Several StarCraft II beta testers have reported their PC or video
cards have died after installing the NVIDIA 196.75 drivers. The large
amount of reports have prompted Blizzard Entertainment to issue an
official statement on the tech support forums after identifying the
source of the problem.

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.

Blizzard recommended to uninstall the
NVIDIA 196.75 drivers, and to downgrade to the previous driver version:
196.21. Starcraft II Beta is not the only application affected, thus
this is a worldwide alert to every gamer out there. Blizzard concluded
the fans control in this NVIDIA driver is not working properly.


This means every single 3D application (i.e. games) running these
drivers is going to be exposed to overheating and in some extreme cases
it will cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. If said
motherboard, processor or graphic card is not under warranty, some
gamers are in serious trouble playing intensive games such as Prototype,
World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis and many other games with realistic
graphics.Some EVGA enthusiasts have been able to manually change
the GPU fans speed settings using the EVGA Precision Tool to run their
fans at 77% speed to compensate.

Blizzard Tech Support
representative Datth, posted the following alert to all gamers:

We're
getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after
installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control
included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the
video card to overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3,
World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and
revert back to the older ones.

• Windows XP
  
• Windows XP 64-bit
  
• Windows Vista/7 32-bit
  
• Windows Vista/7 64-bit
  

More
information can be found on NVIDIA forum threads such as this and this.

We reached
NVIDIA tonight for an official statement concerning this worrysome
issue, and they quickly replied within less than an hour. NVIDIA's
response is:

We are aware that some customers have
reported fan speed issues with the latest 196.75 WHQL drivers on
NVIDIA.com. Until we can verify and root cause this issue, we recommend
that customers stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers. Release
196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our Web site in the
meantime.

One of these gamers reported insane egg-cooking
temperatures as high as 104'C. Among the complaints found in the
Starcraft II Beta forums are the following:My GPU is going almost 100% usage and my
temperatures are at 104'C, 1C below max. I'm wondering if it's because
StarCraft 2 beta REALLY is a demanding game, or if it's overusing my GPU
. Fans are always @ 100% and side case is off. My normal temps for
(halo, mw2, oblivion are 80-90C.) in Window mode or fullscreen, doesn't
matter. - Velakan.velakan

While
playing it has happened several times already. The screen freezes and
then i get the msg: Nvidia driver stopped responding and then SC2
closes. I am using the latest video driver.- Aastu.pacemaker

So drivers
broke my GTX 295. Who to blame? Blizzard or nVidia? - Sydarm.scwire

Hello, I
have a Nvidia 9800GT. Well when I found the posts talking about the
flashing of screens related to the New Nvidia Drivers, I realized that
that was why my previous Video Card went. I spent a week in utter pain
and misery wondering what was wrong with my PC. I had Dell send me a
replacement video card and even spoke with Nvidia as well since my
Direct X versions were all over the place. Well I will not be playing
the beta period until I receive notice of a fix from you guys until it
is resolved. Well Unfortunately for me the bottom line was StarCraft 2
burned out my PC. I hope you come up with a fix soon, I will be
anticipating it so I can resume trying out the wonderful game.
Thankfully I have the new card and it was under warranty, but I will
resume playing Starcraft 1 until it is fixed :) Thank you for your time
and support.

My specs are:
Dell XPS 420
6 GB Ram

Quad Core at 2.39 Ghz
483GB Hard drive
Direct X 11
Vista 32
Bit
Nvidia GeForce 9800GT- Sniperbwd.zerg

I just
downloaded the New Nvidia Geforce Driver 196.75 Windows 7 64 bit
version. Well, as soon as I start up Starcraft 2 the game begins to
flicker on and off. It just keeps doing this every second or so until
the game just crashes. I guess I'll have to resort to my previous
drivers to play the game still, but can this be fixed?- Grandkinz.scf

I'm having
new issues after properly installing the new drivers from Nvidia located
here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_196.75_whql.html
(I am using win7 x64). When I launched the game, a black screen
appeared and after two minutes the game crashed and generated a report.
When I Relaunched the game I got up to the SC2 Loading screen and the
game flickered a lot, eventually crashing around 50% of the way through.
The 3rd time the game loaded fine, but when I alt tabbed to the desktop
and went back into the game the game proceeded to flicker very fast,
eventually slowing down to a still image. What else can I include to
narrow this problem down?- Omegamerc.omega

I posted
this on the general forum and someone suggested that this should be
posted in the tech support so that the blues will know about it. This is
regaurding the latest nvidia drivers that were released today. Several
people including myself have stated that these drivers causes crashes
and in my case, the screen flickers in fullscreen mode, once every
second. Reverting back to previous drivers solves this problem. Just a
heads up. - Strike.exia

Blizzard has investigated and responded to these claims, discovering
that the fan controls in the driver are faulty and are causing
overheating issues, and has warned users not to install them or roll
back to earlier drivers if they have already installed them.
Below is Blizzard Tech Support Datth's response:

We're getting
reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing
these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included
in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to
overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3, World of
Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and revert
back to the older ones.

Windows XP: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_196.21_whql.html
Windows XP 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_196.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_196.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_196.21_whql.html

More information can be found on threads such as these:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161525
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161503

IncGamers got in touch with NVIDIA for comment on the story, and were
told that NVIDIA has since taken the drivers down pending an
investigation of the reported issues.
You can read the full story here.
Long story short: If you've installed the 196.75
drivers already, uninstall them and roll back to 196.21.

Ye, Nvidia screwed over my card too with their drivers lol

My previous ATI video card, destroyed my motherboard and the card itself.
Since then ATI been a no go for me too lol