ZDNet is reporting that the 196.75 drivers could be causing nvidia graphics cards to kill themselves...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=7551&tag=nl.e539

Allegedly, in some circumstances, it can slow the fans down too much and they don't respond to heat build-up properly, leading to overheating cards...



Those are the March 2nd drivers, for those who updated last week.

Hmmm... Interesting...

I dug out my old PC yesterday to sell on to a co-worker who needed a Windows PC to do his tax return - he uses Apple PowerPC Macs at home and the free tax return software is Windows only.

I ran all the updates and got the 196.75 update through and then, after a re-start, my Geforce FX6600GT stopped working, or so it seemed. I had a spare FX5200 in the cupboard, so I slipped that into the machine and it worked fine, for a day... Then I left it defragging and the screen went into power saving mode and never woke up again! I powered the machine down and let it restart, nothing, dead as a dodo... Then I plugged the monitor into the VGA port on the card and it sprang back to life.

Is it possible the nVidia driver is somehow messing up the keep-alive/wake-up signal on the DVI port?

the problem was broken fan control which prevented the fan from spinning up when it got hot ie during games. unless your case has zero airflow i wouldnt think the drivers were at fault, but there have been numerous updates on nVidias site since then, so if you can, give them a try, but we are talking >100 DegC to kill a graphics card. TBH id be looking at something else as the cause, perhaps faulty PSU?

Gav posted on Twitter, that it is an edid conflict not waking the DVI port out of sleep mode properly...

Silly me - I thought nVidia would actually test their drivers work before releasing them to the masses.