Hardware Fault In Nvidia's Mobile GPU's

[sese]

"SANTA CLARA, CA—JULY 2, 2008—NVIDIA plans to take a one-time charge from $150 million to $200 million against cost of revenue for the second quarter to cover anticipated warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses, arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of its previous generation GPU and MCP products used in notebook systems. Certain notebook configurations with GPUs and MCPs manufactured with a certain die/packaging material set are failing in the field at higher than normal rates. To date, abnormal failure rates with systems other than certain notebook systems have not been seen. NVIDIA has initiated discussions with its supply chain regarding this material set issue and the Company will also seek to access insurance coverage for this matter. Regarding the notebook field failures, NVIDIA president and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated:

"Although the failure appears related to the combination of the interaction between the chip material set and system design, we have a responsibility to our customers and will take our part in resolving this problem. The GPU has become an increasingly important part of the computing experience and we are seeing more interest by PC OEMs to adopt GPUs in more platforms. Recognizing that the GPU is one of the most complex processors in the system, it is critical that we now work more closely with notebook system designers and our chip foundries to ensure that the GPU and the system are designed collaboratively for the best performance and robustness."

 

Today's high performance notebooks are highly complex systems with extreme thermal environments. The combination of limited thermal management and frequent power cycling is particularly challenging for complex processors like the GPU.

 

Huang added, "This has been a challenging experience for us. However, the lessons we've learned will help us build far more robust products in the future, and become a more valuable system design partner to our customers. As for the present, we have switched production to a more robust die/package material set and are working proactively with our OEM partners to develop system management software that will provide better thermal management to the GPU"."

 

Source: http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html

 

What this means for the users of the M 8400 and M 8600 series? Instead of a recall Nvidia is promoting that OEM's make BIOS updates. These BIOS updates are meant to turn the fan of the laptop up. Which makes the affected chips last longer. But think about it, all these BIOS updates are doing is prolonging the faulty product's inevitable end, in turn pushing most of us out of our warrenties, and making us pay for the defect.

 

For a list of BIOS updates from Dell visit Here- http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10000353-1.html

 

For a list of affected laptops and BIOS updates from HP visit here- http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/documen...189&lang=en

 

For confirmation that this is true visit PC Worlds article here- http://www.pcworld.com/article/149055/2008...tml?tk=rss_news

[DiaboliK]

yea HP and Dell get thier gpu's from the same manufacturer hence the crappy BIOS update instead of new gpu.

 

i called Alienware to make sure my GPU didnt suffer and they re-assured me that their manufacturer is not the same as HP and Dell. (thank god Alienware didnt take up all Dell's practices)

 

-D-

[sese]

Well I was on the phone for a couple of hours with dell and they admitted that there was a problem, they admitted that it would fail earlier than a normal card anyways, and by saying those two things I knew that this was a stunt to try to push people out of there warranties, so in turn the consumer gets screwed. I asked them if now that I have phoned with concerns about this particular issue would they replace it out of warranty, and they said no. So now I am screwed and helpless. So at the end of my angry phone call I told them I swear on my future mother's grave I would never buy a Dell again and I sure as hell won't.