Are the current nvidia drivers unstable?

[MatheusM]

My computer is freezing in very predictable ways. Whenever I start or quit a game or emulator, or change certain desktop environment or window manager settings, the entire computer slows down to a halt; an effect which lasts for about 30 seconds.

In short, whenever I do something that seems graphics related, my computer locks up.

This simply does not happen with the open source nouveau drivers. I'd have no problems using it, especially since it does such a good job using my hardware to decode HD video, but the deal breaker is that it doesn't provide the performance I need for games yet.

I'm using Fedora 17, and I have the same issues in both GNOME 3 and KDE. My hardware and packages:

# nvidia GeForce 9400 GT
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G86 [GeForce 9400 GT] (rev a1)

# Proprietary nvidia drivers from RPM Fusion
akmod-nvidia.x86_64                      1:295.53-1.fc17.1
kmod-nvidia-3.4.0-1.fc17.x86_64.x86_64   1:295.53-1.fc17.3
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64               1:295.53-1.fc17
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64          1:295.53-1.fc17

# Kernel
kernel.x86_64                            3.4.0-1.fc17
kernel-devel.x86_64                      3.4.0-1.fc17
kernel-headers.x86_64                    3.4.0-1.fc17

This issue doesn't seem to be listed in the Common Fedora 17 bugs page, and I couldn't find any information in this forum that seems to be directly related to my problem. The kernel message buffer and the X server logs have no error messages. So, I ask:

Are these drivers unstable? Is anyone else having problems with them? Can anyone point me in the direction of a fix, if one is available?