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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.
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.
Prototype, World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis
One of these things is not like the others~
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.
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.
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.
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.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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.
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.
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 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
Hi,
Please do tell where I can get Far Cry 3....Unless bittorrent has seriously moved into time travel of course...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Just sayin...