GG Nvidia

[Falaenx]

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.html

More 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
[ Post edited by Datth ]

[Omegaman]

The actual problem with the drivers appears to be that the nVidia drivers are not allowing some software to control the fan speeds and other once configurable settings on the card.  Anyone using Rivatuner and other software to control their video card/GPU settings were locked out of the ability to access to change and configure settings on some of nVidia's video cards.  So, essentially those who were running OC software or even those running stuff like Afterburner or nTune essentially had those settings they had previously configured disabled.  Therefore, this caused a great number of the video cards to act strange because the user assumed the settings from that software was enabled, when it actually wasn't -- which sucks.  However, users who are using stock video cards with no software manipulation to the settings of the cards should see no difference in performance with the new drivers.  You can imagine if someone raised the voltage and bus speeds of the GPU and had the fan settings to 100% to ensure the GPU kept cool, that they would be pretty surprised to find out that the fan was only running at say 25% with the new drivers.  This would easily cause many of the overheating issues reported out there.

My guess is during the testing phase for the new drivers, nVidia forgot to go back and unlock permissions from software to configure some of these video cards before they released them.

The Blizzard poster was pretty much a blanket "Don't use these" just to prevent any further issues, which makes sense.

Regardless, expect to see new drivers soon.

[_Blackheart_]

Well I use older driver's never have issues. 186 I believe. Newer driver's have scared me. Granted some people have great luck, some less than lucky.

Run a GTX 275, and love it.
Which soon to be upgraded to SLI GTX 480's.