Friday, March 5th 2010
![NVIDIA Forceware](https://tpucdn.com/images/news/forceware-v1734446766296.png)
GeForce 196.75 Drivers Overheat GPUs on Some Applications
NVIDIA's recently released GeForce 196.75 WHQL drivers are causing problems with some users reporting "intermittent low FPS", in the words of Blizzard's technical staff. It notes that the drivers have a bug in its fan-speed control that causes graphics cards to overheat when running applications such as Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Not only does bad fan control result in bad application performance, but can also damage the graphics accelerator. Blizzard on its part advised users to revert to older versions of the GeForce driver. Version 196.21 (older WHQL-signed driver) can be downloaded from here.
Update (3/5): NVIDIA has withdrawn the 196.75 WHQL drivers from its website. The company is working to resolve this issue.
Source:
inc gamers
Update (3/5): NVIDIA has withdrawn the 196.75 WHQL drivers from its website. The company is working to resolve this issue.
47 Comments on GeForce 196.75 Drivers Overheat GPUs on Some Applications
forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161391&st=100
And more threads there too. What I've read is 9800GT is the one most dead with melting plastic smell, 8800GTX too. 7950GTX to GTX280 reported to have problems.
Think I'll roll driver back too, even though my fan works, They'll have a new driver out soon, if it's something simple to fix, like the registry thing on that above thread.
So if you went with a custom cooler and it saved your card, money well spent :)
lol, just linked to same link from above post - edited so as not to be noobish. But my sympathies to those it's affected - it's not funny.
Condolences to those who've suffered :(
/wave BFG GTX285OCE I loved you...
I didn't even know about this because I'm still running 195.62;)
I flashed the OC'ed EVGA GTX 275 bios (713/1512/1260), can be found in the GPU-Database.
Note: I'm not responsible if u brick ur card. ;)
The bigger question I have is how did nVidia allow this driver to not only be released, but to be released as WHQL. A problem like this should have definitely been caught very quickly in testing...
The new cards from Nvidia are a completely new design and I would rather wait for release than see it be released with problematic drivers. That is most likely what we are waiting on due to the new architecture I would think. Nvidia cooling designs are almost always given more than enough cooling power lately(8 series through current gen). Ati has started to with 5-series designs too, which is great to see. I will say that the reference fan assembly on my 5870's are the same loudness I encountered with gtx295's which are louder than every other gtx 2xx I have owned. The average WOW player wouldn't know how to turn up the fan speed so Nvidia has to fix it in the driver.
don't know if msi will replace his card
it seems that anyone who installed the drivers and had a 8800GTX or a hot running card, these drivers were basically instant death once something 3D started but it seems this is only the case on nvidia's own pcb's
Warranty should replace burnt out cards, that is if they were stock and new enough to have it left. Different thing is will it? They might see driver as user inflicted damage.
Complete and utter failure from the programmers and testing teams.
After endless rebranding *whoever fault it is, doesn't matter* this, the driver that destroys video cards... This does not look good guys, get it together!
I was even holding off on buying a new card waiting for Nvidia to show something.....
And nothing, + this....
I lost 2 GT220s and a 9500GT that were running F@H, all under warranty thankfully.