Posted 09/26/08 at 03:27:47 PM by Paul Lilly

Earlier this week, it came to light that Diamond Multimedia had shipped some defective videocards, and one rumor estimated the number of bad parts might be as high as 20,000, but Diamond Multimedia claims that number is greatly exaggerated. In fact, Bruce Zaman, a spokesman for Diamond Multimedia, said that only 188 videocards based on ATI's Radeon 3800 series were found to be faulty, and that the problem, which stemmed from inappropriate resistors, has been resolved.

So where did the estimate of 20,000 bad parts come from? Diamond Multimedia claims it was the result of false information being spread by one of its former employees who became intent on creating bad publicity for the company, and that the ex-employee in question was a former engineer among those responsible for the bad parts to begin with.

“The source of this article, after agreeing in writing and verbally to not denigrate their employment with Diamond or divulge any company data or proprietary information such as sources, customers and internal procedures did exactly that,” Mr. Zaman stated."

Whatever the real number of bad parts, it appears Alienware has jumped ship for good. This too holds a conspiracy theory twist, as Zaman claims Alienware's decision to end its relationship was because the company received "tainted data from [its] engineer," and that Alienware was further put off by the time it took the engineer to fix the problem.

Drama, anyone?

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graphics, videocard, gpu, Diamond Multimedia, defective

Posted 08/05/08 at 02:25:20 PM by Paul Lilly

Having already moved on to its 9-M series GPUs, Nvidia presumably has solved whatever problem led to an "abnormal failure rate" in the what the company still contends only affects a limited batch of previous generation GPU and MCP products. Exactly how limited that batch is might never be fully disclosed, but it appears the problem may be more widespread than consumers were led to believe.

Just over a week ago Dell made available a list of its notebooks that could possibly be affected by the GPUs believed to be suffering higher than expected failure rates and is recommending owners update their BIOS to reduce their risk of running into a problem. The updated BIOSes modify the fan profile to help regulate GPU temperature fluctuations, but as Dell notes, the new parameters won't help customers who are already suffering video-related issues.

Dell isn't alone, and now HP has also released a list of models that qualify for 'Warranty Service Enhancement' (curiously absent is the DV97xx series). And like Dell, HP is also recommending its owners update their BIOS as a preventive measure.

So are all G84 and G86 parts bad like The Inq surmised early in July? No one but Nvidia knows for sure, but looking over the list of affected models would seem to indicate the allegation could hold some merit.

Did Nvidia drop the ball harder than they're letting on?

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graphics, mobile, notebook, dell, laptop, cpu, hp, defective