Problem with Nvidia driver 196.75 - Do not update

[CommanderCrazy]

Well, My 260SO has yet to screw up under the driver, but if it does I got a 2 year extended warranty for 20 bucks (:thanks: CPL!)

I get a refund & probably jump on the ATi 5 series Bandwagon.

[Deleted54170User]

My Nvidia 8600 GT overheats occasionally and it crashes. I mean that, "Occasionally."

 

Doesn't seem to matter what version of driver I have, or had, installed. It seems that it just get's too hot on occasion and artifacts start appearing. Some time they look like little snow flake's, until a blizzard of color blurring the screen sets in, and finally freezes the game's video up. The sound track still plays on.

Other times, like earlier this evening, the video suddenly stall's, then blur's, and I can hit Alt-Tab only to see little dots still present on the screens desktop.

 

As I never turn off the computer unless I have to, it is my opinion, that those occasional crashes are caused by the video card getting overheated.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Mine fried itself along with the entire logic board back at the end of December. I sent it in for servicing, and man was I glad I'd bought the extended warranty- I usually don't, but it paid off double. Would have been a $600+ repair... and guess what they (Apple, that is; I dual-boot XP for gaming) dropped in as a replacement part? You guessed it... another 8600M GT which, despite being installed well after the entire foulup was revealed, still exhibits the same chronic overheating that the other one did. I'd buy a new computer, but that's just not in the budget. I run my laptop with a cooling base and a desk fan aimed under the case. I had the same setup when it cooked itself.

 

To give the rest of you some idea of how hot these things run, before it had its meltdown mine averaged ~60C while idling on the desktop, with supplemental cooling. The replacement board so far idles at 57. Compare this to the HD at 42, and the processor at 37.

[Illiad86]

ouch...that sucks. My friend had that problem a while back on other drivers with his EVGA 8800GT...he wound up spending $80 on a new heatsink with a fan controller until a fix arrived. It starting showing artifacts when he was playing Crysis, caught it quick so it wouldn't fry itself.

 

Heh, I was just about to say I should tell my mama not to update them...she has my old 7950GT now...but it's passive cooled :P Glad I have ATI now :)

[Deleted54170User]

Oh! Dust your video cards heat sink grill at least once a month.

 

I use a high pressure air gun.

 

While your at it do the cpu fans heat sink grill too.

Dust bunnies are real!

Their real name is, "Mite". So they definitely have might and can cause a might bit of a mess in your case if you don't keep those mites out.

[Thor.]

Agree with you dust is the biggest killer in most cases. I had 2 8800gts 320mb ram and i had no problems with them. Dust wasn't a problem, cleaned it regularly and good air flow.

 

A friend of mine still has them and they are still chugging along.

[Dark0ne]

Its the 8600GTs (especially the mobile versions) that have the known defects and that nvidia continue to replace like-for-like rather than upgrading people as compensation for a problem they themselves caused. It reflects very badly on them as a company. Pretty much all nvidia cards of the past few years have been extremely hot running cards.

[Deleted54170User]

I have two pc model Nvidia 8600 GT's that I bought when Windows Vista was 1 year old.

I have them in a game machine. Super hot Windows Vista 64 Bit, AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core Processor 6000+ 3.0 GHz CPU, 8 GB of Ram, that used to have a 5.0 Windows Experience Index. After I plugged in a 1 TB USB Hard drive the Windows Experience Index dropped to 4.8. Just barely good enough to handle online gaming.

 

 

As for those little holes on the mobile units that make it real easy to overheat video cards they actually cook the dust attached or laying on them. It is that, that is like thin coat of plaster, on them them that decreases their functionality most and especially if they are not removed and cleaned regularly too. Using a fast flash cleaning solution is preferable.

 

I have burned out a very good gamer Averatec 7100 laptop because of my inexperience with the mobile's, (a. k. a. laptop's) poor circulatory systems with that extra cooking quality from the small closest like space.

 

The port for the fan was open down on the bottom pulling the cool air right up from on my jeans of my right leg if I put it on my lap. Suffocating that poor CPU and Video card area easily while I played or wrote posts to the forum. The exit air slot was a grill about two inches wide and only a quarter of an inch high on the back. It was frequently clogged with dust because laying on my lap slowed the fan down so the dust could build up.

I would forget and put it on a table with only the little knobby pads which only gave it an extra 32 of an inch off the tables wood too.

 

In my opinion Heat and dust are the real problem's; even though some software malfunctions are the blame for the lot.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

I don't mind a component that runs hot- if it was designed to run that way. If the materials can withstand the heat, it's all good. If they can't, own up and redesign the product. There's no excuse for having major system components fail within two years of installation.

 

And back on the subject of software patches, can anyone seriously tell me that a company with nVidia's resources can't spare enough people to thoroughly test a driver patch? Things slip through the cracks, and I get that, but they've had about three decades' worth of crack-slippage in the past three years. One would expect that a company that's made such a major blunder in the recent past would at least make extra-double-sure to dot their i's and cross their t's to prevent further mishaps.

[Deleted54170User]

I don't mind a component that runs hot- if it was designed to run that way. If the materials can withstand the heat, it's all good. If they can't, own up and redesign the product. There's no excuse for having major system components fail within two years of installation.

 

And back on the subject of software patches, can anyone seriously tell me that a company with nVidia's resources can't spare enough people to thoroughly test a driver patch? Things slip through the cracks, and I get that, but they've had about three decades' worth of crack-slippage in the past three years. One would expect that a company that's made such a major blunder in the recent past would at least make extra-double-sure to dot their i's and cross their t's to prevent further mishaps.

 

You are suggesting that Nvidia has the same people working for them still they did when ATI was a challenger and not a partner. Do you really think those same human beings still work for them?

 

People I have worked with have a variety of different habits and work is not always as well organized as some of us would like.

I am guessing the software programmers they have that were with them originally are the kind of people who wake up in the morning and remember they have children now.

 

To joke around and think they are perfect automated human machines that don't make mistake's when they get stressed is like saying, "We are all perfect".

 

At least I know I was perfect yesterday, but today I a feel like I have played Dragon Age: Origin's too much and need to separate my dream sleep views from reality gaming again, like I did with MORROWIND. Morrowind?! Man! Talk about a game that worked on the mind while having sleep dreaming views.

 

People are always making minor improvements and software changes for and to hardware. When they do someone else doesn't always get the memo of the recent upgrade to the 1's and 0's in the machine language.