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NVIDIA Drivers - "serious problem"

A worrying bug rears its ugly head

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Image credit: Eurogamer

If you downloaded and installed the new "Detonator 3s" that NVIDIA released the other day, then watch out. It seems that there is a rather glaring bug yielding itself to users of the new drivers. According to 3dchipset.com owner Jeff Knight, users have discovered that when you return to normal Windows use from monitor standby, the drivers apply "overclock settings to your card on top of your current settings, causing hard lockups or visual anomalies associated with overclocking." Jeff has verified this on his own card. Kyle from HardOCP also says that he has been hearing the same sort of thing from his readers. No official confirmation has been issued. In an attempt to confirm the bug for ourselves, we put our Windows 2000 / GeForce 2 GTS PC running older drivers into Standby, then returned. No effect. Upon installing the new drivers though, returning from Standby mode did increase both the memory and GPU clock rates. This is quite annoying, although not terribly dangerous. Our recommendation to anyone who is forced to regularly use Standby mode is to download older drivers, either from 3dchipset.com, or from a similar distributor. As soon as official confirmation is provided, we fully expect these drivers to be withdrawn and replaced with a "good" set. Naturally we will report on this as soon as we can confirm it. Update: The relationship between this issue and the unofficial "CoolBits" registry tweak which allows overclocking by way of the control panel applet, has not been confirmed. All that is known is that the unusual overclock takes the settings far beyond the options offered in said applet. Related Feature - NVIDIA Release New Drivers

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