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General : Blizzard Warns Against Installing NVIDIA 196.75 Drivers
Posted Mar 05, 2010 by Michael Bitton
StarCraft II Beta testers are reporting their video cards or computers have been dying following an installation of NVIDIA's latest driver version 196.75, according to a report over at IncGamers.
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Image Credit: IncGamers
Blizzard has investigated and responded to these claims, discovering that the fan controls in the driver are faulty and are causing overheating issues, and has warned users not to install them or roll back to earlier drivers if they have already installed them.
Below is Blizzard Tech Support Datth's response:
We're getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and revert back to the older ones.
Windows XP: http://www.nvidia.com/object/ winxp_196.21_whql.htm l
Windows XP 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/ winxp64_196.21_whql.h tml
Windows Vista/7 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/ win7_winvista_32bit_1 96.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/ win7_winvista_64bit_1 96.21_whql.html
More information can be found on threads such as these:
http://forums.nvidia.com/inde x.php?showtopic=16152 5
http://forums.nvidia.com/inde x.php?showtopic=16150 3
IncGamers got in touch with NVIDIA for comment on the story, and were told that NVIDIA has since taken the drivers down pending an investigation of the reported issues.
You can read the full story here.
Long story short: If you've installed the 196.75 drivers already, uninstall them and roll back to 196.21.
Ty blizzard and especially mmorpg.com for telling me! omg!
>: l
[Mod Edit]
I'm glad this was brought up as people do need to know, but why is it news that Blizzard is repeating news from Nvidia? IE: Did we really need to specify that Blizzard was warning people too?
the drivers in question came out 3 days ago, on the 2nd. NOT 2 weeks ago. If youve been having issues for the past 2 weeks, you might wanna inspect your hardware.
you cant download the drivers any more, they pulled them this morning.
but damn, I dont think Ive ever heard of WHQL drivers causing issues like this. Gonna give nVidia a black eye.
Warning for trolling... who? nvidia... mkay. I kinda got a reason to flaming them atm.
Either way i didnt have the problem 2 weeks or 1 week ago, might be problems with earlier drivers as well? I just downgraded and its -20 or -30C.
I think it was the f-bomb apocalypse rather than "trolling" nVidia. Anyways, this is good news, since I haven't updated my drivers yet (yes, I'm always a few days behind. But this time, it saved me)! Thanks MMORPG.com/Blizzard.
Yeah my freinds who still play wow have been having trouble becouse of these drivers, have been going on about it on msn all day. For myself I have found a lot of problems with new nvidia drivers on xp. Haven't upgraded since 196.21 and thankfully haven't needed to. Before that I had a much earlier driver (no escapes me) from the middle of last year. everything else just coursed me to many problems with performance.
Either way releasing drivers that makes so many cards go bom in 3 days? yea thats kinda epics freaking fail.
Such a huge deal over a word. blah w/e can live with that i guess.
Yes, I've seen this news all over the net; including Digg.com, but here was the first place I saw it. Fortunately, I saw it before I checked for updated drivers. I'm still using 196.21 which has been good to me. I don't see any reason to update for now, and I think I'd rather wait before updating anyway.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
lotro had a warning about it aswell
Mine are 195.21 so I'm well behind...
This is good to know. I just had a GPU die, and cannot afford to replace it, so all I need is my 2nd one overheating XD. I agree with other people who said if the drivers arent causing any issues, there's no reason to update.
In my opinion new drivers are never worth the risk for non-hardware enthusiasts. I understand the benefits of having the latest drivers, but too many people ignore the risks, this is just an extreme case.
I do the same just wait a week of so then update the drivers.
Turbine is advising against the drivers as well.
forums.lotro.com/showthread.php
I also had problems with this new driver but I was playing Fallen Earth my screen would flicker from left to right then it would finally just go black. Until i uninstalled the driver an reverted back to the old one..
This is news to me, first have heard they had a problem. Checked my drivers and saw am on the 196.21 so guess am ok for now. Have not had time to updating drivers due to other stuff, so am glad someone caught that problem. Still not sure why Nividia did not send me a warning email about it since am on thier product update email list.
Funny thing is i am usually quick to install new drivers,and i did see the new drivers a few days ago,but i was just too lazy lmao.Then i read last night about the issues for SOME with the drivers,These were so called WHQ or whatever that windows tested standard is,good thing for testing.You would think with a section of the driver involving fan control,that would have been the first thing they test ,sad.
I really don't get how it can be related to only the Blizzard games,unless this is just a case of the game having a lot of players,so more word got out.
Finally, my neglect for driver updates has paid off!
But seriously, if my card was destroyed, I would sue Nvidia.
still using 180.... from dec 2008 .... still faster then the newer ones ( dont believe me , test it yourself , I have ;))
and about this problem, only got 1 word for it " lol "
Well, I guess considering this is a site about MMORPGs, they wanted it to be relevent to the topic somehow haha.
coupled with the face the new Fermi cards are, acording to nvidia, needing a 600 w ps, and that BFG has strted making ATI cards, oh and the CEO said he hates pcs and loves macs (but macs are more ATI focused)
Welll lets just say Nvidia isn't looking at a good place....
My girlfriend's brother just got a new video card and we "think" he has the new drivers. His computer died on him yesterday. Wouldn't boot up. Keeps getting black screen. She is going over there today to check it out. If he burnt up his computer motherboard or the video card he is going to go ballistic. One of the bad things here is everyone clicks the little "Nvidia is not responsible" link when downloading drivers. So, don't expect them to ever honor fixing a computer or a card from this.
Bad Drivers happen more often then people would like to realize. Just be glad you got the information early on instead of not at all. Most places won't address driver issues because in the long run they aren't liable. It's all apart of the clause they have when they distribute the divers. You're basically DLing them at your own risk. I have seen nVidia especially with numerous driver problems, but they always address the issue early on and fix it before to many people have issues!
Like I said, be glad you have the info now. My brother wasn't so fortunate and now I have to go and try to fix something that may not be fixable. Especially when he just got a new 1g card last week. *crosses my fingers* and hope that it's nothing to major!
I just started the welcome back 10 trial on War after not doing much PC gaming at all for the last few months. I saw the drivers were available but didnt want to take the time to uninstall the old ones and install the new ones. War is running fine and thought I would do it this weekend. I guess being lazy paid off for me this time. Thanks for the info.
Thanks!
Good job by the beta testers.
I am glad I didn't upgrade the drivers, my 295 is getting hot enough without problems with the fan control.
Thank god I've been playing Empire: total war, and the fact it doesn't work on drivers past 186. very well. :)
What has this got to do with Blizzard at all? nVidia posted the info prior to Blizzard telling THEIR players about the problem. Blizzard tech posted it on the 6th, Turbine posted it on the 5th to THEIR players.
I mean are we that hard up for more Blizzard stories that this has to be attributed to them?
Elikal Inc. Warns Against Installing Blizzard Software!
I had this issue when I updated Nvidia drivers about a year ago, I had duel video cards setup for SLI and it killed both my cards was awesome.
Good to see Nvidia learns from mistakes and did it again.
But the drivers can also be pushed through window's update. =)
I was actually wondering about that, havn't been on win7 long but I do remember it updating recently, and I can't seem to find where my driver info is. This os is so over simplified that I can't seem to find important info like my driver details lol, any help?
Edit: nvm just figured out how to run dxdiag, lol finally, has to start through task manager.. According to that is says my display driver is 8.17.11.95672, so i'm actually behind, I think.
I can confirm this..
Well, I guess considering this is a site about MMORPGs, they wanted it to be relevent to the topic somehow haha.
Blizzard did't say it was NEWS. It was a WARNING. They did it so if your computer with an NVIDIA 196.75 driver installed caught fire while you were playing their games your potential lawsuits should be filed against Nvidia, not Activision Blizzard.
Too bad for NVDIA and for my cousin who just purchased their Vid card.. lol
It's not. Blizzard just referred to their games for various reasons, one of them probably is that they need to have legal interest in order to talk about what another company does. They couldn't come out as Blizzard and say for example "Pirelli has faulty tyres".
I just downloaded the new drivers yesterday, thank you so much for letting me know what would happen if I use the computer, thank you MMORPG and Blizz!
Oh, one message here said that Nvidia took them off their website, as of this morning, March 9, they are still available to download.
Will the older version overwrite the new drivers I installed?