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When it rains, it pours, and Nvidia could use a good downpour to put out the flames. Perhaps literally. Just last week Dave Murphy reported Nvidia was setting aside $150 to $200 million to cover warranty and repair costs associated with an "abnormal failure rate" in its mobile graphics cards, news of which sent Nvidia stock spiraling downward. Now there's speculation that the failures might not be limited to just a specific batch of notebook GPUs.
Rumor, news, and review site The Inquirer is saying that "all the G84 and G86 parts are bad. Period. No exceptions." That includes both mobile and desktop parts. According to The Inq, both use the same application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), and both ASICs are plagued by a heat related problem originating from an un-named substrate or bumping material. Because of this, The Inq surmises more failures are imminent. But are they?
He (Nvidia) Said
Nvidia maintains that the failures remain limited to a batch of previous generation GPU and MCP products using a different die/packaging material, and that "all newly manufactured products and all products currently shipping in volume have a different and more robust material set." And if you already own a G84 or G86 product, OEMs are offering BIOS updates and new drivers designed to contain potential thermal issues.
She (The Inquirer) Said
According to The Inq, Nvidia's official stance doesn't fall in line with what's really going on. Donning a detective cap, the online news outlet claims to have talked to several analysts and engineers. The former are supposedly saying they were told the failures only affect a specific batch of parts HP got, and not any other OEMs. But the engineers all say there's no way Nvidia would change the assembly processor or material set for a specific batch or an end-of-life part, so if one batch is bad, then they're all bad.
Comments are closed on this article
Pixelated
August 15, 2008 at 7:55pm
How can you guy's honestly advise people to update their BIOS in this case? All that will do is prolong the dying silicon and srew the end user. HP, dell and especially Nvidia are hoping you update your BIOS so your fan speed kicks up to 100%, in hopes it prolongs the life of the chip just enough to make it past the warranty so you get stuck with a dead laptop, not them. To top if off it's going to eat your battery even faster. I don't care how PC you're trying to be that's bad advice.
flomp83
July 11, 2008 at 6:27am
For those who don't read The Inq, you should know that they are very biased towards AMD/ATI products and absolutely hate nVidia. You should always take any nVidia bashing article with a grain of salt and should look for other sources for reliability. Sometimes they are truthful, but too often they either don't tell the whole story or they just post rumors and occasionally false information.
PhynaeusClaw
July 10, 2008 at 5:23pm
I own an HP laptop with a GeForce 8400M GS. Should I expdect it to fail in the near future? It sounds like NVIDIA's "fix" is a weak hack with the potential to hamstring a mobile GPU with middling performance to begin with. Can I get a replacement part somehow??
Skiplives
July 10, 2008 at 1:43pm
Whether it is true or not, it means more 4870 and 4850s going out the door. If it was a huge issue we would have seen it. Likely there is a problem, but how much of one we won't know for a year or two, when they start popping. Or not.
The OEM's aren't at fault for using thermal tape because the spec allows them to do so.
Maleficent
July 10, 2008 at 1:24pm
So what about the OEM's, they arent at fault for using thermal pads instead of thermal paste such as artic silver? I see this as a to part problem, The OEMs not providing enough cooling ability to the products the sell, as well as Nvidias problem mentioned in the above article. My question is why only the 8400 and 8600 parts, why not the 8800 parts? and what about laptops built by "specialty shops such as prostar, xoticpc and the such. are they affected by the failures? I think the OEMs are to blaim as much as nvidia is for the hardware failures
