Hey duders, I have a question for the GTX 970 users. I recently upgraded from a 670 to the ASUS 970 and have been noticing some weird instability issues while using it, particularly in the form of driver crashes. My screen will go black for a few seconds, then the desktop will come back up and Windows says a video hardware error has occurred. Once my PC actually locked up and I had to do a hard reset. At first I thought it might be an overheating issue because the card has been factory overclocked, but even at peak the card is staying within completely exceptable temperatures. What's even stranger is the driver crashes almost never happen during gameplay, it always seems to happen while on the desktop or using Google Chrome in particular. I'm on Windows 7 64bit and I am using the latest Nvidia drivers (353.06). I even tried doing a few clean installs of the drivers. It didn't resolve the issue. I did some searching online and the same problem seems to be effecting numerous 970 users. Has anyone run into this particular problem and managed fix it?

I don't have this problem with Chrome, but the Chrome issue is a very common one and people believe it's a driver issue.

I do have this problem when playing open world games. Not even graphically intense ones (as I wouldn't consider Red Faction Guerilla particularly complicated for this card).

I don't know the cause. I did return mine and get a replacement which works better (as I got it for Witcher 3 which I couldn't run without it crashing after 5 minutes), but after a few hours it still BSODs on me or crashes to desktop.

At least with this one it does seem to be a driver issue and not a hardware issue. My first card my issue was hardware.

I hope NVIDIA fixes it, but I worry they won't which really bothers me. Especially because I have a decent 760 which does not have any problems at all. I'm considering just getting my money back. While the 970 is amazing when it works, the crashes are frustrating as hell.

Look up the Display Driver Uninstaller tool from Guru3D. I've had this problem before and that solved my issue. I also went from a 670 to 970 but I didn't have any problems. (Maybe because I used that program first). Good luck!

Try using the previous driver version.

I did try rolling back and it didn't fix the problem, unfortunately. It's a real shame the 970 has so many issues because when it's stable I get fantastic performance. I can only hope these bugs get resolved in upcoming drivers.

@deox: Really? What are some of the other issues you are having with your 970?

@mb: The major issue I'm having right now is the constant driver crashes and freezing while navigating Windows and surfing the internet (It usually happens right as a new page is loading). Chrome is the biggest offender, but it has occurred while using IE as well. These are problems that only cropped up after I installed the new 970. On my 670 I had no such problems. There were a few instances while playing Witcher 3 and Dying Light that the game would crash to desktop, but in the case of The Witcher, the crashes stopped completely with patch 1.04. So I'm unsure if it's related. For the most part, games are pretty stable and crashes while playing are few and far between.

I've got a Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 970 that I've had since Christmas and, to be honest, I don't recall ever having a problem like this. Maaaaaybe once, but my memory's fuzzy. The only issues I've had are with it sometimes not piping sound to my surround sound receiver that I've got going through a DVI>HDMI adapter, but it happens pretty rarely and a restart usually fixes it.

I'm in a similar situation, had my Gigabyte 970 since Christmas and zero issues so far.

It could also just be a clock issue with the card. Maybe it was binned poorly and the memory or clock OC isn't stable. Try bringing it down a bit, if that solves it then you can live with it or ask for an exchange form where ever you got it.

I've had one since November and I've had the driver crash happen twice, both in the last two or three weeks (since the Witcher 3 optimized driver came out). Like you it's only happened to me outside of a game, so I don't think it's an overheating issue.

Keep a close eye on the Nvidia forums like me, breh. Put Witcher on hold and wait it out. I've had my card for months and experiencing the same problem you and many others have. Nvidiaisz

The GTX 970 seems to have a serious problem with Witcher 3. At one point I was having driver crashes every 15-20 minutes of gameplay.

The fix was to change the FPS limit to unlimited and to change the screen size from windowed borderless to full screen.

Haven't had a problem outside of Witcher 3 though.

I don't personally have a 970, but if your card was factory overclocked, it's possible that it's just a mediocre batch and it's not totally stable. Even if the temperatures are within appropriate limits if the clock is at a level where some transistors can't keep up you'll end up with instability problems and crashes.

Had this problem with my old 560, put in a 770 over a year ago and still have instability issues (though potentially triggered through different circumstances?). It's turned me into a real PC defeatist.

I have an MSI 970 and have had no problems with it. But my set-up consist of Windows 8.1 and an Intel i7-4770 processor. But I haven't played the Witcher or anything, so I don't know what problems I might have. I've been able to play GTA V on pretty fight settings, and MGSV on the highest settings with no problems.

Did you install any of the ASUS pack in programs along with the drivers? Back when I got a 560ti from ASUS it came with some sort of ASUS programs, one for recording video and one for monitoring things like temperature and over clocking. They caused games to crash out and caused weird stuttering issues, even if I wasn't actively using them. I uninstalled those and my problems went away.

Not had any crashing problems with my MSI, (though I use Firefox not Chrome) but have had audio over HDMI issues. They seem to have got better since the last driver update.

I have had windows inform me of a driver crash quite a few times, but I have never noticed it actual doing anything.

All of the 350 releases have been a little shaky, the most recent 353.06 have been especially prone to falling over at random for a lot of users myself included (saw multiple crashes while using Chrome with those ones). If you playing the Witcher then 352.86 appears to be the most stable performance driver but it can still be a little iffy, otherwise I'd go back one further. Nvidia has had TDR issues going back to Fermi when they first started to focus more heavily on adaptive power, the margins are sometimes so thin that you can end up under supplying the GPU by a tiny amount and causing everything to fall over and recover.

@deox You could try use a program called GPUShark, and make sure you use advance settings so it can show you all details, and have it running when you're playing a game like Witcher 3, and see if you get any errors in the power department or voltage hitting maximum errors (they'll be highlighted in red).

As funny as this sounds, it could even be a windows issue, I've had the similar issues to you using my GTX 980, I opened up windows event viewer and i was constantly getting video hardware errors and a reinstall of windows 7 fixed this issue for me. Otherwise its a driver issue, or possibly a faulty GPU but you really gotta test it thoroughly first before thinking of RMA'ing it... I Wish you luck man

Thanks for all the advice guys, I decided to try reinstalling windows but the problem persisted. So I went ahead and removed the 970 to install my 670 again, just to narrow things down. Everything worked fine with my old 670, no driver crashes, no problems at all from what I could tell. When I went back to the 970, I decided to downclock the card to reference settings as a number of you mention. No luck unfortunately, It's still having serious stability issues in Windows. I think I might have just ended up with a faulty card, but I'm still really confused as to why the card crashes while using the OS, but never while playing games. Surely if it was a problem with the factory overclock, it would be the other way around right?

@deox: I recommend contacting your GPU manufacturer and going through their support process, you may need to send it in for repair or replacement.

Just so your aware the issue is wide spread, though not effecting everyone. Nvidia have petitioned their users to essentially bring them effected systems if anyone is near the home office in CA so they can see the behaviour replicated since they haven't seen it in house.

Ya, I ended up returning mine. Personally, my upgrade will have to wait until they have the issues solved.

I'm thinking of upgrading and switching to a 970, but from what i read nvidia drivers seem just as bad if not worse at times than amd (they do update more often though). Posts like this have me scared to jump ship, and the amd 390's just seem super underwhelming for the size and power draw (i'm hearing about some people flashing 290's into 390's).