[News Importer]

Reports have been flooding in from all over the web. The newest NVIDIA WHQL drivers, 196.75, have been pulled from the NVIDIA downloads page, after reports surfaced of fried GPUs. There have been many posts on the NVIDIA forums already with little response. Their initial suspicion of this issue is that of fan speed controls, possibly some sort of malfunction that is still being rooted out.

There is no word yet on if NVIDIA will allow extended RMAs for these happenstances. There is yet no specific cause for these software faults and whether or not they only affect certain models or brands is inconclusive. Most of the time, problems are caused from resource intensive games such as WoW or Crysis.

An NVIDIA Technician has posted a somewhat relaxing comment on the NVIDIA forums:

“We are currently are investigating the matter to determine the appropriate next steps. I'll update the forums of any new developments.”

As per described, it’s highly recommended to uninstall these faulty drivers and use the latest stable that is now posted on NVIDIA’s download section. Stay tuned as the story develops.



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[Paul]

I'd hope that they be able to RMA it in this instance, there's some expensive hardware out there that would essentially be turned into fried eggs for the people affected by this.

[Chris123NT]

Wow, this is not good at all, hope NVIDIA does something for whoever suffered a lost card as a result of these drivers.

[Sevan]

Woa.. That's not cool.

[David]

I've seen a couple topics on various forums of people who have had their card fried as a result. I would imagine the manufacturers would RMA without a fuss.

Not all cards seem to be affected though. The fan on my GTX 275 is clearly running fine, and the GPU temp is hovering around 44C as usual.

[Ryan Price]

LMAO the fall of Nvidia... love it!!!! hahaha

[Michael Trout]

I doubt it will be the fall for Nvidia as a company. it seems to have effected only a small amount of users and only in certain hardware, software, and game combinations.

I for one sure hope to have two major GPU manufacturers. It keeps them working in a forward motion instead of becoming lazy and complacent. The same would happen in the CPU arena if Intel or AMD went under. They no longer would have to strive to keep the customer happy and on board with there products.


I am not by any means an Nvidia fan boy or an ATI fan boy. It would be my wish that ATI spend as much time and effort as Nvidia has in getting Folding at Home working on their GPUs. If they would do that I would be using ATI right now.

[Sevan]

Ryan Price, on 07 March 2010 - 03:49 AM, said:

LMAO the fall of Nvidia... love it!!!! hahaha

Little fanboyish if you ask me.

I mean, people make stupid mistakes, so what. If it can be fixed with a replacement, I don't see a problem.

[Ryan Price]

Fanboyish? What? So i like video cards that don't require 2 to 3 8pin connectors just for it to function or sound like a 787 taking off everytime i turn on the pc? That's not fanboyish thats being a smart consumer.

[Paul]

Well, some ATI cards can be fairly loud as well.

[Mitchell]

All mid to high end video cards that are air cooled tend to be classed as on the loud side, but usually only when the fan is running at around 50 - 100% speeds. Rarely will the cooling fan reach over 50% speeds when set to automatic, although it does take into account how hot the surrounding area is and adjusts it's speed accordingly.

While power requirements may seem hefty, power draw from modern day cards such as ATI's 5700 and 5900 series are considerably less compared to the last generation. Idle consumption is also improving across the board too making them more efficient when left in this state for long periods of time. However, you still have to take into account that when fully loaded these cards will draw a good amount of power which is why supplementary power from the systems PSU is also required. There is an improvement in this also though since we are seeing fairly high end cards using dual 6-pin connectors with 6 and 8-pin connectors being used for dual GPU cards.

GPU manufactures are trying their best to bring down power consumption, especially since we're at a point in time where the GPU is overtaking heavy duty tasks which would have once been executed by the CPU.


Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

I really hope NVIDIA get this issue sorted out and that the people with damaged cards do indeed get replacements. I can honestly say though, never have I heard about nor witnessed a video driver or driver of any sort damaging a component. This has to be a first in my books.

Hopefully NVIDIA can pick themselves up from the bad luck that they've been having since late last year and make their GTX 400 series a somewhat success. That would certainly pay off.

[Ryan Price]

I'd much rather see AMD keep the crown, least they aren't charging the price of your kidney for a video card that only 'matches the performance' of AMD's flagship cards

[Mitchell]

Ryan Price, on 10 March 2010 - 07:09 AM, said:

I'd much rather see AMD keep the crown, least they aren't charging the price of your kidney for a video card that only 'matches the performance' of AMD's flagship cards

Well AMD will probably still be king with the HD 5970's including the upcoming 4GB versions from the likes of Sapphire and XFX.

As of yet we don't know how NVIDIA's GTX 400 series compares to AMD's 5800 series due to them keeping things very quiet. The rumour was that the GTX 480 is comparable to AMD's HD 5870 in terms of performance but higher in power requirements.

I prefer AMD/ATI cards myself and have been using them since I switched back in 2006 - 2007.

[Ryan Price]

Decided to go Nvidia years ago and saw that as a bad idea..i got WORSE gaming performance of those cards than i did with ATI ones.