nvlddmkm error crashing random games. Cant figure out if its a hardware or software issue or how to fix it.

[Alsace]

I bought a used RTX 2070 Super off eBay a few weeks ago and everything has been perfectly fine (performance and thermals) besides random games crashing for seemingly no reason. I do not have a 2nd GPU I can put in the system to figure out if its a problem with other hardware/software installed on my PC or the GPU itself. 

Examples of crashes: 

• Fortnite crashes after a few minutes when going above 60fps lock in DX11 and DX12 mode.
• The Witcher 3 crashes when in DX12 mode after a few minutes. 
• NieR Automata randomly crashes during fights 
• Yuzu will randomly crash after a few minutes 

I do not get crashes in benchmarks such as Heaven or 3DMark TimeSpy. And I do not crash in every game. Only specific ones. 
Looking in Windows event viewer I get this error:

 
"The description for Event ID 0 from source nvlddmkm cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer."

 

After researching it a bit, it seems to be a issue where the display device takes too long to respond, so then it crashes and recovers itself and seems to be a driver issue. 

I have used DDU to uninstall the drivers in Safe Mode and installed the newest ones on the Nvidia site (527.56 as of posting) and still get these nvlddmkm related crashes.

Things I have tried doing to resolve the issue with no success:

• Setting Nvidia control panel to "Debug mode"
• Undervolting my GPU
• Downclocking my GPU to reference boost clocks
• Disabling Windows "Game mode"
• Disabling windows hardware accelerated scheduling 
• Disabling XMP 
• Turning off PBO
• Going back to default BIOS values

Things I have tried with success: 

• (In Fortnites case) capping FPS to 60 
• Setting the trouble game to "Optimal power" rather than "Adaptive' or "Max performance" in Nvidia control panel (This had no change on my wattage used or clocks but fixed the issue 90% of the time)

Things other users have done with success:

• Enabling "Debug mode" in Nvidia control panel 
• Rolling back to older 450 drivers 
• Downclocking their card 
• enabling resizable bar (for 30XX series GPUs) 
• Upgrading their PSU
• Disabling XMP

After looking around some more and reading experiences from other users and from my own, I can conclude that: 

• This only happens (or more often) to Nvidia users 
• This happens more often in DX12 games
• This happens regardless of temperature, and happens at any utilization point 
• Limited to specific games
• Happens more often on 20XX and 30XX series cards than the 10XX and 900 series but is still possible
• Doesn't seem to be an issue with having an AMD or Intel CPU, but no one reporting this issue has bothered listing the CPU they are using. 
• These amount of users reporting this issue have skyrocketed the past year 
• A fresh Windows install does not fix the issue. 

I have an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G and a gold rated 650w Thermaltake PSU incase anyone was wondering what my system specs are for potential power delivery issues.

 

[Radium_Angel]

If you are up for it, try a LiveUSB of something like Linux Mint (it's very Windows-like, new user friendly and Steam works under it)

Linux is very intolerant of bad hardware. If your GPU (or the whole OS) crashes under Linux Mint, then you have a hardware issue. If it behaves, you have a software issue.

[Jorgee]

Identical issues and attempted solutions down to a T, also on a 2070 super and I've been scouring forums just the same. As much as I don't want it to be a hardware issue it might just be the case but it hasn't been this bad 'til this past year and I've been seeing similar hike ups in forums noticing the issue too. Hopefully it somehow gets addressed too because I'd really hate to have this much money go down the drain. I'll post some specs here soon to try and see if there's an overlap.

[Alsace]

On 1/23/2023 at 5:15 PM, Jorgee said:

Identical issues and attempted solutions down to a T, also on a 2070 super and I've been scouring forums just the same. As much as I don't want it to be a hardware issue it might just be the case but it hasn't been this bad 'til this past year and I've been seeing similar hike ups in forums noticing the issue too. Hopefully it somehow gets addressed too because I'd really hate to have this much money go down the drain. I'll post some specs here soon to try and see if there's an overlap.

Honestly I think it might just be a widespread hardware issue on Nvidia GPUs. I've seen post of people having the issue going away when getting their GPU replaced, but I have also seen post of users still having the same problems when getting a replacement GPU.

But it could still be a driver or Windows issue. In Fortnite I only crash if I set my Post Processing and Effect settings above "low" and again only certain games crash regardless of how demanding they are. Those don't seem like hardware issues.