This is a pretty urgent thing to report because it could damage or potentially completely ruin your video card if it's ignored. The latest NVIDIA drivers, 196.75-WHQL released on March 2nd, 2010 are causing issues with the video card fan control while playing Blizzard (and other) games. This is caused by the Automatic Fan Speed feature being broken in the latest drivers.
The games included are: World of Warcraft, StarCraft II Beta and Warcraft III. If you play any of these games (which I'm pretty sure you do if you're reading this website), you'll want to roll your drivers back to earlier versions until this is fixed, unless you want to replace a video card within the next few days.
To find out what version drivers you're using:
- Right-click on your desktop
- Click NVIDIA Control Panel
- When the Control Panel opens, in the bottom left corner there should be a "System Information" link; click this
- Your Driver version should be in the Details portion
Quote from Datth:We're getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and revert back to the older ones.
Windows XP: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_196.21_whql.html
Windows XP 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_196.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_196.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_196.21_whql.htmlMore information can be found on threads such as these:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161525
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161503
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Posted Jun 5, 2010robv9921 i have the nvidia 8800 and my gc shut down and a blue screen came up and told me my driver was pretty much toast. nvidia says they will be putting out an updated driver in the near future to solve this problem but for guys like me im gonna be out 300 to 400 bucks in repairs.... i think its time to switch to a different gc
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Posted Mar 17, 2010I had some issues with video playback with the latest beta driver, might want to stick with the 196.21 for now.
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Posted Mar 17, 2010Latest beta driver who correct fan speed bug is out since today.
GeForce/ION Release 197 BETA 197.13 17.3.2010
This is a WHQL-candidate driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, and 300-series desktop GPUs and ION desktop GPUs.
This driver resolves fan speed issues reported with version 196.75 drivers. NVIDIA asks that you remove 196.75 drivers and update to either 196.21 WHQL drivers or to this 197.13 WHQL-candidate driver.
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Posted Mar 14, 2010i think that my video card has broken, it´s an NVIDIA GeForce7300GS. Can i do anything to repair the card? my computer is being restarted always. Of whom it can be the fault of this? i need to change the video card and i don´t have money. :(
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Posted Mar 8, 2010Yep, it is weird, my video card seems to run fine with these drivers, too.
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Posted Mar 4, 2010Hardware these days doesn't just simply die from overheating. It shuts down first, or trys to compensate by reducing its speed by alot.
But to be safe, its probably better to rollback. NVIDIA has pulled the drivers from their page as well.
On another note, this bug doesn't seem to affect everyone, my fan speed seems to be just fine.