Dell finally speaks out on the NVIDIA FAULTY GPU bug...

So the deal I purchased has an 8600M GT, but it has a 4 year warranty (3 years was the default) and I'm a little worried. I got it five days ago. What do you guys think I should do?

 

You have 4 years warranty on it... so you have nothing to worry about.

whats the point of buying the extended warranty and not using it???

 

Well, is it going to get annoying if I have to keep replacing my laptop every once in a while?

 

I doubt it's going to be breaking every month. I have yet to encounter an issue on my 8600 or 8400 and it's been a year.

 

Could someone find out the gpu revision of the new M1530?

When i mean new, the M1530's that was recieved after Dell made it official.

The new BIOS not might exactly mean its defective too. Dell only makes one BIOS for the m1530 right?

 

More than the 8400 and 8600 must be affected. The company i work for literally has hundreds of D630's and none that I have seen have an 8400 or 8600, they all have the NVIDIA Quadro cards. Therefore they must be affected and corporations with Dell's may need to worry. Also i have a M1530 and i dont want to update my bios. I'd rather risk the videocard dying, i have a 4 year warranty, and get better battery life.

 

I have an 8600M GT in my XPS M1530. Just updated my bios to A09. I doubt it will really help stop hardware failure, but who knows. But its things like this that make my hate laptops. If it was not for me going to college soon, I would not be buying a laptop, and I hope this is the last laptop I ever have to buy. In a desktop, if your videocard dies, you send it in for an RMA and get free replacements for life (eVGA, BFG, and XFX all have lifetime warranties).

IMPORTANT: DO NOT INSTALL THIS A09 update. The fan is always on now. I was just sitting here surfing the internet and the GPU fan was going full blast, it quieted down a bit but is still going. I'm a bit pissed now. This is BS. I don't want a louder laptop, I want a real fix.

 

So you guys think I should just keep it?

 

It's up to you, but I'd return it and get a laptop with a Montievina/Centrino 2 platform. The HP DV5T is a good choice I think and has a 9600M GT. But of course it could end up being faulty too...depending on how wide this thing is.

 

Roll back to the older BIOS and ignore the defect.

Just before your warranty term ends, overclock it till it blows up and get a brand new notebook. (unless it dies before then). They will just think it burnt out due to the defect.

Hopefully you will get a new notebook with no such issues.

 

Ok, just because the nvidia defect affects a small number of units, does not mean EVERY UNIT IS DEFECTIVE AND YOU MUST KILL IT WHEN YOU GET CLOSE TO WARRANTY.

What you should do, is roll back to A09, spend a nice long session of playing a graphics intensive game like Assasins Creed on max settings. The longer the better on the A08 bios, and if your game doesn't lag after many hours, you should be fine.

You should upgrade to the A09 bios AFTER you've tested to make sure that your graphics card is able to work fine on its own, if you experience lag or slowdown after a long period of gametime, then get a replacement. if not, upgrade to A09 bios and your good to go.

The A09 is intended to address problems of affected users with defective cards. Considering your card works fine through rigorous testing, upgrading to A09 simply gives you an edge over those with infected cards. Those affected may need the A09 bios to keep their gfx alive. Though your A09 bios will serve to keep your notebook cooler which is not a bad thing at all.

 

You cant do a rigorous test on its lifespan.

The problem isnt an overheating issue. Its a heat cycling issue that causes the gpu to fail in the long run due to the faulty materials. Once your warranty runs out its game over for you, a M1530 paperweight.

Since the A09 BIOS was offered to nvidia models, they are all affected.

Though excess heat will sure help shorten the gpu's life.

The A09 bios keeps the fan on to reduce temperature fluctuations

 

Considering virtually no one has experienced any issues yet and its been a year so far... situation is not too bad. No one can provide an accurate rough estimate as to how long their Nvidia card will last. it could be a few months, it could be a few years, who knows. Fact is if the defective cards were all manufactured at the same time, you can't really tell when it will actually fail. For all we know it could just shorten the lifespan of the GPU by only a month or two.

No, its just because Dell doesn't know which models are affected and which arn't. Fan regulation would be controlled in the bios and the patch is applied to all lines just to make sure those that are affected are covered, and those that arn't affected, well, they benefit from extra cooling too.

 

Virtually no one has had issues??? Maybe no one that you know.

The symptoms described has shown up alot of times over and over, especially for the m1330. Thus the massive "vertical lines" thread, and that thread was created before Nvidia gave the news. Also its not just isolated to that thread, there has also been seperate threads created involving other models.

Nvidia wouldnt spend $200 million if it was just gonna shorten your GPU lifespan by a few months.

$200 million is alot of money which is gonna be spent on serious issues.

EDIT:

Interesting....

Impending doom to all DDR2's

 

No, I completely agree with Forte on this one. This thread is blowing the issue WAY out of proportion. YES, there are video cards that are defective out there, and YES, some people will have a hassle on their hands. But the minority of cards are the ones affected out there. My M1530 is coming this week, and I have a 2 year warranty on it. As far as I know, I have 21 days to test this thing and make sure there is nothing wrong with it before sending it back. That alone is enough to quell my worries.

And my god, Nvidia and Dell are not retards, of course they are trying to solve this problem, they know that the BIOS update is temporary. Where am I getting this info from? Nowhere, but it's called common sense, damn. Dell wants to save money, but one key rule to a successful company is to listen to your customers, not shut them up. Dell doesn't want a mess on their hands, nor does Nvidia, and seeing as how these 2 giants don't want to lose their market share, I'm guessing that they are doing everything to try to solve the problem. Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe I'm not.

I'll reiterate a very important point - most people that come here come to solve a problem they have, so a lot of threads are going to make a laptop look a lot worse than it really is.

 

As I said a few pages back, this ultimately will boil down to what the end user community will accept as a resolution to a problem NVIDIA cleary admits to.

If you are happy with your systems temps before or after an update to the recently released BIOS then so be it. If your system dies and the manufacturer (I say manufacturer since DELL is not the only company affected) wont do squat since its out of warranty, accept it.

If, like most, you see thru the band-aid fix NVIDIA has suggested to their customers (your laptop maker), then speak out. Being silent only tells the industry its okay to get away with practices such as this.

Oh and for those of you who keep asking if Dell is still shipping cards affected by this issue, the answer is YES. They will ship with the updated BIOS adjusting fan performance as was stated on their Direct2Dell Blog.

 

Why can't Dell switch over to ATI? Do they have a contract with Nvidia or something? Seems easier than this whole mess.

 

I dont think you understand the whole situation here. There is no test for this problem. Its a weak part waiting to break down in the future, 21days isnt enough.

Doing everything would be releasing affected models. Common sense would be a total recall. And Minority wouldnt cost $200,000,000

(nearly a quarter of a billion). Seeing as they mass manufacture gpu's for cheaper cost, $200 million is ALOT of defective cards worldwide.

They are only putting the BIOS as a temporary fix till your warranty runs out. After that when it fails, you have a paper weight. There is NO PERMANENT FIX

Similar has already happened to HP a year ago and it didnt turn out pretty: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c01087277&dlc=en

Same procedure: Only broken ones can be returned to HP for replacement and a BIOS update which runs the fan 24/7.

 

I know i sound like a scaring person but im not saying your GPU's will die tommorow. It can take months or even years depening on your usage and what temperatures you run it. Not all defective stuff will fail instantaneously. The fact of the matter is, there is a defective part in your notebook which could fail unexpectedly in the future. Thus 'impending doom'

At first before dell even disclosed the list of possible affected gpu's, we speculated the G86 and G84 were defective.. turns out we were correct.

Nvidia made it described it as 'higher than usual' failure rates. Now higher than usual to Nvidia isnt just isolated issues, it has to be big for nvidia to announce it.

 

I upgraded the BIOS on my 1420 and my fan isn't always on ...

 

It should be running at the very lowest speed setting while idling. Others have reported differently already.

What gpu?

 

I think I have something wrong here - can't you find out that your card is defective by monitoring the temps in different scenarios?
Also, I agree that Nvidia should have come up with a solution earlier, but the fact is that they haven't, and for now we have to use our own solutions.

I would agree with you, but I don't know exactly what the $200M would be for. R&D for the defective cards, reproduction of fixed cards, re-call fees, etc.? Also, you have to see how large the $200M is in retrospect to the total. For example, $200M would be a small number in comparison, to say, $10 Billion in those same fields. That would make the 200M only 0.2% of the bigger picture.

Edit:

Thanks for the clarification

 

Its a heat cycling issue causing the faulty materials to fail due to heat fatigue that builds up overtime. Its like slowly bending a piece of metal back and forth till it snaps. A more detailed explanation follows:

Keeping your gpu in good temps (not fluctuating or overheating) will greatly reduce the chances of failure. This why this issue didnt affect other manufacturers as much, its because they had good cooling design to counter the problem. The m1330 has the worst cooling out of the XPS range, thats why it was hit the most.

My current HP gpu is affected, its over 6 months old and its been OC'd everytime i play games. Ive done the copper mod, undervolt, cooling pad and AS5 to reduce failure.

 

If you're in the Uk/EC country the one year warranty isn't likely to be an issue as the Sale of Goods Act states things should last a minimum amount of time and you can reasonably expect a laptop to last longer than a year - the law in the Uk allows up to 5 or 6 years, the onus is on the user to show that thje fault is inherent and was there from the start which with all the publicity and Dell offering a sort of fix shouldn't be too hard to prove.

 

Dell wont lose a penny on this - this is Nvidia's problem and they will front the cost. Dell could just say "we're gonna recall them all" and bill Nvidia.

 

Precisely. That would be the best thing Dell could do. Nvidia will have to pay up, but come on, Nvidia going out of business resulting in ATI winning? Doubt it. There have been PS3 recalls, Xbox 360 recalls, etc. The companies are still running strong.

 

the m1330 isnt entirely nVidia's fault.... dell had a lousy cooling design in m1330 compared to m1530 (both similar layout, but m1530 = directly touching the copper cooling using springs, but m1330 = using thermal pad.... thats why m1330 copper mod is useful.......

but how would dell make this right? i dont think replacing everyone's m1330/m1530 laptop is really $-worthy(unless they want to charge everything to nVidia), extending warranty is lame since a lot of people already have 4 yr warranty.....

 

The difference in recalling xbox360's and PS3's is the very large amount of laptops that have the 8400 and 8600 cards. Dell is not the only company that could be seeing backlash from this. They are just the first on the chopping block due to their laptop's inability to deal with heat, causing larger temperature changes.

How long before Apple has to do something about it? All of their MBP's have the 8600m in them. How about Acer? Asus? HP? Sony? Just looking at one page on Newegg for laptops you can find at least one notebook from each of those manufacturers that have an 8400m or an 8600m. How long will it be till they start getting the backlash? Based on the info released so far, it appears that all of the 8xxx series cards could have this material issue. Until we get more info from Nvidia the damage this could cause is a lot more than you would like to believe. Nvidia is already taking a hit from this, but it could be much worse once we get all of the information.

The biggest problem that comes with this is the fact that any card that was manufactured with the faulty material is potentially a card that will fail given enough time. If they aren’t careful with how they deal with this situation there could very well be a lawsuit coming up. If it could be proved that Nvidia knew that there was an issue with the material and went along with it anyway, they are dead in the water. It’s just a wait for Nvidia to release all the information regarding their response to this issue.

 

HP already had to deal with it a year ago, though there was no Nvidia official announcement at the time. There probably was some backlash, but no one really cared much since there was no word from Nvidia themselves.

The only difference between Dell and HP's situation is that while HP addressed it a year ago with their own bios update, Dell only recently addressed it and Nvidia spoke out recently.

What Nvidia addressed clearly indicates that not ALL 8600M GTs were affected and that it is only a small handful. Obviously we do not know how much that is, but rest assured there are good cards out there. Its not a design flaw like the M1330 has with its cooling, but its a manufacturing error that affected a batch of units.

 

I've got a question: my Inspiron 5120 with an 8400m GS isn't on the list. Sup with that?

@Forte: I'm finding it very, very hard to believe nVidia right now. I really want to, but I can't.

 

They are models with GDDR3 memory, they arent affected apparently. Along with the Vostro 1500

 

If HP and Dell systems have this flaw I would say it's a bit more than a batch of units. It seems more like a design error than a manufacturing issue since someone obviously thought the materials used would be fine.

Although I can't really find an actual statement from Nvidia regarding which cards are possibly faulty. The only thing we have to go off of is the list of laptops that got BIOs updates to combat the material issue. Granted I didn't have much time to search around too much. I just saw a few articles on engadget and what not stating that Nvidia had hinted there might be a problem with some GPU's and the whole Dell BIOs update. Other than that I can't find too much from Nvidia(I'm not saying they haven't said anything, I just can't seem to find it if they did).

It would be nice if Nvidia would release how widespread the issue could be. I have a 8600m in my 1520 and I'd like to know if I should expect it to die later on down the road because of this problem(I know it's not on the BIO's update list but that doesn't mean it might not be affected). Still waiting for some official response from Nvidia. $200 million for damage control and they haven't done the greatest of jobs thus far, I'm sure I'm not the only one who is losing faith in Nvidia as time goes on.

 

nVidia only said certain batches of cards are bad.... which everyone claimed BS

 

Well first they said only a small batch of GPUs that were only sent to HP were effected... now we have Dell admitting theirs are effected too. How anyone can trust nVidias word at this point is beyond me.

 

I still like nVidia's cards, regardless of their huge slip-up here. I've always been an nVidia fan, and although they made this mistake, I'll still remain an nVidia fan.

 

The fact is, the only official word from Nvidia, is certain batches were affected. They never said it is a DESIGN FLAW.

Everyone is just blowing it up as if every single card is affected, every single card is going to blow up, when in fact Nvidia have never said there was any design flaw in the first place! Most defects that have occurred are found out early on so far such as people who turned on their computer, the monitor flashed, then the computer died in the first day they turn on their laptop. Or another user who was gaming on the laptop and got incredibly slow framerates. Or people who had high framerates for 3 hours, then got ridiculous slowdown and lag.

Dell's goal in releasing the A09 bios is to keep the graphics cards that are affected, to be in better working condition, basically taking an additional measure to keep defective cards operable. That does not mean ALL the M1530's graphics cards are faulty. It just suppresses the defective cards, but at the same time provides better cooling for working cards.

People are seriously blowing up the situation when in fact, not every single card is faulty. If this were the case, we would have a lot more threads on the forum about the graphics card dying even before this announcement was made.

Nvidia just slipped. I wouldnt say they are a lying and dishonest company. They just made a major manufacturing mistake when making certain chips, just like all the WSXGA+ screens that were plagued by graininess from Samsung. Nvidia still makes great graphics cards and even before the announcement, the gaming performance of the 8600GT is still irrefutable and proven.

 

It's not a design defect as you say - it's a manufacturing defect.

BUT - Nvidia should be able to check the manufacturers numbers of the failed units and match them up with batches and they should KNOW the size of problem they face. The thing is they still seem to be very vague even when saying it's a very small run affected would presumably settle concerns. The fact that they haven't come out with that info either means they dont lnow the numbers affected or that the whole run could be affected.

 

Very well said !

My 8400m GS in my Vostro 1500 idles at 48c/118F

 

Here's my story:

I have a Dell D630 with the nvidia 135m gpu.

Approximately a year after I bought it, I noticed the computer was getting slower. I figured it was the inevitable accumulation of spyware.

Then it got a lot slower. Then the screen would go pretty colors randomely, and I would have to hard restart. I called Dell tech support (I have their "gold" tech support).

The first guy told me I had to reinstall Vista. He even sent me a new Vista install CD. Only I was able to get the computer to run just fine by disabling the video card in safe mode. I figured he wasn't the cream of the crop so I called again.

Second guy I talked to told me not to reinstall Vista, they would send me someone to replace the video card/motherboard. OK.

Tech guy replaces the motherboard. Now the computer shuts off randomely, but without the retarded light show warning - and I have to unplug the computer before I can restart.

Tech support says I need to replace my heat sink and fans. Techie comes over, replaces the heat sink and fans, breaks the keyboard. Same problem continues.

This time tech support says they'll change my motheboard, heat sink, fan, and keyboard, again. Techie comes over, replaces basically everything, computer finally works again.

Let me summarize. Tech support had me go through two motherboards, a keyboard, a heat sink and a fan - and sent three different techies to my house over the course of a week - to fix a known problem with the GPU?

 

Taken directly from the SEC filing available to view @ http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=6028900-3401-5560&type=sect&dcn=0001193125-08-145974:

 

No Inspiron 1720 on the list?

So is my computer not affected or what?

 

Since this is a giant mess, if I were you I would be on the line DEMANDING a new machine (not a refurb, a new machine) to replace the unit you purchased that contained a GPU that has a known manufacturing defect. There is no reason for Dell to deny this given the steps taken to correct it to date.

Be polite but firm. Give them a call.

Until Dell indicates it is by posting a similar BIOS update, consider the answer as NO. Don't worry about it until it becomes an issue (i.e. GPU temps are higher than normal, artifacts, lines, etc.).

 

And also this

Still its a blur eh!! So I guess the best thing to do is relax and not panic, and just see how it goes with our cards.. and if they need a replacement or if they are not functioning properly, call the manufacturer and ask for a replacement which they will do what else can we do?

 

Pointing out a particular line:

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

 

Of course, no one really knows if that includes the 8xxx series or not. Are those still in manufacture? Or does there exist a huge stockpile of pre-manufactured components. I know Dell may not purchase a large volume in advance, but that doesn't mean Nvidia didn't manufacture a huge volume in advance before moving on the the next series. So much of what Nvidia has to say about it strikes me as lipstick on a pig.

I do agree with what you say about most folks blowing it out of proportion. I'm guessing the vast majority will escape this completely unaffected.

 

I hope you are right, I've noticed that too about the DDR2 versions. I have an inspiron 1520 with 1680x1050 lcd, 7200rpm hdd, T7500, and 4gb which I absolutely love. I use it for school and WoW and it's been great. My temps on idle are 48-53c and go up to mid 60c while gaming. I've never had any problems with it since I bought it in February, but this news concerns me.

 

Typical response from a large seller...They want a quick fix that probly cost a few thousand to create and deploy to calm the masses. A few people who know they are getting screwed by getting a fix that applies a band aid to a decapitation. Its a sad story and I may just have to go back to ATi over this.

 

Not really a typical response. Remember the time when Dell had one incident of a battery exploding sporadically? They immediately requested a recall of all batteries for a brand new one.

When the PS3 had problems with a new firmware update, it offered to replace all systems bricked by it.

Xbox 360 red ring of death, mass recall.

 

There is always a different response to a part that just plain fails and one that fails and causes a fire and could quite possible kill many many people who own said device. Had dell not recalled the battery then some kid could have burned his house down with his family in it and then proceded to sue dell for alot of money.

 

There are many other cases besides that of Dell you know. Dell isn't the only large company.