A brief warning to fellow nVidia users and the WHQL 320.18 driver

[Alhanelem]

Quite easily. Device drivers are used to communicate with hardware components within a computer.

Normally, drivers send instructions to the firmware on the device itself. Usually the only way to brick a card other than operating it outside of its specifications is to power down the device or otherwise interrupt a firmware upgrade.

[Aldora]

Normally, drivers send instructions to the firmware on the device itself. Usually the only way to brick a card other than operating it outside of its specifications is to power down the device or otherwise interrupt a firmware upgrade.

Ah, you mean brick in that fashion. You basically can't "brick" a GPU with a simple driver update, since it does not affect the firmware of the device. I don't have a clue why people would update/change the firmware of their GPU's unless they want to overclock them in order to increase performance. Like you said, the only way to "brick" your GPU is to interrupt a firmware update. Other then that, the hardware itself broke down.

Installing a new driver will effect the performance of the card, but nothing else.