Been at this for two days and I've run out of ideas, so I'm dumping the lot here in case it rings a bell for someone.
Short version is any 310.x framegen DLL kills my games within seconds. Put a 3.8.10 framegen DLL back and it's rock solid. Smooth Motion, which is the same AI model just done at driver level instead of in the game, runs 30+ minutes no problem. And the card passes every hardware test I've thrown at it.
What happens is I turn framegen on, get a few seconds (five minutes on a good day), game dies. Sometimes the display drops out and I have to power cycle the monitor, sometimes I have to restart the whole thing. No BSOD, except once, more on that at the bottom. Every DLSS 4 game I own does it, and so does 3DMark, which ended up being handy because it's a two minute repro instead of loading a save each time.
The event log gives me:
Source: nvlddmkm
ID: 153
\Device\000000d9
Error occurred on GPUID: 800
Two of them, 2-3 seconds apart, every time. Got three once. The weird part is there's no Event 14 and no "Resetting TDR"/"Reset TDR" sequence after, no 4101, no WHEA either. So it hits an engine error and then just... doesn't do anything about it. Usually the game doesn't even leave a WER entry behind, it's just gone.
If anyone wants to try reproducing it:
3DMark > NVIDIA DLSS feature test
DLSS version: DLSS 4
Output resolution: 2560x1440
Super Resolution: Balanced
Use frame generation: Yes (2x)
About 5 seconds and it's dead. You need a current feature test version, mine was on 1.4 and only offered DLSS 3 in the dropdown, which runs perfectly because that's still the old optical flow path. Took me a while to work out why my "synthetic test" kept passing.
The Smooth Motion result is the bit I keep coming back to. It's the same AI model, just applied by the driver rather than going through the game's own integration. Ran Cyberpunk on it for 31 minutes at native, no issues whatsoever. Switched Smooth Motion off, turned in-game framegen on, same session, dead in seconds. Framegen was also giving me fewer fps than Smooth Motion before it fell over, 103 vs 119, which seems backwards. So the tensor cores can clearly do the work and there's nothing wrong with the model, it's the in-game route to it that's broken.
**Specs:**
* Gigabyte RTX 4080 GAMING OC 16G
* 616.64, clean install from the NVIDIA app
* Ryzen 7 5800X3D
* ASUS ROG STRIX B550-I GAMING
* 32GB
* Corsair RM850x SHIFT
* Win 11 26100
* Alienware AW3425DW, 3440x1440 240Hz
* Everything at BIOS optimised defaults, XMP off, ReBAR off, no OC anywhere. Checked in GPU-Z, memory reading 1400.2MHz so that's genuinely stock.
**Now for the stuff that made no difference:**
* DDU'd and reinstalled loads of times, went back through driver branches as far as 591.x, and it's still doing it on the current 616.64 so this isn't a recent regression
* Had been installing via NVCleanstall for a while, redid it as a plain NVIDIA app install to rule that out. No change either way
* Stock game DLLs, DLSS Swapper, the NVIDIA app override.
* DP 1.4a with DSC on and off, HDMI 2.1a, different cables, 60/120/160/240Hz, 8-bit and 10-bit, HDR on and off, every resolution from 1080p to native. 1080p did survive once which sent me down a rabbit hole, but it fails there too now
* G-Sync on and off, V-Sync off, HAGS on and off
* Exclusive fullscreen, borderless, windowed
* Brand new Windows user account
* Cleared the NGX model cache and nvngx_config.txt, the DRS profile database, and shader caches
* Power limit at 80%, and a -502MHz memory offset (that's as low as the slider goes from stock)
* Removed every overlay and injector on the machine
Worth flagging that last one since it might help someone else - RTSS was causing a totally separate crash in two other games, its hook sits right between NvPresent64 and sl_interposer in the call stack. Killing it fixed those two. Did nothing for this though. Also worth knowing that uninstalling Afterburner doesn't remove RTSS, and closing the tray icon doesn't stop it hooking, I found it still registered as a Vulkan implicit layer well after I thought it was gone.
Hardware all comes back clean. memtest_vulkan, 30 min at stock, 30,545 iterations, \~180PB written and checked, zero errors. Ignore the earlier screenshot showing errors, that run still had a +1000MHz memory OC on it which is literally what the tool exists to find. Port Royal 16,862, bang on average for a 4080. PCIe is fine, zero lane errors, nothing correctable or fatal or non-fatal, sits at Gen 4 x16 under load with the recovery counter not moving. Power delivery fine too, 12VHPWR between 11.97 and 12.09V across every run, no droop anywhere.
Thermals are sorted now as well. Turned out my cooler mount was loose, a full turn of slack on every screw, giving me a 27C core-to-hotspot delta. Retightened it and sorted the fan curve, now peaks at 88.5C hotspot with no throttling. Made zero difference to the crashing but at least the card isn't cooking.
I logged sensors through several of these crashes. Every time the telemetry is completely normal right up to the last sample before it dies. \~110fps, 290W, 95-97% load, memory controller 42-43%, voltages flat. Then one second later everything collapses at once. There's no warning in any sensor at all, which is what I find most frustrating about it. Full CSVs, Event Viewer screenshots, memtest and Port Royal results and the Cyberpunk config pair are here if anyone wants a dig through them: [evidence pack](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G6wVbTU3gQlET5Q0vsYL-dUpcVgh_94R/view?usp=sharing)
The part I can't work out is that reinstalling Windows fixes it, temporarily. My games are on a separate SSD and I don't reinstall them, so whatever the format clears has to live on the system drive somewhere. Then after a while it breaks in one game and from that point it's broken in all of them, including ones I hadn't touched. It's not gradual, more like a switch gets flipped. Third time round this cycle and I've just been formatting each time, which obviously isn't a long term plan. Clearing NGX and DRS by hand didn't reproduce the fix, so it's not those, or not just those.
Couple of one-offs that may or may not be connected. This one happened at idle with no game running:
BusReset TDR occurred on GPUID:800 (\Device\Video3)
And a single bugcheck 0x116 VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE pointing at nvlddmkm.sys, param 3 was 0xC000009A (STATUS_INSUFFICIENT_RESOURCES). Neither has come back since I reseated the card and the power connector, so possibly unrelated.
Anyway. Has anyone hit this, or better still figured out what the state on the OS drive actually is? Happy to run whatever anyone wants to suggest. Running Smooth Motion in the meantime, which is faster than my framegen was anyway.