Beware of new NVIDIA driver, it might burn your card

[CryptiK]

Massive fail from Nvidia. Always a bad sign when customers immediately identify driver problems when Nvidia are supposed to have thoroughly tested them before release.

[Coldon]

its weird how its mainly the SC2 players are affected? I've got these drivers installed on an 8800gtx and a gtx260 and have had no problems with fan speeds, been playing bc2 all weekend...

Every news report about this goes back to the sc2 beta reports, its weird why there havent been other reports regarding this from other sources... Nvidia will pull the driver just due to the bad press, so its not an admission of guilt, if there is nothing wrong then chance are we'll have the 196.76 drivers in a day or two

[THOMO]

Massive fail from Nvidia. Always a bad sign when customers immediately identify driver problems when Nvidia are supposed to have thoroughly tested them before release.

yeah, so it really makes you wonder if there's really an issue. I (and many others) have used this driver for a week or so and have had no issues whatsoever.

This driver was out for almost a week before whql and a week since, and I don't believe nvidia would've overlooked this problem. No-one mentioned it in beta. Now all of a sudden, a site mentions "buggy fan" and everyone says "you know, I thought there was something odd"......pfffffft.

Show me a page at nvidia where "NVIDIA" state this is an issue and I might consider it valid.

In the meantime BC2 is the dogs bollox

[Piotrsama]

its weird how its mainly the SC2 players are affected? I've got these drivers installed on an 8800gtx and a gtx260 and have had no problems with fan speeds, been playing bc2 all weekend...

Blizzard people/testers were the first to detect the problem, it affected a lot of people doing other stuff, even in this very thread.

yeah, so it really makes you wonder if there's really an issue. I (and many others) have used this driver for a week or so and have had no issues whatsoever.

This driver was out for almost a week before whql and a week since, and I don't believe nvidia would've overlooked this problem. No-one mentioned it in beta. Now all of a sudden, a site mentions "buggy fan" and everyone says "you know, I thought there was something odd"......pfffffft.

Show me a page at nvidia where "NVIDIA" state this is an issue and I might consider it valid.

In the meantime BC2 is the dogs bollox

Your logic is very flawed, just because you don't have problems means it's a non issue?

You want Nvidia to post on their official page: "Our drivers killed graphic cards"?? Not gonna happen.

But this is close enough.


And this:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?a...nce&f=33&id=22

Notice: GeForce Driver 196.75 has been removed

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 website.

Or just go to the official forums and see what a mess that is:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=33

[xXlAinXx]

Blizzard people/testers were the first to detect the problem, it affected a lot of people doing other stuff, even in this very thread.



Your logic is very flawed, just because you don't have problems means it's a non issue?

The whole story sound like a bad flash mob done by an inner circle kids.
You know, the whole problem come by the render method utilized by the SO guy's for they're census tool at Acti-Blizzard home.

[Behemot]

Actually I am surprised how little is number of people here using non-stock cooler. Is this still Xtremesystems forum??

[Sentential]

Massive fail from Nvidia. Always a bad sign when customers immediately identify driver problems when Nvidia are supposed to have thoroughly tested them before release.

I find it so funny how Murphy's law always finds me; here's my quote prior to this knowledge:

These have to be single handidly the WORST sack of drivers I have EVER used. Constant bsods, msi afterburner causes instant lockups with drivers and I have yet to get SLI to work without a hardlock.

Also dedicated physx is broken and does not appear to work anymore with this package. I am in the process of rolling them back as we speak if I can get this computer to remain responsive long enough to do so. If you are using windows 7 64bit STAY AWAY

Anyone wanna guess why MSI afterburner was locking up? (had a custom fan profile) or why I kept getting blue screens? I KNEW these drivers were FUBAR; I just KNEW it So help me god Fermi has better be the second coming that they make it out to be or you can bet your ass I will have a Hecatoncheres come September.

[TurboDiv]

@THOMO

I'm sorry but i really had overheating issues with these drivers in BC2 and mind you, stock clocks for the video card ! Ever since I moved to 196.34 everything runs smooth as silk and I am even overclocking the card. Only thing left is to call me a liar now...

[RejZoR]

It's a common misconception that WHQL means that everything has to work right. WHQL only means the main driver connections work perfectly with the OS they are intended for. And that it works right with DirectX. It doesn't mean anything else really.

[zeroibis]

Maybe it is not the driver teams fault. They just were all using liquid cooled rigs and could not notice that the fans did not work. Or maybe they wanted it to run hotter for a new ad campaign:
NVIDIA the way it is meant to be played,
burning silicon so hard its on FIRE!

[THOMO]

Maybe it is not the driver teams fault. They just were all using liquid cooled rigs and could not notice that the fans did not work. Or maybe they wanted it to run hotter for a new ad campaign:
NVIDIA the way it is meant to be played,
burning silicon so hard its on FIRE!

This is my point, no-one noticed the fan issues with this driver for a week or more in beta, nor the first few days of whql. Release it to a bunch of guys who get 20-30fps in BC2 with their GTX295's and all of a sudden their cards overheat

I wonder where the problem lies?

[Andrew LB]

This driver issue is exactly why I manually set fan speeds for gaming.


It will be interesting to find out how many cards were actually damaged due to this driver issue rather than from overclocking the heck out of them. This is a perfect opportunity for dishonest people to claim their overclocked-to-death cards were a casualty due to this problem.

[Andrew LB]

I wonder where the problem lies?

I have a feeling that 'user error' will play a big role the majority of people claiming the drivers killed their cards.

[Coldon]

well as someone who has tried to kill a 8800gtx by turning the fan off, then by removing the cooler both of which failed to kill the card i can tell you those cards are quite resilient. I'm wondering if maybe the driver issues come into play when using a 3rd party overclocking/tweaker app like powerstrip/rivatuner/precision/afterburner/etc... i know often new drivers don't play nice with those apps and its possible the apps were causing the problem. How many of the people exhibiting the problem are running a 3rd party app.

[Terrare]

The day couldn't start better...
Turned on my PC with my 9800GT in it, unknowing about this issue at hand after just installing the drivers some nights before (first time I fired up the comp with the new drivers), went to get coffee in the morning as I usually do during the computer start-up, I come back and the card's dead.
Tried to wait 15 mins for it to cool down, but it was to no avail. The fan goes up to 100% in the beginning, but the screen will not display anything except the usual "no signal".

I'm really starting to doubt the fact that Nvidia drivers are better than ATi, because it just fried my god damn card.

[Piotrsama]

well as someone who has tried to kill a 8800gtx by turning the fan off, then by removing the cooler both of which failed to kill the card i can tell you those cards are quite resilient. I'm wondering if maybe the driver issues come into play when using a 3rd party overclocking/tweaker app like powerstrip/rivatuner/precision/afterburner/etc... i know often new drivers don't play nice with those apps and its possible the apps were causing the problem. How many of the people exhibiting the problem are running a 3rd party app.

I remember during the 191.07 fiasco, that some people (using monitoring software) noticed that the gpu was overvolted and some mentioned the voltage was constantly fluctuating.
No wonder some cards died.

[THOMO]

I have a feeling that 'user error' will play a big role the majority of people claiming the drivers killed their cards.

You and me both.

well as someone who has tried to kill a 8800gtx by turning the fan off, then by removing the cooler both of which failed to kill the card i can tell you those cards are quite resilient. I'm wondering if maybe the driver issues come into play when using a 3rd party overclocking/tweaker app like powerstrip/rivatuner/precision/afterburner/etc... i know often new drivers don't play nice with those apps and its possible the apps were causing the problem. How many of the people exhibiting the problem are running a 3rd party app.

I think you're spot on.

The day couldn't start better...
Turned on my PC with my 9800GT in it, unknowing about this issue at hand after just installing the drivers some nights before (first time I fired up the comp with the new drivers), went to get coffee in the morning as I usually do during the computer start-up, I come back and the card's dead.
Tried to wait 15 mins for it to cool down, but it was to no avail. The fan goes up to 100% in the beginning, but the screen will not display anything except the usual "no signal".

I'm really starting to doubt the fact that Nvidia drivers are better than ATi, because it just fried my god damn card.

I'm sorry I can't believe this. Your card even with NO working fan shouldn't have died simply due to sitting on the desktop for the length of time it takes to make a coffee. What's your ambient temp 80c

I've seen these gpu's at 80c-90c-100c and still performing...long term. You boot yours once and at some point during boot (since it was at 100% when you powered system on) your fan slowed/stopped and 10minutes of desktop later it's fried????

You must be the unluckiest person ever.

[Terrare]

You and me both.



I think you're spot on.



I'm sorry I can't believe this. Your card even with NO working fan shouldn't have died simply due to sitting on the desktop for the length of time it takes to make a coffee. What's your ambient temp 80c

I've seen these gpu's at 80c-90c-100c and still performing...long term. You boot yours once and at some point during boot (since it was at 100% when you powered system on) you fan slowed/stopped and 10minutes of desktop later it's fried????

You must be the unluckiest person ever.

The worst thing is that I am not lying. And why would I lie?
I've seen folks with same card as me (reference 9800GT cooler) who have noticed temps of up to 140 celsius then had artifacts because of this driver and my card probably went to 140-150 after like 7 minutes and went faulty.

Kind of sad really, since this is by far the best card I've had through all the cards I've owned in my days.
I could play arkham asylum all on Highest settings 1920x1080 without AA though.

Going to try later and see if it was temporary... If that does not work, I'll throw it in the oven and see if it gets fixed.

[THOMO]

Hey if it truely happened then I feel for you, I just find it very bemusing is all.


best of luck.

[xXlAinXx]

The worst thing is that I am not lying. And why would I lie?
I've seen folks with same card as me (reference 9800GT cooler) who have noticed temps of up to 140 celsius then had artifacts because of this driver and my card probably went to 140-150 after like 7 minutes and went faulty.

Kind of sad really, since this is by far the best card I've had through all the cards I've owned in my days.
I could play arkham asylum all on Highest settings 1920x1080 without AA though.

Going to try later and see if it was temporary... If that does not work, I'll throw it in the oven and see if it gets fixed.

Geez let's be real for more then a sec:
Fact, superposition: the driver are one limiting factor.
One of it's function is to ovveride the firmware profile to keep an ONE-WAY relative delta potentials from the registred temperature value.
Anyhow..

[Macadamia]

I see the green plants have come out for some damage control.


Anyway a 9800GT might be more susceptible to such issues in idle, as lower-end fan cards don't have massive fins to dissipate heat. If the fan stops you can basically stay cool until the heat capacity of the metal parts (not much) reach an equilibrium. And the 9800GT should use ~30+ watt at idle.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I remember during the 191.07 fiasco, that some people (using monitoring software) noticed that the gpu was overvolted and some mentioned the voltage was constantly fluctuating.
No wonder some cards died.

I'm not so sure that was 191.07, I noticed the core voltage on the gpu going up to 1.60 because of GPU-z 3.8, I saw a few other people reporting the same thing on other cards with volterra chips. Was that their monitoring software?

The fan speed was an issue with 191.07, thats for sure.

Also I love the people blaming the fans on people's video cards not working on user error.

[JohnZS]

I have not been effected by this issue, but I rolled back to 196.34 BETA anyway as you cannot be too careful.

I just thought I would clarify that there are TWO issues with the 196.75 driver:

1) Fan control does not work on some cards correctly, the fan sticks at idle speeds of ~40% and stays there... even during heavy loading of the card.

This issue can be bypassed using either RivaTuner, eVGA precision, or MSI After Burner to create a fan profile. OR searching the registry and deleting all occurrences of RmThermalProviderInfo and RmThermalProviderNum.
And then rebooting your PC.
(Many thanks to Unwinder RivaTuner Creator for that information).

This would then force the driver to re-detect your sensor.

2) After system has been resumed from Standby the Graphics Card Fan does not re-engage. Therefore your system is running with the Graphics card fan @ 0%. This effects EVERYONE with a reference design nVidia card. Even if you do use eVGA, RivaTuner, or MSI Afterburner to control your fans, this issue can fry your card.

I would suggest rolling back your drivers because it is not worth the risk. nVidia have confirmed that they have located the cause of the issue and a fixed driver will be out shortly.

Although people who have non-reference cards such as the 2GB Pallit Cards, or Water Cooled cards are unaffected there has been rumours of WaterCooled GTX 295 cards running @ 80C when usually they run @ 53C underwater, so there could be a potential unconfirmed 3rd issue with this driver release. (Voltage regulation perhaps?!?)

John

[xXlAinXx]

Well, so rumors without source and real proof is all we got? nice direction.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Well, so rumors without source and real proof is all we got? nice direction.

SO, Nvidia pulling the drivers isn't proof enough? Stop trolling, seriously.