PSA - 196.75 Nvidia Drivers Pulled
by Scott Burns · in General Discussion · 03/05/2010 (9:55 am) · 2 replies
I just found out that the latest official drivers released by Nvidia a few days ago are causing cards to overheat and sometimes fry. Nvidia has pulled the 196.75 drivers while they are investigating the problem.
If you've installed this update I highly recommend rolling back your drivers to the previous version until they've sorted out the problem.
If you've installed this update I highly recommend rolling back your drivers to the previous version until they've sorted out the problem.
Torque 3D Owner Jason Parker
I am honestly not surprised as the card manufacturers seem to use various fan controllers. What probably made the problem worse are those that intentionally keep the fan speeds low even at high temps to combat complaints about noise. I know my 9800GTX+ will only get up to 60% fan speed at 80C and it's a linear scale with the max speed mapped to some rather high temps from what I've observed. I use Riva Tuner to bump it to 100% on intense 3d apps anyway, so even if the drivers have bad code for fan control, I'm already bypassing it.
There's some info on fan controllers in Riva Tuner's docs that opened my eyes to why some cards never seem to turn their fans up high enough. Kinda ticks me off because the 9800GTX+ in question is a BFGTech card, and I don't want to have reasons to hate them, I love their warranties.