http://starcraft.incgamers.com/blog...rivers-starcraft-ii-beta-rip-pc-graphic-cards

Rofl I cant believe this


Official Nvidia PR response:

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.

Click to expand...

Oh dear.

NV that desperate to get peps to purchase fermi...

/me wonders where all the nvidia fanboys who say ati have bad drivers have gone... probably don't have a card to boot with now

all jokes aside, this is pretty poor :O

Gotta love non techies

Well, I didn't personally custom build it. I can't find the PCI or AGP slots, I'll bet their on the insides of my comp. I looked through one of the openings and saw the word Intel, maybe that's important. I guess it doesn't matter what driver I'm using because I have no recollection of installing NVIDIA WHQL 196.75 unless it's an automatic update or something. I think I'm safe. Thanks anyway Medievaldragon.

Click to expand...

I've commented a few times about this in various threads. I've owned three cards now that have had the fan stop working properly after a driver update. Sometimes the fan will be 100% off, sometimes 100% on, and sometimes lets the temp get too high. I'm confident Nvidia do this on purpose to make you upgrade.

The workaround is to use RivaTuner to setup a custom fan profile. It also means you can set a lower threshold to keep your card much cooler than the nvidia driver normally would.

This might be intentional, break the cards and buy Fermi, new method of marketing.

"Card just randomly failed? Buy a Fermi!"

Boo!!! Just installed these in anticipation of BBCII last night. Grr!!!

Oh well, thanks for the info.

This is not surprising to me. There have been far too many "My 8800GT has fried itself, need a suggestion for a new videocard" threads on here for it to be a coincidence.
The purpose of a driver update is to squeeze out more perfromance from an aging videocard. But at what cost?

If anything, this trend of card failiures will help ATI sell more 5000 series cards IMO.

Fanboy comments aside..

This is terrible news

d_brennen said:

Gotta love non techies

Click to expand...

Wow. Just wow

Though, just upgraded the others half's computer last night.

Got text saying computer had crashed while away from computer. So I ask, if it was a blue screen, or if there were any errors.

Them - no, was just a black screen.

Me - Umm, are you sure it didn't just go into standby?

Them - What's that?

Me - Sigh, Never mind. Just try pressing the escape key if that happens again.

saying that i noticed that one of my games i played on monday Killing floor the FPS was shocking, normally the gameplay would be great, so i updated the drivers and hey prendo the gameplay was back to normal.

i can't see how Nnvidia would make drivers to make your gpu fail, is there any law/liability on nvidia for doing so if that was the case.

Nvidia released a driver that screws up the most played game in history and kills PC's.... death-wish?

dave1983 said:

i can't see how Nnvidia would make drivers to make your gpu fail, is there any law/liability on nvidia for doing so if that was the case.

Click to expand...

I smell a lawsuit.

Ouch, I heard about this earlier, I wonder if nVidia will take one on the chin and replace cards they fried due to the driver update.

How could this have gotten out of QA?

I commented about this in the 196.75 thread since my idle temps were showing as 71C and furmark raised them to 104C in like 1 minute. I'm not sure what the problem is since the fan was still working and still ramping up in speed as temps rise (fan was at 72% by the time it reach 104C and was getting very noisy). Is it reporting the wrong temps or overvolting cards?

Went back to 196.34 betas and problem has gone =]

Hairybudda said:

Ouch, I heard about this earlier, I wonder if nVidia will take one on the chin and replace cards they fried due to the driver update.

How could this have gotten out of QA?

Click to expand...

This will hurt them big style. And how many people who have downloaded the new drivers don't realise that they have been pulled and should go back to the old ones.

I think Nvidia ought to be advertising everywhere it can to say they are recalling the drivers.

Equally they should stand for replacement cards for any out of warranty which overheated and died. I suspect in the States they will.

It's not as though they were "beta, use at your own risk"

As for passing QA, since it doesn't affect every card, I would imagine that all the numerous cards they tested it didn't show up this problem as no way would they have released the driver.

It's like tossing a coin 20 times and getting heads everytime. It can happen.

stooeh said:

I'm not sure what the problem is since the fan was still working and still ramping up in speed as temps rise (fan was at 72% by the time it reach 104C and was getting very noisy). Is it reporting the wrong temps or overvolting cards?

=]

Click to expand...

Reading up I think that although the fan sensor may well be showing 72% in your monitoring software, its not going at that speed.

Plenty of people have reported setting their fans to 100% and the card still overheats.

I'm sure we will know more soon though and this is all speculation as to what's causing it.

Greebo said:

Reading up I think that although the fan sensor may well be showing 72% in your monitoring software, its not going at that speed.

Plenty of people have reported setting their fans to 100% and the card still overheats.

I'm sure we will know more soon though and this is all speculation as to what's causing it.

Click to expand...

Well the fan noise was much louder than normal which is why I assumed fan speed was correct.

To play devil's advocate here - it's not just the fault of Nvidia. These drivers are WHQL'ed. Microsoft have a QA system to ensure that it's safe to install drivers on your PC: these guys have again messed up. How many times have you installed drivers that are faulty that have the WHQL label on? I'll bet quite a few.