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.

I personally use a GTX 295. So i'm sure it may be different for how Catalyst controls it.

1. Go to Program Files/Starcraft 2 beta folder. Change the Starcraft ii.exe and rename it to SC2.exe

2. Go to nVidia control panel and then add SC2.exe to your single control list. and force it on and AA will work ingame.


IMPORTANT: if you do NOT do step 1, it will not work, nVidia control panel will try reading it as SC2.exe instead of starcraft ii.exe

The StarCraft II beta doesn't include an anti-aliasing (AA) setting at this time, and it's unclear at this point if the released version will offer that functionality. In the meantime, we tried forcing AA through the Radeon and GeForce driver panels. The feature didn't seem to work on the Radeon cards, but all of the GeForce cards we tested except the GeForce 9600 GT were able to handle AA successfully.

1v1 = toss
2v2 = random

ffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuu, the whole Aus have no more CE for SC2.

ffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuu, the whole Aus have no more CE for SC2.

lol so do u want me to slow mail (pos malaysia parcel) it to you?

or use some courier like dhl?

wah..really? even it is selling at crazy A$148?

1. fujkenasai | megazero.axelay | Random
2. Ash | Ash.duskbin
3. evofantasy | aeco.evofantasy |
4. C_Sagi | konata.izumi
5. fall3n | Akira.loonie
6. melvintcs | MelT.empty
7. DeanKueh | MeDiX.Deankueh
8. Deimos Tel`Arin | DeimosTA.telarin
9. gtboy2 | loric.yau
10. SmileyJeff | Smiley.jeff
11. Quazacolt | Quazacolt.quazacolt
12. aftersteps | aftersteps.john
13. XenoFr3ak | Alucard.crazy
14. taeru | walrusMY.walrusMY
15. BlueBerry | Simplicity.gosu
16. DuskBin.Marksman | Marksman.kng
17. jdreamer | Dreamer.jdreamer
18. ProtossSC | Undisputed.scwire
19. Moonflown| BlueMoon.flow
20. NineCelsius | Arion.ngl
21. talexeh | talexeh.talexeh
22. kianweic | kianweic.kianweic
23. vis.vls | vis.vls
24. HaVoC | Cerebral.neo

How much would it cost with snail mail in total?

I might just go EB to get a Standard Edition instead and a free Beta key.
All gone, called a few shops. They have no CE left.

Except one shop in Liverpool.

I'm lucky enough to get one. Never doubt the internet!


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no collectors edition in malaysia?
what makes you say that?

random all the time, all brackets.

got 50 achievement points ady and not too far away from the 50random wins XD

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Added on May 4, 2010, 1:01 pm

no dice icon? lol

can't seems to download any map from the client! this is frustrating. anyone facing this problem?

can't seems to download any map from the client! this is frustrating. anyone facing this problem?