Display driver stopped responding and has recovered

matt.hibb · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:48

Hello,

I am constantly seeing a black screen followed by the message "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" when doing pretty much any task in Windows 7 64bit. And eventually the whole thing freezes.

My 1st instinct was the graphics card, but I've replaced that and arguably it's worse since that. I've also reinstalled Windows from scratch and updated all drivers etc. Hence I'm a bit stuck.

Hardware wise, could it be the PSU or motherboard?
Any other ideas?

Here is the spec of my machine:
Intel Core i7-3930K
Asus P9X79 PRO Intel X79
G.Skill RipJaws 32GB
Asus GeForce GTX 760 DirectCUII
Crucial Real SSD M4
Lepa G-Series 700W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

OracIe · 13 Jan 2014 at 16:17

I would say it's the display driver.

Idleman · 13 Jan 2014 at 16:27

Have you just updated your Nvidia drivers, if not try updating them. There is a new release available.
I`ve had a similar thing happen, but it stopped on it`s own.

BoonMonkey · 13 Jan 2014 at 16:34

Try stick the card in another slot on your motherboard.

I have an issue where in my 16x slot my drivers constantly crash, but in the 8x slot it runs perfectly fine. It isn't the card as it works in my brothers PC fine and it isn't the motherboard (apparently) because I had it RMA'd and Gigabyte found nothing

If it works in the 8x slot okay then we'll be in the same boat!

Bickaxe · 13 Jan 2014 at 17:04

I get this with mine but only when gaming (AC4, Far Cry 3, XCOM so far)
Its the display drivers, most recent update has reduced the occurances but they still happen.

Mr Goat · 13 Jan 2014 at 17:16

I get this on occasion if my card is overclocked and then fully loaded, have you checked your clocks and temps using MSI afterburner to see what they are when it crashes?

matt.hibb · 14 Jan 2014 at 16:24

I've tried the latest drivers as well as version 320.49 and both are as bad as each other.

I have moved the card to another PCI slot and so far (over half an hour of use) I've had no reoccurence. Does this mean I'm running in a 8x slot rather than 16x? (NVIDIA control panel system info still says Bus is PCI Express x16 Gen2)

Does this point to a motherboard issue? It's about 2 years, 2 months old so beyond warranty, but I would consider a new board to put this (extremely) annoying problem to bed.

Idleman · 14 Jan 2014 at 16:39

Looking at your mobo manual, all the slots run at x16. It does however recommmend running a single card in slot 1 for better performance, but I don`t see how it will make much difference running your card in another slot.
You could try a system restore, go back to a point before the problem started. Or just click on system restore select a date and check to see what software or updates will be affected.

Havana_UK · 14 Jan 2014 at 16:51

My card suffers this if I push the overclock too high in certain applications. For example, if I overclock it by +150MHz on the core Firestrike will run but Heaven crashes within a minute or so, and along with that message the GPU will be running back at its default clock speed.

I would say that the card isn't quite up to the clocks it's currently running (probably GPU speed, not VRAM speed), and if this is happening at "stock" settings (whatever they are for that card) then you may want to speak with customer services about it.

Another possible problem area is your PSU. If the GPU needs more power than the PSU can deliver that could also cause instability. How many amps can the 12V rail deliver?