Nvidia driver updates

[HappyLeighEverAfter]

Hello banished folk,
I have not seen anything like my issue on any site I know of, so I want to share it here just in case someone also has trouble.

In Feb, I was on one of the 442 versions of geforce driver for my GTX1080, and things were dandy. All my favorite games ran lickety split, and smooth as butter.
Then yesterday I had a minor issue with a different game so as a normal part of troubleshooting, I checked for updates. Geforce had a 445, so I installed it.

Today when I started Banished, it freaked out. Freezing, flickering, going solid black, going solid white, or just plain CTD.

I went thru a list of steps, including verify files in steam (I bought thru steam when it was on sale) ; unsubscribe mods; uninstall game; clean registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Shining Rock Software LLC\Banished, and even sandboxing a torrent version to see if it worked at all.

Since the only change I had made to my machine since the last time I had played was the graphics driver update (which historically has never been a problem), I decided to roll it back.

There are 3 different 442 versions of driver, all released in Feb and Mar, and I don't remember which one I was using before I updated to 445. I could not run a roll back via device manager because I always run a cleaner to get rid of old installers and leftover files, so I had to hunt down another copy.
(See https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us for a list of historical drivers)
So I picked the oldest one, 442.19, and overwrote my 445.

Sure enough, the next time I tried to start the game, it ran excellent, and I played for 5 hours with no issues.
Now, the problem with my other game (Anno 1800)  is very minor, a small hesitation when I was grabbing the screen to pan across. And It may not even have improved much with the updated driver anyhow, since quickly panning a city of 8000+ is a drain on graphics no matter how up-to-date I am...

So if there's a choice to make at all, I say roll back for the sake of my all time favorite, Banished, in which I have 3000+ hours, and let that other game have a barely noticeable stutter once in a blue moon.

Happiness is a healthy, well-fed town where no one freezes to death.

[Artfactial]

Hey there HappyLeightEverAfter,
thanks for the heads-up and detailed information.

I have a GTX 1060 and just booted up Banished for the first time in half a year. I am currently running the GeFroce 445.75 version driver and had no odd crashed like you described.
There is, however a newer 445.87 version from the 15th of this month which I haven't updated to yet.
So I will hold of doing so for now. Maybe the 445,75 version is safe to use as well.
But freezing driver versions isn't a very viable option, especially if you're running anything other than Banished.
So I think that gathering more info from people who run into this issue and reporting it to Nvidia would be helpful.

[rkelly17]

I started playing Banished again after a fairly long break in order to cope with pandemic lockdown. My NVIDIA 1066 Super is running driver 445.87 and everything is fine. Does NVIDIA do the same driver for every card or is the driver for each card somewhat customized?

[Artfactial]

No it's the same driver for all supported cards.
However, the newer the card, the more features are available to you.
That is a good point. HappyLeighEverAfter has a better card than we do...but it's from the same series, so I don't think it is all that different....but I might be wrong.

[rkelly17]

I misspoke. I have a 1660 Super. NVIDIA did update to a new GPU awhile back with the 2080, 2070, and 2060. These were mind-bendingly expensive and included ray-tracing technology that has been slow to come to games, so they introduced the 1650, 1650ti and 1660 for people who couldn't afford the new cards and didn't feel an intense need for ray-tracing. Recently the 1650 Super and 1660 Super came out. So the 1060 and 1080 have the same GPU but the 20xx series and 16xx series share a GPU. Obviously, the more expensive cards have better versions of the chip.

[Artfactial]

Oh, I knew about the 20xx series but not yet about the 16xx, neat.
Alright, so you're on a newer chipset than we are, good to know!

[Nilla]

Hi, @rkelly17! Nice to see some of the old inventories again. I hope you are well! And I find too that Banished may help by the quarantine boredom.

[rkelly17]

Hi, @rkelly17! Nice to see some of the old inventories again. I hope you are well! And I find too that Banished may help by the quarantine boredom.

Indeed. Banished is like my favorite comfort foods--always good no longer how long it's been. And, may I add, so is World of Banished. Stay safe everyone, especially those of you who are facing extraordinary challenges during these times.

[Artfactial]

Yes, totally agree.<3

[Artfactial]

Anyone else updated to a newer Nvidia driver version and experiencing crashes?