196.75 was released on March 2, 2010 for for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The 196.75 driver has been withdrawn by NVIDIA.
- Up to 13% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with a single GPU
- Up to 30% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with SLI technology
- Up to 13% performance increase in H.A.W.X with single GPU
- Up to 15% performance increase in H.A.W.X with SLI technology
- Up to 30% performance increase in Left 4 Dead with single GPU
- Up to 28% performance increase in Left 4 Dead with SLI technology
A forum post asked, “That’s good news! When do you think we should expect NVIDIA to reimburse us for our damaged hardware???”
The 196.75 drivers have a defective fan profile. This lead to our 8600 GT to overheat to self-destruction which damaged several components when the regulator shorted out.
See our page on Video Card Overheating. We suggest using MSI Afterburner and a custom fan profile that increases the fan speed to 100% at 75C and higher.
“Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered”.
We identified large numbers of damaged video cards before NVIDIA finally withdrew the defective driver. Most of the dead cards we saw were Zotac as a local distributor carried the line. In total we suffered 6 video card failures that we had to replace at cost as the cards were past the warranty period. Of the GeForce 8000 series cards, we replaced them with GeForce 9000 cards of the same type. We lost about $1,000 due to this driver.
Portable machines could not have their video replaced filed suit and NVIDIA spend a lot of money to deal with the problem. We heard suggestions of $200 million.
We were able to obtain a better display adapter in 2010. We procured a BFG GTX 260 from a private transaction. In the time that we have had the card we have been successful at defending it from bad drivers. BFG was also bankrupted by the 196.75 fisco so the lifetime warranty was moot. When retired the card was still completely functional and never ever overheated or crashed.
The GTX 260 has continued to run well but we use a custom fan profile that is far more aggressive than the default values. Fear is a powerful motivator given the expense of replacing 6 video cards. Later in we purchased a second EVGA GTX 250 SC to operate them in SLI mode.
WHQL
With all the problems we have found; it clearly demonstrates that WHQL is rather pointless from a gaming perspective. No wonder our site is so popular.
CONTACT
Contact us if your have driver issues. Fee Liable.
