NVIDIA 621.01: your videos now come with intermissions

Call: Hold on GeForce 621.01 (Oct 21, the first R620 driver) unless you need its new game support. On Oct 23, NVIDIA staff on its forum logged the bug and asked for crash dumps. There’s no fix date. The release notes list no open issues.

What breaks: Video in Chrome, Edge and VLC freezes for a few seconds, or the screen goes black and comes back. Starting a game while a browser video plays can trigger it. Look for nvlddmkm Event ID 153 starting Oct 21, sometimes with LiveKernelEvent 141 or 117.

Who’s hit: Mostly RTX 5080 owners, some RTX 4090, and a lot of multi-monitor and 480Hz setups.

Workaround: Roll back to 617.42 (Oct 6), ideally with DDU for a clean install. The cost: you lose 621.01’s Game Ready support for Phantom Blade Zero (Oct 28) and Crimson Desert Enhanced (Oct 29). If you’re on 480Hz, users report that dropping to 360Hz stops the dropouts on 621.01.

I haven’t read NVIDIA’s forum thread directly. The acknowledgment comes from the three write-ups below.

Sources: BottleneckPC, Joho no Todai, VGTimes.