NVIDIA Recalls Linux Drivers Over Fan Speed Bug

[lolren]

stop trowing stones on Nvidia

Sure, they dont give out specs and docs, but at least they have a working binary driver, does amd have one? and stop complaining about the evil driver killing GPU`s!!! does somebody`s GPU "Went to a better place" because of the driver??? Dont forget, it was Nvidia Binary driver that made posible compiz, wine..... and so.I have an nvidia and wait everyday for Nouveau, but, the truth is that nouveau is not coming with decent OGL for a long time. Til then, go "Nvidia Binary Blob" thingy)

[bulletxt]

they've released drivers that plain did't work or had obvious bugs a couple of times, so there cannot be that much testing involved.
It's usually less of a problem since they're not tied to the 1-driver-per-month schedule and will just dish out another release. But for anyone who's daring enough to always update their nvidia-drivers to the latest release, this sure wasn't the first surprise. The first one to actually kill hardware, though.

There's quite a difference between a fresh driver that breaks the usability of OpenGl, and a driver that sends your gpu to a "better world".

[rohcQaH]

Nvidia states they test their drivers in "special" environments bla bla bla. And they release a driver that can kill my 200$ card?

they've released drivers that plain did't work or had obvious bugs a couple of times, so there cannot be that much testing involved.
It's usually less of a problem since they're not tied to the 1-driver-per-month schedule and will just dish out another release. But for anyone who's daring enough to always update their nvidia-drivers to the latest release, this sure wasn't the first surprise. The first one to actually kill hardware, though.

[bulletxt]

"This bug could potentially kill the NVIDIA graphics card due to overheating. "

What else to say? Nvidia states they test their drivers in "special" environments bla bla bla. And they release a driver that can kill my 200$ card?

AMD may do shiity fglrx drivers, but they don't kill anyone..... if not my patience!

[SkyHiRider]

Well it's not related, there will be bugs like these on both blobs and OSS but the delta between the release of the driver and the fix would be usually lower on well managed OSS project(in my opinion), as you have more assets(so to speak, just more ppl that dig in the code or test the stuff more internally-like).

But Nvidia is doing a good job with their blob thingy, just saying theres still room for improvement.

[yotambien]

Dammit, you actually managed to distract me!

My original point was, how is this related in ANY way to the driver being closed source?

[yotambien]

That doesn't apply here. Nvidia is perfectly aware that there is a problem, and it's not like you would notice quicker that your card is being fried if you were using an open source driver. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't see any case were people would be more likely to find bugs or other anomalies in OSS software. As for fixing it quicker, I guess that's debatable and pretty much depends on the company, the project and the gravity of the problem we are talking about.

[Melcar]

I don't see how this is a problem exclusively related to closed source drivers.

On open source drivers there is a better chance of people catching bugs and other anomalies, and getting the fix out faster.

[rohcQaH]

Watercooling FTW

jup. When you see smoke, just dump a bucket of water on it

[frische]

Don't drivers have some sort of shut off mechanism that prevents damage to the GPU due to overheating? If not then they should.

they do.
and that's what happens here; the driver fails to act on a soft limit and the hardware shuts down due to a hard limit.
You should be able to use the card again after it has cooled down (though doing this constantly will probably damage the card eventually)