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6 Professor
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February 27th, 2021 15:00
Black screen stability issues | on Nvidia GPU Driver 461.40 (1/25/21) | Kernel Power 141 & 117
Specs: Aurora R7 (z370), Nvidia Titan Xp, EVGA Gold (850W), U2718Q (dp/dp, or dp/USBC), S2716DGR (dp/dp), APC sine wave UPS
Has anyone else experienced stability issues with Nvidia’s January driver update 461.40 released 1/26/21?
Link to driver: https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/170798/en-us
Starting with 456.38, Nvidia introduced Ampere (RTC 3080/3090 series) GPU support. PC was working fine until windows auto-updated me to 456.38 on February 5, 2021. Over the next two weeks, I experienced minor stability issues - three black screens with hardware errors, Kernel Power 141, followed by recovery. I performed hardware and stress tests on the GPU, RAM, PSU and PC. All turned out no issues (now is not a good time for a GPU failure).
Thinking a driver issue may have been patched since 456.38 (9/17/20), I updated to 461.40 (1/25/21) last Saturday and the PC was virtually unusable. Just watching YouTube caused black screens and corresponding hardware errors (Kernel Power 141 and 117). Each time the PC would black screen for about 2 seconds before recovering. However, if a monitor was connected via dock, the PC would either freeze on the black screen and not recover, or freeze and restart after about 10 seconds, which elevated the issue from an annoyance to unusable in my book.
These issues remained unchanged, when I DDU’ed the graphics driver in safe mode (minimal, no internet), rebooted to safe mode, and clean installed the 461.40 driver in safe mode. Ditto when I restored from a known-stable backup image (2/3/21) containing the old driver, re-tested the restore point to confirm stability, and then clean installed to 461.40.
?So I decided to go backwards to 452.06 (8/18/20), the last pre-Ampere driver, and poof, the PC is thankfully fully stable on this driver. It’s been a full week without a hardware error or black screen.
Anyone else with stability issues on 461.40? If so, did updating to Thursday’s release 461.72 (2/25/21) address your issues?
Doghouse Reilly
2 Intern
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396 Posts
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February 27th, 2021 16:00
No, I always update through Nvidia GeForce Experience and have had no problems for the time I have had my Aurora R9 (almost one year).
Everything is latest available version...BIOS (1.0.11), Windows 10 Pro 20H2 (19042.844), Nvidia (461.72), and all other drivers.
i9 9900KS, 64 GB @ 3200 MHz Crucial RAM, SLI 2 RTX 2080 Supers, be quiet Dark Power (1500 Watt),
Alienware AW3420DW (display port) 3440 X 1440 120 Hz.
I have no idea why some folks are having stability issues with the newer Nvidia drivers, should be less problems, not more.
sm56
2 Intern
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178 Posts
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February 27th, 2021 16:00
I got a RTX 2080 ti Founders Edition and am using 461.40 and no issues so far. "knock on wood"
Aurora R10 3800x Ryzen Edition with 32 gb Hyper RAM.
Vanadiel
6 Professor
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7K Posts
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February 27th, 2021 16:00
Had no issues with my R10 RTX3080 on any Nvidia drivers.
Currently running 461.72.
You might need to completely uninstall and cleanup your drivers, or possibly there's an issue with the cooling on your video card. Fans can fail and cause overheating.
r72019
6 Professor
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February 27th, 2021 16:00
Thanks, if the issue doesn't get fixed in the next couple updates I'll troubleshoot it some more and report back for anyone interested. I might test a clean install on a spare drive to see if its something that got installed or corrupted on my system. I did do a basic scan for corrupted files last week. For now I'll probably be lazy and stick with the old (working for me) driver.
r72019
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February 27th, 2021 17:00
r72019
6 Professor
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February 27th, 2021 17:00
"Issue with the cooling on your video card. Fans can fail and cause overheating."
The weird thing is the issue came up mostly on idle while browsing the internet. Only once on twice waiting for a game to load but I think that had to do with me using the browser not the game. I couldn't reproduce the issue while stressing out the GPU.
But as an aside I did recently repaste my GPU and also replaced the fan and heatsink, and blew out all the dust. I wasn't experiencing issues with it but I had spare new parts just sitting around and my room gets dusty so I do clean it out regularly. I'll clean out the old parts and rotate them back in if I still have the GPU in another two years. *knock on wood*
Vanadiel
6 Professor
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February 27th, 2021 18:00
There's a bunch of reports on the official Nvidia forums with others experiencing those errors.
Does not seem to be a proper solution yet, but it looks like you are not alone on those 2 specific errors.
r72019
6 Professor
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5.3K Posts
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February 27th, 2021 19:00
Ah, thanks for pointing me in the direction of their community thread. It looks like another "fix" someone has reported is to disable hardware acceleration in your browser. If I can remember my user name and password I might share some thoughts on their feedback thread.
markburv
2 Intern
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569 Posts
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February 28th, 2021 06:00
Master @r72019, just to help you in your quest for the stability in the
kernel powerforce, my RTX 3080 has no problems with the latest drivers, hardware acceleration is activated in browsers. Reminds me when Nvidia tried to kill my old card off some 10 years ago, I had to stop updating their drivers and stay on some v350/60. Dark times.r72019
6 Professor
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5.3K Posts
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February 28th, 2021 08:00
Thanks, yeah, at least they still offer the updates I suppose. With other stuff like androids a lot of the older models are forced EOL like the route of win 7. Though there is still the free upgrade to 10 workaround on Microsoft's website.
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
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17.1K Posts
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February 28th, 2021 08:00
Yes, over the years I've seen bad Nvidia drivers make a good video-card and machine act like hardware-failure.
Sometimes, Kernel Power error is just Windows saying it got "abruptly turned off" or shut-down dirty.
These are my current ones and machines are very stable (general, browsing, dev, and gaming):
Aurora-R6:
Nvidia GTX-1070 (Pascal/GP104)
Driver: 451.67 (DCH)
Windows-10 Pro 64-bit v2004
Edge (Chromium)
Aurora-R1:
Nvidia GTX-1070 (Pascal/GP104)
Driver: 456.71 (DCH)
Windows-10 Pro 64-bit v2004
Chrome
EDITED