Warframe randomly crashes Nvidia driver

[Heavynator]

I have a weird problem with Warframe since the latest patch: without any warning (no stuttering or errors) my screen simply turns black in the middle of a mission and after a few seconds comes back with the Windows message that the Nvidia driver has been recovered because it was unresponsive. At first I thought that it was due to a problem with the recent Nvidia driver so I rolled back from 385.41 to 382.53 (which I know was stable), but to no effort, the game still crashed the driver.

So I started to look for the issue in other components, so far I did the following:

• underclocked CPU/GPU/RAM
• ran Memtest
• reset the page file
• wiped the driver clean with DDU and re-installed it
• checked for Windows updates
• checked for BIOS updates
• disabled PhysX
• stress-tested the components with different benchmark tools
• checked for over-heating
• verified the download cache over the launcher

But nothing helped with the crashes or indicated why it does so. So i began testing other games, namely Prey and Overwatch and played both for around 4h each, without a single crash. Went back to Warframe and started Sortie, second mission the game crashed the driver again. Interestingly the, the crashes ONLY happened so far during a mission, sitting in the Liset or being in a Relay I never saw a crash. More interestingly the crashes appear to be random, sometimes I can play for over 2h before I see a crash and sometimes it only takes 10min.

It is independent from the faction of the mission, from the mission type, from the tile-set, from the planet. The only thing I think that was identical was my Nova Prime and the Broken War, but I am not sure about it.

 

My system specs are:

• I5 4690k
• 16GB DDR3 RAM
• GTX 980 ti @ 385.41
• Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z97 @ F8 BIOS
• Windows 10 64bit

[Capitalinferno]

Just posted on another thread, would you mind trying the same thing and see if you get a positive result? 

Uninstall the  Nvidia Experience .   If that works for you then it would confirm that it is the issue.

[Heavynator]

I don't have it installed in the first place, cause I had problems with it in the past.

But thanks for the help anyway. The way it is at the moment I simply cannot play Warframe at the moment; I mean, doing a 20min survival just to get a driver crash in the middle of it is frustrating...

[Heavynator]

I just found a fix for me... but it makes no sense whatsoever:

I increased the Power Target of the GPU to the maximum, increased the voltage by 80mv and decreased GPU and VRAM clock speed by 50MHz.

But like I said above, this is ONLY requiered for Warframe, every other game is rock-stable...

Edited September 2, 2017 by Heavynator

[n0aimatall]

I have the exact same issue, the driver crashes and the sys log says "nvlddmkm" is not responding.

I guess I will try your power target hack.. :D give it a try.

This issue is really very frustrating... 

 

Edit: I found some advice on a general Nvidia Driver Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/6vrcs6/driver_38541_discussion_thread/

"If your driver still crashes after DDU reinstall, try going to Go to Nvidia Control Panel -> Managed 3D Settings -> Power Management Mode: Prefer Maximum Performance."

Feels like its somewhat similar to what you posted above. I changed that, and will give it a try.

Edited September 19, 2017 by n0aimatall
added info