NVIDIA Game Ready Driver 572.XX Allegedly Causing Major Issues for RTX 40 Series Users: Crashes, Blackscreens, and More!

NVIDIA’s latest wave of GPU drivers seems to be stirring up a storm of issues across their GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs, and even affecting some older models as well. What’s puzzling is that NVIDIA hasn’t yet come forward with a solid fix.

Reports Flood In About GPU Driver 572.XX Causing Havoc on RTX 40 Systems

Back at the start of the year, when the RTX 50 series hit the shelves, it seemed like NVIDIA had shifted its attention entirely towards their shiny new line-up, leaving the RTX 40 series somewhat neglected in the process. While the RTX 50 series certainly had its fair share of hiccups, such as those pesky BSODs, the RTX 40 series was cruising relatively smoothly with the older drivers. That all seemed to change, though, when NVIDIA rolled out its 572.XX drivers that ostensibly began causing a host of issues for RTX 40 users.

Redditor u/Soctty1992 chimes in with his tale of frustration regarding the 572.XX driver, reiterating a series of similar complaints voiced by many others. Common bugs reported include severe system crashes, unexpected black screens, and display malfunctions—issues that hadn’t been troubling users prior to the new drivers.

A post by the same Reddit user succinctly sums up the sentiment: "NVIDIA’s Black Screen or Hard OS Crash Issues on 4XXX (or older) Series Cards Need To Be Widely Known & Fixed."

Interestingly, those who switched back to the older 566.XX drivers, which predated the January 30th update intended for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, reportedly saw a return to stability. The new features accompanying the RTX 50 series, like DLSS 4, Multi-Frame Generation, and DLSS Override, haven’t consistently led to issues, but the interactions between these features and current drivers seem to warrant a closer look.

Some users share vivid accounts of their woes, with one mentioning that Cyberpunk 2077 would crash straight away on his RTX 4080 unless he reverted to the older driver. Another with an RTX 4090 highlighted persistent problems such as unresponsive screens and random freezes, which similarly disappeared after reverting to the previous drivers.

Frustratingly, NVIDIA appears to be dragging its feet, having seemingly brushed aside the mounting bug fix requests trickling in since January’s end. Although they eventually addressed the BSOD plague on RTX 50 systems, it took several weeks. Many RTX 40 users have had to begrudgingly revert to older drivers, losing out on the latest enhancements like DLSS 4’s new Transformer Model and updated Ray Reconstruction, not to mention the expanded DLSS-supported games library.