For several months, owners of Nvidia graphics cards have navigated a frustrating landscape of driver instability. Reports flooding platforms like Reddit and Nvidia's own support forums detail a range of persistent issues, disrupting gaming experiences for users across different GPU generations. The problems appear to have significantly escalated following the driver releases intended to support the new RTX 50-series GPUs, starting around January 2024. Users have reported experiencing problems such as:Sudden black screensFrequent game crashesNoticeable stuttering and frame dropsGeneral system instabilityThese difficulties aren't isolated to specific hardware; owners of RTX 30, RTX 40, and even the latest RTX 50-series cards have encountered these bugs. Faced with these persistent problems, many users with older RTX 30 and 40-series cards discovered a temporary workaround: rolling back their drivers to version 566.36, originally released in December 2024 before the RTX 50-series launch. This older driver version has proven significantly more stable for many, alleviating crashes and performance hiccups in various titles. However, this solution comes with its own set of drawbacks, primarily the lack of optimizations for newer games and missing features introduced in subsequent driver updates.The rollback strategy has gained such traction that even game developers have begun advising players to revert. Developers for titles like *inZOI* and *The First Berserker: Khazan*, which were particularly affected by stuttering and frame drops on newer drivers, have explicitly recommended that RTX 40 and some RTX 30 series owners use the 566.36 driver for a smoother experience. This places users in a difficult position, forcing a choice between stability with older drivers or potentially buggy performance with the latest features and game support. Critically, this rollback option is unavailable to those who managed to acquire the new RTX 50-series GPUs, as the 566.36 driver lacks the necessary support for the Blackwell architecture.Nvidia has acknowledged the situation indirectly by releasing a series of driver updates and hotfixes since the initial problematic 572.16 release that accompanied the RTX 50 series. Despite multiple iterations (reaching versions like 572.83), these updates have failed to fully eradicate the root causes of the instability for many users, particularly those with older RTX 30 and 40-series cards. In some cases, new updates have reportedly introduced fresh problems, compounding user frustration. The situation has drawn sharp criticism, with tech analysis outlets like Gamers Nexus replicating the issues and describing the ongoing driver quality as "absolutely abhorrent and completely embarrassing."The ongoing saga suggests that fixes aimed at stabilizing the new RTX 50-series may be inadvertently causing conflicts or regressions for the widely used RTX 30 and 40-series hardware. Compiling user complaints reveals a persistent pattern of issues linked to drivers released after the Blackwell launch, even as some RTX 50-specific problems like black screens are reportedly improving. This persistent instability leaves the Nvidia user base grappling with unreliable performance and questioning the company's driver quality control, anxiously awaiting a comprehensive solution that restores stability across all supported GPU generations without forcing users to sacrifice features or game compatibility.
