Nvidia: problematic drivers

Nvidia has decided to remove its new drivers from its servers, the GeForce 196.75 since many users are reporting bugs and problems, even going so far as to produce that their GeForce cards burn out from overheating. The problem is that these drivers suddenly affect the video card fan control causing it to stop working. Apparently the latest Linux drivers also have this problem: www.chw.net/2010/03/nvidia-driver-problems-also-under-linux/

Nvidia's Aaron Plattner put up an official announcement stating that the fan speed issue is also present in the 195.36.08 and 195.36.03 drivers for Linux, users using these versions should revert the drivers to the old version 190.53.

No, no kidding, you just confirmed it Alberto Milone from Canonical lists. Specifically, the news is as follows, as confirmed by sources from NvidiaThe latest released drivers have a dangerous bug in the management of the graphics fan via software. This bug causes that, in certain situations, the fan stops working, stopping and causing the graphics to overheat, even leading to the display of graphic artifacts and in the worst case the death of the GPU.

This is especially serious. I know cases of colleagues who have seen how their laptop returned again and again to the manufacturer's technical service because its graphics mysteriously stopped working. In these cases it was mainly related to a problem in the chipset solder. But this time it is especially serious because I also have a laptop with a graphic Nvidia and I was thinking of abandoning the 190.53 drivers for more current ones and certainly we can all think of updating our drivers. The good news is that in worst cases my laptop is still under warranty, but surely there are readers that could be seen in this case and their equipment is out of warranty. And that would be a chore. And is that Lucid Lynx incorporates the driver affected by this bug (195.36.08)

The bug mainly affects the drivers 196.75, 195.36.08 y 195.36.03. Fortunately, the notice was announced from the forums of Nvidia while these were withdrawn from the official download website.

For now Canonical is already on notice and recommends using free drivers New while there isn't one solution to this bug or in versions prior to Lucid use the 190.53 drivers by default.

There are voices that wonder what is happening in Nvidia so they have these errors. There are other voices that wonder why this sensational entry. We just don't want it to happen to anyone, hence the tone of this post.

More info

• https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2010-March/030380.html
• Ad of Nvidia: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/announcement.php?a=39
• http://www.chw.net/2010/03/nvidia-driver-problems-also-under-linux /

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