Nvidia Pulls Graphics Card-frying 196.75 Driver
Nvidia has pulled its 196.75 driver amid complaints that it's malfunctioning and frying graphics cards.
According to incgamers, several people have had their PC or video cards croak after installing the Nvidia 196.75 drivers. StarCraft II Beta players were the first to notice a problem and following complaints that it was something to do with the latest patch from Blizzard, Blizzard tech support explained that the problem is Nvidia's latest driver and Starcraft II Beta is not the only application affected
Blizzard says the problem has to do with the driver's fans control not working properly. This in turn causes the card to overheat and in some cases it can cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. Blizzard support has instructed all players to uninstall the driver immediately and use the older 196.21.
"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."
When contacted by incgamers, Nvidia said it was aware of the issue and that the drivers had been pulled until they can verify a root cause.
"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."
We'll keep you posted on this one. In the meantime, has anyone experienced this particular problem? Let us know in the comments below.
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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Reynod I have had enough problems with the 196.21 drivers thanks ... and I was thinking of rolling back another notch.Reply
Cheers -
howardp6 If it is truely a driver ussue, I hope the response for NVIDIA is better that theirs for the defective laptop GPUs, I have a HOP Laptop which is is a doorstop.Reply -
Tedders Looks like NVIDIA is taking a cue from ATI's past years when it comes to driver quality...Reply -
Mousemonkey ReplyWell, last night before installing Bad company 2 I thought I'd install nVidia's latest drivers. I had no problems with Bad Company 2 in beta, but last night, with the new drivers, my computer rebooted after just 2 hours of play. Guess I'll be doing some rollback.
Or use Rivatuner to manually turn the fan speed up. -
nforce4max Great a new and fantastic way to turn my sli box into a hog dog rotisserie oven....still using 191.7 :s at least my 8400gs can still do phsyx.Reply -
tinmann I had a problem with slow frame rates in Fallout 3 and didn't wait for someone to tell me there was a problem. I've been using EVGA precision tool and noticed right away my card was running hotter. I immediately rolled my driver back.Reply