A number of StarCraft II beta testers hare reporting that their PC or video cards are dying after installing NVIDIA’s 196.75 drivers. The volume of reports have prompted Blizzard Entertainment to issue an official statement on the tech support forums now that they have finished identifying the source of the problem.
Most interesting of the reports, one gamer reported insane temperatures as high as 104′C, stating
While some players were blaming the StarCraft II Beta client’s latest patch, Blizzard has stated that the problem is caused by the latest NVIDIA 196.75 drivers.
Blizzard is recommending that users uninstall the NVIDIA 196.75 drivers, and that they downgrade to the previous driver version: 196.21.
Starcraft II Beta is not the only application affected, thus this is a worldwide alert to every gamer out there. Blizzard concluded the fans control in this NVIDIA driver is not working properly.
March 12, 2010
#1
Believe me, my Radeon 4850 also goes even to 115C and system simply shut down. I don’t know what to do, if it’s a drivers issue or current graphics simply sucks in terms of cooling, mine have just some basic fan
March 12, 2010
#2
This is why ATI is superior, especially since nvidia started putting PhysX support in the control panel their GPU drivers have been nothing but trouble.
March 13, 2010
#3
My 4870 almost never gets above 75 degrees, even when playing Crysis Wars with everything on full at 1400×900… I think you may have an issue with your fan, or dust perhaps
March 13, 2010
#4
Yeah, probably it’s fan, cause it work way to slow, not like on CPU, on back door of case and on power supply… But hey, it’s ASUS cooler on it which they pretend cooler 7C than reference one. I call BS on this! Wasted money…
March 13, 2010
#5
I’d say go with HIS or XFX next time. HIS coolers are some of the best I’ve deatl with, especially the Ice4+. and XFX has a lifetime warranty on their cards (sometimes double lifetime I hear, meaning you and the person you sell it too)
March 16, 2010
#6
Well, I just played Bioshock 2 and card wasnot hotter than 80C, probably it’s SC2 bug really. After playing SC2 even browsing internet made it hot.
March 21, 2010
#7
It’s kinda ironic. Speaking as a gamer who has been buying nVidia products for over 10 years, it’s shocking to see them fall from grace as much as they have.
10 years ago, ATI was complete garbage. Drivers almost worthless, cards underpowered, totally outdone by nVidia.
Whereas nVidia had the best GPU technology in the world, and were the first to unify the drivers for all their Video Card lines into a single download; idiot proofing the install of Video Card drivers.
Fast-forward to the present, and nVidia is making more costly mistakes than ever. Higher prices than comparable ATI cards, hotter-running cards in all their lines, and as this article exposes, MUCH less testing and viable coding in their Drivers. Just how did a bug that disables your GPU fan completely ever make it past their Beta Testing? That question frightens me most, considering we’re talking thousands of gamers around the world, risking uncounted amounts of money on the video cards they invested their hard-earned cash in.
“MD – especially since nvidia started putting PhysX support in the control panel their GPU drivers have been nothing but trouble.”
I must agree. I don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes, but temps are higher than ever before and stability is certainly more of an issue these days for a number of people.
The answer is always the same – The End User needs to use more cooling.
More fans, or upgrade to Water cooling. Basically, always putting blame on the End User as much as possible, instead of raising industry standards. Improve the coding of their drivers? Research cooler running architectures? Seemingly not as high-priority as rushing buggy drivers out the door, and faster cards.
I’ll stick with my mid-range ATI card for awhile longer. She may not be bleeding edge, but I’d rather have a running system than an oversized paperweight.
–DKnight