NVIDIA 196.75 Drivers Kill StarCraft 2 and Computers

[Konrad]

I want to warn all of our visitors who are participating in the StarCraft II Beta to refrain from installing the latest NVIDIA WHQL 196.75 WHQL-certified drivers. If you already installed it, uninstall it and downgrade to the previous version. Yeah, it's that serious. Many players are reporting their PCs or graphic card have died. It also affects all Blizzard games, so heed the call and safe your hardware's life.

According to Blizzard's Tech Support the latest NVIDIA drivers are causing fan control to not work correctly and causes massive overheat. StarCraft II Beta might kill your PC or card literally. A fix is already in the works. Stay tuned for further updates.

Source: http://starcraft.incgamers.com/blog/comments/nvidia-19675-drivers-starcraft-ii-beta-rip-pc-graphic-cards

It appears that nVidia made a bit of a woopsy, and is now killing Star Craft playing computers. Maybe the're just bitter they didn't get into the beta? :p

When not melting your computer, the drivers offer some real goodies:


Adds SLI and multi-GPU support for top new gaming titles including Assassin Creed II, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, Mass Effect 2, Napoleon: Total War, and Zombie Driver.
Enhanced SLI support for World of Warcraft and Unigine.
Adds override anti-aliasing support for Mass Effect 2.

[Jason]

Yowch. What is it with Nvidia and dodgy driver releases? This has to be the most serious yet... I imagine they'd probably be opening themselves up to some potential legal action here. :-/

[MyNameDidntFit]

? (http://www.mature-gamers.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=23)

In recent years I really think that ATI have caught up to NVidia and started to beat them in the face. If NVidia doesn't start fixing up their act with drivers and getting out some new hardware, I'd say they're going to lose a lot of sales.

[Jason]

Agreed. I think it's the Radeon 4850 (or something along those lines) which is an absolutely phenomenal card for the price. At the moment, Nvidia are still running on their past glories, and are getting sales through brand name alone. That won't continue forever, particularly if they keep churning out rubbish drivers and ATi keep pounding on them in the low price, high performance stakes.

[MyNameDidntFit]

The 4850 is an astounding card. It's not exactly new (mid '08 release IIRC) and yet it runs every new game I've tried on it at the highest settings -- and keep in mind that I run on 1680x1050. Even the horribly optimised but oh-so-pretty Crysis games. I look forward to testing it on an even shinier Crysis 2 :p