Posted 03/18/10 at 08:50:44 AM by Paul Lilly

Nvidia this week released new GeForce driver (version 197.13) the company claims resolves recent fan speed issues, and apologized for the incident.

"Nvidia apologizes to any GeForce owners that installed the 196.75 driver and experienced quality issues," Nvidia said in a statement. "For the small number of customers that did experience problems, in almost every case reverting back to our 196.21 driver immediately resolved their issues. We continue to work closely with our add-in card partners and PC manufacturers to help resolve any additional customer issues not solved by reverting to the earlier driver. Any GeForce owner who has questions about their board as a result of downloading the 195.75 drivers should contact their board supplier."

Earlier this month, Nvidia pulled the 196.75 driver release after complaints began surfacing that the buggy driver flubbed the fan controls, causing videocards to overheat. Users reported a number of associated issues, including dropped framerates and even motherboard damage.

 You can grab the updated drivers here:

Windows 7 and Windows Vista (32-bit)
Windows 7 and Windows Vista (64-bit)
Windows XP (32-bit)
Windows XP (64-bit)

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Posted 03/05/10 at 10:30:05 AM by Paul Lilly

There's more trouble brewing in the Nvidia camp, this time over a driver release that may not have been ready for prime time. According to Tom Hernandez over at IncGamers.com, several StarCraft II beta testers have complained tht their videocards have gone belly up after installing Nvidia's 196.75 drivers.

"Some players were blaming the StarCraft II Beta client's latest patch, but a  Blizzard Tech Support representative quickly explained the issue is caused by the latest Nvidia 196.75 drivers," Hernandez writes. "Blizzard recommended to uninstall the Nvidia 196.75 drivers, and to downgrade to the previous driver version: 196.21."

Apparently this isn't limited to just StarCraft II. The issue, says Blizzard, relates to the fan control in Nvidia's latest driver, which is leaving videocards prone to overheating while running 3D applications. This has also led to lower than expected framerates, and even motherboard damage, according to reports.

Read more here.

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Posted 02/18/10 at 09:08:19 AM by Paul Lilly

Good news for ATI videocard owners who have been struggling with gray lines, vertical corruption, and other unpleasantries. AMD has released its Catalyst 10.2 package, and if the company follows through on its promise, these look to take things a little more seriously.

The latest release resolves a number of issues for a variety of Windows operating systems, just a handful of which include:

• System will no longer freeze while accessing the UVD Decoder (all Windows OSes)
•  System no longer fails and screen distortion no longer visible during Blu-ray content playback with 1680x1050 (Windows 7)
• Resume playback after sleep or hibernation no longer causes green block corruption on video (Windows Vista)
• Changes to the AVIVO gamma settings during Blu-ray HD playback are not retained after closing and restarting player (Windows XP)

Performance improvements include up to 8 percent in Dirt 2 on ATI HD 5970, 5800, and 5700 series cards, 6 percent in Battleforce for HD 5870 CrossFire, and 4 percent in Chronicles of Riddick.

Release Notes (PDF)
Download Link

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Posted 02/17/10 at 11:45:18 AM by Paul Lilly

Some ATI videocard owners have had a rough go lately, with complaints of gray screens and vertical line corruption running rampant. The issue prompted AMD to release a hotfix (see here), and going forward, the company promises to do a better job.

Catalyst 10.2, which is due later this month, is supposed to usher in better game performance courtesy of game profiles that AMD says it's going to focus on. These will consist of separate executable files on AMD's site, giving ATi owners quicker access to improved performance rather than waiting for the next full-blown Catalyst release, Fudzilla reports. The upcoming driver will also bring better "panoramic gaming" with CrossFireX.

Later on down the line, Catalyst 10.3 will put a bit of focus on improving ATI's Eyefinity technology. Reports suggest this driver package will implement an easy-to-use wizard to help adjust the layout and compensate for monitor bezels.

Catalyst 10.3 will also cater to Mobility graphics owners, and AMD is said to be working with most of the major notebook manufacturers to make sure everything works as it should.

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Posted 02/08/10 at 11:30:48 AM by Paul Lilly

AMD over the weekend released a new Catalyst 10.1 hotfix intended to alleviate the "gray screen and vertical line corruptions that may randomly appear during normal usage when using an ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics card."

In the last couple of weeks, some users have flocked to AMD's user forums to complain about gray screens, crashes, hangups, and other quirks associated with their swank new 5800 series videocards, although a few users also mentioned AMD's HD 4xxx series.

When we first reported the problem, ATI got in touch with us and said it was aware of the issue, noting that "initial tests indicate that a driver hotfix resolves" the problem and that it would be made available shortly.

You can download the hotfix, which is available for Windows 7, Vista, XP, and XP Media Center, right here.

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Posted 01/21/10 at 08:01:59 PM by Ryan Whitwam

If you’re the type that obsessively updates your video drivers, you might also be the type that likes to overclock your video card. Those predilections certainly didn’t you well this week if you run Nvidia cards. The GeForce 196.21 drivers released this week caused overclocking software to stop working. 

The glitch affected multiple tweaking apps like RivaTuner, EVGA Precision, and Galaxy MagicPanel HD. In some cases only the shader clock could not be set. In the more severe cases, shader, memory, and core clocks were all locked. At first, there was fear that this was an intentional move by Nvidia to limit user tweaks. Nvidia quickly cleared the whole matter up though. The problem is just a software bug and there will be an updated driver available soon.
 
Have you updated to the 196.21 drivers? Any problems?

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Posted 12/21/09 at 08:26:21 AM by Paul Lilly

AMD the other day announced the availability of its ATI Catalyst Software Suite 9.12, though there doesn't appear to be a whole lot that's new in the updated driver package.

Catalyst 9.12 brings full support for DirectCompute 10.1 for the Radeon HD 4800 and 4700 series in both single card and CrossFireX configurations. The new driver package also ushers in OpenGL 3.2 extension support for the Radeon HD 5800 series and on down to the 2000 series.

Other than that, there's a couple of performance boosts, including up to a 9 percent gain in 3DMark Vantage benchmarking, and as much as a 6 percent gain in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat in single card configurations.

Catalyst 9.12 resolves several niggling issues in Windows 7, including fixing a corruption issues with some DX9 apps when AA 8X is enabled, and playing back Blu-ray content on some systems with a 120Hz display no longer results in a black screen.

Driver Download
Release Notes (PDF)

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Posted 11/22/09 at 11:37:05 AM by Justin Kerr

Apple doesn't exactly have the greatest track record on mouse designs, and while you probably weren't going to switch platforms just for a "magic mouse" anyway, thanks to a clever new hack, you won't have to. The team over at uneasysilence.com has found a way to extract both the 32 bit, and 64 bit drivers by using WinRar on the latest Apple Bluetooth update and so far users are reporting no issues. The Apple driver, oddly enough, seems to contain all the components you will need to use the mouse on any Microsoft based machine from Windows XP all the way to Windows 7.

At $70 the magic mouse isn't as hideously overpriced as most Apple hardware, and debatably, it might actually be a decent travel mouse given the profile. Based on how easily the drivers were discovered, it also makes you wonder if Apple had planned Windows support for this mouse all along.

Has anyone tried out the magic mouse or the driver hack? Let us know what you think after the jump.

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