NVIDIA’s recent GPU drivers have been a source of frustration for users of both the GeForce RTX 40 series and older models, and the company isn’t yet addressing these problems.
Reports have started to pile up about the havoc that the GPU Driver 572.XX is wreaking on systems based on the RTX 40. Despite the shiny new rollout of the RTX 50 series earlier this year, NVIDIA has seemingly left the venerable RTX 40 series to fend for itself when it comes to resolving bugs. It’s typical for companies to focus on their latest and greatest, but while the RTX 50 had its share of troubles like blue screens of death, the RTX 40 had been doing well until the arrival of the RTX 50 drivers, which somehow managed to stir up trouble for the older models.
One vivid account comes from Reddit user u/Soctty1992, who shared his own struggles with driver 572.XX, citing numerous overlapping issues reported by other users. System crashes, black screens, and display malfunctions began cropping up, issues that were rare before the 572.XX drivers became the norm.
Interestingly, multiple users reported finding relief by reverting to the 566.XX drivers that were available before NVIDIA launched the 572.16 version on January 30 for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080. The RTX 50 series brought a slew of new features like DLSS 4, Multi-Frame Generation, and DLSS Override, which unfortunately seem to have introduced a mixed bag of challenges for RTX 40 users.
A user noted that attempting to play Cyberpunk 2077 with an RTX 4080 resulted in a crash as soon as the game booted, a problem that went away with the older, pre-572.XX drivers. Others with the RTX 4090 encountered persistent black screens, freezes, and even a complete failure of monitors to turn on, issues that similarly vanished with a rollback to the older drivers.
NVIDIA appears to have overlooked these pleas for fixes, despite a steady stream of complaints from users since January’s end. The only acknowledged problem, BSODs affecting RTX 50 systems, took weeks to address. In the meantime, RTX 40 owners have been left with little choice but to revert to earlier drivers, sacrificing the benefits of the newest features like the Transformer Model DLSS 4 and updated Ray Reconstruction, not to mention access to the latest DLSS-supported games.
