these drivers are bull and are totally broken. 

Even valley benchmark is tdr crashing within 15 minutes at STOCK settings on a reference evga 980. I am officially pissed off.

-------

Monitor: ASUS VS248 1920x1080 
Windows 7 64bit sp1 
MOBO: ASUS P8P67 DELUXE rev3.0 / bios 3602 
Intel i7-2600k @ 4.4ghz 
G.skill 8GB DDR3 2133 
EVGA Gtx 980 Bios: 84.04.31.00.80 (samsung vram)
Samsung 830 250GB SSD Firmware: CXM03B1Q 
PSU: Antec 850w gold certified 
Keyboard: Logitech G110 
Audio/sound: Logitech G35 7.1 headset 
Mouse: Razer Deathadder 2013 edition
------Essential background programs-----
MSI afterburner 4.1.1
Rivatuner Statistics server v6.3.0.7688
Samsung magician
Razer synapse 2.0 v1.18
Logitech gaming software v8.58.183

Just did a run, no issues at all 
 
 

TDR crashes are worse on this driver!    :(
 
Getting one every 30-45 minutes in Chrome, no crashes in games though.    Also GTA5 is a stuttery mess!!   What the hell is Nvidia doing, none of the drivers for the GTX980Ti have been good yet!!    Nvidia needs to fix this!!
 
I'm getting pretty fed up and seriously thinking about just returning these cards and going over to the Red Team.

Can evga say anything about if they are working on a bios update or anything like that to target the issue of why the newer drivers are making our cards so unstable?

EVGA Gtx 980 Bios: 84.04.31.00.80, cannot use 352.86 / 353.06 / 353.30 due to instability. 353.06 and 353.30 are by far the worst. Can't even run valley benchmark at stock values without tdr crashing.

Brian Walker
Just did a run, no issues at all 
 
 

I can assume you're using the Logitech gaming software v8.58.183, and samsung magician. What are your other background programs are you running? Are you using evga precisionX or msi afterburner? If so, what are the exact tweaks you've made to them?

Also you can't just run valley benchmark one time for a stability check, I usually run it up to 10 times in a row to see if something is truly stable. 353.30 drivers TDR crashed valley every single time after 10-15 minutes at stock clocks. You may not even know that its crashing because it doesn't minimize or close while benchmarking like a game does. It will flash and resume benchmarking even if you have an OC it will do that but it will revert your OC to defaults. 

If you want to check if you are having TDR crashes in valley/heaven benchmark without any shadow of a doubt, then you need to search c:\windows\livekernelreport, open watchdogs, and see if there are any .dmp log files for the same day and time that you ran the benchmark. If you see .dmp files there, it means it experienced a TDR crash.

Also if your system really is stable (extremely hard to believe to be honest), then we need details on WHY man.

Please post professionally and be considerate of others who may not have as much knowledge as you might have. Respect those who post even if you disagree with their opinions.
 
This thread has been cleaned up a bit.

Shelledfade
these drivers are bull and are totally broken. 

Even valley benchmark is tdr crashing within 15 minutes at STOCK settings on a reference evga 980. I am officially pissed off.

-------

Monitor: ASUS VS248 1920x1080 
Windows 7 64bit sp1 
MOBO: ASUS P8P67 DELUXE rev3.0 / bios 3602 
Intel i7-2600k @ 4.4ghz 
G.skill 8GB DDR3 2133 
EVGA Gtx 980 Bios: 84.04.31.00.80 (samsung vram)
Samsung 830 250GB SSD Firmware: CXM03B1Q 
PSU: Antec 850w gold certified 
Keyboard: Logitech G110 
Audio/sound: Logitech G35 7.1 headset 
Mouse: Razer Deathadder 2013 edition
------Essential background programs-----
MSI afterburner 4.1.1
Rivatuner Statistics server v6.3.0.7688
Samsung magician
Razer synapse 2.0 v1.18
Logitech gaming software v8.58.183

Run the benchmark again at default CPU settings.

rjohnson11

Shelledfade
these drivers are bull and are totally broken. 

Even valley benchmark is tdr crashing within 15 minutes at STOCK settings on a reference evga 980. I am officially pissed off.

-------

Monitor: ASUS VS248 1920x1080 
Windows 7 64bit sp1 
MOBO: ASUS P8P67 DELUXE rev3.0 / bios 3602 
Intel i7-2600k @ 4.4ghz 
G.skill 8GB DDR3 2133 
EVGA Gtx 980 Bios: 84.04.31.00.80 (samsung vram)
Samsung 830 250GB SSD Firmware: CXM03B1Q 
PSU: Antec 850w gold certified 
Keyboard: Logitech G110 
Audio/sound: Logitech G35 7.1 headset 
Mouse: Razer Deathadder 2013 edition
------Essential background programs-----
MSI afterburner 4.1.1
Rivatuner Statistics server v6.3.0.7688
Samsung magician
Razer synapse 2.0 v1.18
Logitech gaming software v8.58.183

Run the benchmark again at default CPU settings.

already uninstalled the driver... and have zero intentions of going back to it. Things that I did try before going back to 347.88 
1. Geforce experience is not installed, still crashed. Installed it, still crashed.
2. Audio driver, 3D vision driver, none of that is installed. Crashed.
3. Only the display driver and physx are installed. Crashed.
4. Crashes with msi afterburner/rivatuner running. Crashes without msi afterburner/rivatuner running.
5. Crashes at stock clocks, crashes with OC that was stable in previous drivers.
6. Crashes with msi afterburner polling rate set up to 5000.
7. Msi afterburners FORCE CONSTANT VOLTAGE does not work according to GPU-Z.
8. MSI afterburner low-level IO driver disabled, still crashes.
9. Crashes with precisionX. 
10. Crashes With precisionX kboost.
11. Crashes with precisionX OSD completely off.
12. Closed razer synapse, still crashed.
13. Closed samsung magician, still crashed.
14. Nvidia control panel MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE enabled, still crashes.
15. Nvidia control panel single-display performance mode, still crashes.
16. Control panel - power options - PCI Express - Link State Power Management OFF, still crashes.
17. Nvidia control panel threaded optimization on or off, still crashes.
18. Default BIOS used when crashing: 84.04.1F.00.80 
19. Contacted evga, sent new bios: 84.04.31.00.80, crashing unchanged.
20. Used Display driver uninstaller in safe mode, still crashed with newer drivers.
21. Used control panel to uninstall and reinstall, still crashed with newer drivers.
22. Disabled all AUDIO drivers in device manager other than my g35, still crashed.
23. Disabled any left-over drivers in human interface devices in device manager as well as other areas, still crashed.
24. Temps are good, 63-68c, still crashing.

Unfortunately I just don't have the willpower left to reinstall 353.30 and then default the cpu on top of it to its stock value. It's stable on older 347.88, I'd find it extremely hard to believe the cpu is causing this for newer drivers. (who doesn't OC their cpu these days?) 

ManualG just posted this as well...  https://twitter.com/ManuelGuzman/status/613124131928715264  Although he made the same statement on twitter about a month ago. I'm sorry but I'm just tired of testing potential fixes after 3 straight drivers of this issue. I'm out of testing gas at this point. Just gonna accept there's an issue outside of my control and wait for a fix.

can confirm crash after ~15 minutes of valley

Zordrack
I ran heaven for 15 mins and it crashed then I lowered my oc and it ran for an hour without crash.

try valley instead. Heaven seems more stable than valley for some reason. Valley crashed for me at stock clocks with this driver three different times, always after around 15 minutes.

Hey I just ran valley for 4 straight hours without crash with my cards oc'ed t o 1506mhz.

I'm now trying prime95 + valley

What is TDR? I am running 780 Classified SLI, has anyone using G-Sync notice any better performance?

You can also check the event viewer for checking TDRs.  I made a custom TDR view using event ID 4101.
 

These drivers are broken still. Chrome causes BSODs. 
 
If I underclock my 980 SC editions by 250 mhz, down to reference clocks, I can make chrome run with hardware acceleration enabled for several hours before getting a BSOD, but they STILL BSOD. 
 
Meanwhile, actual games run with no problems at 300 mhz over reference clocks (50 mhz over factory OC), and 125% TDP....
 
I've simply disabled hardware acceleration in chrome for now, that prevents the crashes almost completely. 
 
 

Shelledfade
According to Nvidia's ManualG its a timing issue. It affects gaming/benching/ or for some users even idle at desktop. For me, it caused games to crash or benchmarks to crash even with stock clocks on the newer drivers.

Nvidia (manualG) said they still testing a hotfix for it and it should be out soon.

Thanks for the info.  Nvidia's PR team is Atrocious. They post all their updates on critical issues on twitter, where the information is buried and lost in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, they completely ignore their own websites forums. 
 
It'd take 2 minutes a day to have an up to date sticky on the subject, and they can't manage it.
 
I understand it's going to take as long as it's going to take to fix, regardless of what they tell all of us lusers, but keeping us informed would certainly cut down on the amounts of vitriolic rage they are getting thrown at them right now.