[modcrash.com] Nvidia 320.18 WHQL Display Driver is Damaging GPUs

[Obsoleet]

I'd agree Rvenger, the idea of one is better for this or that and vice versa.. if the card-killing drivers weren't continually popping up.

Everything else can be forgiven pretty easily considering how many difficulties are encountered making these drivers.

Settling the debate over 'gold standard drivers' to "ok ok! It's a tie! We over here on Team Green give up! We'll stop talking about it!! Please!"- is more of a best-case scenario for them.

It would be completely unfair to AMD to accept that when both firms' drivers are pretty much equal anymore- just 1 kills cards every few years. That's really the deciding factor and not fanboyish to point out (it's fanboyish to push under the rug though, for sure).

 

[Rvenger]

(it's fanboyish to push under the rug though, for sure).

I agree, if the drivers are in fact killing the cards, what exactly is Nvidia doing that stresses the cards so much. I have no choice but to use the 320.18 drivers since I own a GTX 780 and I know for a fact that this thing hits 80c in the first 3 minutes of firing up a game on auto fan speed. I do notice some weird artifacts in Farcry 3 but it could just be the game.

 

[sushiwarrior]

I agree, if the drivers are in fact killing the cards, what exactly is Nvidia doing that stresses the cards so much. I have no choice but to use the 320.18 drivers since I own a GTX 780 and I know for a fact that this thing hits 80c in the first 3 minutes of firing up a game on auto fan speed. I do notice some weird artifacts in Farcry 3 but it could just be the game.

GTX780 is designed to hit and stay at 80C. It will ramp up clocks until it hits 80, then use the highest OC it can while staying at 80C (GPU Boost 2.0). Your card isn't a lemon, they're just supposed to run at 80C no matter what (under load).

 

[toyota]

I agree, if the drivers are in fact killing the cards, what exactly is Nvidia doing that stresses the cards so much. I have no choice but to use the 320.18 drivers since I own a GTX 780 and I know for a fact that this thing hits 80c in the first 3 minutes of firing up a game on auto fan speed. I do notice some weird artifacts in Farcry 3 but it could just be the game.

lol it is supposed to go to 80 C with gpu boost 2.0. did you even look at any of the reviews for your card?

 

[Rvenger]

Oh I know about the whole 80c temps and GPU Boost 2.0. I used to own a Titan, and my Titan rarely even hit 80c under load. This 780 runs hotter and I was wondering if it could be driver related or hardware related. It's just speculation at this point.

 

[paul878]

I agree, if the drivers are in fact killing the cards, what exactly is Nvidia doing that stresses the cards so much. I have no choice but to use the 320.18 drivers since I own a GTX 780 and I know for a fact that this thing hits 80c in the first 3 minutes of firing up a game on auto fan speed. I do notice some weird artifacts in Farcry 3 but it could just be the game.

My GTX780 ACX never hit 80c with 320.18, 75 is the most benchmarking and playing Metro LL.

 

[amenx]

I left Nvidia when I bought my 8800GTX due to terrible drivers and went AMD...

I had trouble with their drivers back in the 8800GTX days, having moved to NV after 3dfx died

... a downhill slide with their driver support since roughly the 8800GTX days...

This is happening AGAIN? This happened in 2010 I know for sure http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/warning-nvidia-196-75-drivers-can-kill-your-graphics-card/7551

and someone said this happened last year as well?? edit- found it, 2011-> http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=341316

I think we can all finally end the 'best drivers debate' once and for all and agree at this moment that AMD has won. Handily and without question.
The debate is over, for real.

For every person who has had driver(s) issues with the highly regarded 8800gtx, there were probably a 100 others who had stellar experiences with those cards/drivers. Theres a reason that card was so highly regarded and drivers played a part in that. Your negative experiences with it were not the norm but the exception. Could be embarrassing once it sinks in.

Re the 196.75 drivers, Nvidia acted pretty quickly and withdrew the driver once it became clear that it could damage cards due to faulty fan control. The 267.52 drivers did not kill any cards per se, but had unlocked voltages that allowed a couple of extreme OC'ers from sweclockers and another review site to OC the hell out of them resulting in 2 dead cards. No others.

The 320.18 drivers have been out for quite a while and only now (very few) people are making claims it damaged their card and without any factual technical reasons that could have a bearing on it. It is the same branch of earlier driver releases (320.11, 320.14) that have not caused such claims to appear (as ViRGE noted). It does seem though it is causing graphical glitches in some games for some people but not others. In which case, reverting would be the logical option.

Also a bit silly to use isolated cases to make sweeping statments that X brand won over Y brand based on a very narrow data base. Any informed individual would know that a host of variables including other components/drivers in ones setup may conflict with other drivers/components and result in issues that others do not have and which is often the case. Yet, still, the overall persisting impression - whether right or wrong - is that Nvidias overall driver performance is ahead of AMDs.

Nvidias problem unfortunately is that the video card business is rife with sensationlism and scandal mongering, and where if any potential problem arises with any driver release, it is immediately linked to that past major driver problem, the 196.75. It also gets far more 'extra coverage' because of it in forums and as I stated earlier, "amplified x10 by those who dont even own Nvidia cards"... and who may make fine editors at the Nat'l Enquirer or The Drudge Report.

 

[moonbogg]

I tried installing these a few times and i got some sort of invalid signature error and i couldn't even locate the file after downloading. I tried from different sites as well. I will leave these alone.

 

[Chiropteran]

The source is questionable, I mean it's based on posts at the nvidia driver forum?

Good point. Nvidia users are pretty questionable as far as sources go.

 

[blackened23]

Good point. Nvidia users are pretty questionable as far as sources go.

What I meant was, that if you look at users as a whole, a lot of them aren't technically savvy. Presumably a lot of them may run into a user-caused error or something unrelated to a driver causing a card failure, and then automatically associate a driver release with it.

Now with that said, obviously I don't know if there's any truth to this matter. I kinda doubt it based on the fact that nothing changed with the release aside from added game support, although one thing I have noticed is that all of the complaints originate from GTX 400-500 users? I don't know man. I certainly wouldn't take the issue at face value until a major tech website reports it - I don't consider the source cited in the original post to be anything reputable.

 

[Vesku]

I kinda doubt it based on the fact that nothing changed with the release aside from added game support, although one thing I have noticed is that all of the complaints originate from GTX 400-500 users? I don't know man. I certainly wouldn't take the issue at face value until a major tech website reports it - I don't consider the source cited in the original post to be anything reputable.

"nothing changed with the release aside form the added game support"

Yet there are numerous reports of artifacts and other odd behavior after installing 320.18 WHQL.

 

[Granseth]

For every person who has had driver(s) issues with the highly regarded 8800gtx, there were probably a 100 others who had stellar experiences with those cards/drivers. Theres a reason that card was so highly regarded and drivers played a part in that. Your negative experiences with it were not the norm but the exception. Could be embarrassing once it sinks in.

(...)

Actually, if I remember correctly most people who where trying to use GTX 8800 with vista had driver problems. At least to start with. But I think that was to be expected, new OS, new driver model for DirectX, they started to use unified shaders and so on.

But as I remember it things got better after a while, and all in all 8800 GTX was a big fantastic monster. When I got my 8800 gts 512 mostly all problems where gone.

And with WinXP most problems where minor.

As to stellar experience I'm sure you are right, even with a few problems, especially with performance, most people will not have a reduced experience. It's only when it becomes game breaking that most people will remember it.

 

[thilanliyan]

"amplified x10 by those who dont even own Nvidia cards"...

Sounds a lot like people (not referring to you) who don't even own AMD cards telling me that I must be having massive issues with my 7950, cause ya know, AMD drivers suck and all. By your same reasoning, for every person posting about driver issues with AMD cards, there must be 100 others without issues, yet the "AMD drivers suck" line is perpetually posted on these forums. I must be extremely lucky then as I have never had any major game/OS breaking driver bugs with ATI going all the way back to my X800GTO2. I have no experience with XFire though, which from what I've read has more issues than SLI.

Count me in that group that had driver issues with G80 though (8800GTS 640 for me, bought on launch day). Of course, I still did buy nVidia cards after that, and don't bash them about their drivers every chance I get.

 

[Obsoleet]

. Yet, still, the overall persisting impression - whether right or wrong - is that Nvidias overall driver performance is ahead of AMDs.

Kind of. I think opinion has and is continuing to change. Of course there are a few head in the sand types. It's more of a cliche that NV drivers are better, I don't think anyone really believes when they say NV drivers are better after all these card inflaming scandals NV has better driver support. It's gotten to the point of being a laughable assertion. Yeah there are a few not paying attention, and who do not WANT to pay attention to the facts- as it fits their motives to deny AMD the crown.
But most of us know that AMD driver support is equal, and superior if you're aware of Nvidia destroying their own cards every few years. If you're not aware its not a far stretch to say 'it doesn't matter' and give NV some mythical crown based off of ATI's previous performance.

I believe the general change with Radeon driver support happened when AMD took over. I tried NV and ATI back when 3dfx died, it was easy to pick NV back then. And then had a 9800Pro- gave me another reason to avoid ATI for a very long time. Those days are over though, and some prefer to live in the past. To be honest, I don't know how anyone even used ATI back in the olden days. I had problem after problem, with the 9800 I recall it was Call of Duty (OGL), abymal, major problems at the time. I had to put a GF2MX in the system to play it, and it was faster.
Needless to say I got rid of the 9800 as fast as possible and bought whatever the best NV card was at the time.

Why Nvidia's driver support went down the tubes compared to the pre-8800 era is due to a lot of reasons (maybe overstretched resources, new archs, new OSs, some flat incompetence). But there's really no excuse for the resultant damage done to Nvidia's reputation both on forums and in the mainstream press. Much to the dismay of many, you can't hide from it anymore.
Times have changed. AMD does have the best driver support, whether that's pleasant for anyone to admit or not. I fully admit in the past, this would have been a blatant lie.

 

[thilanliyan]

Times have changed. AMD does have the best driver support,

That's not gonna go over too well on this forum lol

 

[daveybrat]

I know it's an older game, but after i installed the 320.18 drivers for my GTX 660, my COD4 experience was just awful. I got constant stuttering throughout the game almost making it unplayable online.

I reverted back to the 314 series and all my issues disappeared. Guess i'll just skip these and wait for the next batch to release.

 

[SirPauly]

Since this topic may garner some attention -- may try to garner some constructive awareness if nVidia reads this:

With 120 xxx drivers -- -- TXAA x4 is offering odd temporal artifacts with Secret World.

 

[tweakboy]

Its gotta be something else fisher, you still with gang green right ?

You go Red, you go to Devil and we dont want that,

 

[SirPauly]

I believe the general change with Radeon driver support happened when AMD took over.

I think ATI starting working on their reputation during their first Radeon product. Witnessed in 2001 their x16 filtering improve, offered a dithering for 16-bit FSAA banding and offered a forced on x16 filtering for Direct3d content.

In 2002 is when Catalyst was born to continue to improve their reputation and for me was on par with nVidia and from my ATI experiences were very stable -- very rare crashes.

I've been impressed over the years over-all with ATI and nVidia drivers!

 

[Obsoleet]

I think ATI starting working on their reputation during their first Radeon product. Witnessed in 2001 their x16 filtering improve, offered a dithering for 16-bit FSAA banding and offered a forced on x16 filtering for Direct3d content.

In 2002 is when Catalyst was born to continue to improve their reputation and for me was on par with nVidia and from my ATI experiences were very stable -- very rare crashes.

I've been impressed over the years over-all with ATI and nVidia drivers!

That must have been somewhere around the Quack 3 scandal. I remember laughing at ATI for that one. I almost bought the original Radeon. But I owned the ATI TV Wonder before that (the standalone, not the All In Wonder cards they used to sell), and it was really cool, great software features, when it worked. Overall not worth the trouble. Though to be fair part of the troubles might have been that I was using an Audigy at the time, which the 1st models were known to flood the PCI bus with null data. Making anything else not function properly, and even it didn't function properly..
I got a Hauppauge instead, used it with my Geforce's and never looked back until the 9700 Pro launch which caught my eye. Waited till the 9800 though, and already posted that story.

G80 era I started toying with the idea of giving ATI another fair shot, had the 4870 (exceptional release), and now the 5870 (best release from either camp in recent history, a true star moment in GPU/VPU history). I also praised the 5870 for what it was upon release, I swear to god there's a anti-AMD/ATI crowd that plays down massive successes like the 5870 at every turn.
They don't admit it blew everything out of the water for YEARS down the road, once it's irrelevant. We unbiased ones, notice this crap. We notice it coming from Anandtech itself too.

 

[notty22]

Rose-colored glasses :whiste:

 

[Gikaseixas]

Too early to make judgments but from users posts here these drivers do seem to have some instabilities, the card killing part seems to be a bit farfetched thou.

 

[hawtdawg]

I've already mentioned it, but my 780 has 2 different times done the exact same things shown and described on that webpage. My card isn't dead or anything and continues to work fine, but I have to say that it definitely bothers me.

I had a problem here or there with AMD drivers after having nothing but AMD since the 3xxx series (it was all CF related too from what I remember), but never was I scared that my card might randomly fry because of them.

 

[Granseth]

Wouldn't it be really hard to break a card with boost 2.0? With TDP and temperature throttling?

If this is a problem, wouldn't it only be a problem to older cards?

 

[SirPauly]

I also praised the 5870 for what it was upon release, I swear to god there's a anti-AMD/ATI crowd that plays down massive successes like the 5870 at every turn.
They don't admit it blew everything out of the water for YEARS down the road, once it's irrelevant. We unbiased ones, notice this crap. We notice it coming from Anandtech itself too.

imho,

5870 was a welcomed choice, efficient chip, did bring welcomed features like multi-monitor support -- one can argue offer a balanced architecture but had artifacts with filtering transitions and nice to see third party sites investigate filtering strongly -- discuss motion, imho.

AMD had success over-all and the 5XXX series; as they did over-take over-all discrete leadership away from nVidia.