GTX 970 problems - black screens, stuttering, and flashing screen

src1425

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Mar 3, 2009
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So I upgraded to an MSI GTX 970 100ME for Witcher 3. Everything worked great for a couple of hours until I started getting black screens with the "NVidia display driver stopped working and recovered" error, both in the game and just in Windows. I tried various fixes, including:

Malware scan with MAM
Setting NVidia power management mode to "prefer maximum performance"
Increasing timeout detection and recovery in the registry

While the black screens disappeared, they were replaced by frequent stuttering. I rolled back my drivers from 353.30 to 347.25 and now I get frequent bright flashes in the game, almost like a lightning flash even though the weather is clear.

My GPU and CPU temps don't go higher than 60, and my FPS is usually around 60. My specs are:

i5 2500k oc'ed @ 4.2
Seasonic x750 Gold
8 MB RAM
Win 7 Pro 64

Any suggestions would be much appreciated! I had none of these problems with my Radeon 7850, just couldn't run the settings as high as I wanted.
 
Solution
I know you wont want to hear it but it sounds like a faulty GPU. i had a 280x ages ago that had similar flashing and green bars etc over screen and it turned out to be an issue with the VRAM and was a dead card, the steps youve done are correct and 347.25 is a solid driver so its not a driver issue i think its just a faulty card

Fullmetalalkami

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May 1, 2014
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I know you wont want to hear it but it sounds like a faulty GPU. i had a 280x ages ago that had similar flashing and green bars etc over screen and it turned out to be an issue with the VRAM and was a dead card, the steps youve done are correct and 347.25 is a solid driver so its not a driver issue i think its just a faulty card
 
Solution

src1425

Distinguished
Mar 3, 2009
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Update: after using DDU to do a clean install of the 352.86 drivers I've been problem-free for a couple of hours. FPS on Witcher 3 is between 70 and 90 with most settings on Ultra and Hairworks turned off. Will update if problems pop up again. (Thanks for the response, FMK! Keeping my fingers crossed!)