177+ driver problems

I have been trying quite a while now to figure out why the 177 drivers are crashing my PC is any 3d application, while the 175's are completely stable with OC.

I have found other users with this problem and have narrowed it down to the following: my motherboard. The P5N-E has been nothing but trouble since I bought it.

For a bit of history: I have to underclock my ram about 200mhz for stability, disable most of the onboard features to get SLI to work, and even had it RMA'd just to make sure it wasn't just a faulty board.

With 177.92, I tried playing games with the cards overclocked. Freeze. Okay, no biggie, didn't expect it to be completely stable, its beta after-all. I removed the overclocks, still crashing. Now I realize that its still the same old problem I have had with the 173's, 174's, as well as the 177's. But something with the 175's just works magically.

When it crashes, it is possible to recover. Recover being extremely over-exaggerated. The desktop turns into an over saturated mess, and forces me to restart. With that said, I have only recovered once... and it wasn't worth it. When I can't recover to the desktop, the screen with flash a quick black then return to the frozen screen. Audio still seems to be playing regularly, and on rare occasions I can still hear footsteps if the game has movement.

I don't know how it could possible be the motherboard, but all others with the exact problem have P5N-E SLI boards. Coincidence?

Anyways, if anyone is actually still with me and knows of any fixes that might work or steps I can take to help figure out the problem, it would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

I get the same problems with any 177 driver and am using a P5N-E. I've seen a few people having the same problems using a different mobo as well, but more then not it is this mobo.

 

Sometimes you must uninstall them and then driver clean and install in Safe Mode or the old files don't get overwriten and you still have files from previous drivers. If you driver clean and install them in Safe Mode they should work. I also disable the Nvidia Display Driver Service in Services, maybe this is needed for dual monitors or Nview but I don't seem to need to have it running. You could set the service to Manual and just stop it incase it is needed at some point.

 

I always do clean installs of the drivers, cleaning through safe mode and all.

 

I have p5n-e sli motherboard with 2 8800gtx cards. I can only get SLI working in 175 drivers and below. All the 177 drivers with sli enabled crash as soon as you get ingame.

 

Same problem here, except for me it only happens in some games, like Penumbra Requiem and Halo 2, while it doesn't happen in Team Fortress 2 or any source engine games.

 

Update your codecs and other drivers then reinstall games if they still don't work. Also update DirectX to latest.

It may help if you put SLI in your thread title. Failing that use different drivers, 175.xx if they work why not use them? SLI support doesn't work with all games.

 

I'd been fighting this same issue, think it was also with nVidia drivers newer than 175 (or was it 174?). Anyway, FINALLY resolved the SLI lockup issue and seeing your specs wanted to chime in.

The Creative XFi card (or drivers) were the cause. I removed the drivers, removed the card, installed an Audigy SE in, updated the Audigy drivers and BINGO! Have been playing hours with COD4 etc, no lockups, no "not responding" errors. Used to get them within maybe 5-10 minutes of any gaming session with SLI enabled (same when using Windows Media Player), NO MORE!

If you don't have another sound card, try older XFi drivers. It was definately that card and/or drivers causing my problem for months. The Audigy is working fine for me, I don't feel the need to pop the XFi back in and try different drivers.

 

I use onboard sound and getting the same problem.

 

From what I can see some of y'all are either suffering some SLI(stop using),overclocking to much,need new drivers(not just gpu,it's not the only driver that needs updating),sound card(especially if it's x-fi or using with Vista) or mobo. Could even be a ram issue but from what I see, I would go with SLI,mobo,ocing or sound card or driver being the issue. Most, if not all can be fixed with testing. Downside is that it takes time to do and most don't have or want to take the time. Patients is a virtue.

Don't forget that maybe you just have some bad hardware. It happens.

 

Disabling SLI fixes the problem, but I would hardly call that a solution.

Thanks for the help

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I uninstalled my x-fi and removed it from the PC. Installed drivers for internal sound card but the same thing happened when SLI was enabled. I get a few seconds of games then it freezes needing a hard-reboot.

 

did you try disabling SLI to see if that fixed the problem?

 

I have basically the same problem with an nforce 780 mobo and onboard sound with 3 x 8800gtx's

except now it's crashing with SLI off

was fine until i upgraded from 175.xx

 

How does it crash? What do you see? What do you hear?

 

All the drivers work fine with SLI disabled. I am wanting to make use of the extra 8800gtx I forked out for!

 

hey I made an account here just so I could reply to this topic. I have the exact same issue with games like WoW and Half-Life 2 freezing after about 5 seconds of play. The sound will go off in some infinite loop and I cant alt tab or ctrl alt delete or anything. Using the same P5N-E mobo and 8800gts in sli.

Disabling SLI fixes the problem, and since I primarily play WoW (which doesn't see much benefit from SLI), I have been just doing that until I can find a solution somewhere.

If anyone finds anything out PLEASE come back here and tell us!

edit: should also mention it the 175 drivers still work OK in SLI, its just since I went to any of the 177s that I have this problem.

 

I only have issues with the 177.xx drivers when I overclock both of my cards really hard in SLI.

The 177.xx drivers are well optimised and I found that lowering my GPU clocks helped me gain both stability and performance.

The 175.80 driver gave me best performance (and highest stable clocks) of the 175.xx drivers (but no physx support).

I am currently using 177.92 on Vista 64.

I lowered my clocks a fair bit so now my cards also run cooler (plus I have physx) so it's a bit of give and take...

 

Theres a new bios version for the p5n-e sli "1201" released 22/08/08 which I will try but I dont think it will change anything.

Convinced its a motherboard problem..

 

Let us know how things go.

I have been a little upset about not using my second card for anything

That is until I found out you can enable SLI AA with SLI disabled