Nvidia driver bugs. Update: TDR?

[Obsoleet]

I've been searching for information for a friend of mine on one of Nvidia's driver bugs, the TDR issue. Is this solved or has it been identified as far as the root cause?

I moved from NV to AMD based on a number of crippling driver bugs (BSODs, some specific game issues) which were solved by moving to a faster Radeon, and I suggested the same to him but he wants to know if there has been progress on the TDR issue.
The next round he'll be moving to a Radeon but for now he'd like Nvidia to fix their driver bugs.
Thanks for any info.

 

[thilanliyan]

I moved from NV to AMD based on a number of crippling driver bugs (BSODs, some specific game issues) which were solved by moving to a faster Radeon,

This should be a stickie lol. Then we can refer people to it every time they say "AMD drivers suck, nVidia's are better".

How long has the bug been around for? I figure nV would fix it fairly quickly if it is very widespread.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Well, I can't say for certainty as with 4 Nvidia cards (3 different 460's and a 480) I've NEVER had this issue and I OC the hell out of them. I did a search on it to see what the concensus was and it seems to be varied.

I can say that the newest beta drivers (301.24) fix a bunch of issues that have existed since after the 260.99 days and overall runs better.

Honestly I've avoided moving to the newer generation cards because for the price, other than less heat/less power, they offer very little oomph(and sometimes less) over the 4 series. (This includes the Radeons newer gens).

 

[destrekor]

There are a few things regarding the TDRs.

One, it seems to be more commonly associated with specific models, perhaps even specific vendors.
Another is an install-related issue.

I've had NUMEROUS driver kinks that I've had to work through (made worse by, or specifically due to, my SLI (x2) EVGA 560 Ti 2GB cards).
Reading the official forums on nvidia.com has provided insight and tips. Sometimes the clean installation solution built into the drivers is best, and that has worked for me for most driver installations... but sometimes I've had to do the uninstall/install route that involves, for my setup, around five or so reboots. I have had success without even touching any driver cleaner software in Safe Mode, and for that I am thankful.

Both of my cards are OC'd (with a slight overvolt, about 50mV iirc), and are stable. Well honestly, I haven't tested BF3 with 301.24's yet, but iRacing triple monitor, and Witcher 2 single monitor (1080p) have performed flawlessly. And I think I have finally moved beyond TDRs - I might get one on rare occasion, but I cannot remember if I've had them on this specific install for this driver set.

There are about a billion variables that can create issues, and it's almost trial and error - but if plagued by TDR, it's worth the effort imho.
301.24 has been good to me thus far.

 

[Obsoleet]

I'll pass this thread onto him. My research thus far has shown that it's a hardware issue that might(?) be fixed by drivers? It seems discussion about this issue among others is rather suppressed across the web.

 

[BD231]

It's suppressed because it came/went so quickly and was clearly just a driver issue. Around 260's to 270's idle states got messed up and caused driver crash's in desktop use, it was rectified in later driver release's. If you're impatient enough to swap hardware over driver related issues from reputable companies you might want to pay more attention.

It's one thing if there's no end in sight like AMD's continued cross-fire issue's, minor annoyance's like TDR are completely different.

 

[Jaydip]

The issue is suppressed because it is very difficult to recreate.If i'm not mistaken they even wanted others hardware to do a RCA.

 

[f1sherman]

TDR is not a bug.

It's the symptom of malfunctional/badly configured/OC-ed, bottom line unstable system, giving BSOD on Win XP, or kernel panic on Linux.

Vista/Win 7 handles this more graciously, hence instead of system reboot/shutdown you only get a TDR popup.

Basically check your PC.

 

[Anarchist420]

TDR is not a bug.

Yes it is.
Every nv driver after (but not including) 275 has TDR issues for me. I had an OpenGL lost connection crash with 301.24, so it's not due to faulty hardware. The 275 driver I had was stable, later ones are not 100% stable.

I don't get artifacts or freezing in games and they run at the frame rate they're supposed to, so it's not a HW issue. nvidia screwed with something after R275, and they haven't solved it.

 

[Obsoleet]

Interesting. Be interesting to see if others have more info on this- especially our Nvidia representatives.