MSI 970 - 344.16 Display driver stopped responding

CrazyCactuaR · 8 Oct 2014 at 08:54

Hi all, I've recently bought a MSI 970 from OC and I've had this error happen randomly twice so far, Although I've had it in my pc for about a week now.

So far It's only ever randomly happened when playing World of Warcraft, I'm yet to excessively play other games but I have tried Risen 3 and Shadow of Mordor for afew hours and not had this happen.

I'm still concerned as to why this is happening.

GPU Temp while on WoW is at 60c and GPU usage shows to be at 35%. Which to me doesn't seem worrying.

From what I've seen on google regarding this error I'm seeing people say to RMA the card etc, Which I find is abit over the top, Also some mention underclocking the core to stock but I've no idea how to really do that even with MSI Afterburner.

Is anyone able to help regarding this?

-- Edit.

Also, Should the Fan Speed always be 1 even on Auto?

Gregster · 8 Oct 2014 at 09:17

It could well be because the card is new and drivers are not fully optimised for the 980/970. Wait for the next drivers to see if it still does it, if so, you should send it off for replacement.

You could make sure you are on a clean driver with no conflictis by running Display Driver Uninstaller. Clean out all the old nVidia/AMD drivers and do a clean install. Other than that, not much else you can do for now (apart from the obvious).

CrazyCactuaR · 8 Oct 2014 at 09:28

Gregster said:
It could well be because the card is new and drivers are not fully optimised for the 980/970. Wait for the next drivers to see if it still does it, if so, you should send it off for replacement.

You could make sure you are on a clean driver with no conflictis by running Display Driver Uninstaller. Clean out all the old nVidia/AMD drivers and do a clean install. Other than that, not much else you can do for now (apart from the obvious).

Fingers crossed it is just a silly early driver issue. Theirs no other driver's installed as I did a fresh installation of Windows once I installed the card, Just to avoid such a problem.

I really do not want to have to send this back, takes a lot longer to receive a replacement

-- Edit: Not good, It's happened again

Vimes · 8 Oct 2014 at 10:58

This happens quite often with my MSI GTX970 and Metro 2033 Redux. But as the Steam support forum has many other posts from people with NVidia cards and the exact same problem with different cards I'm not too bothered that it has anything to do with the card per se.

I am bothered though that it stuffs up quite a lot of gameplay etc and keeps closing the game down.

In that game some have suggested reducing or turning of Physx helped them or use Direct X 10 as the renderer and not 11.

CrazyCactuaR · 8 Oct 2014 at 11:17

Vimes said:
This happens quite often with my MSI GTX970 and Metro 2033 Redux. But as the Steam support forum has many other posts from people with NVidia cards and the exact same problem with different cards I'm not too bothered that it has anything to do with the card per se.

I am bothered though that it stuffs up quite a lot of gameplay etc and keeps closing the game down.

In that game some have suggested reducing or turning of Physx helped them or use Direct X 10 as the renderer and not 11.

I know I used to have this problem with 560 Ti and the latest Nvidia driver's so would always backtrack to a version that never caused a problem.

From what I've seen online so far, people having this issue throughout the years with different cards simply get no support from Nvidia in fixing it. Other than other people suggesting all sorts of things such as increasing gpu power, under clocking, changing bios power manage etc. Again this seems way over the top for something that could simply be Nvidia being silly.

I've gone and uninstalled some Nvidia features installed like HD Audio and 3D Vision since I'll never use them at all. Hopefully lets hope Nvidia actually fixes whatever issues is causing it and releases an update soon.

It would send me insane if it started doing it on every game and wrecking the fun of actually playing them.

Vimes · 8 Oct 2014 at 11:26

For me and Metro 2033 I get the impression that the problem is more prevalent with the Redux version that I'm playing.

I have just updated my Audio Realtek drivers for the same reason you have noted. I have also just disabled the advanced Physx option from the game. Apart from the problem being what it is the game will not restart until I do a full reboot.

Yes it is a pain and it did happen with my Asus 670GTX and the noted game but I can't remember it happening with the std Metro 2033, as I completed the vanilla version.

David Bisset · 8 Oct 2014 at 11:33

edit: nvm, stupid comment

ubersonic · 8 Oct 2014 at 11:44

Historically I have always found WoW to be very good at showing up GPU problems when other games don't. Have you tried running WoW in DX9 mode? or OpenGL mode? (instead of the default DX11), it may have an effect.

I have been running WoW on SLI GTX970's with 344.16 since the drivers were released and running the current WoW PTR on a single GTX970 (no SLI support in PTR's), no issues with either set up, so I don't think your issue is driver/WoW related unless one of those is corrupt on your system /shrug.

CrazyCactuaR · 8 Oct 2014 at 11:50

ubersonic said:
Historically I have always found WoW to be very good at showing up GPU problems when other games don't. Have you tried running WoW in DX9 mode? or OpenGL mode? (instead of the default DX11), it may have an effect.

I have been running WoW on SLI GTX970's with 344.16 since the drivers were released and running the current WoW PTR on a single GTX970 (no SLI support in PTR's), no issues with either set up, so I don't think your issue is driver/WoW related unless one of those is corrupt on your system /shrug.

I'll switch it to DX9 and let you know if it does happen. As previously said it's only ever been WoW to cause this error so far, but still I've not played other games that much either. (Shadow of Mordor with HD Graphics didn't flag anything while it was on, but wasn't on it for long)

Kelt · 8 Oct 2014 at 11:52

I didn't have this for years but it happened to me a year or so ago, due do a dodgy Nvidia driver release. Then the problem went away after Nvidia refined their drivers.

So yes, it could be due to early drivers. Have you looked around the web (including here) to see if other people are having similar problems?

nick-fury · 8 Oct 2014 at 12:15

I've had the same issue (twice) with my MSI 970 (344.16) whilst running WoW.

It happened whist having WoW open on one screen and watching videos/twitch on another.

I put it down to driver issues with the new card.

bru · 8 Oct 2014 at 15:48

I have had a similar issue while playing world of tanks, a reinstall of the game and the re-downloading then reinstalling the driver seems to have mostly sorted it ( it happens a lot less frequent now.) It did it overclocked and at stock even though it would run through heaven, valley and 3dmark for hours with a single glitch. I even tried heaven and prime95 to see if it only happened while the CPU was loaded up but it ran that fine for 3 hours straight.
Definitely a driver related issue in my opinion rather than a hardware one. hopefully the next driver will sort it out.

CrazyCactuaR · 8 Oct 2014 at 17:44

After uninstalling 3D Vision and HD Audio, Also switching WoW to Direct X 9, I've not had an issue so far.

Could have been either or all of those but thankfully this may be of use to others.

Let's hope it doesn't just randomly happen again to prove me wrong.

yashiro · 8 Oct 2014 at 18:48

Nvidia had this issue a while back. It was a combination of driver timings and pre-overclocked cards with non-ref timings that caused it. They eventually fixed it for most people but it was a big issue at the time. It generally occurred when the card changed/or was supposed to change power state (P0/8/12 etc).

Stas823 · 8 Oct 2014 at 18:52

Could a bad power supply also cause the driver to crash as it cant deliver the amps?

CrazyCactuaR · 8 Oct 2014 at 22:57

Stas823 said:
Could a bad power supply also cause the driver to crash as it cant deliver the amps?

Dont scare me with thoughts like that!

Ontopic though, Wouldn't a psu too weak actually go pop if the gpu tries pulling too much out?

breathe3asy · 10 Oct 2014 at 07:28

yashiro said:
Nvidia had this issue a while back. It was a combination of driver timings and pre-overclocked cards with non-ref timings that caused it. They eventually fixed it for most people but it was a big issue at the time. It generally occurred when the card changed/or was supposed to change power state (P0/8/12 etc).

This sounds the most accurate to me as I too am having driver crashes, I shall put it down to early release, is annoying though especially on a fresh Windows install

Gothamgoblin · 11 Oct 2014 at 10:29

nick-fury said:
I've had the same issue (twice) with my MSI 970 (344.16) whilst running WoW.

It happened whist having WoW open on one screen and watching videos/twitch on another.

I put it down to driver issues with the new card.

My msi 970 crashes on WoW too. 344.16. Everything else seems fine. Had 1 crash in arkham city over the course of 20+ hours play, but other than it's ok. I do have ocassional artifacts in firefox though. The browser bar at the top sometimes distorts.

There's a big update on wow next week, maybe that will help.

A guy here with a 900 series is having trouble with wow too, http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/12286979108

CrazyCactuaR · 11 Oct 2014 at 19:50

So far I've not had a single problem, So perhaps the other nvidia thing i've uninstalled has actually sorted the problem. Only thing I can suggest really.

Dicehunter · 12 Oct 2014 at 04:47

CrazyCactuaR said:
Hi all, I've recently bought a MSI 970 from OC and I've had this error happen randomly twice so far, Although I've had it in my pc for about a week now.

So far It's only ever randomly happened when playing World of Warcraft, I'm yet to excessively play other games but I have tried Risen 3 and Shadow of Mordor for afew hours and not had this happen.

I'm still concerned as to why this is happening.

GPU Temp while on WoW is at 60c and GPU usage shows to be at 35%. Which to me doesn't seem worrying.

From what I've seen on google regarding this error I'm seeing people say to RMA the card etc, Which I find is abit over the top, Also some mention underclocking the core to stock but I've no idea how to really do that even with MSI Afterburner.

Is anyone able to help regarding this?

-- Edit.

Also, Should the Fan Speed always be 1 even on Auto?

I had problems with 344.11 *Not 344.16 but same driver branch* also on my 750 Ti and went back to 340.52 and the unresponsive driver and freezing went away, Just driver teething with the new driver branch.