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
Alien Emperor Trevor
March 9, 2016 at 09:02
Eina. I can feel that pain.
RinceThis
March 9, 2016 at 09:19
You feel nothing John No!
Alien Emperor Trevor
March 9, 2016 at 09:21
You shut up. Get back to your muck raking & mud farming.
RinceThis
March 9, 2016 at 09:22
Get back to your family Stark… Oh, yes…
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
Hammersteyn
March 9, 2016 at 09:03
MESTER YS!
RinceThis
March 9, 2016 at 09:09
BWAHAHAHA!
Commander Admiral Chief
March 9, 2016 at 09:19
He was probably running a strange form of RAID that caused the meltdown
Alien Emperor Trevor
March 9, 2016 at 09:20
But Raid is supposed to kill bugs, not cause them.
RinceThis
March 9, 2016 at 09:21
haha
Commander Admiral Chief
March 9, 2016 at 09:22
Not when running in a 0 configuration
Raptor Rants
March 9, 2016 at 09:35
*shudders*
Hammersteyn
March 9, 2016 at 09:21
http://i.memeful.com/media/post/LR8nW4w_700wa_0.gif
Ottokie vs the forces of Evil
March 9, 2016 at 09:28
MATHEMATICAL!!!
Umar
March 9, 2016 at 09:06
Is Nvidia not liable to replace those busted GFX cards that were affected by the update?
Hammersteyn
March 9, 2016 at 09:11
Somebody’s liable to get fired
Hammersteyn
March 9, 2016 at 09:11
Somebody’s liable to get fired
Umar
March 9, 2016 at 09:24
RIP to the GX cards that were fired instead.
RinceThis
March 9, 2016 at 09:33
lol
Captain JJ the Isolated
March 9, 2016 at 09:40
XD
Fox1 - Retro
March 9, 2016 at 09:25
Nope. They weren’t liable ever before when this happened.
Hammersteyn
March 9, 2016 at 09:26
All because of the T&Cs no one reads?
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.
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.
James Page
May 1, 2016 at 20:46
Nope, they refuse to replace what they broke.
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
Commander Admiral Chief
March 9, 2016 at 09:18
I almost joined you last night, when suddenly, a wild day one patch appeared….4GB
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
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?
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
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
Commander Admiral Chief
March 9, 2016 at 10:36
IKR????? 2016 is a good year so far
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
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.
Fox1 - Retro
March 9, 2016 at 09:24
Nvidia have gone from crippling games to cards now.
Hammersteyn
March 9, 2016 at 09:25
Maybe their hairworks got stuck in the fan and the card overheats?
Fox1 - Retro
March 9, 2016 at 09:26
Awwww…just slap some Gameworks on the GPU and it will be fine for Team Green.
Captain JJ the Isolated
March 9, 2016 at 09:41
Only if the fan was under water. 😀
Commander Admiral Chief
March 9, 2016 at 10:38
Bwhahahahaha
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 🙂
Raptor Rants
March 9, 2016 at 09:34
I wonder if they will be replacing damaged hardware
Ottokie vs the forces of Evil
March 9, 2016 at 09:35
Only from the GTX 7xx range
Commander Admiral Chief
March 9, 2016 at 10:38
xD
James Page
May 1, 2016 at 20:49
Nope, they damaged my 580 and won’t replace it. I’m switching to amd radeon.
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.
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.
b1nd3r
March 9, 2016 at 09:58
vulcan api breaks everything……never saw that coming
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!
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.
Greylingad[CNFRMD]
March 9, 2016 at 10:17
Ah man… I totally skipped that part! I should have started there! Dammit…
Captain JJ the Isolated
March 9, 2016 at 10:17
XD
Ottokie vs the forces of Evil
March 9, 2016 at 10:15
One of the rare times I will not say “TLDR”
Bravo.
Captain JJ the Isolated
March 9, 2016 at 10:15
😀
Commander Admiral Chief
March 9, 2016 at 10:37
?oo? ??? ???d
Greylingad[CNFRMD]
March 9, 2016 at 10:40
Stay STRONG
Commander Admiral Chief
March 9, 2016 at 10:40
xD
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-
Alien Emperor Trevor
March 9, 2016 at 11:46
Nvidia wins!
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
PoisonedBelial
March 9, 2016 at 15:01
Obligatory “TEAM RED” statement here…
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.