Warning NVIDIA 196.75 Drivers kill cards

[IRQ Conflict]

Just a heads up in case anyone installed these.

Update - 11:00pm EST: I reached NVIDIA's PR for an official statement and they replied within the hour. Read their response and feedback from many gamers here.

Original post - 5:20pm EST: I want to warn all of our visitors who are participating in the StarCraft II Beta to refrain from installing the latest NVIDIA WHQL 196.75 WHQL-certified drivers. If you already installed it, uninstall it and downgrade to the previous version. Yeah, it's that serious. Many players are reporting their PCs or graphic card have died. It also affects all Blizzard games, so heed the call and safe your hardware's life.

According to Blizzard's Tech Support the latest NVIDIA drivers are causing fan control to not work correctly and causes massive overheat. StarCraft II Beta might kill your PC or card literally. A fix is already in the works. Stay tuned for further updates.

[Linus]

Water cooling > *

[Arinoth]

Well at least for Windows 7 you can't install/run these drivers, i looked in both the beta and latest and its no where to be found

[r0bc]

Best drivers I've used in awhile but I always set fan speed manually .

[crowTrobot]

There is a workaround in the registry similar to the wrong GPU error of a previous driver version.

Official NVIDIA Forceware 196.75 display driver feedback thread - NVIDIA Forums

I didn't have temp problems when I had the 196.75 driver even when I had MSI Afterburner set the fan control to Auto. I rolled back to 196.21 though as the 196.75 doesn't have 3D vision drivers yet.

[SKYMTL]

Overheating WILL NOT kill a modern GPU. For the last half decade (possibly more) every GPU has a built-in thermal sensor and accompanying thermal shutdown routine. Once the GPU hits a certain temp, a shutdown is initiated. That's it.

It should be noted however that high heat over prolonged periods of time will shorten the life of components.

Maybe the drivers are messing with fan control but like I said, overheating won't kill a GPU. This seems like a perfect example of a developer's tech support talking about something they know nothing about.

[Sagath]

Originally Posted by Linus

Water cooling > *

+1

(I <3 Linus)

[Full Speed]

Originally Posted by Arinoth

Well at least for Windows 7 you can't install/run these drivers, i looked in both the beta and latest and its no where to be found

Yeah Nvidia pulled them from their site.

[SKYMTL]

Shows you how pointless the WHQL certificate is...

[CMetaphor]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Shows you how pointless the WHQL certificate is...

ahaha, that made me lol.... "Hey everyone! Use this latest driver! Its approved by the Windows Hardware Quality Labs! That means it must be great, right? Cause MS says its good!"