Severe FPS Issues in Source games with NVIDIA Drivers

Adrian Brony · 05-06-2012, 03:05 PM

Alright, so in over four years of playing TF2, I have never had FPS issues. But lately I've been getting some bluescreens with the 0x0124 stop message, and I read that it means its because of the drivers.

First off, I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 on Windows Vista (32bit), and I saw there was a new driver available. I installed the driver (296.1) (just the driver, no 3D or PhysX crap) and the bluescreens seemed to go away.

That was last night. I get on today and immediately notice that I have severe FPS issues on Source games now. I used to get 45-90 depending if I was in a large battle or not, now I get 10-30. I'm almost certain the driver is at fault.

So I rollback the driver, thinking I'd prefer a blue screen once a day instead of not being able to play the game at all. To my dismay I saw the problem persisted. I tried a fresh reinstall of the new driver, basically removing everything that was there and then installing the new one again, the issue is still happening.

Lowering the settings on TF2 hasn't helped, I've always been able to run it on high settings. No processes are taking up that much CPU either. I have tried one older driver (295.51), I may try an even older one later. I don't remember which one I had, unfortunately.

I've heard NVIDIA cards aren't really the best for Source games, but I've never had any problems with them until now. Is that true? I'm stuck with this card for awhile.

+Rep to any help.

schnitzeljaeger · 05-06-2012, 03:20 PM

Did you check your GPU's temperatures? Maybe it's overheating and reducing its clocks...

05-06-2012, 03:05 PM	#1
Adrian Brony Join Date: Mar 2012 Reputation: 21 Posts: 71	Severe FPS Issues in Source games with NVIDIA Drivers Alright, so in over four years of playing TF2, I have never had FPS issues. But lately I've been getting some bluescreens with the 0x0124 stop message, and I read that it means its because of the drivers. First off, I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 on Windows Vista (32bit), and I saw there was a new driver available. I installed the driver (296.1) (just the driver, no 3D or PhysX crap) and the bluescreens seemed to go away. That was last night. I get on today and immediately notice that I have severe FPS issues on Source games now. I used to get 45-90 depending if I was in a large battle or not, now I get 10-30. I'm almost certain the driver is at fault. So I rollback the driver, thinking I'd prefer a blue screen once a day instead of not being able to play the game at all. To my dismay I saw the problem persisted. I tried a fresh reinstall of the new driver, basically removing everything that was there and then installing the new one again, the issue is still happening. Lowering the settings on TF2 hasn't helped, I've always been able to run it on high settings. No processes are taking up that much CPU either. I have tried one older driver (295.51), I may try an even older one later. I don't remember which one I had, unfortunately. I've heard NVIDIA cards aren't really the best for Source games, but I've never had any problems with them until now. Is that true? I'm stuck with this card for awhile. +Rep to any help.

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05-06-2012, 03:20 PM	#2
schnitzeljaeger Join Date: Dec 2009 Reputation: 193 Posts: 1,727	Did you check your GPU's temperatures? Maybe it's overheating and reducing its clocks...