nvlddmkm crash 1080 ti

[AngryLittlePony]

Hello everyone,

 

I've been having issues with my computer lately and I would be grateful if you guys could help me resolve them.

 

Since a few weeks, some games have been crashing on my computer and the event viewer always shows that the display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding (event ID 4101).

This started happening right after Red Dead Redemption 2 got updated mid-november, the game would close after a few minutes showing the error message : ERR_GFX_STATE, since I saw a lot of people got this error I figured I'd just wait for a new patch.

But last week I got a crash playing PUBG Lite (resolution scale set to the max), so I looked into the event viewer to see it was the error I previously mentioned. I checked if the same error was shown when RDR 2 crashed and sure enough it was.

 

Before I tell you what I've tried doing to figure out what the issue is, here are my specs :

 

Motherboard : Asus Z97-A

CPU : i7-4790k (overclocked to 4.8GHz but I've reset my bios settings for the following tests)

GPU : Asus Strix GTX 1080 ti OC

RAM : G.Skill Trident X 2 x 8gb 2400MHz

PSU : Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 850W

Monitor resolution : 1080p

 

The first thing I did was removing the graphics drivers with DDU and trying the ones I know worked (before the Nvidia Hotfix for RDR 2), I even tried 417.58 from a year ago but nothing changed.

I've also used the command sfx /scannow and reinstalled Vulkan and DirectX.

 

I've checked my CPU and GPU temps which are fine, the most I've seen the GPU at is 72°C, CPU around 80°C when overclocked.

PSU voltages in bios are fine, I've tried monitoring them in game with HWMonitor and everything seemed fine but I know it's not a reliable test.

I've also tried to underclock the GPU, the first time I did it I was able to play RDR 2 for about 20 minutes before I had to leave, but then that wouldn't work anymore.

I've used the debug mode from the Nvidia Control Panel since my GPU is factory overclocked and that only made my computer crash when I tried playing RDR 2 instead of only the game crashing : black screen and GPU fans running at full speed.

 

I haven't been able to test the GPU in another computer yet sadly but hopefully I will be able to soon.

 

As far as benchmarks and stress tests go :

I've tried running Unigine Superposition in 8K and had no issues running it (benchmark and game for about 20 minutes). All the benchmarks from 3DMark run well too and give me a valid score.

I also tried some other GPU intensive games, such as Metro Exodus which crashed in both DX12 and DX11 (about 5 minutes in). Battlefield V in Ultra would not crash when I set the resolution scale to 200%, but after disabling the Future Frame Rendering feature it quickly did.

 

I've then tried finding stress tests that would make the driver crash quickly and have found two :

- MSI Kombustor - (VK Phong-Donut) at 4K, a few seconds to a couple minutes in (I haven't tried them all, I figured I'd try a Vulkan stress test since I run RDR 2 in Vulkan and it crashes everytime)

- Furmark Overclocking Validation utility 2560x2048 16X MSAA, literally one second in, the screen doesn't even go black, the application hangs but I still get the same driver error in the event viewer. Every single time.

 

I then tried putting the GPU in the second PCIe slot. Strangely, I was able to run Furmark for about 45 seconds. It seemed to take longer for the GPU to crash in the Kombustor test as well.

 

Light games such as Rocket League never crash, the driver seems to crash only when the GPU is under heavy load. I've played PUBG Lite since, limiting it to 200 fps and it didn't crash.

 

Apologies for the long post I just wanted you guys to have all the information I could gather.

Thanks in advance for your time.