Hey
Recently upgraded my computer from a Asus 980 Strix to first a EVGA 1080 FTW (RMA due to black screen 100% fan defect) and replaced it with a MSI 1080 Gaming Z. At the same time I got a PG279Q monitor, at first I thought all my issues were due to the faulty EVGA card but now I'm not so sure anymore since they are still happening on the MSI. I didn't have a single issue with my setup for over a year using the 980 Strix and 3x Dell 60Hz IPS monitors which is now 2x Dell and the PG279Q.
The crashes are plain and simply weird and usually happen while I switch graphics options or display mode (fullscreen, borderless). Far Cry Primal was very repeatable and I could crash it within 5 minutes of starting it by just going back and forth to the options menu to switch the graphic options preset level. Usually I didn't even load into the game! Yesterday I managed to crash Dishonored 2 beta 1.2 by switching from borderless to fullscreen without having loaded into the game.
The common factor in all my crashes is this, G-Sync and a Firefox/Chrome (HW or no HW acceleration) playing a video or stream on my secondary monitors. By shutting down all browsers or turning off G-Sync so the LED goes white I stop the crashing. Played Far Cry Primal for 2 hours with either alternative without a crash, turning both alternatives on, crash!.
I've managed to finish Titanfall 2, Dishonored 2, DOOM and some other games by either keeping my secondary monitors off or just keeping browsers with video playback off them. All benchmarks also never crash, I even tried a full night of Heaven.
Another strange thing is that the framerate goes haywire after these crashes for a while, in Far Cry Primal the menus go to 3k+ FPS even though V-Sync is enabled and trying to run Heaven Unigine results in 30 fps stutterfest. The GPU however does clock up so that's not the problem and either disabling G-Sync or strangely enough right clicking the desktop fixes the FPS situation.
My monitor as others also has the firmware issue so I'm kind of wondering if there's any other issues out there that might get fixed by a update because if it wasn't for this crashing issue with G-Sync the monitor would be pretty much perfect since I barely have any BLB and 0 'found' dead pixels.
TL;DR Nvidia drivers crash if G-Sync is enabled while a browser is playing a video on a second monitor.
EDIT: Just to confirm here's a picture of that firmware thing I just took since it decided to appear, this is not the worst thing ever though since the monitor turns off and on very quickly
http://i.imgur.com/CUMScMo.jpgI also noticed that my monitor drivers might have been corrupted, Windows and Nvidia were reporting them correctly however Dishonored 2 was saying it was PnP device, I reinstalled them and now it's saying the correct monitor name.
Trying to get my crashes to happen right now but I'm not getting them, and I'm uncertain if the LED on the monitor has been flicking between red and white this much before. If a issue like this can be caused by monitor drivers then wow....
EDIT2: Nope still crashed in less than hour, so it's not the drivers. Strange that it survived this long though.