Nvidia Pulls GPU Overheating 196.75 Driver

Nvidia has pulled its 196.75 driver amid complaints that it's malfunctioning and frying graphics cards.

According to incgamers, several people have had their PC or video cards croak after installing the Nvidia 196.75 drivers. StarCraft II Beta players were the first to notice a problem and following complaints that it was something to do with the latest patch from Blizzard, Blizzard tech support explained that the problem is Nvidia's latest driver and Starcraft II Beta is not the only application affected

Blizzard says the problem has to do with the driver's fans control not working properly. This in turn causes the card to overheat and in some cases it can cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. Blizzard support has instructed all players to uninstall the driver immediately and use the older 196.21.

"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."

When contacted by incgamers, Nvidia said it was aware of the issue and that the drivers had been pulled until they can verify a root cause.

"We are aware that some customers have reported fan speed issues with the latest 196.75 WHQL drivers on NVIDIA.com. Until we can verify and root cause this issue, we recommend that customers stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers. Release 196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our Web site in the meantime."

We'll keep you posted on this one. In the meantime, has anyone experienced this particular problem? Let us know in the comments below.