Summary
- Nvidia's newest drivers are causing display issues on older GPUs.
- Users are reporting problems like crashes with Cyberpunk 2077.
- Best fix for now is to roll back the driver, but may lose support for new games.
If you've been keeping tabs on your Nvidia news, you'll likely remember that the RTX 5090 got hit by a nasty black screen driver bug soon after release. And while this issue made a good case for not upgrading to the RTX 50 series, it seems that even RTX 40 owners can't catch a break. Users are reporting that older cards are also experiencing nasty display issues after installing the latest patch.
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is closer to the RTX 4090 than Nvidia's own RTX 5070
This thing is a mid-level game changer, taking on the latest from Nvidia.
Nvidia's newest graphics drivers are wreaking havoc on people's GPUs
As spotted by WccfTech, Reddit users are beginning to report issues with the newest Nvidia driver. One user by the name of Scotty1992 posted an in-depth collection of user complaints and included this tidbit:
Problem: Cyberpunk 2077 will crash entire PC. This problem happens on all 572.xx drivers that I have tried and does not occur in 566.xx drivers. Something Nvidia has changed in 572 drivers has damaged stability. I suspect it happens in other games as others have reported, but I'm not interesting in corrupting my Windows install. The minidump points to nvlddmkm.sys. All drivers were uninstalled via DDU.
Some users chimed in with their own experiences, including this one about how far this bug has spread:
It's not just the 40 series. Happens on my 50 series (5080) as well. I have two monitors and anytime the system goes idle I have to either reboot the system or unplug and replug in the video cable to the monitor. Seen tons of people talk about the same
If you're affected by the bug, it seems the best way to fix it is to roll back the driver to a version you know for sure is stable. However, as Scotty1992 noted in their post, rolling back your drivers means losing support for some new games, including the new Half-Life 2 RTX mod. Here's hoping Nvidia can push out a fix so people can enjoy the latest games and a stable system at the same time.
Nvidia hasn't been having the best starts of 2025, with bad drivers, missing ROPs, and stock issues putting a damper on the hype. However, some would argue that we're to blame for allowing Nvidia to get to this point in the first place.