NVIDIA Releases 376.09 WHQL Driver Update

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• Zak - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link

  My current build is my last SLI build. I haven't had any issues with SLI until this year when they're plentiful. It's like Nvidia is actively discouraging SLI use through shitty drivers. My next build will be a miniITX with a single card. And to think I always hated ATI for crap drivers. All this year, one broken Nvidia driver after another.

• JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link

  Team green and team red are the same thing; graphics card manufacturers.
  
  People like to espouse that one side's drivers are better, but that's just a person's anecdotal evidence. Both sides have issued out drivers that have ultimately caused the GPU fan(s) to be unresponsive and causing the GPU to fry itself upon opening the next game. Both sides uncommonly issue out buggy drivers while you wait for a new game release to be playable.
  
  People like to espouse that one side's hardware is designed better, but both sides have been guilty of some kind of hardware scandal, whether it's AMD's use of a 6-pin connector instead of an 8-pin connector and relying too heavily on PCI-e board power or AMD's liberal label of "8 cores" actually being 4 modules comprising of 2 cores with shared FPUs, or Nvidia's crippling memory architecture choices for the last .5GB of VRAM of GTX 970's.
  
  There's two things to keep in mind as a PC enthusiast:
  
  1) Early adopters always lose.
  It doesn't matter whether it's hardware or software you're wanting to buy, prices come down in time due to sales or to keep pricing competitive with new launches on the market. In particular, for games, you're going to have to deal with poor SLI/Crossfire performance for the first few months of the game (you know, the time when you should be _enjoying_ the game), while the other guy who waited for the game to go on reduced price during a Steam Summer/Winter sale gets the game for cheaper, with all DLC included free, and driver issues are already resolved. It's good to look forward to a new game launch, but stop getting burned by history repeating itself with every new game launch.
  
  2) Never bandwagon for any company.
  They're all out to get your money, and no company needs your support as a white knight on the internet. Every company makes mistakes, so everyone needs to hold them accountable so that they don't repeat the same mistake again with their next hardware or game launch.
  
  3) Never go SLI/Crossfire unless the single fastest GPU on the market is still not enough to drive the game your need at the performance you want.
  I doubt you have a Pascal Titan SLI setup, and even if you do, then more money for Nvidia. Avoid the headaches of poor SLI/Crossfire support entirely by always going for the single best GPU you can afford.

• Zak - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link

  No, not Titans, I'm not that crazy, nor that wealthy:) I have 1080 SLI and I regret it really. My old 980Ti setup was flawless. Problems started with this build and 1080 related drivers. The last driver that didn't have massive SLI issue doesn't support 1080.
  
  I know they're just corporations out to get my money but Nvidia GSYNC does work better so I'm in their camp for that reason. Considering that I play older games mostly, dual 1080 seems indeed like an overkill. I may just go back to one card even sooner if I get fed up with SLI bugs.

• JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link

  I haven't had any issues with Freesync on a Asus MG248Q monitor. It's a much lower barrier of entry going with a $200 RX480 + $200 Freesync 144hz monitor than going in for Gsync. But if you're looking for a PC that's capable of the best performance possible, AMD video cards aren't really an option, and you're left with the (arguably slightly) better G-Sync, but the undeniably more expensive option.

• oranos - Monday, December 5, 2016 - link

  its just really not. i got a 27 ips 144hz gsync for $600 cyber monday weekend. similar freesync monitors are priced very comparably

• HomeworldFound - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link

  I think the worst part of SLI for me is when you have to turn it off. If it were easier to switch without killing all of my apps, I could live with the level of support. I play older stuff that still could benefit from higher settings. Dragon Age: Inquisition really surprised me when I saw the SLI bugs.

• HollyDOL - Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - link

  As for drivers quality, historically green team had significantly better. Years back I worked in a computer store and given roughly 50-50 sales of graphic cards (team red vs team green), we had multiple computers with ATI cards per day for fixing because 'it doesn't work with game ABC' while there was only a handful of issues with nVidia.
  
  These days it looks like the companies can shake their hands because neither provides really good, polished, super stable high end drivers. Maybe too much fine tuning for various DX11 titles starts to pile up and code starts to be more and more difficult to maintain?
  
  ad 1)
  Early adopters always lose - not the games become cheaper, with DLCs for free etc., but also get another months of development and debugging... after all significant majority of game issues is caused by bugs in the game itself.

• HomeworldFound - Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - link

  Back in the Windows Vista days there was a chart released displaying which pieces of software or drivers were causing the most crashes. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/vista-capab...

• 8bitg33k - Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - link

  "There's two things to keep in mind:
  
  1)
  
  2)
  
  3)
  
  "

• xenol - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link

  "In our fixes this week we first have a solution for high GPU idle clocks while two DisplayPort displays are plugged in. "
  
  This is a winner for me! Well, if this actually works.