NVIDIA users take heed!

[GreyGeek]

The NVIDIA 196.75 driver is causing over heating problems.

[PhilT]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

My GeForce HD card blew up yesterday!! >

Had to re-install an older Radeon ATI HD3650 card

[Adrian]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

It looks like this story is about the Windows driver.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

NVIDIA pulls 196.75 driver amid reports it's frying graphics cards

http://www.onenewspage.com/news/Tech...reports-it.htm

FYI - I can't find the driver on NVIDIA's web site, so it's evidently been pulled.

[dibl]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

The newest released driver for Linux is 195.36.08:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...a26f5&t=122606

[oshunluvr]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

It seems it's a fan control issue. Thanks goodness for water cooling!

[Telengard]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

Thanks for the warning GG. My graphics card was quite expensive, and I'd probably cry buckets if it overheated like that.

@dibl, reading about this is kind of scary. What do you do to avoid defective nVidia drivers? Or are you sticking to packaged drivers from Canonical?

Edit:
Fan control problem in recent releases - nV News Forums: Relevant thread.

[dibl]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

@dibl, reading about this is kind of scary. What do you do to avoid defective nVidia drivers? Or are you sticking to packaged drivers from Canonical?

These kinds of reports are scary, but you have to be very cautious about "buying in". Do you remember "Ubuntu is killing your hard drive" on Ubuntu Forums a couple of years ago? While there was a nugget of truth at the core of it (for a select few models of laptop/hard drive combinations), I'd guess thousands of users were needlessly sent into a panic, and wasted a zillion hours chasing around unsubstantiated reports and theories about what was really the problem (if any) and what could be done about it.

This one is even easier -- just don't run 196.75 on your Wintel box, until the truth or a fix comes out. (No 196.xx series driver has ever been available for Linux, AFAIK).

I only download the proprietary driver from the nvnews site or Nvidia.com -- if they're not safe, then why would I think the Ubuntu packaged driver was safe?

[Telengard]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

Fan control problem in recent releases - nV News Forums:

We believe recent NVIDIA UNIX graphics drivers, 195.36.08 and 195.36.03, are also affected by this. Until the problem is resolved, we recommend that UNIX users revert to the 190.53 web release or the 195.30 public beta.

[dibl]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

OK (I hadn't read that) -- it's a "belief". In my book, that's right up there with the various theories of how to get into Heaven.

Seriously, I'm running 195.36.08 on my sidux system, with overclocking, and with fan control and heat sensor enabled. There's no drama -- no fan action, no apparent heat concerns. So, that's my hardware -- it is certainly possible that there are issues on some other hardware.

I just installed Kubuntu 10.04 this morning and am presently playing with configuring it. So far, I've figured out that it installed the nouveau driver, which is apparently preventing installation of the proprietary driver -- it's failing with an error at the point where the module gets installed on the kernel. Nouveau actually runs 2D video just fine, although glxgears is a puny (for my GTX260) 3000 fps. Rather than fight the default setup, I'm going to work on other things (installing VMware, etc.) and then I'll see whether I feel the need to outsmart the default system in order to install the Nvidia driver, so I can have Compiz and the Emerald window decorator.

EDIT: DoctorDruid has already solved this issue here. Except, as of today, it is

sudo apt-get remove --purge linux-backports-modules-nouveau-2.6.32-15-generic

(for my kernel) -- you would be well-advised to just use the Tab key after ... 2.6.32- .

[Telengard]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

glxgears

You mean this?

$ aptitude show mesa-utils
Package: mesa-utils
State: not installed
Version: 7.0.3~rc2-1ubuntu3
Priority: extra
Section: graphics
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers <ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com>
Uncompressed Size: 156k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), libgl1-mesa-glx | libgl1, libx11-6
Replaces: xbase-clients (< 6.8.2-38)
Description: Miscellaneous Mesa GL utilities
 This package provides several basic GL utilities built by Mesa, including glxinfo and glxgears.
Homepage: [url]http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net/[/url]

Should I be running it on my nVidia equipped machine?

[dibl]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

glxgears is just a visual utility to check whether glx is enabled on your system. Every Linux guru on the Internet has written a post that glxgears is NOT a valid benchmark, so don't even think of it that way -- it's just a way to validate that you've got GLX.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

will install it.

Back to this issue with the new driver -- I've got it installed, and here's what I'm seeing:





So my card is barely lighting the thermal monitor.

[Detonate]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

I've been having problems with my older GeForce 6200, which does not come with an onboard fan. Even though I cooled it down with an old CPU fan I had, I guess I over heated it a few too many times before I installed the fan. I replaced it today with a Geforce 9500 1 GB PCIe board, and it's running great. Temp is steady at 53 degrees C. The 9500 does come with a fan. All my video problems seemed to have disappeared, but it may be too early to tell.

[Telengard]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

Here's what I've got:

$ nvidia-smi -lsa

==============NVSMI LOG==============


Timestamp            : Fri Mar 5 17:21:44 2010

GPU 0:
    Product Name      : GeForce GTX 285
    Serial         : 3309255885157
    PCI ID         : 5e310de
    Temperature       : 43 C
$ sudo nvidia-installer -l --ui=none

Welcome to the NVIDIA Software Installer for Unix/Linux


Currently installed version: 190.53; latest available version: 190.53
. . .

It looks like my driver is not one of the affected ones. Am I reading that right?

It looks like my GPU core temp is well within the safe range. Am I reading that right?

What do you all think?

[GreyGeek]

Re: NVIDIA users take heed!

.....
Should I be running it on my nVidia equipped machine?

You don't have to. It's frame rate is bogus. TuxRacer or Stellarium will give more accurate frame rates.

The real value in glxgears is its companion program, glxinfo, used to determine if you have direct rendering and what version of video drivers you are using:

jerry@vgnfw140e:~$ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.4
server glx extensions:
......
client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:
......
GLX version: 1.4
GLX extensions:
......
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset GEM 20091221 2009Q4
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.7.1-DEVEL
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20