Home Gaming Warning: Nvidia’s latest driver is destroying some graphics cards

Warning: Nvidia’s latest driver is destroying some graphics cards

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Nvidia drivers destroying PCs

Nvidia is generally rather good with their driver updates. Especially when it comes to new releases, the team in green is usually on the ball – pushing out game ready drivers that, in most cases, stabilise launch performance better than their competition. Not this week though. This week, Nvidia’s driver meant to help The Division launch did the exact opposite of help, and in some cases became the worst nightmare for PC games.

Nvidia Driver 364.47 – which is no longer up for download – started plaguing PCs globally shortly after launch. Many, many users quickly began posting issues to Reddit, official Nvidia forums and more, including a loss of sound, visual corruption, Windows crashes and handicapped performance. In some of the more extreme cases though, some users reported the driver being able to damage hardware, and even burning out some graphics cards and power supplies.

This is just one comment from the Nvidia page.

Disaster struck… I chose to update to these drivers and went to bed. I woke up to the smell of something burning. My computer is toast… it must have been restarting continuously for over 8 hours. Damn… turns out the power supply gave up and luckily not the GPU which is a 980 Ti.

Nvidia quickly took notice, first pointing to multiple display setups as a problem area and quickly shifting gears to an underlying bug in the driver. It was quickly pulled and replaced with Driver 364.51, which solved issues for some but created brand new ones for others. That’s really as far as Nvidia has progressed so far, so for now it’s probably advisable to just sit tight and wait. Nvidia doesn’t usually have such widespread issues with their driver releases, so it might take a little longer for them to nail down the cause.

You could risk it to try and (hopefully) get the best out of The Division (when it’s not crashing on its own), but it just seems too risky. Having drivers damage PC hardware is rare, but it’s certainly not something with which you want to tempt fate. We’ll update as soon as Nvidia finds a more permanent fix to the issue.

Last Updated: March 9, 2016

69 Comments

  1. Eina. I can feel that pain.

    Reply

    • RinceThis

      March 9, 2016 at 09:19

      You feel nothing John No!

      Reply

      • Alien Emperor Trevor

        March 9, 2016 at 09:21

        You shut up. Get back to your muck raking & mud farming.

        Reply

        • RinceThis

          March 9, 2016 at 09:22

          Get back to your family Stark… Oh, yes…

          Reply

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            March 9, 2016 at 09:24

            See, now if you’d said “head back to your family Stark”, that would’ve worked. ;P

          • Hammersteyn

            March 9, 2016 at 09:25

            If it was the Lanister family he would’ve incested you get back.

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            March 9, 2016 at 09:25

            lol

          • RinceThis

            March 9, 2016 at 09:27

            BWAHAHAHAH!

          • RinceThis

            March 9, 2016 at 09:28

            I’m not that mean!

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            March 9, 2016 at 09:33

            Yes you are, you just didn’t think of it. ;P

          • RinceThis

            March 9, 2016 at 09:35

            THAT TOO! I’M WORKING! ISH

  2. Hammersteyn

    March 9, 2016 at 09:03

    MESTER YS!

    Reply

  3. Umar

    March 9, 2016 at 09:06

    Is Nvidia not liable to replace those busted GFX cards that were affected by the update?

    Reply

    • Hammersteyn

      March 9, 2016 at 09:11

      Somebody’s liable to get fired

      Reply

    • Hammersteyn

      March 9, 2016 at 09:11

      Somebody’s liable to get fired

      Reply

      • Umar

        March 9, 2016 at 09:24

        RIP to the GX cards that were fired instead.

        Reply

    • Fox1 - Retro

      March 9, 2016 at 09:25

      Nope. They weren’t liable ever before when this happened.

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        March 9, 2016 at 09:26

        All because of the T&Cs no one reads?

        Reply

    • James Page

      May 1, 2016 at 20:45

      Nope, they did this on purpose to get you all to buy their new card. I’ve been an Nvidia customer ever since I bought the GeForce 2 for counterstrike 1.3. However what they have done here is unforgivable. This driver caused permanent physical damage to my video card, and they refuse to take responsibility and offer to replace it. I’ve purchased a radeon 390x, and will never again buy any Nvidia products. I will also make sure everyone knows about how they are doing business.

      Reply

  4. UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy

    March 9, 2016 at 09:07

    Thus far I am not being impacted by this GPU killer.

    Shit’s weak Nvidia! WEAK! Get your act together! I hope they reach out to these people and replace their broken parts since they are the direct cause. MAJOR trust issues from here on out.

    Reply

    • James Page

      May 1, 2016 at 20:46

      Nope, they refuse to replace what they broke.

      Reply

  5. Ottokie vs the forces of Evil

    March 9, 2016 at 09:15

    Geeze, and I almost updated after getting a couple of graphical glitches in Division last night

    Reply

    • Commander Admiral Chief

      March 9, 2016 at 09:18

      I almost joined you last night, when suddenly, a wild day one patch appeared….4GB

      Reply

      • Ottokie vs the forces of Evil

        March 9, 2016 at 09:26

        I was wondering why you said your’s only pre loaded 28Gb while I was doing 31Gb

        Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        March 9, 2016 at 09:29

        You bought The Division? That’s two games you bought day one this year and it’s only March?

        Reply

        • Ottokie vs the forces of Evil

          March 9, 2016 at 09:30

          Nope, Admiral has one of the best IRL RNG that I know of

          Reply

          • Hammersteyn

            March 9, 2016 at 09:30

            …..I missed something

          • Ottokie vs the forces of Evil

            March 9, 2016 at 09:30

            I will leave it to him to tell you 😛

        • Commander Admiral Chief

          March 9, 2016 at 10:35

          Bought? LOOOOOL

          Reply

        • Commander Admiral Chief

          March 9, 2016 at 10:36

          IKR????? 2016 is a good year so far

          Reply

  6. Ottokie vs the forces of Evil

    March 9, 2016 at 09:15

    Geeze, and I almost updated after getting a couple of graphical glitches in Division last night

    Reply

  7. Gian-Paolo Buffo

    March 9, 2016 at 09:23

    Hmm, and here I was wondering if I just had bad luck.

    While installing the drivers, my PC restarted (which was already a bad sign). But fret not, it gets worse. The damn thing wouldn’t boot into Windows. I would be kindly greeted with a blue screen and a video display error, and it would restart and try again. To no avail. Eventually I managed to boot into advanced options and did a system restore, which fixed the problem.

    Scary stuff mayn.

    Reply

  8. Fox1 - Retro

    March 9, 2016 at 09:24

    Nvidia have gone from crippling games to cards now.

    Reply

    • Hammersteyn

      March 9, 2016 at 09:25

      Maybe their hairworks got stuck in the fan and the card overheats?

      Reply

      • Fox1 - Retro

        March 9, 2016 at 09:26

        Awwww…just slap some Gameworks on the GPU and it will be fine for Team Green.

        Reply

      • Captain JJ the Isolated

        March 9, 2016 at 09:41

        Only if the fan was under water. 😀

        Reply

      • Commander Admiral Chief

        March 9, 2016 at 10:38

        Bwhahahahaha

        Reply

  9. Lardus-For the Emperor!

    March 9, 2016 at 09:34

    Go team Green…haha. Not good news actually, hope they sort it out ASAP. Lucky for me everyone knows team Red has driver issues, so my new PC will be safe enough 🙂

    Reply

  10. Raptor Rants

    March 9, 2016 at 09:34

    I wonder if they will be replacing damaged hardware

    Reply

    • Ottokie vs the forces of Evil

      March 9, 2016 at 09:35

      Only from the GTX 7xx range

      Reply

      • Commander Admiral Chief

        March 9, 2016 at 10:38

        xD

        Reply

    • James Page

      May 1, 2016 at 20:49

      Nope, they damaged my 580 and won’t replace it. I’m switching to amd radeon.

      Reply

  11. Captain JJ the Isolated

    March 9, 2016 at 09:39

    Nvidia drivers have often given me problems. It’s the only reason I switched to AMD. The cards themselves are bulletproof, but the software, not so much.

    Reply

    • Kromas untamed

      March 9, 2016 at 11:33

      The same reason I switched. My last Nvidia card was wasted by drivers ages ago. I don’t trust Nvidia because I knew this was eventually going to happen again and sure enough.

      Reply

  12. b1nd3r

    March 9, 2016 at 09:58

    vulcan api breaks everything……never saw that coming

    Reply

  13. Greylingad[CNFRMD]

    March 9, 2016 at 10:09

    Ouch… Now imagine if you had a quad Titan X SLI configuration, sitting there, with the friendly intrusive reminder that there is a new update available for your card, you click on the download and install options, as you look to your left, you see your neighbour running across his lawn naked and insecure, but this doesn’t phase you, you’re on your way to play The Division, on your brand new, still fresh looking hardware, as you see your neighbour jump over his lawn mower, you start smelling something, almost like peanuts burning, you don’t pay attention to it, because, The Division… You look to your right and what catches your eye, nearly blinds you, the sight of your PC, bursting into a ball of flames, so violent that Mr. T. bursts through the wall of your study, wielding a fire extinguisher, you stare at him in awe, he jumps to the rescue, and beats the flames to death with his fists, because the extinguisher was just there for decoration purposes… You both stare at each other, he points a finger at you and says, You Fool!

    Reply

    • Captain JJ the Isolated

      March 9, 2016 at 10:14

      You should write horror.
      The Division was a nice touch, considering you’d have to deal with devil client Uplay himself.

      Reply

      • Greylingad[CNFRMD]

        March 9, 2016 at 10:17

        Ah man… I totally skipped that part! I should have started there! Dammit…

        Reply

        • Captain JJ the Isolated

          March 9, 2016 at 10:17

          XD

          Reply

    • Ottokie vs the forces of Evil

      March 9, 2016 at 10:15

      One of the rare times I will not say “TLDR”

      Bravo.

      Reply

      • Captain JJ the Isolated

        March 9, 2016 at 10:15

        😀

        Reply

    • Commander Admiral Chief

      March 9, 2016 at 10:37

      ?oo? ??? ???d

      Reply

      • Greylingad[CNFRMD]

        March 9, 2016 at 10:40

        Stay STRONG

        Reply

        • Commander Admiral Chief

          March 9, 2016 at 10:40

          xD

          Reply

  14. HairyEwok

    March 9, 2016 at 10:23

    LOL, and this happens when GDC is right around the corner. AMD must be loving this. -Well our GPU do run hot but at least they don’t let your PC catch fire huehuehue-

    Reply

  15. Alien Emperor Trevor

    March 9, 2016 at 11:46

    Nvidia wins!

    Reply

  16. Ghost In The Rift

    March 9, 2016 at 13:33

    No issues on my GTX960 so far, gonna do a rollback tonight just to be safe though

    Reply

  17. PoisonedBelial

    March 9, 2016 at 15:01

    Obligatory “TEAM RED” statement here…

    Reply

  18. druout1944 .

    March 14, 2016 at 13:26

    Last slew of Nvidia drivers have been awful for me. Have had to revert to October drivers on my Nvidia systems due to a host of issues.

    Reply

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