Nvidia Pulls New Drivers - Warning!

Copied and pasted, I've downgraded mine today:

05 Mar 2010 at 02:26:09 by Tom Hernandez

Several StarCraft II beta testers have reported their PC or video cards have died after installing the NVIDIA 196.75 drivers. The large amount of reports have prompted Blizzard Entertainment to issue an official statement on the tech support forums after identifying the source of the problem.

Some players were blaming the StarCraft II Beta client's latest patch, but a Blizzard Tech Support representative quickly explained the issue is caused by the latest NVIDIA 196.75 drivers.

Blizzard recommended to uninstall the NVIDIA 196.75 drivers, and to downgrade to the previous driver version: 196.21. Starcraft II Beta is not the only application affected, thus this is a worldwide alert to every gamer out there. Blizzard concluded the fans control in this NVIDIA driver is not working properly.

This means every single 3D application (i.e. games) running these drivers is going to be exposed to overheating and in some extreme cases it will cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. If said motherboard, processor or graphic card is not under warranty, some gamers are in serious trouble playing intensive games such as Prototype, World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis and many other games with realistic graphics.

Some EVGA enthusiasts have been able to manually change the GPU fans speed settings using the EVGA Precision Tool to run their fans at 77% speed to compensate.

Blizzard Tech Support representative Datth, posted the following alert to all gamers:

We're getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and revert back to the older ones.

More information can be found on NVIDIA forum threads such as this and this.

We reached NVIDIA tonight for an official statement concerning this worrysome issue, and they quickly replied within less than an hour. NVIDIA's response is:

We are aware that some customers have reported fan speed issues with the latest 196.75 WHQL drivers on NVIDIA.com. Until we can verify and root cause this issue, we recommend that customers stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers. Release 196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our Web site in the meantime.

i lol'd @v.196.75 http://www.pbbans.com/forums/bug-drivers-t107404.html/page__view__getlastpost > 186 already smelled of fried silicon

Benway, on Mar 5, 2010 - 10:17 AM, said:

I'm just happy the players are talking about this issue so quick. I really dont need any hardware meltdown as really its going to come out of my pocket in the end.

Edit: Yah, the iceberg may have been scraping several months back, but its nice to see rapid response once the leaks are springing all over.

Edited by Mashman, Mar 5, 2010 - 11:14 PM.

Mashman, on Mar 5, 2010 - 11:11 PM, said:

well I have had to install riva tuner since getting my GTX285oc and run fan speed at 80+%, there seems to be a error where the card dont change the speed of the fan with the heat of the GPU.............

dont get me wrong though heating up your G-card can be a good thing sometimes (I baked 3 broken 8800 g-cards in the oven for 7mins at 198c and they work now )

Dickymint, on Mar 6, 2010 - 08:28 PM, said:

LOL thats dry joints for you but a soldering iron & some solder would have done it better LOL anyway yes the new drivers are causing some fan issue for some not all but if you use a programe to implement fan controll you shouldnt have any issues but it might be better to revert back to 196.21 or use this http://www.evga.com/PRecision/default.asp & then you can overide your factory settings & fan settings & all will be good in the world of GPU land again

But Nvidia recommend a roll back to 196.21 (no need for the oven this time)

But my asus ENGTX295's top editions(quad sli/gpu) & my XFX9800GTX+ black ediotion(physX) are hot enough to cook on any way I have to sit in shorts & Tshirt when i play in my sauna.... sorry office at least my heating bill is coming down LOL

Edited by jimbouk1977, Mar 8, 2010 - 12:51 AM.

xX_Renegade_Xx, on Mar 5, 2010 - 10:10 AM, said:

I didn't load the new drivers thank god as I had heard from a friend not to...

5 month old thread