Tech - October 2026 Nvidia Driver issue reported

[SGM]

NVIDIA's latest Game Ready Driver (version 621.01), released on October 21, 2026, has several confirmed bugs. It marks the debut of NVIDIA's new R620 driver branch and has introduced stability issues across different setups. [1, 2]


The primary reported problems include:

Video Playback Freezes & Black Screens
An official bug report has been filed by NVIDIA regarding system freezes and temporary black screens during video playback. [1, 2]

• The Trigger: Watching videos using Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or VLC Media Player.
• The Behavior: The display may freeze entirely or cut to a black screen for a few seconds before recovering. This is frequently triggered when launching a game while a browser video is active in the background.
• Affected Cards: Heavily reported by RTX 5080 and RTX 4090 users, frequently resulting in nvlddmkm Event ID 153 crashes and GPU timeout errors.

HDMI Detection Issues: Users have reported HDMI display detection failures, specifically on the RTX 5070 Ti, where the card completely fails to recognize secondary or primary displays over HDMI.

Stuttering with Frame Generation & V-Sync
Users across the official forums are reporting heavy microstuttering when attempting to use DLSS Frame Generation concurrently with Global V-Sync settings

How to Fix It
Because NVIDIA is still collecting crash logs and has not yet deployed a hotfix, the community consensus is to roll back to the previous stable release

 

[SGM]

Update!

Key Details of the Hotfix (Version 621.12)

• • Video Playback Fixes: Resolves issues where videos freeze or cause temporary black screens in browsers (Chrome, Edge) or media players like VLC on GeForce RTX 50 Series and RTX Spark systems. [1, 2]
  • Other Additions: Addresses an Unreal Engine 5.8 crash, display corruption with a specific adapter, and screen flickering on the MSI N16 Flip. [1]
  • Availability: Users can download the optional update directly via the NVIDIA Support Hotfix Page.
  • 
    NVIDIA notes that waiting for the next full WHQL-certified driver remains the safest standard route if you do not urgently need the hotfix.

 

[Redbot]

first time i update in a year and it's a buggy one

 

[SGM]

first time i update in a year and it's a buggy one

I was messing with turning off all of my frame limitations, I thought I broke EQ, then the screens started turning black....

 

[TempusX]

I was messing with turning off all of my frame limitations, I thought I broke EQ, then the screens started turning black....

It's been an issue for a month or two now for me. Tried various drivers and if anything I'd need to roll back 3+ months of drivers for it to stop happening. Each time it happens, both screen black out for a bit, and when they come back every EQ client is blacked out, unless I tab out. the only solution was a full reboot -or- a clean driver re-install. Initially I had tried to camp all clients and close MQ (although MQ would crash with an IMGUI cpp error popup).

It was and is very difficult to reproduce and very annoying, so I hope it gets fixed sooner rather than later. For me, it's happening on a 4070 card under Win10. I had thought it was something buggy in either an IMGUI overlay or the eqlogparser overlay, but being unable to find users with other reporting on it made me question that.

 

[SGM]

It's been an issue for a month or two now for me. Tried various drivers and if anything I'd need to roll back 3+ months of drivers for it to stop happening. Each time it happens, both screen black out for a bit, and when they come back every EQ client is blacked out, unless I tab out. the only solution was a full reboot -or- a clean driver re-install. Initially I had tried to camp all clients and close MQ (although MQ would crash with an IMGUI cpp error popup).

It was and is very difficult to reproduce and very annoying, so I hope it gets fixed sooner rather than later. For me, it's happening on a 4070 card under Win10. I had thought it was something buggy in either an IMGUI overlay or the eqlogparser overlay, but being unable to find users with other reporting on it made me question that.

Hopefully their fix solves all of that for you!