Assassin's Creed III crashes when run on the NVIDIA GPU

Question

I have a Lenovo Z470 notebook with these specs:

• Windows 10 64-bit Version 1511 (OS Build 10586.164)
• Intel Core i5-2450M @ 2.50GHz (Sandy Bridge)
• 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M with Optimus Technology
• 8GB RAM
• 465GB Seagate ST9500325AS (SATA)
• Hard disk has C:\ and D:\ partitions. Steam games are in D:\Games
• Steam and Uplay are of the latest version.

I've just started this game (15% in) and I've had so much trouble getting it working consistently. It almost always crashes at the beginning of a sequence or a mission during the cutscenes. I've googled much about this and have tried the following:

1. Turn of anisotropic filtering (resolved the crashing until the next sequence).
2. Reinstalled manually the included DirectX and VCRedist.
3. Verified the game cache several times (purchased this on Steam).
4. Downgraded the NVIDIA driver version to 362 (resolved the crashing on another sequence).
5. Decreased the GPU Core clock by 50MHz using MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision 16.
6. Upgraded the NVIDIA driver to the latest version, 364.51.
7. Uninstalled all NVIDIA drivers and apps using Display Driver Uninstaller, and then reinstalled the 364.51 driver again.
8. Disabled all in-game overlays.

I don't know what else to do. I installed this on my work laptop with AMD graphics and I haven't had an issue with the game crashing. The game crashes without any error messages. But I found this in the Event Viewer:

Faulting application name: AC3SP.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5155b7ef
Faulting module name: d3d11.dll, version: 10.0.10586.122, time stamp: 0x56cc01ef
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0005e681
Faulting process id: 0xf88
Faulting application start time: 0x01d185b0f606a847
Faulting application path: D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Assassin's Creed 3\AC3SP.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\d3d11.dll
Report Id: ae746aed-0c8c-4dd3-9cfc-680ecf147ad6
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Just last night I found out that when I switch to using the integrated graphics (Intel HD 3000), the game doesn't crash. I was able to play a bit, then I switched to the NVIDIA GPU after passing the cutscene where the game consistently crashed. I was able to play afterwards but come another cutscene and the game crashes again. Please help me, as I already ran out of ideas. Thank you.

Answer 1

I wouldn't use the 364 driver series at all.

Revert to 362.00. The 364 driver series is fraught with issues, and the latest revision (364.72) is known to brick video cards altogether (see also Graphical glitches under Windows 10 with up-to-date NVIDIA drivers).

AC3 runs flawlessly on my machine using 361.43.