There are also widespread issues with any driver released after 446.14 and VR applications. In effect, some are reporting any driver since 451.48 included are causing stuttering and lag spikes. I personally believe the issue is rooted way lower in the system into the new HAGS feature + wddm 2.7 introduced with Win10 2004.
NVidia is aware but only recently and this might have to wait a driver in 2021 for a solution. Last week during the HP Reverb G2 AMA on Reddit:
NB: It seems you can mitigate a certain number of âspikesâ problems in deactivating all background apps which are âmonitoringâ hardware events/state (MSI Afterburner, RGB software, etcâŠ)
Still no joy with NVidia Surround on my RTX 2060 Super and 460.79.
I give each new release a try, more in hope than optimism, to see if NVidia Surround will work but each time the NVidia control panel crashes as soon as Surround is enabled. The Windows crash logs are not very informative and the threads in NVidia forums give the impression that NVidia have abandoned this feature.
Fortunately I can always go back to 456.55 where it all works OK.
I am sure that I canât be the only one in the world using NVidia Surround as I see no other reports in the msfs forums of this but for the life of me I canât figure out what in my system is causing it.
In the meantime I will continue using 456.55 until propper multi monitor support is rolled out and I can consign Surround to history. Or perhaps that may be a whole new can of worms?
I donât use Nvidia Surround but this driver version is a mess. Even scrolling through a webpage feels like an old Windows 95 pc with a pentium.
I will reinstall my lastet 457. version.
For anyone wanting to try/experiment with stripped down Nvidia drivers, they exist and can be found here on Guru3D âŠ
A cleaned RTX version is available too. All have bloatware removed. I have just installed 460-79 and I donât have the numerous Nvidia threads running in the background now, hopefully less is more!. I have been struggling with simulator stuttering recently, something that has become worse with either driver updates or game updates. I rolled back to an earlier driver with no joy. One can download a driver cleaning tool and do the job yourself if you wish too.
I am confident these drivers are safe, scan them with your AV and set a restore point in Windows if you are unsure.
This is what I usually do before asking questions indeed, especially since spending 5 minutes searching online is often faster too. Nevertheless in this case, I didnât find what was left out, only what was left in, except what is visible in this post noticeably:
Hello Captain! I am sorry I did not have much time earlier with you, I have been wanting to get back here to write to you. Unfortunately I never recorded or took screen-shots of all the running processes on my computer relating to the Nvidia driver, (there is normally quite a few from what I recall). If I had anticipated your question, I would have done this for you. I have the âtrimmedâ down driver version installed. Assuming you have an official Nvidia driver, check the running Nvidia processes using your computer task manager, (Windows). There are only two Nvidia processes running in the background NOW and they are NvContainer while using the trimmed down driver. I am trying these drivers because I have a significant stuttering problem that has crept into my simulator from somewhere.
The driver trimming tool is available from the Guru3D website, if you need detailed information about itâs use and what it hopes to achieve, there is probably instructions that come with it. For me itâs very simple, I am hoping fewer Nvidia processes running in the background would equal fewer stutters. I have not had the chance to put this theory to the test, Iâm just clutching at straws. Take care. BRGDS. Charles
Thank you for the follow up. I should have been more precise as well. I know about the âtrimming toolâ (as a matter of fact Iâve just discovered this topic over there a few days ago!). However what was puzzling me was the qualification âbloatwareâ which led me to believing there would be something else than just âNVidiaâ installed alongside the driver and I was wondering then what could this be?!!?
Having said this, the stuttering problem is present in any driver past 446.14 which is the last version before HAGS and Win2004. Iâve very good results with 457.30 and FS2020 with regard to the NVidia induced stuttering. However the main stuttering source in FS2020 is not the driver but the Coherant GT and the way theyâre refreshing the gauges:
(copied from a post you might not have access to)
Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate is the main source of stutters
HAGS is killing VR with NVidia 457.30 and SteamVR 1.14.15.
Yes, I realised using the term âbloatwareâ was probably a bit confusing, I picked it up from their forum and the main thread title relating to the âtrimmed driversâ. I should have said Nvidia background processes as this would have probably been more specific. Thank you for the extra information and informed insight. I have seen a reference to HAGS before but have not followed this up yet. I am using a i7-2600K overclocked to 4.2GZ and a GTX 1070, itâs worked surprisingly well at 1080P until recently. I now have to turn off one side of the glass cockpit in the A320 to get 33FPS at high simulator settings. I have âGame Modeâ disabled and have right clicked the properties of the MSFS.exe, (executable) to set turn off âfull screen optimisationsâ and made a change to the DPI setting as suggested in many of these forums. I am not sure if this really helps though? I will try my instrument refresh rate set at high, it sounds counter-intuitive to me at first and so it has never occurred for me to try that.
Take care and keep safe. BRGDS. Charles
Ah ha! HAGS was turned on! I will let you know tomorrow if this has helped reduce my stuttering. If it has , I will have to give you a big virtual hug!
NB: âMy 4K Settingsâ is recommending HAGS ON and Gauges Refresh MEDIUM, however, it is because of more recent discovery Iâm starting to recommend HAGS OFF, Game Mode OFF and Gauge Refresh HIGH but youâll have to wait until Dec. 22 for more.
Wow, there is quite a bit here to read! I will take a look at this tomorrow, thank you for what you are doing to help! Time for bed now. Yours aye. Charles
Looking through the installation files/folders, it looks like [nodejs] and [PPC] folders arenât necessary. Deleted these two folders and installed. So far so good.
These people are messing around with drivers using trial-and-error. And what testing was done before publishing? Sound like when the âupdatedâ driver is installed and doesnât immediately crash, it passes QA testing.
Hi Pacific. I am not sure there will be any QA testing because they are already release candidate drivers from Nvidia but presumably, literally stripped to the âcoreâ. I donât think itâs trial-and-error, at least I hope not because Guru3D appears to be a well respected and trusted website with a great following. Would they risk a trial-and-error approach to this type of software distribution? This is the first time that I have used one of these modified drivers, obviously there are what appears now to be unnecessary background processes running with the official driver, as to weather not having them improves performance or does something else beneficial, is unclear to me. This information should be easy to find and kept with their download link on the website. If itâs there, itâs not obvious. Charles
My biggest concern is, although highly unlikely, if these cleaned up drivers from Guru3D or anyone else somehow caused hardware problems, would NVIDIA honor warranty replacement? My video card was expensive and it has already been replaced once by NVIDIA. I wouldnât want to get into a â â â â â â â match between NVIDIA and any other company over a warranty dispute. After warranty expiration, Iâll be much more open to drivers modified by other companies. This is just my personal opinion FWIW.
Yes, thatâs a good point!
I would not like to put it to the test. I think it would be difficult to damage a GPU with drivers though. Fortunately there is built in thermal hardware protection from the effects of bad overclocking with most, if not all modern GPUâs. With the cost of GPUâs being so astronomically high, itâs wise to be cautious. Charles
Well I did a lot of testing this morning to try and work out whatâs different in my system that would cause the major stuttering issue which started when I installed the 460 series drivers.
I restart the PC between every set of tests.
I installed 460.79 and the stuttering starts right from the loading screens. Rolled back to 460.51 no stuttering
I installed 460.89 and again the stuttering starts right from the loading screens. Rolled back to 460.51 no stuttering.
Installed 460.89 and disabled everything in the background (RGB, NVIDIA Control Panel, ICue etc). Still stutters.
Turned off GSYNC. Rebooted PC and guess what! No stutters.
My Acer 4K monitors are natively Freesync but are supposed to be compatible with GSync. They have worked perfectly with NVIDIA drivers up to 457.51 with GSync turned on however it appears there is an incompatibility introduced from 460.79 onwards
Why oh why canât AMD and NVIDIA get their act together over sync compatibility!
⊠Iâam so lucky that I leave these horror windows 2004 release behind me 
Only 417Mb zipped.
I will take a look at this tomorrow, thank you for what you are doing to help! Time for bed now. Yours aye. Charles