As many of you are aware, NVIDIA has hit some snags with their latest round of WHQL drivers. The drivers have been interfering with the fan operation on certain NVIDIA video cards, resulting in the GPU overheating. NVIDIA has taken down the drivers in question, and has asked that we pass along the following message:

We are aware that some customers have reported fan speed issues with the latest 196.75 WHQL drivers on NVIDIA.com. Until we can verify and root cause this issue, we recommend that customers do not download this driver. Instead, please stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers. Release 196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our website and we also are asking our partners and others to remove temporarily this 196.75 WHQL driver as well.

Here’s a link for instructions on how to roll back your driver. http://www.nvidia.com/object/driver_rollback.html

Comments Locked

34 Comments

View All Comments

  • AmdInside - Monday, March 8, 2010 - link

    Glad Microsoft's WHQL certification saved us. Oh wait. Stupid good for nothing WHQL.
  • mathew7 - Monday, March 8, 2010 - link

    I'm not a MS fanboy, but MS has nothing to do.
    1.WHQL certification verifies the driver related to the Windows OS. It does not care that the driver spins the fans 100% all the time (hint: noise) or keeps then at 0.
    2.I really don't think the tests are done in a computer case. I think they are open tesbenches, and maybe even controlled enviroment (25C?). Why would MS bother to test the HW, when it's interested in Windows-driver interactions. So I don't think a GTX could fail the test even after throttling.
  • NJoy - Monday, March 8, 2010 - link

    now I know why we had to replace that burnt GTX285 under warranty 2 days ago...
  • TGressus - Monday, March 8, 2010 - link

    On both sides, they program the fans to stay low to appear more quiet out of the box and in reviewer testing. Put a poll up and I think we'd find most serious 3d/compute users have already learned manual fan speed is preferred and often required.


    Personally, my Heatkiller block didn't notice any change at all...

    watercool.de
  • Kchekrik - Sunday, March 7, 2010 - link

    "drivers have been interfering with the fan operation on certain NVIDIA video cards"

    Which cards exactly are they refeering too. I would like to know if my brothers gfx and mine is affected.
  • TFHX2 - Sunday, March 7, 2010 - link

    it pours!
  • Jamahl - Sunday, March 7, 2010 - link

    how are the nvidia fanboys going to spin this?
  • ProfEW - Saturday, March 13, 2010 - link

    Very careless of Nvidia. This dumb driver fried my 8800GT. I was forced to move to my new ATI 5850 before I was really ready to do so.
  • Ramon Zarat - Monday, March 8, 2010 - link

    How can you "spin" a melted, 500$+ 295GTX? Class action lawsuit anyone??? This is not a question of fanboyisim anymore. We are beyond that now. I've owned many great Nvidia cards myself in the last 15 years, but enough is enough.

    The renaming of the renaming of the renaming of renaming suck. Fermi "puppy" wood screw launch suck. In fact Fermi suck, period. And it's not even out yet... Jen-Hsun Huang suck. Nvidia PR spin after spin after lies after deception suck. Over all, Nvidia attitude suck. And now, their driver suck major balls too.

    If you still have share in this company that is a mere shadow of its former self, I would sell them RIGHT NOW, before it's too late. I mean, a catastrophe of this magnitude, just 3 weeks before lunching an overdue and already doomed product? It's enough to wonder if Nvidia is not suicidal...
  • Devo2007 - Monday, March 8, 2010 - link

    Class action lawsuit? Are you serious?

    There was a bug in the drivers that nVidia pulled once they started getting reports. I'm also quite sure that if cards were fried because of the driver update that nVidia would help out with that. Hardly grounds for a lawsuit - let alone one with class-action status.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now