nVidia GeForce Drivers

[TechAngel85]

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There've been reports that 320.18 WHQL drivers kill GPUs. O.O Better be careful and keep a copy of the previous driver at hand.

I also keep a copy to the current and previous drivers on my system. (Windows also tracks this but I like having the installers.)

[Neovalen]

I downgraded my driver, just in case, not risking my expensive ass SLI cards. ;)

[Besidilo]

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There've been reports that 320.18 WHQL drivers kill GPUs. O.O Better be careful and keep a copy of the previous driver at hand.

This was probably a card not throttling when exceeding certain temperature threshold. It shouldn't be an issue for users that have half-decent cooling.

 

I haven't had any issue with that driver, personally. The problem is not even reported by any of the major tech forums.

[rootsrat]

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There've been reports that 320.18 WHQL drivers kill GPUs. O.O Better be careful and keep a copy of the previous driver at hand.

This was probably a card not throttling when exceeding certain temperature threshold. It shouldn't be an issue for users that have half-decent cooling.

 

I haven't had any issue with that driver, personally. The problem is not even reported by any of the major tech forums.

 

Still to bear in mind that ENB is not compatible with this driver.

[Besidilo]

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There've been reports that 320.18 WHQL drivers kill GPUs. O.O Better be careful and keep a copy of the previous driver at hand.

This was probably a card not throttling when exceeding certain temperature threshold. It shouldn't be an issue for users that have half-decent cooling.

 

I haven't had any issue with that driver, personally. The problem is not even reported by any of the major tech forums.

Still to bear in mind that ENB is not compatible with this driver.

Scrap that, there are users on overclock.net reporting the issues with Fermi cards, as well as on the official Nvidia forum.

 

I'd avoid them in that case, personally, even though I haven't had an issue with them (but that could be due to a limited number of games I tested it in).

 

ENB is not fully compatible, but besides the SkyLighting bug, I don't think there's anything else that conflicts.

[WilliamImm]

Note to self: When the 660GTX arrives and is installed, get the 314 drivers instead of the 320. I know the problem seems to happen more with 400 series cards, but I would rather not have my new and pricey card be dead shortly after installation.

[phazer11]

I wouldn't worry too much about it: even if they haven't fixed it by the time you get your card. That is if you are able to keep running everything with your current one since you can RMA it for free or next to nothing. I do understand the hesitation however: I'm currently looking for deals from EVGA since I have over a hundred bucks in coupons/vouchers etc for them and would rather not have to RMA something I spent $2-300 on in addition to the savings.

[WilliamImm]

Well, better to be safe than have a fried card. That being said, if the 660 gets fried, I could just reinstall my 6870, or, even if I don't have that, I could use the 7660D built into my processor, though I won't be able to run Skyrim as well. Still, better than having a non-functional computer.

[Besidilo]

I haven't seen any indication that it affects Kepler cards at all. Besides, for the card to get fried, it would have to be running at very high temps already. GTX 660 is not even close to the ballpark Fermi is at.

[TechAngel85]

My Geforce GTX 460M isn't having any issues with the drivers. :P

[Freyrgjurd]

Tested it, but reverted back to 314.22.

The 3,3% improvement is nowhere near noticeable and I was having problems in Mass Effect 3 (texture clipping).

 

As for the "killing factor", it really can be a death sentence to Fermi and other cards that work normally at 70º+. It slightly elevated my 670's temps from 60º at full load to 65~68º.

[TechAngel85]

I'm expecting an updated driver soon to fix these issues. Companies usually don't let these types of problems exist for long.

[Besidilo]

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Tested it, but reverted back to 314.22.

The 3,3% improvement is nowhere near noticeable and I was having problems in Mass Effect 3 (texture clipping).

 

As for the "killing factor", it really can be a death sentence to Fermi and other cards that work normally at 70º+. It slightly elevated my 670's temps from 60º at full load to 65~68º.

 

Fermi's thermal spec is way beyond 70ºC. It's actually somewhere around 105ºC, at least for the desktop GPUs. They're quite comfortable with running in the 90s and frying eggs.

 

I'd think the new drivers might be putting an unnecessary stress on the VRMs or disable thermal throttling in some way. Other than that, I don't see how the drivers would be killing the cards. I mean, running Furmark all day with throttling disabled should be safe for them anyhow.

 

Kepler GPUs run cooler and have lower throttling threshold which is what lead me to believe was the reason for the issue affecting Fermi cards only.

[Freyrgjurd]

A while back, there was a driver that disabled TT. Didn't fry any cards, just made fan noise unbearable.

 

If they really are frying cards, it's not by overheating. Maybe faulty execution codes for bios related instructions ?

 

I don't know, really. But it's quite weird.

 

As for fermi's thermal spec, I had a 560 Ti a while back. Two actually. But one had this annoying problem of running 90º+ on load, reaching 103º in some cases. Had to pass it on to my mom's computer, since she just watches videos; gaming was killing it. I remember that 100º+ could damage components, like memory (due to poor cooling of said components).

 

Anyway, caution is advised.

[TechAngel85]

Driver version 320.49 is out as well as some new beta drivers; however, I only install the stable drivers on my system. :)