Website Claims all G84/G86s are "bad"

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

If this article has any truth to it then all of us XPS M1330/M1530/MacBook Pro/Asus whatever/HP something or other/etc. owners are screwed. They claim all G84 and G86 chips are bad.

They also claim:

Yet I have not seen any post on here mentioning issues with these chips and I have not heard of them ever replacing a Nvidia chip with an ATI chip in the XPS line.

 

better wait to get a laptop then. that's probably why the 9xxx series are coming out so fast without any huge upgrade

 

On the other hand, theinquier... is not a valid source.

 

No it's not really.

 

Possibly, but paragraph twelve nails the A11 M1330 bios to the wall without even referencing it or Dell directly. Are you suggesting that it's purely a coincidence that HP's new firmware is reportedly doing the exact same thing?...

A compelling read I thought.

 

We should not take anything Charlie Demerjian says about NVIDIA as "news" or fact.

 

I think the article makes some valid points but it also sounds like the author is anti-Nvidia. For example, he gets it right with the heating issues on the XPS line but Dell is not replacing the 8400 and 8600 chips with ATI graphics. He probably wanted to refer to the Studio line since it comes with Radeon cards rather than Nvidia. One of the Engadget leaks had mentioned an 8600M GT card as an option for the Studio series:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/15/even-more-on-dells-studio-1536-1536-and-the-studio-brand/

Considering that post basically got everything else right, Dell might've dropped the 8600 from the Studio line since they knew about the problems. And for the record, I don't buy Nvidia's official stance that only one batch of chips was affected. Typical BS.

 

No I think that Nvidia did make some mistake with the 8xxx. However, it's not as dramatic as theinquirer has reported.

The whole article is based on the "fact" that Nvidia has boosted the core voltage from 1.3 to 1.375. However, a voltage boost is a very usual process in the overclocking field and based on what I know about g86s' overclocking potential, most cards are able to withstand it (of course, the GPU may last 6 years instead 10).

IMO, the problem is not that general and 8 series is not "all bad". What is happening is that instead of having a more traditional failing rate of, for example, 0.00001%, 8 series has a failing rate of 0.001%. 0.001% is not that big, but that's 100x0.00001%.

 

The way I look at this is, if the 8600M GT is affected, and Nvidia or Dell is going to make it up to me, then they better put a 9600M GT in there, however they want to do it!! =D

 

Yep, the guy is known to be anti-Nvidia.

 

A blind person could tell he's anti-Nvidia, but since Nvidia has announced that a "significant" number of cards are defective (without further elaboration on exactly which cards are affected) and many cards have failed if you go according to many of the forums, we definitely have an issue here with these cards. The question is how bad is it ? He didn't make the stuff up, just added a little more gas to the fire than he probably should have since he definitely has a beef with Nvidia.

 

I really don't understand why are neither Nvidia nor Dell are making it clear regarding which all GPu's are defected....mistakes do happen and they should be very clear with it ,rather than keeping people in dilemma ....and i think this seems to be a very major problem since they aren't responding properly ...
they'll lose a major market share if this thing goes on

 

Dell don't care, since it's not their fault and almost everybody are troubled by this.

Nvidia wont say it, because if they say: oh it's all our fault, then they assume everything.

 

I own a Laptop with an Nvidia GForce 8600m GPU and have read through thousands of pages in forums where other G84 and G86 owners are franticly looking for a solution for this Nvlddmkm.sys has stopped responding and has recovered successfully error. When I got this error I was told by both HP and Nvidia that they had no knowledge of this issue. According to this article the GPU's were all made with this same ASIC that is susceptible to heating and in the case of a lap top this is exacerbated due to the usual lack of cooling. Not to mention the fact that you turn a laptop on and off allot more than you would with a desktop so with a lap top it happens faster. These poor people myself included have tried everything short of suing Nvidia. Including Nerfing our systems, underclocking the GPU, removing Dims of Ram. All things that essentially reduce the speed and efficiency of the PC... And why, to make the Video card we spent money on because it boasted performance... anyone see the irony here? But alas luckily for the suppliers HP or Dell this usually happens in about a year of turning on and off the laptop. Good for them cause they offer a 1 year warranty free. If you were smart and bought an extended on I envy you cause I didn't now I am the proud owner of a $1200 paperweight! This is also explained in another article here: http://news.softpedia.com/news/All-Nvidia-G84-and-G86s-Are-Believed-to-Be-Faulty-89754.shtml
My Brick:
HP DV9700t CTO
Intel Core2 Duo Mobile Processor T7250
Nvidia GForce 8600m
4G Ram
Vista 32

 

The display driver stopping responding is not a symptom of the GPU failure unless you are experiencing multiple images, random characters on the screen, lines on the screen or no video signal.