Upgraded NVIDIA Drivers - Freezes/Bad Performance (November, 2018)

Technical Support
1

Hi, I recently upgraded my NVIDIA drivers to the latest, so that I could play Battlefield V, as the drivers are required.

I am now on driver version: 417.01 running a GeForce 1080 Ti with a i7-7700K.

I was previously on driver version: 390.77.

Since the upgrade, I have experienced a vast loss of performance in Overwatch. I find that it freezes every few minutes for a few seconds and as a whole runs more laggy and less responsive. I often stream on Twitch (MikoeGaming) and have found that closing OBS makes the game more responsive, however, still freezes. The FPS counter claims I’m getting 150+ FPS, however, with OBS running, it feels vastly lower than that.

I have tried setting the 3D Settings to “Prefer Maximum Performance” and experience zero improvement.

I need to stress, that before the driver update, everything was fine. I have since downgraded my drivers and as expected, it runs smooth as butter once more. Something is causing a problem here and there is an issue/conflict with the newer drivers. I have tried a few versions prior to the newest and experience the same problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

2

Hello Mikoe!

If you want to return to the newer drivers, I would recommend trying both fullscreen and borderless windowed modes. If you’re using a G-sync monitor, I’ve also seen reports that G-sync optimization in the latest driver is inconsistent, so you can try disabling that from the Nvidia Control Panel (right-click the Windows desktop to access).

3

Hi, thanks for that.

Unfortunately, both those options make no difference and the problems still persist. I actually exclusively play in Borderless.

4

Mikoe,

If it works fine with the drivers downgraded there’s about one more thing we can try - a complete clean uninstall/reinstall without any of the extra fluff. If we do it this way. (I’m aware some of these steps are going to be things you already know, but I’m putting this here in case others run into this.)

  1. Download, but do not install the most recent driver for your graphics card from Nvidia.
  2. Download Display Driver Uninstaller from The Wagnard Mobile Forum (Click Official Download Here near the bottom of Wagnard’s first post. It will automatically download)
  3. Run the Display Driver Uninstaller file you downloaded and extract it to desktop
  4. On your desktop, click Display Driver Uninstaller and run it. Do not run in safe mode.
  5. Click Clean and Restart
  6. After restart, install the driver that we downloaded above in step 1*
  7. Reset your overwatch settings.
    *Note: Use the Custom Installation option when reinstalling this driver. Do not install the Nvidia Geforce Experience or 3d Vision drivers.

Once you’ve done this, do not use any optimized settings. Does it fix it? If not, you need to report this to NVidia support patch so they can help figure out what was just changed. I’ll keep an eye out on this end too, but I suspect based on what you said we may need NVidia’s help on this.