Discussion: NVIDIA Display Driver (nvlddmkm.sys) DPC Latency

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Hi Everyone

This issue has been driving me insane for months now.
I have never had issues with DPC latency when using this pc with the integrated graphics. I use a focusrite USB soundcard.
I purchased a 3070 FE as i wanted to get back into game audio and suddenly I am having audible pops and clicks even on basic projects in multiple programs. Ran latency mon and it was flagging Nvidia as the culprit. Removed video card and went back to integrated and the DPC latency vanished.

I will get straight to the point of what has worked for me. I know that it may not help everyone as we all have different hardware but if it helps just one person then here goes...

Download Display driver uninstaller
www.guru3d.com

Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) download version 18.0.7.6

Download Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) - Remove AMD/NVIDIA/INTEL Graphics Drivers Cleanly - DDU is a driver removal utility that helps you completely uninstall AMD/NVIDIA graphics card drivers and packages from your system, leaving no leftovers behind, including registry keys, folders, files...
www.guru3d.com www.guru3d.com

Download NVcleanstall
www.techpowerup.com

NVCleanstall v1.16.0 Download

NVCleanstall lets you customize the NVIDIA GeForce Driver package by removing components that you don't need (or want). This not only keeps things ti
www.techpowerup.com www.techpowerup.com

Disconnect from the internet and make sure that auto connect is not selected if on wifi

cmd + R and run msconfig ... go to boot tab and put a check in safe boot ... click ok then accept the reboot

When PC restarts in safe mode repeat the above step but remove the check from safe boot ... when prompted DO NOT restart..

Run the Display driver uninstaller and restart when prompted

When back in normal mode run NVCleanstall and once this is running it is safe to reconnect your internet.

I chose to install only the driver and the Physx components.
It allows you to select a driver manually so I chose Studio driver 522.30

Once this installed I rebooted again just for kicks and after running Latency MON is sitting in the green even on quite complex projects.

I know its not ideal and is not using the latest driver, but I was getting so distracted with the audio glitches that I couldn't do my work.
This would suggest that it is definitely the Nvidia bloatware that is causing this DPC issue on my system at least.

Hopefully someone can make this solution even better or Nvidia fix this issue but I wouldn't hold my breath for the latter!

I hope that this helps someone.
 
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Necrosaro said:
I am sure it's not a Nvidia problem anymore
Click to expand...
I don't think this has been ruled out yet, all signs still point to Nvidia driver and/or W10. This is actually an extremely popular topic right now on the web, to where it's improbable that it's a niche issue like PSU or overclocking, etcetera. I'll explain how I came to this conclusion though:

I see this thread being viewed by multiple visitors every time I login, meaning it's appearing in a lot of Google searches, and since I posted it to the general forum it's gone from page 15 to page 1 in number of views in only 5 months, surpassing the other threads that have been searchable on Google for the last 5 years from the new NTLite forum, meaning a ton of people have this problem. 99% of forum visitors are lurkers though, so you don't always get a sense of how popular something is without seeing things like view count. Google searching also reveals that the DPC problems weren't widespread until the year 2015 and later, which happens to be the release year of W10.

It's a common issue on the Nvidia forums, Reddit, TomsHardware, and other gaming sites, and I still haven't seen any screenshots of LatencyMon from anyone that "doesn't" have the issue, it's just their word that it's "fixed". I'm not saying those people are wrong, but I don't trust anything on the internet, especially when it comes to computers, until I can see some screenshots and/or replicate it myself, because there's so much placebo out there--far too many people go by how things "feel", not actual benchmarks or monitoring. Hell, most of the reg files I see uploaded are clearly untested, since half the keys are duplicates, don't apply to that OS, don't do what the person thinks they do, or there's improper formatting and the keys aren't even being applied properly, so you have to take computer discussions with a huge grain of salt.

If we get several people to post proof, whom don't have the DPC issue, we can engineer a fix based on what is different about their setup compared to everyone else. But since Nvidia and Microsoft have been in the news quite a bit for performance issues, bugs, and other problems recently, and this issue is so widespread on Google (over 7,000 hits for "nvlddmkm" "dpc") I'm not holding my breath that there's a sensible workaround users can do while we wait for it to be fixed. At this time I see no reason to believe it's anything other than some kind of Nvidia issue and/or OS conflict introduced with W10. Me personally, I never had DPC issues on Windows XP using the same computer, it was only upon moving to W10 this year that I had problems.

Anywho, please know that I greatly appreciate everyone taking the time to post in this thread. The more information we gather the better, and eventually we can find a workaround or bring enough attention to it that someone who can pull strings will get in touch with Nvidia and/or Microsoft and get it addressed.
 
Do you by chance have a driver that was released during the Windows 7 era before it went EOL? If so I'd be curious to know if that version has the issue. It'd help to narrow down if it's the OS or Nvidia at fault.
 
471.96 supposedly doesnt have the problem but it damn well does. and to be honest i aint got time(or the bloody werewithal) to test 20 drivers and then to end up with the same damn result.

If its happening on multiple OS's then its nvidia and they cannot be rsed or dont have the technical knowledge to fix it.
 
Yeah I hear you, eventually when real life settles down I plan on doing just that and testing a bunch of drivers, but it takes forever... And I feel the same way, I think even if we find a solution you will trade one problem for another by going back to such ancient drivers. In the meantime I'm just hoping as I make my way down my tweaking todo list that I stumble on a workaround.

It might not be Nvidia or W10 directly, but rather all of the new stuff they've introduced over the years, and the problem just gradually grew with each new OS. For example, GPU TDR (timeout detection recovery) as well as HPET (high precision event timer), and DX10 were introduced in Vista, and Vista was a trainwreck for gaming. All of these types of new features under the hood could be the issue, as they snowballed together by time W10 released.

Even as we speak, Nvidia and Microsoft are arguing over the latest performance bug in 22H2, and Nvidia released a hotfix and then blamed Microsoft, whom then denied any wrongdoing, until later on they finally admitted the problem was on their end (Microsoft). I just don't have faith in either company. I mean look at W10 gaming mode, it has been butchered into nothingness now because of how buggy it was. Gaming to Microsoft is nothing more than PR fluff.
 
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i cannot disable hpet in bios because there is no option. ive got a workload and it doesnt include this.
 
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Hellbovine said:
I don't think this has been ruled out yet, all signs still point to Nvidia driver and/or W10. This is actually an extremely popular topic right now on the web, to where it's improbable that it's a niche issue like PSU or overclocking, etcetera. I'll explain how I came to this conclusion though:

I see this thread being viewed by multiple visitors every time I login, meaning it's appearing in a lot of Google searches, and since I posted it to the general forum it's gone from page 15 to page 1 in number of views in only 5 months, surpassing the other threads that have been searchable on Google for the last 5 years from the new NTLite forum, meaning a ton of people have this problem. 99% of forum visitors are lurkers though, so you don't always get a sense of how popular something is without seeing things like view count. Google searching also reveals that the DPC problems weren't widespread until the year 2015 and later, which happens to be the release year of W10.

It's a common issue on the Nvidia forums, Reddit, TomsHardware, and other gaming sites, and I still haven't seen any screenshots of LatencyMon from anyone that "doesn't" have the issue, it's just their word that it's "fixed". I'm not saying those people are wrong, but I don't trust anything on the internet, especially when it comes to computers, until I can see some screenshots and/or replicate it myself, because there's so much placebo out there--far too many people go by how things "feel", not actual benchmarks or monitoring. Hell, most of the reg files I see uploaded are clearly untested, since half the keys are duplicates, don't apply to that OS, don't do what the person thinks they do, or there's improper formatting and the keys aren't even being applied properly, so you have to take computer discussions with a huge grain of salt.

If we get several people to post proof, whom don't have the DPC issue, we can engineer a fix based on what is different about their setup compared to everyone else. But since Nvidia and Microsoft have been in the news quite a bit for performance issues, bugs, and other problems recently, and this issue is so widespread on Google (over 7,000 hits for "nvlddmkm" "dpc") I'm not holding my breath that there's a sensible workaround users can do while we wait for it to be fixed. At this time I see no reason to believe it's anything other than some kind of Nvidia issue and/or OS conflict introduced with W10. Me personally, I never had DPC issues on Windows XP using the same computer, it was only upon moving to W10 this year that I had problems.

Anywho, please know that I greatly appreciate everyone taking the time to post in this thread. The more information we gather the better, and eventually we can find a workaround or bring enough attention to it that someone who can pull strings will get in touch with Nvidia and/or Microsoft and get it addressed.
Click to expand...
Did you update your system since upgrading from XP to 10?

I will post my results for you sometime tonight on my low numbers.
 
We need a definitive guide, step by step, tweak by tweak and numbers, not go through 7 pages and see each post then try them all.
 
not to pressure anyone but it is needed, the sooner the better. making it visible isnt a problem, thats easy.
it doesnt have to be baked into an image, post setup(setupcomplete.cmd) or post 1st logon will be just as welcome.
being december i accept that people will be busy so january would be welcome.
 
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Hrm, I'm not sure why there's a time limit being put on it, as you can't force a solution when people don't know what the issue is. If mods want to close the thread for some reason, that's your perogative, but there's plenty of other threads on this forum that have more replies and are mostly banter without any focus on actually tweaking with NTLite.

I think this thread is good publicity for NTLite, because it's bringing in a lot of hits from Google, and this software absolutely helps with DPC, by slimming down the OS through integrating reg files, doing component removals, etcetera. This thread is also in the proper subforum (General), so I guess I don't see the problem.

We're trying to find a solution, but right now one doesn't exist anywhere on the internet, so we can't make anything definitive at this time. My custom OS helps lower the DPC spikes from ~800 to ~500 on my system, but it's not a definitive solution. That's just happening because it's lowering the amount of handles/threads which keeps the Nvidia driver from being tied up so long. Necrosaro may have found NTLite tweaks that reduce it even more, and perhaps by combining our efforts along with someone else's tweaks, we might come up with a definitive guide.
 
To reach this goal of a solution faster, I propose a template, that hopefully we can get people to try and fill out on future posts here, so we can figure out a workaround. Once we have one that can be replicated I'll update the original post, as well as adding a reply that links to that update too. Anyone interested in helping, please copy the template below and fill out the information.

TROUBLESHOOTING TEMPLATE
PC Type:
Operating System/Version:
Processor:
Graphics:
Driver Type:
Driver Version:
DPC Spikes:

EXAMPLE
PC Type: Desktop
Operating System/Version: Windows 10 64-bit 21H2
Processor: i5-3350P (Ivy Bridge)
Graphics: Gtx 670
Driver Type: Game Ready
Driver Version: 473.81
DPC Spikes: up to ~500 on custom OS, ~800 on default install

Note: If you do *NOT* have DPC spikes in LatencyMon, please also include:
- Screenshot of the "Main" tab, running for at least 5 minutes
- Screenshot of the "Drivers" tab so we can verify that nvlddmkm.sys is active
- OS tweaking information (registry files, NTLite removals, etcetera)
 
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Its not for me to specify a time limit, im saying no rush guys, january onwards would be nice :) and this must be one of the top issues for pc users.
 
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Here is my result after 5 minutes right after starting up. Also posting a picture of my driver's to verify.

Ntlite and other things needed will take a long time since I have done too many to count at this moment and not even sure if I could remember them all. Also overclocked on older hardware(10 years on some parts)

Amd 8350 (overclocked to 4.72)
Ddr3 Gskill 2133 ram(overclocked to 2449 and tight time)
Nvidia 1070(driver 516.94 cleaned with NVCleaninstall)
800 watt gold plus power supply
Asus Sabertooth 999fx v2 motherboard
Denon reciever connected with Lg C7 monitor
512g Samsung SSD SATA drive
16 terabyte external hard drive

For some reason my pictures are too big to upload and could only get one even when I compressed them. Was only able to upload one but hopefully you can get enough information from this
 

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