"Breaking" News: nVidia Card Issue - Info from Tech Support from Dell Italy/Europe.

Alright.

I just spoke with a tech support personnel from Dell Italy / Europe and I asked about these faulty nVidia card issues and the BIOS updates released by Dell.

First, they said till now, they have absolutely no issues at all with any European customer regarding these cards and the heat and issues related to the faulty ones as acknowledged by nVidia / Dell. I pressed further, and they were sure there were no problems or complaints at all!!! Should I believe this?

Second, when I asked them why did they release the BIOS update then even here, they said it was an "international BIOS update release" and so it was released everywhere and for everyone who wants to update. When I asked them further that "if they think then probably the faulty cards are out here too, and thats why this was an international release?", they said no - as of now, no customer has reported any problems or card failures 'due to this faulty die material issue' but probably there were replacements made because of other issues connected to the video card and/or motherboard.

hmmmmmmm.......................... The story just gets interesting!!!!

 

At the same time I wonder how much Dell is billing nVidia for the cost of replacing video cards? Up until recently the problems most likely weren't being diagnosed for what they are now known to be. For example, how many people died of AIDS before it was a recognised disease and how many more died of it before it become OK to be acceptable to have died of it?

At the moment I will stick to The Inquirer's version. I think that the majority of computer manufacturers are just hoping that their products will die of old age before these GPUs fall sick. BIOS fixes are a measure to reduce their risk.

John

 

Well, I was thinking on similar lines. As John said, I think the manufacturers are just playing the 'waiting-it-out' game and hope the products either die after a while or either out of the warranty period.

But what if one extends the warranty now? I know it costs, but if we do extend it, and then if the cards fail, will the manufacturers accept that the cards failed because of this initial huge mess? or will they start saying its because of excessive use / wear n tear and so on? I don't know...

Its a hard life!! :-(

 

If it's faulty die material and the company detected the problem then it's very possible that only a batch of the cards had the problem and Nvidia fixed the problem.

If the cards and computers are lasting 6 months without a problem they should last 4 years. By that time you'll be getting a new laptop anyway is likely the thinking from both Dell and Nvidia.

I'm glad I paid the extra $50 for the 3 year warranty.

 

Me too. I got an extended warranty.

And yes, I was thinking about this too - I don't know if its a 'single' manufacturing plant for nVidia for the whole world and they ship out the cards to Dell Manufacturing plants all over. I was thinking probably nVidia manufactures these cards in different places, and the nVidia plant supplying to Dell Manufacturing plants would differ as well. No? (I might be wrong, but this is just my thought.) Anyways, so is it possible that this defect in the faulty die material came out of 'just one' nVidia card manufacturing unit and not from every unit? And probably this unit was the one which was supplying the cards to the Dell Plants in the US and so on? Pheeeewwwwwww... So much to think / talk / discuss / argue about!! Why the hell can't nVidia just come out in the open and let us all know what the issue is in reality, and what are the fixes they did (apart from shelling out money to fix future replacements) and where are the mostly affected cards from? I am sure they have an idea of the faulty cards, their source and their destination!! I am sure they do. Just that we, the paying customers, don't.

 

I believe this falls under the "latent defect" category in UK consumer legislation so the normal warranty doesn't apply. Similar provisions may apply in other countries and are intended to guard consumers against defects which may only become evident after the normal warranty has run out.

My dictionary defines latent as "existing but not yet developed, manifest, or active". It appears that the problem with one of the GPU's materials only became evident after some months and then only under certain temperature cycling conditions.

The headache for everyone is knowing which out-of-warranty computer repairs are because of this problem and which are not.

The Inquirer has several articles about this problem. Read here, then here and you will start to understand the extent of the potential problem.

John

 

Well no duh, I'm 100% sure none of the customers who called in prior to Nvidia's announcement would have known that their defective card was due to faulty die material. No one.

So the rep wasn't lying on that one. Obviously there have been defective cards, but remember, not all of them are defective. It is only a "small" batch of them, if you take away the small, you still are left with a batch.

Fact is not ALL cards are affected by this. Its not a DESIGN FLAW. If Nvidia said it was a design flaw, yeah, were all screwed. Though there are clearly good cards out there and plenty of people have not had problems with them even over a year of usage. Of course there are defective cards out there just like everything else, but it really is not difficult to notice whether the card is defective or not, especially if you do intensive gaming.

 

Ahh.. I've never seen these articles. Thanks a lot for the links @ John

I understand what you are saying.. But as you said in the second part of your message, it appears the problem became evident only after some months / only under certain temp cycling conditions. Is there a common sure answer for this out there? As in what the conditions are exactly? I guess I don't know or I haven't come across one! :-( So yeah.... As the articles you linked to mentions, its a damn big mess!!!!! And really, belief is something I would find to be hard to place on either Dell or nVidia right now regarding this issue. And as Forte says, just live it out and see if the card I got or each of us got is either the faulty one or the one that escaped the faulty card batch!!!

 

The Inquirer is not a good source to believe in. Really, they over exaggerate a lot of things like "The PS3 is half the power of a Xbox 360"... there are plenty of other sources to choose from that are much better than the Inquirer.

The temp cycling issue is easily noticed when you do intense gaming, do your temperatures fluctuate in your graphics card? As another user has put it, what happens is similar to this:

Take a piece of metal, bend it back and forth over and over again and gradually it gets weaker and weaker until it finally breaks.

The thing you have to remember is, it is a manufacturing defect that affects only a handful of graphics cards and NOT ALL OF THEM. People are literally slapping on a whole bunch of junk like "EVERYONE WITH A M1530 HAS A FAULTY GRAPHICS CARD THAT WILL DIE SOONER OR LATER! EVERYONE OC IT BEFORE YOUR WARRANTY ENDS!!!".

The majority of the mess is being made by the consumers themselves making up hypotheticals like this in which every single 8400M GS and every single 8600M GT is affected, which is based on what Nvidia says, is not true.

No one even knew about this issue until Nvidia announced it and people continue to game and operate fine with the M1530 they purchased on the day it was launched.

Its pretty sad because its obvious now that everytime someone has a problem with their GFX card, they will blame it on the die problem. Which may or may not be true, but the fact is there are some cards that are just plain defective. The main issue resides in whether you have one or not. If you are able to game on it intensively for long hours without fluctuation... you are fine and probably have a good non-defective card.

I feel sorry for all the people who overclock their 8600GT's on the day before their warranty and the whole slew of people who are stupid enough to kill their adorable, non-defective 8600GTs.

 

Nothing to say.. but this is interesting conversation / discussion with so much information / clarification / explanations coming out Great stuff. I am sure the newbies are gonna have lots of their questions / doubts clarified or explained even before they start a new thread with their queries. Nice.

 

No because newbies will not read, and the average - low end consumer will come up with the exact same questions that everyone else have asked and most likely will panic and the same thing will have to be repeated again and again.

Its not just about defective graphics cards, but people do have reoccurring issues that have the same answers to them over and over again that pop up all the time. Newbies will be newbies.

As long as your one of the ones who are in the know, you don't have to worry.

 

Forte

Thanks for your great responses - I ordered the XPS 1530 anyway because most of the competition for the money either has no gaming card or other worse specs.

Assuming it is a die problem then it is likely that as soon as they became aware of the problem they changed the die. Hypothetical but still. The same thing happened with the glue around my headlights on a Honda Civic - The one Canadian Plant was using the wrog glue and it allowed condensation into the light. One plant only was affected and when they discovered the issue they changed glues.

In another thread I asked about hard evidence in percentages and no one has any info. The speculation that over time they'll fail is not acceptable to me. That's true of everything - over time everything will fail. My view on laptops is that if I get 3 years without problems I am EXTREMELY happy. These are disposable products with a lot of parts and things will go wrong. My HP is nearly 4 years old and, knock on wood, has never had any problems - lately it occasionally shuts off so perhaps the Pentium M gets hot or there is dirt in it or something. But a lot of the time it was on downloading bitorrent 24 hours a day for about a year. More than lived up to my expectations.

When I get my Laptop you mention running some taxing games - would Mass Effect count? - it looks like it might be a fun first game for me.

 

Yup, hence from the official SEC announcement:

All newly manufactured products and all products currently shipping in volume have a different and more robust material set.

Mass effect does count as a taxing game. Never played it myself, but... it does sound fun. ^_^

 

It IS fun @ Forte... ;-)

 

Also would you guys just recommend getting those USB powered Targus dual fan things. They're selling them for $30.00 and so would they not be an effective way to cool the laptop. Might be worthwhile regardless to cool everything down? Seems to cheap and too good to be true but...

 

An interesting point about the faulty dies only being at one plant, and could very well be true.

Has anyone outside of the US experienced these GPU issues?

 

Not that I know of / heard from specifically. And even in the US I don't think I have heard a real complaint / issue arising out of this as of now. As Forte keeps pointing out, none actually came up with this issue, at least till now or at least I think no one knows for sure if the issue (assuming they had one) was because of these faulty GPUs.

 

Mass Effect is a great game. One of the best RPG games I've ever played. You should really try it!

 

As I posted in 2 other threads, just thought I will share it here too for people who missed out on the those....

From >> http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/07/25/nvidia-gpu-update-for-dell-laptop-owners.aspx

Cheers

 

Seems like your pretty popular:

Well, if all this will eventually lead to Dell initiating a massive recall... refund or other compensation, that would be nice. Keep pressing them hard Direct2Dell readers!

 

lol.. he actually spelt my 'name' wrong.. ;-) But never mind. He got it right in the other places.

Well, you know, I got this laptop after a loooonnng loooonnngg time, and after lot of thought and browsing through here. Of course I'd always been a fan of Dell (around 8 years now) and I never had any real, serious problem. But still this was a big investment and I ended up spending like so much time in so many forums / sites on the web browsing through, asking questions and stuff like that, and as a result of which I ended up knowing many people / familiar faces as well as making myself familiar as well. Anyway, this was just by chance because there was guy who was like cribbing his life out just for the fact that Dell did not come out with an update for M1530. And I realized he didn't take the time / effort to just pop in to the Dell update section as much as he had the time to crib about it in the Direct2Dell place. Anyways, I just pointed it out to him and it ended up being like even the original blogger did not know about the release till then!! LOL... Anyways.. All for the good.

And yeah, there are numerous people there, literally breaking balls of Dell & Co., and literally taking them apart for a sure fix / solution / deal with the customers! I guess something should happen some time soon, because I don't think for all the efforts Dell & nVidia took to building up the company to its current status, they would let this issue pull them all down the drain. Guess its just a matter of time when some solution would come out that would please all the parties involved, that includes the customers primarily. Dell has a huge customer base and I am sure they won't let go of it. So, all 'paranoid-about-dell', 'I-hate-dell-for-this-mess' people out there, lets just be a little patient and see what happens, and till then, lets enjoy this wonderful XPS M1530

 

I couldn't agree more!! I just purchased my 1530 about a week ago...and some of these comments are making me feel a lot more comfortable! Thanks!