safemode, ran DDU and then installed the previous driver that worked fine 572.42 (Feb Release).

Then, it all went back to normal, so for those with 3000/4000 series, don't bother with the latest drivers for now, until nvidia fixes all of these issues.

 

[ddferrari]

It should be noted that reverting to the 566.xx driver will result in the loss of DLSS 4. So if you're not having issues with the 572 drivers and you use DLSS 4 stay put!

 

[Jarenien]

Latest driver is working fine for me and everyone I know that has it. Sounds more like people's rigs are pos's.

 

[ChipBoundary]

First, no they don't. Second, you're full of crap and making things up. Third, I have a 4080 on the latest drivers, with zero issues and zero reduction in performance. I'm just going to say this bluntly, get the hell out of here with your brand hatred, made-up bullshit. I have no loyalty to any particular brand, but I do oppose when people make stuff up.