How to provide valuable feedback to NVIDIA

When reporting driver issues to NVIDIA, the information we require may vary depending on the type of issue you are encountering. The most common driver issues are seperated into categories below along with a list of questions based on the type of graphics related problem. When contacting NVIDIA to report driver related issue either through our support portal, NVIDIA display driver feedback form or by email, please consider including answers to the following questions below based on your issue.

 

1. If the driver install failed, click here to learn how to download the driver manually and performing a clean install of the driver.  We strongly recommend users close all applications including GPU monitoring utilities, anti-virus live scanners and any GPU accelerated applications including web browsers and video players before starting the NVIDIA display driver installation process.   

 

2. If further troubleshooting does not solve your installation issues, we will require installer logs from your PC in order to further diagnose the cause of of the installer issues. Please click here to learn more on how to enable installer logging so that you may provide it to an NVIDIA representative.

 

1. If you are installing a new graphics card, check if it is seated properly.  When installing larger graphics cards, it may not be obvious when a graphics card is not inserted all the way.  Reseat the graphics card if needed.  If the graphics card uses external power, verify that the PCI-E power connectors are inserted all the way.  If you are using a 3rd party PCI-E power cable/adapter, try swapping the cable for the one that came bundled with your graphics card or power supply.  Incorrect installation of the graphics card may result in performance or system instability issues.     

 

2. If you updated your NVIDIA display drivers while a 3rd party GPU monitoring utility was running in the background, it is possible the Power Target setting is incorrect which can lead to lower performance.  To learn more, please visit the following KBA:
Lower GPU performance may be observed in games after updating drivers while a GPU monitoring application is running in the background

 

3rd party applications, in particular system monitoring utilities such as anti-virus and malware scanners, may block the NVIDIA display driver installer from completing succesfully.  If you did not close all applications running in the background before you launched the NVIDIA display driver installer, close all applications and try re-installing the latest driver again manually as described below:
GeForce Experience driver installation failed. How do I manually clean install the NVIDIA driver for my graphics card?

 

Whenever you perform an NVIDIA display driver clean installation, you may experience temporary slower performance in certain games while the driver creates new shader cache data.  In most cases, this should only last a few minutes.      

 

3. If you have other applications open in the background, even if they are minimized to the taskbar or system tray, can introduce a heavy overhead to the CPU or GPU that may affect performance.  In addition, these applications may not release the PC resources that were reserved, even if they are idle, thus further affecting the overall experience.  You may try closing all unnecessary background apps (eg. game launchers, web browsers, desktop theme/wallpaper apps, instant messaging and social media platforms, etc.) and then test the performance of the app/game again to see if it solves your issue.     

 

4.  To share a performance bug report, start by sharing the title of the game which you are seeing a performance issue. If an issue occurs across multiple games, we still require the name of a specific game that you are able to reproduce this behavior. Please do not give a broad answer such as "happens with all games" or "happens with all the games I play".

 

5. Which platform are you playing the game on (Battle.net/Bethesda/Epic Games/Galaxy/Microsoft Store/Origin/Steam/Uplay/etc.)?

 

6. Please share screenshots showing the in game graphics settings you are using and the settings you have changed from the default values in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

 

7. Are you running more than one display? Does the problem go away if switch to single monitor only?

 

8. Close any background apps and check if the stutter persists.  If you are using any apps that insert an overlay (eg. Discord, EVGA Precision, MSI Afterburner, Steam Overlay, etc.) in your app/game, disable the overlay and verify the performance results again.  To disable the in-game overlay for GeForce Experience, click on the settings icon -> toggle off the IN-GAME OVERLAY setting as shown in the screenshot below. 

 

      

 

9. GPUView trace logs - If the performance issue started after a driver update or after the game received a patch update, we will likely need logs in order to investigate the cause of the performance drop as the issue may very well be specific to your system configuration. Click here to learn how to collect GPUView trace logs. We typically need about 30 seconds to 1 minutes worth of gameplay logs. These log files can be quite large in size (typically over 1GB in size) so you will need to upload the files to a file sharing site such as Google Drive/One Drive/Dropbox/etc.. Then you will need to email the URL to download the file to driverfeedback@nvidia.com or share it with the NVIDIA Customer Care representative you are working with.

 

1. If you are installing a new graphics card, check if it is seated properly. When installing larger graphics cards, it may not be obvious when a graphics card is not inserted all the way. Reseat the graphics card if needed. If the graphics card uses external power, verify that the PCI-E power connectors are inserted all the way.  If you are using a 3rd party PCI-E power cable/adapter, try swapping the cable for the one that came bundled with your graphics card or power supply.  If the graphics card is not receiving sufficient power under heavy load, it may manifest as a black screen system freezes.

 

2. Title of the game

 

3. GPU make and model

 

4. Windows version (click here for information on how to look up this information)?

 

5. Does this reproduce with other games/applications or just one particular game/application?

 

6. If possible, please provide a screenshot or a Youtube video showing the graphic corruptions you are seeing.

 

7. Please share screenshots showing the in game graphics settings you are using and also the settings you have changed in the NVIDIA Control Panel from the default settings. You may email the screenshots

to driverfeedback@nvidia.com.

Display flickers, no signal or missing display modes

1. If you are installing a new graphics card and do not get a picture on your display when you power on your PC:

2. When providing feedback, please share the following:

3. If your PC shows one of the following, click here to read how to capture logs to investigate your issue:

Applications/Games crashing to desktop or causing PC to BSOD

1. Are you overclocking your GPU or using a factory overclocked graphics card?  If so you can configure your graphics card to run at NVIDIA reference clock speeds by enabling Debug Mode.  To enable Debug Mode, open the NVIDIA Control Panel (right-click over your Windows desktop to locate the NVIDIA Control Panel context menu option) -> click on Help from the top menu ->  click on Debug Mode.  Next see if you are still able to reproduce the application crash.  

 

2. Troubleshooting:

3. Are the crashes or system reboots limited to a single application or does it happen randomly with different applications? If the issue happens with multiple applications, it may be a hardware issue. Check your components such as system memory/power supply/motherboard and graphics card for possible hardware problem.

 

4. Some PC motherboards may be more sensitive to higher loads or frequencies. Update your motherboard to the latest system BIOS available. If your system memory is using an overclocked profile (XMP for Intel/EXPO for AMD), change it to default from the motherboard BIOS.  

 

5. If issue started after updating your display drivers, try clearing the NVIDIA shader disk cache.  Close all applications/games that may be open.  Navigate to the location below and deleting all of the shader cache files inside.  You will not be able to delete the shader cache files that are currently in use.  If you wish to delete all shader cache files, you will need to do so from a Windows Safe Boot.          

   
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\NVIDIA\DXCache
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\DXCache
 

6. If your application/game is crashing to the desktop, please refer to the FAQ "How to save a Windows crash dump file after a game/application crash or TDR" to learn how to enable Windows full dmp file logging so that you may provide a crash dmp file to NVIDIA. If applications/games are instead causing your PC to reboot with a blue screen of death (BSOD), please refer to the FAQ How to save a Windows complete memory dump file after a blue screen of death/unexpected reboot" to learn how to enable Windows full dmp file logging so that you may provide a crash dmp file to NVIDIA. Windows DMP files can range in size from around one hundred megabytes to over a gigabyte in size. The size of the files will mean that you will not be able to email the files as an attachment. Instead as ask that you upload the dmp file(s) to a file sharing site such as Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive or any other service and then email a link to download the file(s) to driverfeedback@nvidia.com.