Latest NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Drivers for Windows 8

[Dwarf]

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How to Determine Currently Installed NVIDIA Graphics Display Driver Version in Windows​

Latest Available NVIDIA Drivers:

• NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready Driver Version 456.55 (September 28, 2020)
• NVIDIA Studio Driver Version 456.38 (September 17, 2020)

   Tip

NVIDIA GRAPHICS FIRMWARE UPDATE TOOL FOR DISPLAYPORT 1.3 AND 1.4 DISPLAYS

Version: 1.0
Release Date: 2018.06.04
Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit

NVIDIA GRAPHICS FIRMWARE UPDATE TOOL FOR DISPLAYPORT 1.3 AND 1.4 - Windows 10 Forums

NVIDIA GeForce GAME READY DRIVER (WHQL)

   Information

Version: 456.55
Release Date for Desktops and Notebooks: September 28, 2020
In Device Manager: 27.21.14.5655

Game Ready Driver Release Notes (PDF)

Control Panel User's Guide (PDF)

   Note

Release Highlights:

Software Module Versions

• nView - 200.93
• HD Audio Driver - 1.3.38.35
• NVIDIA PhysX System Software - 9.19.0218
• GeForce Experience - 3.20.4.14
• CUDA - 11.0
• Standard NVIDIA Control Panel - 8.1.940.0
• DCH NVIDIA Control Panel - 8.1.958.0

What’s New in Version 456.55 WHQL
Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases, including Virtual Reality games. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1.

Game Ready for NVIDIA Reflex Support for 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare' and 'Call of Duty: Warzone'

Our latest GeForce Game Ready driver provides support for NVIDIA Reflex in the blockbuster titles Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Warzone, as well as offers the best experience in Star Wars: Squadrons. The new Game Ready Driver also improves stability in certain games on RTX 30 Series GPUs.

Learn more in our Game Ready Driver article here.

Changes and Fixed Issues in Version 456.55

The following sections list the important changes and the most common issues resolved in this version. This list is only a subset of the total number of changes made in this driver version. The NVIDIA bug number is provided for reference.

Fixed Issues in this Release

• [Omniverse 2020.2.4496]: Corruption occurs after switching from RTX Real-Time to RTX PathTraced renderer. [200649160]
• [Vulkan games]: The GeForce Experience> Performance > Render Latency setting sometimessticks at 0 on Vulkan games. [3129618]
• Multiple G-SYNC Compatible monitors were removed from the G-SYNC Compatible list in thedriver. [3130059]
• There is a slight increase in the Windows Event Log CPU utilization. [200659659]
• NVIDIA Container service may crash upon resume from system sleep /hibernate mode.[200658281]
• [Notebook]: Performance Power Mode cannot be set from the NVIDIA Control Panel.[200657525]

Open Issues in Version 456.55 WHQL

As with every released driver, version 456.55 WHQL of the Release 445 driver has open issues and enhancement requests associated with it. This section includes lists of issues that are either not fixed or not implemented in this version. Some problems listed may not have been thoroughly investigated and, in fact, may not be NVIDIA issues. Others may have workaround solutions.

You may encounter issues installing the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store. See “Issues Installing the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store” on page 19 for more information.

For notebook computers, issues can be system-specific and may not be seen on your particular notebook.

Windows 7 Issues

• [Notebook][H-Clone]: With the integrated graphics processor as the clone source, display settings cannot be changed from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200594188]

Windows 10 Issues

• [World of Warcraft Shadowlands]: When run at frame rates greater than 60 FPS with highdisplay settings, moving characters display minute twitching/stuttering. [200647563]
• [Sunset Overdrive]: The game may display random green corruption if Depth of Field isenabled from in-game settings. [2750770]
• [Call of Duty - Warzone]: Freestyle does not work. (200593020)
• [Forza Motorsport 7]: The curb may display a black strip during a race on certain tracks.[2781776]
• [Fortnite]: Blue-screen crash occurs pointing to nvlddmkm.sys when playing the game at 4Kresolution. [200645328]
  
  To work around, set the resolution to lower than 4k.
• [Zombie Army: Dead War 4][Ansel/Freestyle]: The Ansel & Freestyle tabs are unselectable.[2810884]
  
  You may encounter issues installing the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store. See“Issues Installing the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store” on page 21 for more information.
• [YouTube]: Video playback stutters while scrolling down the YouTube page. [3129705]
• [G-SYNC]: With G-SYNC enabled on some Freesync displays, half of the screen goes black.[3133895]
• [GeForce RTX 3080/3090]: Samsung G9 49” display goes black at 240 Hz. [3129363]
• [Notebook][H-Clone]: With the integrated graphics processor as the clone source, displaysettings cannot be changed from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200594188]
• [Notebook]: Some Pascal-based notebooks w/ high refresh rate displays may randomly dropto 60Hz during gameplay. [3009452]

NVIDIA Studio DRIVER (SD)

   Information

Version: 456.38
Release Date for Desktops and Notebooks: September 17, 2020
In Device Manager: 27.21.14.56.38

Game Ready Driver Release Notes (PDF)

Control Panel User's Guide (PDF)

See also: NVIDIA Studio Driver vs. Game Ready Driver: which should I install?

   Note

Release Highlights:

Software Module Versions

• nView - 200.93
• HD Audio Driver - 1.3.38.34
• NVIDIA PhysX System Software - 9.19.0218
• GeForce Experience - 3.20.4.14
• CUDA - 11.1
• Standard NVIDIA Control Panel - 8.1.940.0
• DCH NVIDIA Control Panel - 8.1.958.0

What’s New in Version 456.38 WHQL
NVIDIA Studio Drivers provide artists, creators and 3D developers the best performance and reliability when working with creative applications. To achieve the highest level of reliability, Studio Drivers undergo extensive testing against multi-app creator workflows and multiple revisions of the top creative applications from Adobe to Autodesk and beyond.

Applications

The September NVIDIA Studio Driver provides optimal support for the latest creative application updates including D5 Render, SheenCity Mars, and the new NVIDIA Broadcast App.

In addition, this release also provides support for the new GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 GPUs. Powered by our second-generation RTX architecture, with ray tracing up to twice as fast and five times faster motion blur rendering, utilizing third generation tensor cores to power next-gen AIpowered tools.

Learn more about these new releases in our Studio Driver article.

Changes and Fixed Issues in Version 456.38

The following sections list the important changes and the most common issues resolved in this version. This list is only a subset of the total number of changes made in this driver version. The NVIDIA bug number is provided for reference.

Fixed Issues in this Release

• [Batman Arkham Knight]: Enabling Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling on PhysX gamesresults in lower frame rate.[2988376]
• [Call of Duty: Modern Warfare]: The game may intermittently see a drop in frame rate whenray tracing is enabled. [3050468]
• [Detroit: Become Human]: The game may crash. [3037846]
• [Forza Horizon 4]: Stuttering occurs in the game after racing a few laps. [3101001]
• [Horizon Zero Dawn The Complete Edition]: Flickering and texture corruption occurs in gameafter setting Anisotropic Filtering to 16x from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200638389]
• [madVR][MPC-HC]: Various HDR issues occur when using the madVR renderer with MPC-HC.[3038381]
• [Minecraft Java Edition;]: The game may crash when launched with XSplit Broadcasterrunning in the background. [3052464]
• [World of Warcraft]: Objects randomly flicker. [3101638]
• Video playback on the secondary display lags/freezes while playing a game on the primarydisplay if Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling is enabled [200586262]
• [Notebook]: Display is not detected when connected to Thunderbolt 3 port on HP Spectre x360- 15t-df100 Notebook. [3087076]
• [Notebook][NVIDIA Control Panel]: With Clone mode set, only the Developer pages are visiblein the NVIDIA Control Panel after hot-plugging a DisplayPort/HDMI Freesync display.[200637570]
• [Notebook]: When a game is played on the primary display and a YouTube video is played onthe extended display, viudeo playback is sluggish and stutters. [200586262]
• [Pascal GPU][Marvel's Avengers]: The game may crash when switching windows [Alt+Tab]while the game is running. [3101682]

Open Issues in Version 456.38 WHQL

As with every released driver, version 456.38 WHQL of the Release 445 driver has open issues and enhancement requests associated with it. This section includes lists of issues that are either not fixed or not implemented in this version. Some problems listed may not have been thoroughly investigated and, in fact, may not be NVIDIA issues. Others may have workaround solutions.

You may encounter issues installing the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store. See “Issues Installing the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store” on page 19 for more information.

For notebook computers, issues can be system-specific and may not be seen on your particular notebook.

Windows 10 Issues

• [SLI][G-SYNC][Red Dead Redemption 2 Vulkan]: With SLI + G-SYNC enabled, the gamesdisplay corruption and a blank screen.[200645671]
• [SLI][World of Warcraft Shadowlands]: Character images may flicker when SLI is enabled.[200647193]
• [World of Warcraft Shadowlands]: When run at frame rates greater than 60 FPS with highdisplay settings, moving characters display minute twitching/stuttering. [200647563]
• [Sunset Overdrive]: The game may display random green corruption if Depth of Field isenabled from in-game settings. [2750770]
• [VR}: HDCP errors occur with Valve Index VR. [2967616]
• [Call of Duty - Warzone]: Freestyle does not work. (200593020)
• [Forza Motorsport 7]: The curb may display a black strip during a race on certain tracks.[2781776]
• [Fortnite]: Blue-screen crash occurs pointing to nvlddmkm.sys when playing the game at 4Kresolution. [200645328]
  
  To work around, set the resolution to lower than 4k.
• [Zombie Army: Dead War 4][Ansel/Freestyle]: The Ansel & Freestyle tabs are unselectable.[2810884]
  
  You may encounter issues installing the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store. See“Issues Installing the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store” on page 21 for more information.
• [Omniverse 2020.2.4496]: Corruption occurs after switching from RTX Real-Time to RTX PathTraced renderer. [200649160]
• [Notebook][H-Clone]: With the integrated graphics processor as the clone source, displaysettings cannot be changed from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200594188]
• [Notebook]: Some Pascal-based notebooks w/ high refresh rate displays may randomly dropto 60Hz during gameplay. [3009452]
• [Notebook]: Performance Power Mode cannot be set from the NVIDIA Control Panel.[200657525]

 

[Dwarf]

Currently experiencing some sporadic problems with this driver. Basically, I get pink/purple artifacts across the screen and then the system locks up. Sometimes it is able to recover, but sometimes it automatically reboots. It's not the card, as it is working perfectly in the other OSes with the latest appropriate drivers.

Been checking the NVidia forums about this, and I'm not the only one with this problem: Windows 8 Graphic Glitch - NVIDIA Forums and Windows 8 Consumer Preview Geforce Desktop/Notebook Driver Information - NVIDIA Forums - Page 6 describes the symptoms I'm getting perfectly.

It should be pointed out though that issues were present with the graphics drivers with the Beta versions of Windows 7 as well (not necessarily the same issues, but issues nonetheless). Hopefully, these will be ironed out over time.

 

[Dwarf]

Been getting quite a bit of this lately. Already today it has caused my system to lockup and reboot 3 times.

I can no longer recommend the use of this driver, and I am reverting to 296.10 (the latest W7 version).

Edit: Now back with 296.10. I'll see how that goes.

 

[Dwarf]

No lockups since reverting.

 

[GMan]

Been getting quite a bit of this lately. Already today it has caused my system to lockup and reboot 3 times.

I can no longer recommend the use of this driver, and I am reverting to 296.10 (the latest W7 version).

Edit: Now back with 296.10. I'll see how that goes.

Dwarf, I can practically assure you something else is wonky in the system. I've known NVIDIA/AMD drivers to never cause this type of thing. Yet, whenever it does happen, in 100% of the cases it is another cause.

You should see the things I read on Guru3d forum. Many, many say this that and the other thing about drivers and since I'm not part of the forum there, I don't say anything or offer help. Part of the reason for that is because most there like to overclock and the instant I would tell them not to, to test, oh boy lol!

You're welcome to run the tool in the Crashes subforum and post the zip either here or of course, you can make a thread there (even though you don't say any bsod).

The machine should have the ability to throw any driver at any time from NVIDIA on it and should never have a problem.

 

[Dwarf]

I should point out that I haven't had a single lockup since reverting to 296.10. I don't overclock, everything is running on fully automatic settings. We need to remember that W8 is still in development and that the hardware manufacturers are still in the process of developing drivers for the new OS. If I recall, there were issues with the graphics drivers for W7 during its development cycle and that NVidia have, in the past, been known to release a buggy driver (although this didn't affect everyone).

 

[GMan]

I should point out that I haven't had a single lockup since reverting to 296.10.

Cool! True though, I saw that before my post.

If an NVIDIA driver caused freezes or lockups, it would be plastered across all the internet and I haven't seen anything like that at all.

Especially if there have been recent bsods (C:\Windows\Minidump) - I can likely say what the exact cause is, although that isn't easy sometimes.

 

[Dwarf]

I can see your point. Often an apparent problem with a driver is not necessarily the fault of the driver. Indeed, it can be another application that interacts with the driver causing the problem to arise.

Update: I was getting the purple screen issue with 296.10 as well, although not for the first day or so. I updated to the Beta 301.24 and still got the problem. I then realised that the problem only seemed to manifest itself whenever I allowed Flash to run on a webpage (although it was random as to whether the problem occurred or not). I have now updated Flash (having first removed the existing version with the uninstaller) and, touch wood, so far so good.

 

[GMan]

I can see your point. Often an apparent problem with a driver is not necessarily the fault of the driver. Indeed, it can be another application that interacts with the driver causing the problem to arise.

Update: I was getting the purple screen issue with 296.10 as well, although not for the first day or so. I updated to the Beta 301.24 and still got the problem. I then realised that the problem only seemed to manifest itself whenever I allowed Flash to run on a webpage (although it was random as to whether the problem occurred or not). I have now updated Flash (having first removed the existing version with the uninstaller) and, touch wood, so far so good.

Yup, no doubt. Not sure if you've seen this or not: AdobeClearFlash

That clears system-wide LSO "super-cookies" that track you and also destroy stability/performance. Clear them and likely things remain good or fix things when bad.

If using Firefox, I recommend BetterPrivacy plugin because it can delete the LSOs on a timer or each time you close Firefox. Ghostery offers similar functionality but also disables all 3rd party tracking/snooping from advertisers, trackers and the like. I use both plugins.

 

[thatmanbrian]

I can play flash but for the life of me can't find any trace of "Flash Player" on my pc. I've got several folders but they don't contain an executable. How do I get the Global Setting Panel up please?

 

[Dwarf]

GMan supplied the link, but here it is again: Adobe - Flash Player : Settings Manager - Website Storage Settings panel

 

[Airbot]

I can see your point. Often an apparent problem with a driver is not necessarily the fault of the driver. Indeed, it can be another application that interacts with the driver causing the problem to arise.

Update: I was getting the purple screen issue with 296.10 as well, although not for the first day or so. I updated to the Beta 301.24 and still got the problem. I then realised that the problem only seemed to manifest itself whenever I allowed Flash to run on a webpage (although it was random as to whether the problem occurred or not). I have now updated Flash (having first removed the existing version with the uninstaller) and, touch wood, so far so good.

Yup, no doubt. Not sure if you've seen this or not: AdobeClearFlash

That clears system-wide LSO "super-cookies" that track you and also destroy stability/performance. Clear them and likely things remain good or fix things when bad.

If using Firefox, I recommend BetterPrivacy plugin because it can delete the LSOs on a timer or each time you close Firefox. Ghostery offers similar functionality but also disables all 3rd party tracking/snooping from advertisers, trackers and the like. I use both plugins.

GMan supplied the link, but here it is again: Adobe - Flash Player : Settings Manager - Website Storage Settings panel

Since about flash player 10.3 and above versions (since march 2011), you can delete all that natively, with the supplied flash player Settings Manager in the Windows Control Panel also.

 

[thatmanbrian]

My query arose as no one mentioned the setting had to be from windows control panel not from within flash player...

 

[GMan]

My query arose as no one mentioned the setting had to be from windows control panel not from within flash player...

Right, it's never from within Flash player. So far, we shown 3 methods of clearing LSOs:

1) The internet link: Adobe - Flash Player : Settings Manager - Website Storage Settings panel

2) Plugins such as Ghostery/BetterPrivacy that do so automatically if set to.

3) Control Panel .cpl as Airbot has shown.

 

[Dwarf]

Although I didn't get any purple screens yesterday, I've had a couple today. I've managed to locate this, which might be worth reading.

Timeout Detection and Recovery of GPUs through WDDM

I've added the TdrDelay entry to the registry and given it the value of 8 to extend the timeout threshold from the default of 2 seconds to 8 seconds.

 

[GMan]

Yeah, that's workaround that is unnecessary. Something else is wrong on the machine. Top of the list culprits are overheating or another poor driver.

But even then, if you've had the issue that addresses, you would be getting 0x116 bsods. Do you have a C:\Windows\Minidump folder at all? If so, we're probably already a long way to seeing what we can do for it.

If not, msinfo32 saved file is usually helpful to some degree.

I also notice your psu and tried to Google search it. It doesn't seem like a known brand such a Corsair or OCZ etc... It's doubtful but maybe that is part of this issue. It's another thing on "the list".

 

[Dwarf]

I don't think that it is down to overheating, as GPU-Z 0.6.0 is currently reporting a card temperature of 37°C. I have seen reports suggesting a PSU issue, and I suppose that it could be. I've been thinking about upgrading it anyway since I need more SATA connectors than I have currently.

What is your opinion on this one?

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-zx-series-850w-power-supply.html

 

[GMan]

Don't really think you can beat OCZ as they're a known reliable brand across the industry for the products they make. So that would be an excellent choice imho.

Before you actually purchase anything though, is it possible you have another machine to borrow the psu from to test - or maybe a friend or relatives machines to borrow one from to test? You wouldn't even have to install it physically. Just let it sit on the desk if the cables are long enough.

Someone recently fixed their machine after I brought attention to the psu. The user ran Speccy and saw that the 12v was well below spec. Replaced the psu and reported back no more crashes. So maybe check things with that program too, can't hurt none.

 

[Dwarf]

I reckon you could well be right with the PSU. I ran Speccy and found that, although within spec, the 12V line was fluctuating. I then ran Furmark at 800x600 and 8X MSAA (so that I could still see the voltages reported by Speccy) and found that the 12V line dropped to as low as 11.5V almost immediately.

 

[Dwarf]

I'm still getting the lockups, although it is random. I had 3 in quick succession earlier today, but none since. I've also dug out the box that my current PSU came in and, whilst it is rated at 750W, the loading is spread across 2 rails. I'm currently getting parts together for a system upgrade, and the PSU is definitely going to be replaced with a single-rail model.