NVIDIA Driver Update Causing Video Cards To Overheat In Games

After a group of StarCraft II beta testers reported technical difficulties following the installation of NVIDIA driver update 196.75, Blizzard tech support found that the update introduced fan control problems that were causing video cards to overheat in 3D applications. "This means every single 3D application (i.e. games) running these drivers is going to be exposed to overheating and in some extreme cases it will cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. If said motherboard, processor or graphic card is not under warranty, some gamers are in serious trouble playing intensive games such as Prototype, World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis and many other games with realistic graphics." NVIDIA said they were investigating the problem, took down links to the new drivers, and advised users to revert to 196.21 until the problem can be fixed.

Comments

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hot.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Prototype, World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis

One of these things is not like the others~

Re:Wow

[SimonTheSoundMan]

I fell off my chair reading that.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean FarCry 3 or WoW?

Re:Wow

[databyss]

Yeah... I love WoW, but Realistic Graphics?

Those it does not have.

Re:Wow

[assemblerex]

You know they are workingon a beta of wow that is 100% graphics overhaul. It is probably that version.

Re:Wow

[Jason Winters III]

LOL... WoW that's my final answer

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the odd one out is the one that doesn't exist...

Wow realistic?

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW realistic? psssssssssshawwwww

Re:Wow realistic?

[Beelzebud]

It's not realistic, but it can be a very demanding game, especially when raiding with 24 other people, and a room full of boss spells going off at once.

Re:Wow realistic?

[nigelo]

Times up. Let's do this.

Glad it didn't fry mine.

[Beelzebud]

Oddly enough, I played World of Warcraft and Fallout 3 quite a bit since upgrading to these drivers, and my performance has been much better than the previous win7 64x driver. I hear the fan ramping up like it should, and the card hasn't gotten close to overheating. Maybe it's only affecting certain models. I have an 8800ultra.

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[brucmack]

Yes, it probably only affects newer cards.

The newer cards have so many execution units, that the cards aren't actually able to run all of them full-out at the same time - it would take too much power and produce too much heat. The logic behind this is that for most applications, total performance is bottlenecked somewhere, so every part of the chip is never going to be active at the same time. Apparently something in their driver update has either changed this or (more likely) broken the logic to throttle back the card if it is running too hard.

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you work at nVidia, I'm not buying it. What you say is equivalent to building a quad core processor but only being able to run three cores at one time. I don't think you know what you're talking about and as much, you are taking up valuable space.

The cards are designed inside of a thermal and power envelope and this is part of the where the 6 and 8 pin pci-e power plugs straight from the psu come in.

Also: The article is pretty uninformative. Are these cards that are burning out laptop parts or desktop parts? But, it sounds as though it is just a fan issue. And yes the firmware/driver should detect the temp rising and throttle the card back, but it doesn't mean that the whole card can't run all out...it just means that someone put the wrong fan ramp up / temps table into the driver.

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[Prof.Phreak]

or some intern optimized a complicated piece of logic by noticing it's essentially an idle loop---a very important idle loop.

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[maxwell demon]

While I don't know much about GPUs, I think it makes sense. AFAIK the GPU contains quite specialized hardware for certain tasks; unlike the CPU cores which are all identical generic hardware. In which case it indeed makes sense to have more units in total than can be used at once.

To fix your CPU analogy:

Imagine a CPU which has different types of cores. Some cores are efficient integer units, but don't do floating point. Others are very good at floating point, but only have rudimentary integer capabilities. Now floating point heavy applications usually don't do too much integer processing, and vice versa. Now imagine that some physical limitation (heat, power supply, whatever) only allows a certain number of cores to be active at the same time, but die space allows for more. Now if you put exactly as many cores on your CPU as your physical limitations allow, then you have to decide: Either you put many floating point cores on your die, then you'll have excellent floating point performance, but would suck at integer-heavy applications. Or you put many integer cores on it, then your integer performance will be great, but you'll such at FP. Or you use about the same number of integer and floating point units, and then you'll get mediocre performance for both.

However if you put more cores on the die than you can run at the same time, then you can give the FP-heavy app many FP cores and get great FP performance (the lack of fast-integer cores won't hurt the FP-heavy app), and give the integer-heavy application many integer cores and get great integer performance (the lack of fast-FP cores won't hurt the int-heavy application).

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[Minwee]

or some intern optimized a complicated piece of logic by noticing it's essentially an idle loop---a very important idle loop.

You mean it wasn't a Speed-up Loop?

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[gad_zuki!]

>Oddly enough, I played World of Warcraft and Fallout 3 quite a bit since upgrading to these drivers, and my performance has been much better than the previous win7 64x driver.

If you read the release notes you'll see big performance gains on a lot of games from this driver. This is something I've never seen from Nvidia. Anyone have the details on what happened? Maybe they found some new way to be efficient or found some long standing bug.

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[tlhIngan]

Oddly enough, I played World of Warcraft and Fallout 3 quite a bit since upgrading to these drivers, and my performance has been much better than the previous win7 64x driver.

If you read the release notes you'll see big performance gains on a lot of games from this driver. This is something I've never seen from Nvidia. Anyone have the details on what happened? Maybe they found some new way to be efficient or found some long standing bug.

Or someone mentioned elsewhere, you can't run the card at full capability because it uses too much power and generates too much heat, so you throttle the card. (And the hardware protection kicks in when it overheats by clock-skipping and other methods, like the old Pentium 4s). Maybe that's why these drivers work better - an unthrottled card will produce better performance, at the expensive of the heat destroying the card, or the increased power draw destroying the motherboard and/or PSU by demanding more power than it's designed to give.

Thermal dissipation seems to be the limit - there's only so much cooling you can fit into a double-wide card, and with these quad video cards on a double-wide, there's even less. Given how everything is onboard these days, maybe that's what we'll fill those slots up with - a quad-core video card that takes up 4 slots...

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have it quite backwards. Modern GPUs are mostly tons of identical, generic cores. It would also make no sense to produce a GPU that has "twice as many" cores as the previous GPU if only the same number are being used. Benchmarks would have already show this to be the case if it were true.

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[maxwell demon]

So if e.g. a vertex shader and a pixel shader are the same thing, why are they named differently?

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[Chees0rz]

They're named different things because they have different inputs and outputs. A VS takes a 3D vert and processes it, outputting a transformed 3D vert. A pixel shader gets a 2D coord and writes to memory.
The fixed function units pretty much do stuff in between.
The PROCESSING (read: adding, multiplying, powing, moving, SHADING) of the vert/pixel happens on the same sets of computational units (cores, eu, whatever). A good pipe or driver can balance its workload, and a very specific execution can in theory max out all cores and have them running full throttle.

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[daedae]

Also, because of the work that's done by the integer pipeline, even so-called floating point applications still may do more than 50% integer processing.

Re:Glad it didn't fry mine.

[BikeHelmet]

I had an 8800GS that overheated with all recent drivers. I had to underclock its memory with Rivatuner by about 10%.

I recently picked up a GTS 250, which also overheats. I had to underclock its memory by about 30%, bringing it in line with the 8800GS's memory speed.

The culprit seems to be inadequate GDDR3 cooling. Frankly, I'm glad their new drivers are more efficient, and stress the card more. I just wish they didn't half-ass the heatsinks.

Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[flyingfsck]

Apart from the fan problem, is this version more stable? The last version causes my laptop to crash every few minutes, making it unusable, so I have to run the VESA driver.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Laptop? You should probably use the drivers from your laptop manufacturer, they often customize things to get clock frequencies etc right for their specific model.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[jhoegl]

Also they like their spyware.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they don't offer drivers at all for certain operating systems.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[yacc143]

What a stupid recommendation, I mean, they usually stop to provide updates, the moment the next model comes out.
Consumer laptop models have seldom a life much beyond 6-12 months. Some consumer laptops can be quite useable way longer than 12 months. (and that assumes that you buy it on the first day it's out)

Hence you are forced to use the upstream drivers.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[ZosX]

I always use the untouched nvidia drivers for my laptop. If they can't figure out how to make drivers for their own chipsets then shame on them. I mean most integrated nvidia chipsets have fairly fixed clock frequencies. I've even overclocked my laptops gpu slightly, without a great deal more heat generated. (thanks evga!) I always get the best performance from stock nvidia drivers. I tried the dox drivers but found them to be problematic and no faster than the nvidia stock. I guess YMMV of course......

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[scalarscience]

This issue is related to automatic fan control not working due to improper registry keys, and so GPU's that run warm (9800 series for instance) can quickly overheat and potentially suffer damage. I'm having no issues with mine, but I set fan profiles manually as I'm using a machine that has a very hot MCH & fb-dimms (2008 Xeon) and don't want the gpu contributing more. However for anyone interested (and using a GT200 or at least G80/G92 on up) here's the fix: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161767

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[SecondaryOak]

Maybe they do that when their machine is first released. I doubt they do that with each new driver version.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[mmalove]

I wonder if this is what was happening to me then?! I run a 9800M GS (laptop version of the 9800). Been overheating for months now, finally resorted to using ntune to underclock the processors by 25%. Fixed the crashing with minimal impact to WOW (hurray for modern GPUs on a 5 year old game).

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[realityimpaired]

It being a laptop, usually there isn't actually a fan specific to the video card. My last laptop had an 8600M GT 256MB (I only retired it on Wednesday for the new one; that system was almost 3 years old). Inside the case, there was a heatpipe from the video card to a set of fins that was right next to the fins for the CPU heatsink (with a similar heatpipe setup), and a separate fan that blew air through both sets of fins. The cooling fan wasn't actually connected to either the graphics card or the CPU, and was controlled directly by the system's BIOS as a case fan.

I have not opened the case on the new laptop (nor will I until it's out of warranty), but I imagine it's a very similar setup... the new one has a Core i7 920QM and a 1GB Radeon HD4670. Pretty much every laptop I've owned has been that kind of setup.

If you're noticing that it's overheating, it could be something much more mundane than a bad driver... How old is this laptop, and do you use it in a dusty environment, or somewhere it's possible for stuff like pet hair to get into the fan? I live with 2 cats and a dog, and have had to crack the case on a laptop to pull out a layer of felt that builds up between the heatsink fins and restricts airflow.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[Anonymous Coward]

wearing that felt as some sort of Wig replacement or WOW trophy is not considered acceptable behaviour. But go ahead anyway.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[kannibal_klown]

Laptop? You should probably use the drivers from your laptop manufacturer, they often customize things to get clock frequencies etc right for their specific model.

In my limited experience, the laptop manufacturer releases drivers at a very slow pace and they stop releasing new versions after a while. After some point the most they might do is release a new version if a new OS comes out.

For the most part that's alright (especially in non-gaming environments), but some games need a more recent version of a driver due to a fix or a new feature.

I tried playing Champions Online with the manufacturer's 1+ year-old video drivers on my laptop after a reformat. The game warned me of old drivers and performed horribly. I then installed something more recent directly from nVidia: the message went away and the performance went way up.

Re:Crappy Nvidia driver has multiple issues

[mmalove]

While I appreciate the advice, I've cracked open the innards of the laptop and do clean it regularly. It is indeed set up as you describe with the heat sink pipe leading to a single fan/exhaust system. Maybe the fan on that's just choking independent of driver issues.

Ah well, it runs significantly cooler underclocked - should carry me till I'm ready to replace the system I think.

Convinience

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing wow while making eggs and bacon without leaving the PC?

Processor damage, really?

[cbope]

Wait a minute... just how is an overheating graphics card causing damage to a CPU? As an EE, I'd love to hear the basis for that. Even motherboard damage is extremely unlikely, unless the card bursts into flames and torches the PCIe slot. Or the graphics card gets hot enough to re-flow solder, which then drips onto the PCIe slot or motherboard components. Not to mention most cases are vertically oriented these days. Not a chance in hell, I'd say.

I'm not saying there isn't an issue, but it sounds like the issue is just a bit over-hyped... or someone has an agenda and just wants to bash NVIDIA.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPU explodes. That's how.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[theeddie55]

if it causes a short circuit, the feedback could easily blow the CPU, though in practice, any half decent power supply should cut out before that can happen.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[someone1234]

The melting GPU burns the CPU. It could even damage the carpet!

Re:Processor damage, really?

[mkairys]

Laptops for example generally have the same heat pipe connected to the CPU and GPU. If one overheats, so can the other.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[Manip]

The slot can be damaged by overheating cards, and if it is your only 16x slot then you could wind up throwing away the entire motherboard. Although typically this is more often seen when a card overheats multiple times causing the material to expand and contract until it eventually fails (as opposed to this case when cards just die).

My only guess about CPU damage is unregulated power spikes but that is just conjecture. Plus if anything was going to get damaged by power spikes it wouldn't be the CPU it would be the RAM.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange an EE does not understand something every overclocker does. I guess education can't make up for experience.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is an additional problem since all decent GPUs can survive much higher temperatures then CPUs.

Water cooling from the same reservoir & same cycle and such is fine, but a shared heatpipe would be questionable in most (but not all) cases. The difference in max operating temperature is just too high.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[yacc143]

Well, I'm not an EE, but I seem to remember from university, that changing temperatures can lead to changes in voltage/current. Then you've got the extreme case of a short circuit.

So I think it's quite possible to have motherboard damage, e.g. GPU takes more power than is good for the MB, MB dies. Slowly or quickly, depending upon how extreme the effect is.

As an official example, see GPU that have a seperate power connection, where the documentation explicitly states that the GPU and/or the motherboard can die if it's left unconnected, because the GPU will overuse the PCIe provided power.
So obviously, something that the GPU does can effect the MB and other parts of the system, phrased nicely by the manufacturers.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[asdf7890]

Wait a minute... just how is an overheating graphics card causing damage to a CPU?

Depends on the airflow in your case, but many are not well laid out in terms of airflow. If the card is pumping out more heat than usual and this isn't being drawn out correctly, it may build up in the case generally, reducing the ability of the CPU's HS+F to cool it properly. Similarly, if the heat built up is sufficient for an appreciable amount of time (say, over the course of a long gaming session) you may also find drives and other components start failing due to overheating though the CPU is the item most at risk from this collateral warming and would most likely be the first to go (rescuing other parts by falling first, hopefully stopping the heat build up as no more head generating tasks will be run by it of give the the GPU by it) if the situation became extreme enough.

Another GPU-killing-CPU-by-heat scenario exists in liquid cooled systems. If the GPU and CPU share coolant and the GPU heats up so much that it overwhelms the liquid cooling arrangement there may not be a sufficient temperature gradient between the coolant and the CPU for the CPU to be usefully cooled.

I'd file both of these situations under "quite unlikely, but far from impossible".

Re:Processor damage, really?

[L4t3r4lu5]

If the fan fails to spin up and the gfx overheats, the ambient temp in the case rises. Without good airflow it would be easy for an overheating gfx card to seriously affect the CPU heatsink's heat dispersion properties. An ambient temp of 100f means your cpu will be that temperature at least. I don't know the physics, but my "seat of my pants" maths tells me that you'll add 50% onto that temperature from the cpu, bringing up the core temp to almost 150f / 60c. My old prescott ran at that temperature, and it wasn't pleasant.

Plus, aren't most tower cases built with the gfx directly underneath the CPU? I never understood why the hottest component would be lowest in the case...

Re:Processor damage, really?

[Calinous]

AT cards for desktop cases had the processor and memory on the right side while the expansion cards were grouped on the left side. When the tower AT cases appeared, they put the hottest item (the processor, at that time running without a heat sink, I've seen even a 486SX in a Dell running very hot) at the top of the case, and near the power source (the only source for ventilation in those cases were the fans in the PSU). The hard drives were situated near openings in front of the case, so whatever airflow there was would cool them too.
      Now, moving to ATX boards, the processor remained the hottest element (Pentium at 15W with active cooling, 486 at 10W with passive or active cooling) while the video cards of the times had passive cooling or none whatsoever. Also, to simplify the life of case builders the ATX layout is similar to AT layout (I've had a motherboard that would accept either AT or ATX power sources - a Soyo mainboard for K7 processors, and I think there were cases that accepted AT and ATX mainboards).
      Now, as the most heat comes out from the video card(s) (in the usual extreme gaming rigs you have some 100W from the CPU and 200+W from the video cards), things changed. I think Intel's BTX standard separated the expansion slots, but BTX is almost a dead standard in availability, and we only have ATX in userland (there are other standards in server land, but those are even harder to find than BTX)

Re:Processor damage, really?

[databyss]

The excessive heat can overwhelm the standard cooling system on a PC.

As an EE, I'm sure you're well aware that heat has negative effects on CPU's and other electrical components.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

BTX never really took off in the "third party components and DIY" sector, even back when Intel was cranking out chips that really could have used the extra cooling help; but it was a pretty big hit in corporate basic-box land. To this day, a substantial proportion of PCs from the various vendor's business lines are either actually BTX or heavily BTX inspired in terms of cooling layout.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[wisnoskij]

I have had a video card overheat and break my motherboard.

I am not sure about the technical side but I imagine that the motherboard was not designed to run at extreme temperatures.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[mkairys]

Spot on. My 8600GT started overheating in my laptop and while it survived, my CPU was hitting 105C and would shut down randomly and required the processor, motherboard and many other components to be replaced (the heat ruined the life of the battery). The GPU was holding out at the temperatures fine but because of the heat pipe it was connected to, it was cooking the CPU in the process.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[cbope]

Umm... not likely. A short circuit in the power circuit of the GPU would only affect the graphics card itself and probably the power supply. At the most it would probably trip the over-current protection in the power supply which would simply shut down. The only electrical connections between the CPU and GPU are data lanes and these are not sufficient to bring down a CPU. They are only signal circuits, not power. Even shorting a signal to ground is unlikely to do damage. Remember, a binary zero is 0V (or very close to 0V).

Re:Processor damage, really?

[mcgrew]

Or the graphics card gets hot enough to re-flow solder, which then drips onto the PCIe slot or motherboard components. Not to mention most cases are vertically oriented these days. Not a chance in hell, I'd say.

In hell you wouldn't even need to turn the PC on for all the solder to melt!

Re:Processor damage, really?

[idontgno]

You're forgetting laptops. Everything integrated in close proximity on one motherboard, with shared fixed-capacity cooling. If the driver update pushes a heat-constrained laptop GPU harder, you could easily exceed whole-system thermal limits leading to CPU or MB damage.

The less obvious case is if a desktop system is ventilated just well enough to handle normal heat from its components, and the GPU goes into thermal overdrive because of this driver. In that case, intra-case temps will go up and, if not noticed, overheat other components. Probably not damage the CPU at that point, but thermal shutdown is likely.

I'm not saying there isn't an issue, but it sounds like the issue is just a bit over-hyped... or someone has an agenda and just wants to bash NVIDIA.

NVIDIA is doing a damn fine job of bashing themselves. They lost my trust with their piss-poor chip engineering and deceptive PR and warranty practices in the Bumpgate fiasco. This driver screwup doesn't help that. After years of devoted NForce/GeForce fanboism, I'm now thoroughly on the AMD/ATI bandwagon. We'll give NVIDIA another look when they appear to have gotten their crap together.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for you theory laptops use the mobile nvidia series and the newest driver release is still 195.62, therefore not affected by this.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[Molochi]

To add to what Fuzzy said,

There have been a number of nonstandard "ATX" cases that mount the motherboard upside-down on the opposite side of the enclosure mostly intended for multi videocard gaming machines. some of those even isolate component areas like BTX does. Cable lengths can be an issue in these though.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[Calinous]

Yes, cases with the power supply on the bottom (and even in a separate compartment along with the hard drives) appeared some time ago. I don't remember separate compartments for video cards and for processors, but dedicated ventilation for those zones are becoming common.

Re:Processor damage, really?

[petermgreen]

One thing to remember about PCs is that there is a wide range of voltages present. At the high end you have 12V for analog stuff and bulk power distribution* while at the low end you have signal voltages of less than 2V (afaict) and core voltages of under a volt.

I could easily see a A badly fried graphics card putting 12V onto the data lines. That would almost certainly damage whatever was on the other end (northbridge for LGA775 stuff, IOH for lga1366 stuff, CPU for LG1156 stuff) and maybe stuff beyond that too.

*There has been a shift in PC architecture design in recent years from distributing power at 5V and 3.3V to distributing it at 12V. 12V has lower cable losses and the power has to be routed through switchers near the load anyway to power modern high current low voltage devices like CPUs.

Planned obsolescence...

[Anonymous Coward]

... programmed obsolescence, literally :-).

If it ain't broke..

[Mascot]

WoW seems an odd companion to those other games, I've always felt the CPU was the primary bottleneck in that beast, but be that as it may..

For me, I can't recall ever solving an issue or getting noticeable performance improvements from upgrading graphics drivers. I have, however, had several issues introduced by it.

Nowadays I stick to the old "if it works don't try to fix it" mantra, with a few exceptions. For example, I kept up-to-date for a bit after Win7 release, assuming there would be teething issues for a few revisions. If buying a bleeding edge recently released card I would also stay on top of drivers for a month or two. But other than that, just leave them be I say.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you should grab a copy of GPU-Z http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/ some time and watch the gpu load graph when you idle in the login screen with the fancy dragon ....

Re:If it ain't broke..

[lowlymarine]

Now watch the same graph once you log into Dalaran, as it drops off to something like 10-20% usage. Admittedly your processor usage on a quad-core is still going to be 30% as well, so it's just horrible, horrible coding on Blizzard's part, but still.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[L4t3r4lu5]

The shadows implemented with v3 crippled WoW graphics performance. I have an C2Q Q6600@2.8GHz, 4GB DDRII RAM, 8800gtx running everything at max settings except shadows (blob only), 1920x1200 with min 60fps. If I turn shadows up one level I get 40 fps, full shadows bring the thing to a crawl even in open areas like The Shimmering Flats.

I can easily see the gfx being a bottleneck with the shadows up, but other than that I agree. Loading the other players in Dala is horrid.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to moonlight as a hardware reviewer specialized in graphics cards, and I can assure you, performance and quality DOES differ between driver versions.

I cannot give any recent examples since I'm not longer in the business, but i've seen drivers that gave up to 33 FPS more in newly released games in comparison with preview driver versions. That said, those gains were sometimes fueled by quality drops, but not always.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems a bit contradictory. You state that you have never had an issue resolved by upgrading a driver, yet state an upgraded driver has caused issues for you? So let me guess you never updated beyond that point either, since it's quite possible a newer release of the driver fixes the issues the previous one caused? To offer the counter view Mass Effect 2 didn't get into the menu screen on my machine, a issue that was fixed by updating the driver. Yours works, then good for you.

What about added features to offload graphical processing? The introduction of PhysX makes a very noticeable difference to games which support it.

The if it ain't broke mentality may work for office types but there's a lot of people who push their cards to the limit and the differences in drivers can have quite a significant impact.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Blakey Rat]

More to the point, World of Warcraft has "realistic graphics?" Even if you ignore the art style, which is as far from realistic as you can get, the engine is something like 5-10 years older than all the other games listed there and quite frankly looks like ass.

I wish people would proofread before they publish an article that thousands will read.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Mascot]

I'm not sure how GPU-Z showing me below 30% load (on an almost two year old card) is proving the point you implicitly appear to try to make..?

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Dalaran is your hard drive. Watch it next time you go there. It's why you see toons popping up slowly. The game has to load all the textures from the drive.

You Can't See Inside!

[Anonymous Coward]

that's what you get for using proprietary software!

Nvidia driver causing overheating? Oh really.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no fan of Nvidia or ATI, but I have to question Blizzard and their programmers and beta testers on this. Leaving WoW sitting at the title or login screen has caused overheating in my 8800GT's for over a year now, no matter what drivers I've used. I've noticed temperatures reaching 105-110 Celsius in under 2 minutes flat as recently as last week when I made the mistake of letting WoW sit at the login screen. This only ever occurs in said game and accompanying areas. Similarly, my laptop's ATI 3650 tends to jump to 75+ Celsius in said areas of WoW. Pardon me, but I'm a little skeptical about Nvidia's drivers being the ultimate source of the problem.

Re:Nvidia driver causing overheating? Oh really.

[omglolbah]

A game should not be able to cause an overheat in a card, ever.
The card's firmware or hardware should throttle down before damage occurs.

If not the design is broken. Simple as that.

Re:Nvidia driver causing overheating? Oh really.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best way to solve this, Is to turn v-sync on, And triple buffering off in your nvidia panel. As that'll cap your framerate at 60 (Or whatever your monitor would be.)

I've had a few 8800ultras and gtx 280s, And anything that's 'high performance' generally uses alot of power, and renders at high framerates.

(Also, Laptop cards use hardly any power, so they generate hardly any heat, assuming you have a decent cooler, My laptop with a 8800GTX in it never goes above 55c in games like the STALKER series)

Re:Nvidia driver causing overheating? Oh really.

[fostware]

I have a XPS 1730. My SLi 8800GTXs *idle* at 55C :)

I'll admit the "laptop" tag doesn't fit that well though...

(BTW, It's a insurance replacement for what was both a portable games and work machine, before anyone bitches about heat being a result of my choices...)

Re:Nvidia driver causing overheating? Oh really.

[Anonymous Coward]

The design is broken. They acknowledged that, It's in the summary!

Now if you're saying that hardware should now be able to be broken by software then you are naive and have clearly never had a firmware update go wrong on you.

A little more info from the story

[L4t3r4lu5]

The EVGA tool has been used to manually set fan speed to 77% to compensate. I see no reason for other low-level customisation tools (RivaTuner etc) to not behave in the same way.

If you get a performance boost from this new driver, download RivaTuner or a similar tool and manually set the fan speed for gaming.

Re:A little more info from the story

[Deluge]

It's pretty pathetic for NVIDIA to write drivers that require the use of 3rd party utils to achieve sane fan behaviour. The GTX260 I bought was the first video card that I'd bought that required such a massive cooling solution, and I thought that since the cooling hardware seemed fairly capable, the software wouldn't be a problem.

Imagine my surprise that, by default, the fan is set to run at 40% without *ANY* ramping, and only jumps to 100% when the card reaches ~85C - when it's basically overheating. Thanks NVIDIA but I'd rather live with a bit of noise from higher fan speeds than turn my case into an oven.

You can download an addition to the NVIDIA drivers that allows you to manually set the fan duty cycle (which works), load profiles with alternate fan duty cycle % depending on temp (which works, badly, because the profile loading locks the comp for a second, and this isn't fun when you're playing a game), and set a fan ramping profile with a graphical curve (which has never worked, and since it's been 2 years, I can only assume never will)

Why they can't fix this is beyond me - RivaTuner is capable of directly reprogramming the fan controller, and is trivial to set up to smoothly ramp (without any CPU load) the fan speed in response to GPU temp. 40% at 40C and 100% at 65C. On demanding games I usually top out at ~61C and 80% fan speed. Sure it's a bit noisy, but that's always been the price of good cooling (barring some exotic expensive solutions).

Re:A little more info from the story

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of Laptops have their cooling fan controlled by the CPU not the GPU.

For example the ASUS G1S which has no end of over heating problems thanks to incredibly bad internal thermal design (this is from ASUS! So others will have have it too). One tiny heat pipe connected to a GeForce 8600m GT which:
    a) Is made by nVidia - which means it will run hot.
    b) Is a know problem, it has a history of over heating.

So it is quite easy to end up in a situation where the GPU is stressed out to the max and the CPU is idling - so the fan drops to quite and the GPU temperature starts to rises.

I've seen 110*C on a G1S which was well ventilated (raised off the table) and was dust free inside - it had just come back from ASUS after being RMA'ed because the previous GPU had overheated and killed the laptop. It took them a month to repair.

There is no tool, that I am aware of, that allows you to modify the BIOS of the GPU 8600m GT successfully, ie:
    a) Undervolt it (I'm sure nVidia purposely overstate the voltage requirement on their GPUs so that they can be overclocked successfully).
    b) Change the default clock speeds for Full and Idle loads.

MMTools and NiBiTor comes closes but does not work (you can change the values re-flash the bios but they have no effect).
No desktop application fan speed controller will work either.

The best it gets is a cooling pad - which creates even more noise.

Terrible design

[QuoteMstr]

Software should not be able to destroy hardware, period. The GPU's cooling system should be designed to safety operate for sustained periods at peak load --- anything less is artificially crippling the hardware and leads to both security and reliability problems.

Great job, NVIDIA: now, malware can not only destroy your files, but destroy your expensive graphics card as well.

Re:Terrible design

[ZeRu]

Software should not be able to destroy hardware, period

There's a piece of software which is able to do that for a long time, if not used properly. It's called BIOS.

Re:Terrible design

[Anonymous Coward]

This is more likely due to a defective card.. Should have RMA'd it. Haven't gotten any crashes on any of my nvidia cards in years.

Re:Terrible design

[QuoteMstr]

Sure, you can flash the BIOS with garbage. But you can restore it with the right equipment -- the hardware itself lives on. You can't physically destroy the computer that way.

Re:Terrible design

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference between hardware and software? I'm not being ridiculous, it's a genuine if somewhat rhetorical question. Graphics cards have firmware and microcode, clock frequencies can be changed via software, etc.. When you get down to the bare bones of the system, the distinction between hardware and software becomes blurred, and the clear separation between the two is not so obvious.

Re:Terrible design

[Kleppy]

"Software should not be able to destroy hardware, period."

Tell that to Toyota.....

Re:Terrible design

[rotide]

Software (read: applications) isn't destroying hardware in this case. The hardware itself is now "faulty" as the drivers have a pretty bad bug.

In my mind, this is no different than taking the the heatsink/fan off a CPU. That's a hardware issue. Doesn't matter what games, etc, you run, you risk killing that CPU because the CPU is under an abnormal operating condition.

While drivers are in control in the case we have here with nVidia, I see the drivers as part of the hardware since they were released by the manufacturer.

Re:Terrible design

[maxwell demon]

Old monitors could be killed by software as well (by just selecting a too high sync frequency). Later monitors added a protection against that.
Also, don't some motherboards allow to set the CPU voltage in the BIOS? I guess that means you could fry your CPU from software as well.

Re:Terrible design

[QuoteMstr]

I see the drivers as part of the hardware since they were released by the manufacturer.

Congratulations! You've won the "Stupidest Thing Dan Has Read In The Last 24 Hours" award.

Re:Terrible design

[rotide]

Do you care to discuss something? Or does it simply make you feel better to make fun of people that disagree with you and/or have a different opinion?

Re:Terrible design

[maxwell demon]

I see the drivers as part of the hardware since they were released by the manufacturer.

So Mac OS X is hardware, too, because it's released by the hardware manufacturer, i.e. Apple?

Re:Terrible design

[maxwell demon]

Simple: If you can download it, it's software.

Note that clock frequency is neither software nor hardware.

Re:Terrible design

[rotide]

If you want to take my post out of context, I guess.

But my point, in this case, is what happens if the firmware was causing the problem? Ok, that's software too, should that "never" damage hardware as well? I mean, it's code written and compiled, right?

When it comes to video cards, there are at least two sets of software released by the manufacturer that run the card. One is the firmware and two is the driver. If either one bugs, it's software causing the hardware to fail.

I took the OP to mean "application" level software and I stand by my post. If he meant any software at all then he'd have to explain all the firmware screw ups over the years.

Re:Terrible design

[syousef]

Software should not be able to destroy hardware, period

Good luck with that since software controls the hardware. Whether it's in bios or drivers, software that operates hardware is going to be able to fry it if written poorly.

The GPU's cooling system should be designed to safety operate for sustained periods at peak load --- anything less is artificially crippling the hardware and leads to both security and reliability problems.

Yes, that's why they built a fan or heat sync into the graphics card.

Great job, NVIDIA: now, malware can not only destroy your files, but destroy your expensive graphics card as well.

You must be new to computing because the ability for a virus to destroy hardware is not new. The only reason it's not done more often is that there's no money or glory to be made in such asshole behaviour. So instead viruses focus on stealing bank account details.

Re:Terrible design

[MikeBabcock]

Wanna bet? I can tell my BIOS to shut off all the case fans and not sound the overheat alarm.

Re:Terrible design

[VGPowerlord]

Software (read: applications) isn't destroying hardware in this case. The hardware itself is now "faulty" as the drivers have a pretty bad bug.

In my mind, this is no different than taking the the heatsink/fan off a CPU. That's a hardware issue. Doesn't matter what games, etc, you run, you risk killing that CPU because the CPU is under an abnormal operating condition.

Er, no, because the hardware clearly still works fine with older drivers.

While drivers are in control in the case we have here with nVidia, I see the drivers as part of the hardware since they were released by the manufacturer.

If it was an issue with the Firmware, then it'd be a hardware issue, as firmware is part of the card itself. Drivers are a piece of software on the computer that knows how to talk to the hardware device that can be changed out by the user as needed.

The real issue here is that the firmware has no override if it thinks the driver is giving it the wrong fan control values.

Re:Terrible design

[null8]

That is not realistic. If you want to provide people with a possibility of BIOS update to fix some hardware bugs, you can overwrite you bios for example with some garbage that can apply incorrect voltages, which will physically destroy your mainboard, it once happened to me. If you know how you even can load new microcode, which can kill a CPU. One can theoretically open multiple tristate gates and cause some kind of short circuit. I mean you can say "noone should kill another person, period", everyone will agree with it, but it's also not realistic.

Re:Terrible design

[PPalmgren]

I think it has a lot to do with enthusiast cards. That market segment is incredibly picky and extremely informed. They tend to push the hardware to the limits, and beyond if it all possible. A lot of these guys run fans at 100% for a year with the card pushed to the max, so it has a lifespan less than 30% of a stock card. As such, they buy more cards per year than their mainstream counterpart. They are also the highest profit margin and recoup R&D costs for NVidia and ATI.

A good way to kill your enthusiast appeal is telling them that you hard-coded in OC prevention to dangerous voltages and temps into your cards. "Just works" doesn't cut it in that arena.

Re:Terrible design

[ZeRu]

...or set my E6600's VCore to 2.0 V. I'm pretty sure I'll end with some dead hardware after that

Re:Terrible design

[Nemyst]

This is why you don't buy directly from Nvidia (or ATI for that matters). If you get a BFG or XFX or EVGA card (which often run for about the same price as vanilla cards), you also get lifetime warranty to protect against exactly this kind of trouble. A friend of mine got his EVGA GPU fried (8800GTX) and they replaced it within 5 days with a GTX 260, for free. No, it's not normal that the drivers can allow that, but shit happens. It'll get fixed quickly I hope, but you should always give yourself some protection on top of that.

Re:Terrible design

[bjwest]

While drivers are in control in the case we have here with nVidia, I see the drivers as part of the hardware since they were released by the manufacturer.

Hardware are PROMs, logic gates and discrete components on the cards, the drivers however are software that runs on the computer and/or changes data on EEPROMs on the card. If it can be changed in a non physical means, it's software. Using CD's as an example, Data on CD-R's, once written, cannot be changed (hardware) where as data on CD-RW's can be (software).

Re:Terrible design

[SwabTheDeck]

Software should not be able to destroy hardware, period. The GPU's cooling system should be designed to safety operate for sustained periods at peak load --- anything less is artificially crippling the hardware and leads to both security and reliability problems.

Great job, NVIDIA: now, malware can not only destroy your files, but destroy your expensive graphics card as well.

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Software (or firmware, if you want to make the distinction) has been used to control fans on GPUs, CPUs, northbridges and plenty of other components for many, many years. I think people don't think about the alternative: putting hardware exclusively in charge of fan control. If you choose the hardware method, there is just as much chance of it becoming fucked up due to lack of testing, poor design choices, etc. However, if you ship a million units with faulty hardware, that means you have a million broken units and there is no choice but to recall/replace them. If you use software and you fuck it up, you can patch it, saving your customers the time and hassle of having to return their product or being stuck without a solution for an extended period of time, and at the same time saving your company from potentially devastating financial losses. Frankly, I think all parties benefit with a software solution.

Re:Terrible design

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing to discuss. You made a stupid comment that has no basis in fact. Drivers are not hardware. You might wish to treat them that way for administrative, accounting, or support purposes, I guess, but the fact of the matter is that drivers are software. Not only that, they're general purpose software that runs on a general purpose CPU alongside other software that can modify, interrupt, or prevent its function -- implicit in the definition of being part of "a system."

Stating otherwise reveals your ignorance.

That is to say, that's the stupidest thing I've read all day.

Re:Terrible design

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the drivers as part of the hardware since they were released by the manufacturer.

I see you as still being part of your mom because you were released by her.

Re:Terrible design

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing to discuss because you're a fucking idiot. The hardware is just fine if you move it to another computer. There's nothing wrong with the card's firmware that would make it behave badly. What is wrong is the FAN CONTROL, something managed by SOFTWARE in this case.

Re:Terrible design

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you care to discuss something? Or does it simply make you feel better to make fun of people that disagree with you and/or have a different opinion?

How about your utter & complete failure to understand the difference between hardware and software, for starters.

Driver == software
Card == hardware

In my mind, this is no different than taking the the heatsink/fan off a CPU.

Please provide an example of a driver update which removes the heatsink/fan from a CPU. Not only is it different, it does not get any more different.

The only way that you could call this a "hardware" issue would be from the point of view that the hardware should never allow the software to tell it to do something that is physically damaging. However, it appears this hardware DOES have such an issue. Which means that the post you initially replied to was correct- malware could potentially destroy your hardware by simply turning the fans off on your video card... using software.

Re:Terrible design

[Brianwa]

Reminds me of my laptop. The fan speed is software controlled. There's some sort of fail safe built in -- if the speed control software doesn't initialize or stops responding completely for around 10 seconds, the fan will spin up to maximum speed and stay there. Once I was having some software problems (a nasty rootkit broke a lot of stuff) and the fan speed control process was crashing every few hours. One time, the fail safe didn't kick in. Unfortunately the CPU load was light, so it sat there running at incredibly high temperatures for half an hour rather than shutting down. Luckily the laptop still works, but that probably took a chunk out of it's lifespan. :/

Re:Terrible design

[petermgreen]

Frankly, I think all parties benefit with a software solution.
IMO the best solution is a hybrid. Let software be in charge of finding the normal balance between cool, quiet and fast but have safety limits in the hardware that kick in when thing go too far outside normal.

BTW does anyone know if anyone has retested the affect of heatsink removal under load with more modern CPUs since toms hardware did it back in 2001. I'd like to know if AMD have got thier act together...

Re:Terrible design

[jim_v2000]

Ok captain literal, calm down. Obviously he meant that the hardware was useless without drivers...kind of like how cars are useless without roads or gas. In that case, the drivers could be considered to be part of the hardware....perhaps saying "hardware package" would suit you better.

Er....

[Anonymous Coward]

Farcry 3? Really?

nVidia and the dreaded nv4_disp.dll bug

[CuteSteveJobs]

Don't expect it fixed... ever! In 2005 bought a "top end" Nvidia card that worked fine most of the time, but occasionally it would go through fits where it threw up a BSOD announcing an infinite loop was detected in the display driver nv4_disp.dll.

Many reported it to nVidia - me included - but they ignored everyone through every avenue. The bug stayed there through releases of new generation nVidia cards, and Google shows people still finding the bug and trying to "fix" it to this day.

I can only presume nVidia knew about it, but the problem would have required a card recall. So they just ignored it and kept selling the buggy cards. Many solutions were suggested by users, posted and tried, but none worked. No solutions ever came from nVidia, who wouldn't say a word on the issue. Their FAQ fobbed you off to the OEM who of course had no clue. Last time I checked you couldn't even submit a bug report through their site. They may be successful, but they have the worst tech support ever. Don't expect a fix. In the end I tossed the card.

http://www.google.com/search?q=nvdisp+4+nvidia+bsod

Re:nVidia and the dreaded nv4_disp.dll bug

[Anonymous Coward]

it's 2010... if you're still getting BSOD's you're doin it wrong. I haven't seen a BSOD in at least 5 years and I use computers pretty extensively.

Re:nVidia and the dreaded nv4_disp.dll bug

[Anonymous Coward]

You considered nVidia are the ones doing it wrong?

Re:nVidia and the dreaded nv4_disp.dll bug

[kalirion]

My 8800GT was getting that, but mainly in older games (Descent 3, Gothic, Recoil, Neverwinter Nights) and just a few of the newer ones (Titan Quest: IT). The integrated Nvidia 7100 ran those perfect with the exact same drivers.

The real question is....

[TheFakeMcCoy]

How the hell did those guys get into the Starcraft II beta, I've been waiting for months!

Actually, that gives me a nerdier idea

[Moraelin]

Playing wow while making eggs and bacon without leaving the PC?

Actually, that sounds even better to me. It's just a watercooling block and a nozzle away from a coffee maker. Just imagine it. The non-virtual Java Machine :P

my 8800 ultra died a few days ago

[Anonymous Coward]

And I installed the new drivers a week before that. Co-incidence possibily.. but funny enough the gfx died after playing a long stint of Aion and PC locked up (like a heat related crash) rebooted and blue lines were going across the screen in bios. :(

Oh well I guess NVIDIA could think maybe they could up their sales on cards because people needed to replace their old ones... well guess what NVIDIA! I baught ATI and I'm not looking back. /hugs new 5870

nVidia and bug reports

[achurch]

I haven't heard of that particular problem, but I should point out that nVidia does in fact accept bug reports (on Linux, just run nvidia-bug-report.sh and it'll tell you where to mail your report), and I have actual experience with reporting a bug (nvidia_drv crashed X when switching to another virtual console while an OpenGL window was minimized) and having it fixed.

Far Cry 3

[Karem Lore]

Hi,

Please do tell where I can get Far Cry 3....Unless bittorrent has seriously moved into time travel of course...

196.21 had issues as well

[Darcojin]

I had to revert back to 195.62 driver because the 196.21 was causing my system to randomly lock up, even more so when i was playing games such as Star Trek Online. Boy am I Glad I didn't see the newer one. I will tell you this however, these last to driver revs from Nvidia are sure starting to make look more closely at ATI again.

Re:196.21 had issues as well

[Anonymous Coward]

It certainly is unfortunate to hear about these overheating issues. I bought an ATI 4850 for myself, and I was constantly having overheating issues in most any 3d application (100C or higher). I cleaned the card off as best I could a number of times and verified that the fan speed was going as intended - 100% speed when over 90C sounds like a jet engine taking off. After reapplying thermal grease, it generally stays around 90C. When I initially bought the card, it ran at about 65-75C under load.

In Windows XP SP 2 and 3, I consistently have driver issues. Any online version of the ATI drivers just wouldn't work with the card at all, and the CD drivers would boot me up in a desktop resolution of approximately 320x240 (I couldn't tell for sure, but it was way smaller than 640x480). Eventually I figured out that I needed to install the drivers without ASUS's "GamerOSD" software, and everything would work fine.

I also bought my mom a 5770, and I found that any online version of the ATI drivers causes bluescreens in WoW for her. Thus far, the only thing that doesn't BSOD her is the drivers that were included on the CD. She's on Win XP SP 3.

Due to these issues, I was pretty set on waiting for Nvidia to release a card that is close in performance/cost ratio to the 58xx series ATI cards. Now I'm not so sure on which side I'll aim for :(.

WoW has realistic graphics?

[Drethon]

Since when?

Re:WoW has realistic graphics?

[maxwell demon]

You only think it's unrealistic because you think the unrealistic graphics the Matrix gives you is the reality. The real reality of course looks exactly like WoW graphics.

WoW and realistic in the same sentence!

[carlhaagen]

That's very odd. Also odd is that from the article it seems that the overheating has to do with how realistic the game looks; as if the card just KNOWS the content looks realistic, and suffers a spell of worry, feeling stressed about performing, and thus not managing to cope. Oh, the poor GPUs, they deserve better. Spread the love.

Silence

[DrYak]

Software should not be able to destroy hardware, period. The GPU's cooling system should be designed to safety operate for sustained periods at peak load

And that's certainly the strategy in the corporate* world (for servers, for example).

On the other hand, some other people, the kind who only occasionally play games and use their computer most of the time for office-type work (ie.: non graphically intesive tasks), would appreciate not having to endure the sound of an Airbus A380's takeoff coming out of their computer case every single moment during which the computer is on.

Thus the fan aren't working at constant speed, but are varying their speed to constantly find the perfect balance between silence and avoiding the card catching fire under the load.
Thus you have a small chip controlling the fan. Of course to simplify Q/A, in field bug fixing, etc. this small chip has a small firmware. (Just imagine a non programmable chip controlling the fans, and the same bug. Every single card produced with the bug has to be called backed and replaced - a logistic night mare).
This firmware is setup by the drivers.
A buggy drivers *could* damage the hardware by setting the fan too low. And all that because the end user *wants* a fan that slows down when it's not necessary to have some silence.

The only thing that could have been done, is adding a safe guard which fires a software alarm and either shuts down or massively underclocks the 3D core in case a temperature threshold is crossed. (That's how it's done to protect CPU in case of faulty fan).

*: And then, there's the question of wear of mechanical parts like fans - in server land, it's more a quesiton of balance between mechanical wear of the fans and the server surviving a /. effect (and the wear of the computer due to thermal expansion).

Re:Silence

[Deluge]

"Thus the fan aren't working at constant speed, but are varying their speed to constantly find the perfect balance between silence and avoiding the card catching fire under the load."

And that's the problem with NVIDIA cards. The fan stays at 40% until the card is near overheating, and only then will the fan jump into 100% "oh shit" mode. And to change this behaviour you need a 3rd party util because what NVIDIA provides (a driver addon) is broken, and has been for as long as I've been using the latest NVIDIA card.

Re:Silence

[petermgreen]

The only thing that could have been done, is adding a safe guard which fires a software alarm and either shuts down or massively underclocks the 3D core in case a temperature threshold is crossed. (That's how it's done to protect CPU in case of faulty fan).
Back in the P4/athon XP era toms hardware demonstrated ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSGcnRanYMM ) removing the heatsink from various chips while gaming and the P4 kept going albiet at slideshow framerates and reconvered fine when the heatsink was reattatched . Unfortunately i'm now aware of any similar tests since

Nvidia need to realise (like AMD did after that video) that thier overheat protection systems need failsafes implemented at as low a level as possible so that even if the fan system fails the chip can't cook itself.

SUE THEM!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone whose hardware is damaged should SUE THESE BASTARDS!!!!

GPUs not just for gaming anymore

[dcraid]

I use my GPU as a 715+ GFLOP SETI cruncher.

YouTube RivaTuner Guide to work around this

[allcoolnameswheretak]

So nVidia FINALLY acknowledged that there is a problem with their newer graphics cards.

I've been having this problem for over 5 months since I got a new GTX 275. Games would crash or freeze because the fan duty cycle would stay fixed at 40% even with temperatures higher than 75. I reported my problems to the nVidia forums, but people there said it had nothing to do with the driver, but was probably a manufacturer BIOS or chipset issue. Still, since the problem can be solved by software using RivaTuner, I don't see why nVidia can't take responsability and provide a fix for this issue in their drivers.

Here is a YouTube guide on how to configure RivaTuner so that you can play your games again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXr6IIj1sLY&feature=player_embedded#

Keep in mind that for some reason, you have to have RivaTuner -AND- the Hardware Monitoring both running for the settings to take effect.

evil...

[GNUPublicLicense]

nvidia is evil since they don't publish their hardware programming manual like AMD(ATI)/Intel. Buy AMD(ATI) or Intel. Avoid like hell nvidia till they release their manuals.

Time to switch to ATI?

[js3]

Last week my win7 bluescreened 3 times with weird hardware errors while playing WoW. I knew something was off but never figured it would be crappy nvidia cards. I've always been a fan and always bought their cards but yea wtf is up with that. Maybe time to try some ATI

These drivers were WHQL certified

[bconway]

According to Microsoft, The Windows logo signifies the compatibility and reliability of systems and devices with Windows operating system. It gives customers confidence that your product is thoroughly tested with Microsoft-provided tools and ensures a good user experience.

Doesn't say much about their testing, does it?

Re:These drivers were WHQL certified

[shadowfaxcrx]

If they claim that their certification process "ensures a good user experience" and "gives customers confidence that your product is thoroughly tested" then. . yeah.

Re:These drivers were WHQL certified

[bconway]

Yes. That's what WHQL means. Try installing drivers on an x64 Windows without it, it's not pretty, and for this very reason (plus security).

Re:These drivers were WHQL certified

[Chees0rz]

The last time I had access to the WHQL test suite, it was mostly used for testing the functionality and compliance of hardware to DX9/10. I don't recall it covering any areas of 'stress.' Although I sure wasn't looking for it.

Has any GPU damage *actually* occurred?

[3.1415926535]

Unlike the (what appears to be purely speculative) complaining here, modern graphics boards have thermal and voltage protection circuitry that operates independently of the software to protect the GPU from exactly this sort of situation. That's why the Blizzard report talks about a lot of "my game slowed down" complaints rather than "my GPU blew up" complaints.

Re:Has any GPU damage *actually* occurred?

[kalirion]

Unlike the (what appears to be purely speculative) complaining here, modern graphics boards have thermal and voltage protection circuitry that operates independently of the software to protect the GPU from exactly this sort of situation.

Are you saying it's impossible to damage modern GPUs by reckless overclocking?

I doubt they've isolated the bug.

[MarkvW]

I finally sidelined my (very expensive) NVIDIA card because it kept bsodding. Damn nvlddmkm driver. This is a long term problem for NVIDIA. Check the web.

Don't know whether it's a software or hardware problem. Card used to work.

Won't buy NVIDIA for a long time.

Linux Users Remain Largely Unaffected

[RobDude]

Just sayin...

Re:Linux Users Remain Largely Unaffected

[Kirin Fenrir]

Just sayin...

Yes, Tux Racer never overheats videocards!

(I kid. Don't kill me.)

November update.

[Anonymous Coward]

The November Nvidia update caused me to start getting serious artifacts in Batman after just a few minutes of play that would not go away until I shut down the machine and waited a few minutes. I wasn't alone with that.

This is the 3rd catastrophic Nvidia driver fail since November. Good job guys!

My NVIDIA Observation

[dlfretz]

I do know that in my computer setup that the 2 EVGA 275 FTW cards get cooled down unevenly at idle. I am running the NVIDIA 196.75 driver under Vista 64 Ultimate with SLI ana PhysX turned on. The first card runs at 163 degrees Fahrenheit and the other card at 123 degrees Fahrenheit with both fans set at 100% speed via the NVDIA control panel at idle.

I have caused my computer to lockup playing Mass Effect with the fans in automatic mode and running with the NVIDIA Real 3D feature. The temperature was 192 degrees Fahrenheit on the hotter card before the lock up with Mass Effect. However, World of Warcraft doesn't cause as much heat as other games. I normally see both cards range around 163 degrees Fahrenheit with no problems at all.

It's the late 80's and early 90's again.

[Mashiki]

And people called me crazy when I said there was a possibility of software ruining hardware again. Those old enough should remember the ansi/ascii malware that ran around for awhile popping peoples monitors before there was sync locking. And they should also remember the number of virus that were floating around that would crash drive heads into the spindle.

So...

[Moheeheeko]

...buissiness as usual at NVIDIA?

Will you let us know when it's safe to go to newer

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you let us know when it's safe to go back to the pulled or newer driver?

It's a warning label.

[Narcocide]

Seriously tell me you didn't already know.

The BSOD was on Windows.

[CuteSteveJobs]

nVidia don't accept bug reports for Windows.

GPU can't cook themselves.

[DrYak]

Nvidia need to realise (like AMD did after that video) that thier overheat protection systems need failsafes implemented at as low a level as possible so that even if the fan system fails the chip can't cook itself.

Modern GPU can't easily cook themselves. They are spec'ed to work with extremely harsh temperature. 90C is a normal operating temperature for some chips.

The problem is not the CHIP, the problem is the PCB board. If the cooling system fails, the whole PCB will be heated. If done for a prolonged time, the card is going to suffer : Thermal stress, board wrapping, connection breaking, solder melting, etc.
The exact same as observed in some modern consoles (XBox360 mainly) and some classic computers (Apple III). In none of these where the chips actually fried, but the whole device suffered from the mechanical stress done by the heat. ...though we don't know if dropping the GeForce from 3inches highe is going to fix the problems. :-)

How to Find Current NVIDIA Driver Version

[progliberty]

How to Find Current NVIDIA Driver Version (on your computer) in Windows XP: START menu >> Control Panel >> NVIDIA Control Panel >> Help Menu >> System Information

nVIDIA Overheating

[Chili-71]

I have had a problem for years with nVIDIA cards overheating. So, I have the profile setup to run the fans as max speed. Makes the system a little noisy, but then again, when a grenade goes off in your face, the fan noise is not an issue.

9600 GT goes bye-bye

[Derpnooner]

This driver update is probably why my 9600 GT popped 2 caps a couple of weeks ago. How lame is this? My card is no longer under warranty and it popped due to badly written/tested drivers. Oh well, I went out and bought an ATI 5 series. DirectX 11 and AvP is a pretty good combo. Thanks Nvidia!