[Driver Regression] Quadro K2200 – R570/R580 OpenGL driver uses POPCNT → Blender 3.6 crash (Maxwell, Win10 22H2)

Gaming and Visualization Technologies General Topics and Other SDKs Drivers - Linux, Windows, MacOS
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On NVIDIA Quadro K2200 (Maxwell GM107) with an Intel Xeon X3220 CPU (no POPCNT support), all R570.xx and R580.xx drivers crash immediately when launching Blender 3.6 LTS. The crash occurs inside nvoglv64.dll with EXCEPTION_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION at a popcnt instruction. This instruction is unsupported on my CPU, so the driver is executing an opcode the processor cannot handle.
R550.xx and R535.xx ODE drivers work normally, indicating the regression was introduced in R570 and persists into R580.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Clean install Windows 10 Pro 22H2 (Build 19045.6282).
  2. Install any R570.xx or R580.xx Quadro driver (DCH).
  3. Install Blender 3.6.23 LTS (Windows Release build 2025‑06‑17) from blender.org.
  4. Launch via: blender.exe --debug --verbose 3
  5. Observe crash before splash screen.

Here is the error, call stack, and disassembly in one image:

error_callstack_disassembly
error_callstack_disassembly1000×850 92.4 KB

Expected Result:
Blender launches normally and displays the splash screen.

Workarounds Tried:

  • --disable-gpu → crash persists
  • --factory-startup → crash persists
  • R580.xx and R570.xx → always crash
  • R550.xx and R535.xx ODE drivers → Blender launches successfully
  • Any drivers before the R580 and R570 works.

System Information:

  • GPU: NVIDIA QUADRO K2200 (GM107) Device ID: 10DE 13BA-10DE 1097
  • CPU: Intel Xeon X3220
  • RAM: 8GB
  • OS: Windows 10 Pro 22H2 (Build 19045.6282)
  • Driver: 572.16

Notes:
This appears to be a CPU feature detection bug in the OpenGL driver path for Maxwell GPUs (and probably others). The driver assumes POPCNT is available and executes it unconditionally, causing an immediate crash on pre‑SSE4.2 CPUs. Older branches (R550.xx and R535.xx) correctly avoid this path.
Request: Please restore proper CPU feature checks or fallback code paths so that OpenGL applications remain functional on supported GPUs paired with older CPUs. This would be important to fix ASAP before bug fixes and new features end in October this year so that it will still behave normally with future security updates. Drivers for this GPU/architecture worked before with this type of hardware, so compatibility should still remain with the upcoming last drivers. This issue has been reported in many other ways by other owners. Attention to this matter is much appreciated.

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This issue already happened earlier and NVIDIA had claimed to have fixed it with an MSVC update.

Via: PC may bugcheck when installing NVIDIA graphics driver version 555.85 through 565.90 on PCs using older CPUs that do not support SSE 4.2 instructions | NVIDIA

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I don’t believe this is the same issue. That mentions potentially crashing during install. The new drivers install fine. If this is the same type of issue, it might have been introduced in another area, in this case: nvoglv64.dll So while they may appear similar, this does not occur during installation. This happens during execution of apps that utilize opengl and the opcode for popcnt is encountered.

To reiterate what I am trying to say is, they fixed something involving popcnt for installation. I have no issue install drivers. The issue is apps using nvoglv64.dllnow crash for drivers after R550 i.e. R570 and R580