Nvidia GTX590 suffers from old driver bug: burning out

We got wind of this story yesterday but we wanted to investigate a little further before going live today. It seems now everyone is discussing it, so we feel its important to let our readers know of potential problems with the GTX590.

It appears that some people who have bought the GTX590 have been having problems with Nvidia Forceware 267.52 driver. This is failing to engage the ‘ramp down' safety mechanism built into the graphics card. This is a system designed to reduce the cards performance if the temperature reaches a critical level, preventing damage. When this happens, then things can go seriously wrong.

Running on the older drivers, the card is overclocked by increasing the GPU voltage which increases the heat output. In the case above, the card ends up popping.

If you are using the 267.71 drivers then you are protected from this failure, so be sure to be using the updated forceware drivers !

Nvidia have issued a statement: “A few press reports on GTX 590 boards dying were caused by unsafe overvoltaging – as high as 1.2V vs. the default voltage of 0.91 to 0.96V –  and using older drivers that have less overcurrent protection,” Nvidia explained in response to Thinq_ queries on the matter. “Rest assured that the GTX 590 operates reliably at default voltages, and our 267.84 launch drivers provide additional levels of protection.”

KitGuru says: Its always important to keep the drivers updated, in this case even more than usual.

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