Don't install Nvidia 196.75 drivers - overheating issues.

[apocrypha]

Haven't seen this posted anywhere here yet, thought it best to spread the word. Seems the latest Nvidia drivers have a fan control bug of some kind that's leading to serious overheating of graphics cards. This is taken from a battle.net blue post:

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

[BoatApe]

Thank you.   

[01101010]

I haven't had an issue, though I use RivaTuner and manually set my card fan speed when I play games. Good to note though.

edit: on a side note, I tested on a couple of games and things seem to smooth much better on 196.21 than on .75. Even with my card fan @ 75% speed - I don't get near the stuttering I did with .75

[Sky]

I'm still on .21 and also use RivaTuner, but thanks for the heads-up. I've already got a lot of heat issues