NVIDIA Drivers Fan Speed Alert

03/17/2010

On the Ubuntu developer mailing list, Alberto Milone warns testers of the alpha version of Ubuntu 10.04 about problems with the resident NVIDIA driver versions 195.36.08 and 195.36.03.

The 195.36.08 and 195.36.0 driver versions can possibly affect the GPU fan speed, according to Milone. The original alert came from NVIDIA forums themselves and referred to Windows driver version 196.75. After NVIDIA detected the fan speed problem, it removed the driver and published an alert on the drivers download page.

Milone himself had not experienced any problems with the drivers, but suggested to remove them to be on the safe side. His mailing list entry indicates how to deactive the drivers and use the open NVIDIA driver instead for the time being.

In the nV News forum, NVIDIA's AaronP recommended for the same reasons to revert to the 190.53 Web release or the 195.30 public beta version. Meanwhile, however, NVIDIA has corrected the original fan speed problem with a 195.36.15 update.

Even though Milone speaks for Ubuntu 10.04 only, the alert might also affect other Linux distros where the proprietary drivers are deployed, such as openSUSE and Mandriva.

( Kristian Kissling)

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