Discussion It wasn't the GPU (edit: maybe it is?) or the PSU after all, but Nvidia's DRIVERS! - Argh! Are they trying to break FreeSync compatiblity now?

[King_V]

Well, I'd originally had my thoughts/questions in this post. And, diagnosing, it appeared to be the power supply. Said power supply was replaced under warranty.

It was not the power supply. The behavior, as part of its intermittent nature, simply didn't happen while I was testing with another PSU. Likewise, in another system.

I then once again started to suspect the video card. I was also able to enable a FreeSync indicator on my monitor (LEDs at the bottom white when FreeSync is off, and red when FreeSync is on). My monitor is the Acer XR382CQK 38" 3840x1600 IPS, 48-75 FreeSync Range.

Now, we're talking 3840x1600, but we're also talking about some singularly undemanding games, such as (windowed mode) Pinball Arcade, and (fullscreen) Don't Starve/Don't Starve Together, Portal, Portal 2, and Clue/Cluedo. My old R9 285 could do this (albeit with some struggle), and the GTX 1080 was managing it flawlessly at 60Hz.

Until recently.

Finally it dawned on me. I was using the 442.59 drivers. So, I uninstalled the drivers, and tried installing the latest, 442.74. It still happened. I tried earlier ones that I had an installer for (441.41 I believe), same thing.

I tried installing the earliest one I could find from Nvidia's advanced driver search, 430.39 (where are the earlier ones??), it still happens. Given that I'd also triggered the "change LED color when FreeSync is on" function on the monitor, and that I'd noticed that, if it was struggling with frame-rate, it seemed to coincidentally always be hovering at one FPS below my minimum FreeSync range.

I still had an installer for an earlier driver that I knew was working, so I went back to 417.71. Everything was fine in Pinball Arcade and Portal, and Portal 2.

With 430.39, I noticed that the screen juddering in Don't Starve Together, and Clue (seriously, it just pans the camera from an in-room view to an overhead view, and THAT'S IT!) were particularly bad. I'm going to try those with 417.71 tonight or later in the week, time permitting.

I might also bite the bullet and disable G-Sync/FreeSync in the drivers with one of the known bad drivers, just to see.


Maybe it's just the aggravation factor, but I swear, it seems like Nvidia is breaking FreeSync functionality that previously worked. I don't know if I need FreeSync for any of the games I'm playing, but it's really nice to be able to have the option. Why put it in, then later sabotage it?

 

[jeremyj_83]

Why put it in, then later sabotage it?

To claim that Freesync is inferior to G-Sync. There are enough people who will believe that if the marketing is done right.

 

[King_V]

I'm really HOPING that's not what they're doing.

I'm hoping that it's just some quirk with a combination of my monitor and the drivers, and that some slight coding screw-up did it. I really would prefer to believe that. I'm a software developer, I know these things can happen.

I can't imagine it's that isolated, that narrow, though, and hasn't been seen anywhere else.

I really like to keep my drivers up to date. However, it looks like I'm stuck with either 417.71, or turning G-Sync off.

I'd also like to try to get drivers older than 430, but newer than 417, just to see WHEN exactly the bug was introduced.

 

[King_V]

Hmm... so, it might NOT actually be the drivers after all... but the card. Maybe.

Going back to the 417.71 drivers seemed to do the trick, for a while. I'm going to have to try to isolate it a bit better, but now Clue/Cluedo and Don't Starve Together are jittering. Playing the latter game for about 45 minutes last night, there were issues for a while, then about the last 20 minutes, it all abruptly smoothed out and everything was fine.

At least Pinball Arcade didn't seem to exhibit issues - and I didn't get ANY screen blanking from anything.

Clue/Cluedo is still really strange how the start of the game zooms in then pans over, and the GTX 1080 struggles to do that at 60 fps. I'll call that one probably an outlier. But, it's not as bad windowed as it is fullscreen.

I'm also going to shut off VSync tonight and just force it to run constant 60fps, to see what happens. At this point I feel like screaming at an Nvidia manager "well, send a damn engineer over here and figure it the hell out! This was working flawlessly several months ago!"

I suppose I could just ask for a warranty replacement. That would eliminate the card as the issue. Do they still have the Pascal cards to even offer as a replacement?


EDIT: I found the "fact" of the PSU being defective very surprising, but kind of accepted it based on the evidence I had at the time. Why does the thought of a "never stressed or pushed to its limits 1080 FE" being possibly defective hard to accept?

 

[jeremyj_83]

Hmm... so, it might NOT actually be the drivers after all... but the card. Maybe.

Going back to the 417.71 drivers seemed to do the trick, for a while. I'm going to have to try to isolate it a bit better, but now Clue/Cluedo and Don't Starve Together are jittering. Playing the latter game for about 45 minutes last night, there were issues for a while, then about the last 20 minutes, it all abruptly smoothed out and everything was fine.

At least Pinball Arcade didn't seem to exhibit issues - and I didn't get ANY screen blanking from anything.

Clue/Cluedo is still really strange how the start of the game zooms in then pans over, and the GTX 1080 struggles to do that at 60 fps. I'll call that one probably an outlier. But, it's not as bad windowed as it is fullscreen.

I'm also going to shut off VSync tonight and just force it to run constant 60fps, to see what happens. At this point I feel like screaming at an Nvidia manager "well, send a damn engineer over here and figure it the hell out! This was working flawlessly several months ago!"

I suppose I could just ask for a warranty replacement. That would eliminate the card as the issue. Do they still have the Pascal cards to even offer as a replacement?


EDIT: I found the "fact" of the PSU being defective very surprising, but kind of accepted it based on the evidence I had at the time. Why does the thought of a "never stressed or pushed to its limits 1080 FE" being possibly defective hard to accept?

How long of a warranty is there for the 1080FE? I've run into issues before and don't think its the GPU. Spend hours upon hours looking at other possible solutions only to find out it is the GPU. In your case I would have figured on GPU before PSU though since your PSU is excellent. 2-3 years on that PSU I would NEVER expect problems with it. If it was a Corsair VS or Cooler Master MWE Lite, then for sure probably the PSU.

 

[King_V]

Yeah, the only reason that I concluded the PSU was because when I swapped in a different PSU (a Dell OEM unit, of all things), the GPU behaved itself for something like 4 to 5 hours continuously, which it had never come close to doing before.

After I got the replacement , the problems still happened with the new Seasonic. Puzzled, I went back to the Dell PSU, and suddenly it was happening with the Dell PSU as well.

The 1080FE has a 3 year warranty from date of purchase - thus it's until February 2021, so I have time.


All these issues started happening after I had gone a few months not gaming on this PC. When I decided to game on it again, I updated the drivers.

I'm now starting to wonder if the driver update was also a coincidence, and just, somehow, something a little funny happened when it was powered up after several months of dormancy.


Ugh. This is a case of trying to figure out what the least insane sounding possibility is, and pursuing it.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Yeah, the only reason that I concluded the PSU was because when I swapped in a different PSU (a Dell OEM unit, of all things), the GPU behaved itself for something like 4 to 5 hours continuously, which it had never come close to doing before.

After I got the replacement , the problems still happened with the new Seasonic. Puzzled, I went back to the Dell PSU, and suddenly it was happening with the Dell PSU as well.

The 1080FE has a 3 year warranty from date of purchase - thus it's until February 2021, so I have time.


All these issues started happening after I had gone a few months not gaming on this PC. When I decided to game on it again, I updated the drivers.

I'm now starting to wonder if the driver update was also a coincidence, and just, somehow, something a little funny happened when it was powered up after several months of dormancy.


Ugh. This is a case of trying to figure out what the least insane sounding possibility is, and pursuing it.

Have you used DDU to uninstall the drivers before installing the other ones?

 

[King_V]

Every time. I was paranoid, LOL

 

[King_V]

I should also say, that, just as a point of reference, while I can't get Pinball Arcade or Cluedo to run on it, Don't Starve and Don't Starve together are so low in what they demand of the video card that my Micro Machine (see spoiler in my sig) manages it just fine at 59-60fps. That's the integrated graphics on an Athlon 200GE we're talking about.