Question Crazy Driver - A Tale of Nvidia Madness

[atticus_maytrap]

Bear with me on this here, it's been a wild ride

1. Was having issues with Nvidia Game Ready Drivers after driver 466.47. Basically, all drivers (466.77 and onwards) were causing the GPU to clock up to load levels (1900+MHz) in basic desktop usage, for a variety of programs including:
*Autocad
*Revit
*Sketchup
*Facebook Messenger
*Adobe Premier Pro
*Having more than one monitor turned on
Games ran fine on these drivers, but the unusual desktop behaviour was worrisome. GPU usage would wobble up to 100% simply by moving the mouse across an open document in some of the above mentioned programs, very much NOT normal behaviour.
Rolled back to 466.47, problem resolved itself.

2. Upgraded to driver 496.13 on release, unwanted GPU upclocking in desktop programs not present, happy days.
Games ran fine enough, however i noticed some performance dips on a few games, and then an absolute drop in Guardians of the Galaxy (very fun game).
GPU usage would bounce down to zero to spring back up again, making the game stutter like crazy and be basically unplayable.
I took some screenshots of the GPU usage in MSI afterburner, and noticed that all games were experiencing these dips in GPU usage at regular intervals, with the drop being more pronounced in some games than others, GOTG being the worst.
THE FIX: simply restarting the computer. This resolved the GPU usage drop and games ran perfectly, a nice flat line of 98-99% usage.
.....worth pointing out that i have windows10 fastboot turned off and have had it so since May of last year after a strange non-start at bootup once.

3. Upgraded to the most recent driver 497.29, no unusual desktop behaviour, games ran smoothly.
Soon after then dips began again, restart to fix - until yesterday when even a restart would not cure the GPU drops.
DDU'd the driver out to do a clean install on the same driver - only to have the unusual desktop behaviour return with a vengeance!!
.....and the GPU usage dips in games NOT fixed at all.

have since rolled back to 472.12, GOTG game performance is still in the toilet (minor dips on other games), restarts not helping - however the unusual GPU desktop behaviour only appears after using the card for load tasks (gaming / rendering)

Is this just a driver issue or is there some other underlying problem causing this odd behaviour?

SPECS:
Intel i9-9900k, Dec. 2019
850W Be Quiet! Straight Power 11, Dec. 2019
MSI 1080 Ti, Dec. 2017

EDIT: just upgraded again tp Driver 497.29 again, game performance is back where it should be - GPU usage a nice flat line with a few little dips, nothing dramatic like before - however the abnormal GPU clock and usage is still there in desktop apps.
Worth pointing out that after installing this driver, the abnormal desktop behaviour wasn't there at first, only popped up after restarting, and is at the moment only present in Autocad and Revit

 

[vov4ik_il]

Mining malware?

 

[atticus_maytrap]

Mining malware?

i dont think so.
I just changed the driver over from 497.29 to the latest Studio driver 511.09 and its working smooth as silk with regard to my work apps, rendering prefectly with the GPU clock/usage behaving exactly as they should be.
Not sure if ill try gaming with it, might start out with something simple.

I get why they have 2 different driver types (i think/hope) but they do state quite matter of factly that if you use your machine for both work and play, use Game Ready drivers.
While its probably not damaging my computer any more than playing a game is, the abnormal behaviour just bugs me.