Nvidia Warns: Latest Drivers May Damage Graphics Cards

From X-bit Labs: Nvidia Corp. on Tuesday issued a warning claiming that its latest ForceWare drivers contain an error that causes fan speed issues, which, according to media reports, may damage or even damage certain graphics cards.

“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 do not download this driver. Instead, please stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers. Release 196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our website and we also are asking our partners and others to remove temporarily this 196.75 WHQL driver as well,” a statement by Nvidia reads.

Nvidia also created a special web-page that provides instructions how to downgrade to older drivers.

According to Web reports, ForceWare 196.75 drivers can slowdown or even stop cooling fan on graphics cards. As a result, the graphics cards may start to throttle down its performance in order to keep itself cooler or even get damaged by heat.

At press time it was unclear how many graphics adapters around the globe were damaged by the drivers, how Nvidia plans to replace such products and how it will figure out that the boards were harmed by the drivers, not overclocking.

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