I bought a Gigabyte 9800GTX yesterday and have spent the last 24 hours ripping my hair off. After installing driver version 174.40 for Vista 64 bit I started getting BSOD with a referral to NVLDDMKM.SYS. This has never happened before. I realised that my previous power supply was probably too small for the graphics card so I bought a 550W Thermaltake today. However, it made no difference. Still BSOD right after the Windows welcome screen. In the end I realised that if I remove 4gb ram out the 8gb installed I no longer have any problems. Conclusion: Can it really be that 174.40 has got a problem with memory above 4gb ?
Does this happen with any other drivers? Most MB's get a little flaky with 4 sticks of ram until you up NB voltage and maybe even relax ram timings slightly. My MB BSOD's all over the place at my rams recommended timings of 4-4-4-12 with 4 sticks whereas its fine at those timings with two sticks. I had to drop my ram to 5-4-4-12 to stop the BSODS. If your ram is erroring if could be the nvidia driver thats exposing it thus getting the blame in windows. Or it could be a driver issue. 4x2GB sticks will be putting maximum strain on your northbridge. More so than 4x1GB sticks which I have.
Thanks for an excellent reply. I tried all sorts of combinations of timing and voltage changes and memory stick but without luck. In short, it just made it more clear that 8gb works fine under driver version 169.25 but not under 174.40. I have ruled out my new graphics card being the sinner as my old graphics card now comes up with the same error message (using the newer, 174.40). So this is what I have done: I have installed 169.25 but in order to do so I had to first insert my old card (as the new 9800GTX wont let me install 169.25), boot with 4gb ram, uninstall the 174.40 driver, reinstall the 169.25 driver, shut down, insert 9800GTX and 8 gb ram, reboot and.....everything working fine. So why am I frustrated? Because I doubt this is the optimal solution. I'm now running an older driver (169.25) that my new card wont let me install if I tried to reinstall it. 174.40 was designed for the purpose of supporting 9800GTX. Anyway, if anybody has similar experience let me know. For now, I will run with the 169.25 and try to update when 174.40 gets replaced with an updated version.
Boy, did I stuff up the above thread. Throughout bost posts I was'nt meaning 174.40 but 174.74....... Sorry about that.
sounds like a bios problem, have you tried updating your mother board bios? also if your ram voltages are set to auto check they are not actually undervolting in the actual o/s. on another note 8 gig lol you lucky man
I had the exact same problem and error message and BSOD. with my Brothers 9600 GT with that same driver version. we returned the card as faulty, maybe u should do the same.
I really cant see that m8, if he removes 4 gig of ram his issue is resolved so it cannot be his gfx card m8, drivers? yes maybe we all know how much fun ppl have with drivers on 4gig of ram never mind 8gig
That is probably the one thing I have'nt tried. I'm not that comfortable fiddling with bios updates but hey, if you think it may be solving the problem then I might just try it. Thanks.
Same problem, but a little bit different. Rig: CPU|Cooler ~ E8500 3.2GHz|Zalman CNPS9700 LED Mobo|Bios ~ Asus Striker Formula|1101 Memory ~ OCZ 4GB PC9200 DDR2 1150MHz Reaper HPC 2.1v 5-5-5-15 Videocard ~ Asus EN9800GTX Soundcard ~ Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Hard Drive(s) ~ 1x WD Raptor X 150GB|1x Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB Optical ~ Asus DRW-2014S1T Black SATA Case ~ Cooler Master Cosmos|Zalman ZM-MFC2 Power ~ Zalman ZM850-HP Heatpipe Cooled 850W Keyboard|Mouse ~ Razer Lycosa (Blue LED)|Razer Copperhead (Blue LED) Speakers/Headset ~ Yamaha RP-U200|Logitech Z-2300 2.1/Quad 5.1|Razer Barracuda HP-1 Display ~ Samsung 24" Syncmaster 245B TFT Wide 5ms OS ~ Windows Vista x64 Ultimate Whole system a week old, stable as far as I can see. But I always get a BSOD when I enter the Nvidia Control Panel. And only under performance. Whenever I enter an option within perfomance I get a BSOD. What also happends is that when I start up everything is fine, but when I reboot from within Windows my monitor doens't get a signal. But Windows is booting. My monitor never got a signal, not even a Boot screen. Tried 174.40 and running now on 174.85, same problem.
All I can suggest is to run with 4gb of ram for now a try all of the new drivers as they are released. TBH you don't need 8gb apart from the e-peen. Creative had issues with the x-fi and lots of ram, but that got sorted so I assume this issue will too........
sometimes it helps to run a little program called driver sweeper to be found here, on this site. http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D---Driver-Sweeper-(Setup)-download-1655.html
I am having the EXACT same problem with the exact same drivers. My PC is 8 hours orthos and yet I get blue screens whilst watching youtube. I am switched back to my old drivers today. BTW I noticed that when windows recovers it points to the graphics card as the source of the crash.
