Graphic Cards Beware of NVIDIA 196.75 Driver update

gaganjain

gaganjain

Adept
NVIDIA 196.75 kills video cards
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.
More here

Guess nvidia fans can't say ati's drivers are bad anymore
 
This is scary stuff, its a good thing I dont jump onto the driver upgrade bandwagon, unless absolutely required...
 
TheNightwing said:
Read the message on the top left side.:)

Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers
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oookk thanks for making me clear:) but its really very good that nvidia has made a alert on for that version ON ITS DOWNLOADING FRONT PAGE i.e left side. i have never seen this kind of alert on ATI web regarding there driver and nvidia has also removed it temporarily . any ways don't worry beta version will be there soon in 2-3 days or the WHQL version will be fixed.:) Now a day NVIDIA is having issue with there driver may be they are busy with Fermi that's why they are not able to concentrate on there driver......LOL
 
Gosh ... i was just a step away from possible ruining of my card..!!! This is close enough for me to consider updating drivers only after a considerable time has been spent after its release date..
 
ranjan2001 said:
OMG I am using NVIDIA 196.75 Driver updated 2 days ago what should I do, I don't game at all, is the danger still there?
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196.75 main issue is with Fan. Look if your GPU fan is running at it required speed as per temp and also have a look on GPU core Temp. But i will suggest you to roll back to 196.21 WHQL. Why to take risk.
 
ranjan2001 said:
OMG I am using NVIDIA 196.75 Driver updated 2 days ago what should I do, I don't game at all, is the danger still there?
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I suggest you downgrade to 196.21

@ Edit

Windows XP: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_196.21_whql.html

Windows XP 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_196.21_whql.html

Windows Vista/7 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_196.21_whql.html

Windows Vista/7 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_196.21_whql.html
 
I updated a couple of days ago. GPU temperatures are fine, so is the fan speed... but i havent gamed at all in the past week. But i am gonna uninstall it anyway... too spooked to continue.:crazy:
 
Argh, can anyone upload those faulty drivers? These should be useful to kill my card just before my warranty period ends.
 
damn said:
Argh, can anyone upload those faulty drivers? These should be useful to kill my card just before my warranty period ends.
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For which OS you want?
But be careful while killing card before warranty ends:cool2: as you may get burning sign or flow of thermal paste sign after killing the card with this driver as this versions main issue is with Fan. I will say don't ever try this or you may be joking. Rest your choose.;)
 
Marine said:
i have never seen this kind of alert on ATI web regarding there driver and nvidia has also removed it temporarily .
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dont want to start a fanboy war, but afaik, I dont think ATI has ever released a driver which actually kills the graphic card. So I dont see why ATI need to put up such a warning.

As crappy as ATI's drivers are, THIS is a new low.
 
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