Picked up on this via Stropp (who got it from Engadget). If you are using the latest Nvidia drivers, 196.75, you’ll want to roll them back. Apparently there’s a problem related to the fan controllers which can cause the card to overheat and possibly kill your GPU.
I looked at Nvidia’s support site, and you can’t even download the 75’s now. The current driver release for the 200 series cards for Windows 7 64-bit is 196.21, which is what I’ve been using since the end of January with no problems.
Nvidia 196.75 Drivers Recalled
After I burned through three 8800’s in a year, I switched to ATI and haven’t looked back. Not a single issue, and it runs like a dream. Can’t say I’m sad about it either.
Wow, that’s quite a run of bad luck. I’ve never had a hardware problem with any of my video cards (knock on wood), it’s always been driver and video glitch stuff. Still, for my next card upgrade, I will likely switch back to ATI if Nvidia doesn’t get their software act together.
Yeah Nvidia produced a series of really poor, buggy and problematic drivers recently. But I was in general more happy with my GeForces than with my Radeons. They were quite cool but I never got to like the ATI Control Panel stuff, I deactivated it for the most part. As I mostly use my laptop nowadays, I do not have much choice, I am stuck with the card that was inside… 😉 In my case a GeForce. Bought my dad a brand new laptop today, GeForce 330 etc. etc., and it is running very cool and silent. My Mobile Radeons in previous laptops were always a bit on the overheating side and noisy.
Not making a verdict against ATI or Radeon – I know they sometimes look better than GeForces and my buddy Steve uses Radeons for gaming and they are just great. Just wanted to point out that I am quite concerned about the GeForce driver stuff! 🙁
The machine I’m on now is the first one I’ve ever owned with Nvidia on it. I’ve actually been quite happy with it, sort of a shocker to hear this.
Most of my problems were back almost 10 years ago now, but this latest driver fiasco does have me a bit concerned. Just have to wait and see I guess.
Ahh, I was wondering why they were no longer on the site.
My attitude towards GFX drivers is that if the current ones you have work OK, don’t ever upgrade. It’s not like like your GFX-card drivers will give you security problems like using an outdated system file or web browser will. I generally only try to fix things when they seem broken, which means I update my GFX drivers once a year at most.
This it the attitude that I try to take, but anytime I find out there’s a new driver available I’m always tempted to get it. Usually there’s no reason too, but it’s almost always a temptation. Fortunately I didn’t ever know a new driver was out, or I probably would’ve gotten it.