WARNING! NVIDIA 196.75 Drivers Can Kill Your GPU

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Osiris

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WARNING! NVIDIA 196.75 Drivers Can Kill Your GPU

It seems that NVIDIA has pulled its 196.75 drivers because of overheating issues. Apparently there has been a rash of complaints about dead, dying and overheating video cards. The problem seems to be the fan controller in the 196.75 drivers, no word from NVIDIA on the matter yet.


The problem seems to be related to the fan controller, causing the fans to slow down, and even stop. This happening while the card is in use is a very bad thing indeed, and can cause poor performance (as the GPU tries to cool itself down by reducing power) and possibly even overheat your GPU to the point where the card stops working.
 
Very glad I chose to avoid it now :) Thanks Osiris, and Slaymate.
 
I'm using them, but I am also using EVGA Precision to overclock my card and control the fans so I should be good.

If anyone is not using third=party program to control their fans they should roll back to the previous version. Better to lose a couple of frames per second than fry your card.
 
This should put an end to the fanboys calming Nvidia has better drivers than ATi once and for all.
 
This should put an end to the fanboys calming Nvidia has better drivers than ATi once and for all.

ATi's drivers are getting better but unless ATi drivers have gotten a lot better in the last year (last time I had an ATi Card) nVidia drivers are probably better.
 
The whole 190 series of Drivers have had issues as far as I can tell. I have 4 different PC's with Nvidia Graphics and none of them work properly with the 190's. I've been waiting on Fermi before deciding what new cards to buy, but it's getting harder and harder to wait.

This should put an end to the fanboys calming Nvidia has better drivers than ATi once and for all.

It's never been Nvidia with better drivers, as both Nvidia and ATi have released good and bad. But Nvidia does tend to release WHQL and Beta versions more frequently. Which is normally a desired attribute, unless they blow your card up :D
 
ATi's drivers are getting better but unless ATi drivers have gotten a lot better in the last year (last time I had an ATi Card) nVidia drivers are probably better.

What could drivers possibly do that is worse than killing the card?

This chart of the causes of Vista BSODs is pretty interesting.

3-27-08-vista-crash.jpg


Also from what I have seen using ATI Tray Tools instead of Catalyst Control Center can go a long way towards reliving any issues with ATI's drivers.

It's never been Nvidia with better drivers, as both Nvidia and ATi have released good and bad.

I agree, however there are a lot of people who seem to think nvidia's drivers are always flawless.
 
My experience has been better with nVidia drivers, it's been about a year since I have last had an ATi card. ATi's drivers weren't bad (I liked the fact that they were small) nVidias just seemed to work better with less hassle.
 
I've had WAY less problems with ATI drivers than nVidia. like WAYYYY less. That's just me though...
 
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