NVIDIA Game Ready Driver 572.XX Causing Crashes and Blackscreens for RTX 40 Series Users

NVIDIA’s recent update to its GPU drivers is leading to significant complications for users of GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards, as well as some older models. Despite the widespread reports of these issues, NVIDIA has yet to respond effectively.

Widespread Issues with NVIDIA’s Driver 572. XX Affecting RTX 40 Series

Following the debut of the RTX 50 series in January, NVIDIA seems to have shifted its focus away from addressing bugs affecting the RTX 40 series, which had been performing admirably with earlier driver versions. Although the new RTX 50 models also faced stability problems, the performance of the RTX 40 GPUs started to deteriorate significantly after the introduction of driver 572. XX designed for compatibility with the latest series.

User reports, such as those from Reddit member u/Soctty1992, outline numerous complications tied to the new driver. These complications include severe problems such as system crashes, black screen occurrences, and other display-related issues that weren’t prevalent prior to the arrival of driver 572. XX.

PSA: Nvidia Widespread Black Screen or Hard OS Crash Issues on 4xxx (or older) Series Cards Need To Be Widely Known & Fixed. by u/Scotty1992 in hardware

Interestingly, many affected users have reported positive experiences with the earlier 566. XX drivers released prior to the problematic 572.16 version, which launched on January 30 to accommodate the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080. This update introduced several enhancements, including DLSS 4, Multi-Frame Generation, and DLSS Override. Although enabling some new features does not inherently cause issues, a combination of factors likely contributes to the problems noted.

For instance, one user recounted that his RTX 4080 encountered a crash while trying to launch the game Cyberpunk 2077, with the only solution being a rollback to the pre-572. XX drivers. Another user reporting issues with the RTX 4090 mentioned facing black screens, freezing problems, and even monitor failure to activate. Again, reverting to the 566. XX drivers resolved these issues.

NVIDIA appears to have overlooked these bug reports, primarily addressing BSOD issues specific to the RTX 50 series instead. While some fixes were implemented weeks later, many RTX 40 series users have been compelled to revert to older drivers, thus sacrificing the advantages offered by the latest updates, including improvements in the Transformer Model DLSS 4 and the newly supported titles in the DLSS game library.

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