i'm somewhat confident this is more a software/driver issue, than a hardware issue.
in any case, i've already tried reverting to an older driver.
lemme ask this: if i uninstall the driver, i can still re-download from nvidia anytime i wish right? in other words, is there any danger to uninstalling? [obviously, some GPU-intensive stuff like games will be out of commission, but nothing permanent, of course?]
thanks for help, btw.