Faulty nVidia GPUs?

i was trying to decide on what laptop to purchase, and i stumbled across this:

hxxp://w w w.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=9448

(sorry for the weird formatting; i'm not allowed to post urls yet)

is the information it describes accurate? is there really a fundamental defect with the 8400 and the 8600?

if the information is true, what are the implications? does it mean i should avoid all laptops that offer these gpus?

also, more importantly, which other gpus have this defect?

 

in my opinion the 8600 is already over the hill. I'd just go with the newer 9 series, since I think the defects have also been adressed and you'll need the 256 bit to play the newer games as they're meant to be played. 9700m gts is the lowest of the 256 bit so start from there.

 

Just go ahead and buy a 9 Series.
8600 are defective yes, but I'm pretty sure that with all the newer revisions, they are optimized to provide a defect in the long run. (motherboard revision and heatsink/fan revision)

Though if problems persist, you can have customer service change your mobo/grapics card for a new one, etc.

 

The new replacement motherboards are only an eye-wash. People with faulty 7600s are getting new 7600s which will fry maybe in another year. Same is the case with faulty 8400M GS,8600M GS and 8600M GT.

My advice: Don't buy a notebook with an 8 series video card. The new product lines might have been corrected but why take the risk?

 

What is wrong with people these days ...
There is nothing wrong about 8600m gt ~.~

At least thats the case in my Dell XPS m1530

However, if you are looking for another semi-gaming laptop, just go ahead and get the 9 series. 8600m gt no longer has the fame and glory it used to have.

 

So you're stating that the "bad solder" problem doesn't exist because you haven't experienced it?

Well, I guess then that car accidents never happen and people never get cancer since I sure as hell haven't.

 

there is every reason to belive that this faulty gpu is serious business. my 8400m gs had died on me not long ago about 20 days out of warranty. (thanks to the extended warranty or I would have been toast). I'd advice against buying a 8 series gpu as they are first faulty and second sub par performers (at least right now)

 

Most of the failures have happened after the warranty has expired. I was one of the victims.

 

That sucks, I was hoping the issue would have been addressed and when I sent mine in for repair I would get a non-faulty one...

Oh well, guess I know when I will be getting a new computer (this time next year-ish )

 

Well they do offer extended warranty options at time of purchase. To believe a laptop should last forever, or any period of time for which you so choose will only set yourself up for disappointment.

When you buy a laptop, purchase the 3 year warranty if you're worried about faulty components. So many people get hung up on "I paid $1700 for this thing and it failed!". You paid for a 1 year warranty, you should count on it failing on the 366th day. Just because your old P4 1.8 laptop from 2001 is still going strong does not translate into a new high performance laptop lasting that long as well.

As far as the issue goes, it does exist. I'd write Dell a letter saying you know of the issue and want a certain laptop but want the 3 year warranty thrown in at no charge. If you don't ask, you won't receive.

 

The laptops are failing because a component which was supposed to work well didn't. That transgresses the warranty because the liability falls on the manufacturer. If a factory installed component doesn't work because it was a faulty make, it should be the prerogative of the manufacturer to replace without asking a second question. The ridiculous thing is some of these so called tech support don't even acknowledge the problem when it is so widespread. Deliberately pushing off the customers for no fault of theirs will not result in warranty extensions but it will lead to lawsuits from the customers' side.

 

Although the 8 series Nvidia GPUs for laptops have known problems, the main reason why a consumer doesn't have to purchase them is because they're quite dated relative to current hardware and the newer GPUs from either Nvidia or ATi give better performance.

 

ok, very clearly, there is a problem then, based on what i'm reading here. what is the extent of the problem? are any gpus faulty outside of nvidia 8400/8600? for example is the 9300 faulty? what about the quadro equivalents? are there any other cards other than these 2 i should avoid? i am not expecting a laptop to last forever, but i certainly will not purchase a graphics card that requires a crutch to last even through the warranty period, much less the laptop that comes with it.

 

No, none of the 9 Series are defective

As far as we know right now...

 

yeap mine fried up too. stay away from anything else than 9xxx since you are buying a new one. and as i learned my lesson too, maximise the warranty.

well sony said they would fix it alright, if i paid £700. go figure...

 

Mine fried when the warranty was over. After much deliberations, HP replaced the motherboard for free.

 

Wow thats suprising! Im thinking about extending my warrenty another year, just in case. I cant count on them dojng it for free, even though they do have good support.

Cool though for you!

 

Hmm. I didnt kno that the 7600's were faulty and it just so happened that mine went out in just a year and 1/2 old... but i guess that was partially my fault coz i did push it to the limit quite a couple times... but if I had know that i prolly wouldv'e waited a lil more for something better

 

If you visit HP's business forums, you would notice that nearly 60-70% of the complainants have their Go 7600s fried after a year of purchase. Worse of all, their notebook models are not even listed in HP's warranty extension models.

 

It is only during these periods that the 8 series problems are already being felt by consumers. ( Sadly, after warranty expires ), most of the defects ( which should not have been there in the first place ) are passed on to the consumers. It is also a known issue for ASUS c90s users, I myself have to pay another 300$ to replace my GPU after a few weeks out of warranty. It really sucks.

Point being : yeah. stay away from the 8 series and dont risk it.

 

This kind of behavior from major companies is idiotic.
Why do they even provide a warranty if they don't even want to bother themselves with fixing a problem which is clearly a fault of the manufacturer (let alone acknowledge it)?

Ah right ... for financial reasons.
Money, money, and more money.
It's way too costly to repair a laptop for 0 fee when under warranty but definitely a top priority when you shell out the cash.

I really dislike money.
It created so many problems/limitations it's not even funny.

To stay OT though ...
To my knowledge, the only series of Nvidia Gpu's that seem to be affected are primarily the 8xxx series.

If people are buying new laptops that fall in the mid-range category, I'd sooner tell them to avoid older series of gpu's (at least from Nvidia) as they are ... outdated, slower, and have a higher possibility of failing before their time.

No contest ... if you are buying a new laptop, make sure it has the new technology inside of it for a decent price.
If new mid-range Nividia gpu's are more expensive, then go to the older gen ATI gpu's such as 3470 and 3650.

 

We 7600 users felt the pinch 5-6 months back. It is only around this time that a majority of the 8600 notebooks are going into their last month of their 1 year standard warranties. From my experience I seriously advise all my fellow NBR forumers who are having this problem to right away extend their extending warranties to 3 years.

 

I wish, but i dont have the money...

I belive it is ~$100 to extend it 1 year extra, which is what ill be doing. But dont want to spend it... By two years though, ill sell it and get a non defective GPU and new PC.

 

Anyone who goes out today and buys a laptop with an 8xxx card is seriously doing it wrong. The 9xxx series is widespread in every conceivable price range.

 

A friend of mine had their HP laptop die about a months ago. It was out of warranty, but HP has a free extended warranty for the issue now & he received a prepaid shipping box to sent it back for repair.

According to HP the fact that windows was detecting his video card as a 7300 rather than a 7600 had nothing to do with the video card failing. But the fact that his wireless card didn't work did

 

Sad news... I only hope that my card will work for two years. Then my laptop will be worth crap and I will buy new one anyway.
Is that too much to expect ?

 

My 7600 also failed a few months ago, when I was mere weeks out of warranty. Dell refuses to acknowledge the solder flaw in the 7000 series of nvidia gpus.

 

In fact the problem was more widespread in Go 7200 and Go 7600s. There are more people out there whose 7 series GPUs have failed. Both HP and Dell are acting like idiots.

 

well.....my old computer with the go6600 is still running top notch...even though my bro plays games on it like bf2. far cry, ghost recon. and the likes for hours at end....so it looks like the issue spans the 7+ series

 

The integrated Nvidia Geforce 6150 in my brother's Compaq failed after 1.5 years of use but HP had a recall on it and repaired it for free. It still overheats like crazy though, once went up to 90 degrees Celsius when playing the original Doom, I kid you not! When I owned it before getting my Vaio TZ, it got very hot just when playing Simcity 3000!

 

Ah, good ol' Nvidia cards overheating (sarcasm), at this rate, we will hear about a lot of people saying that their Nvidia Graphics Cards have turned into silicon soup , hopefully not.

 

Is there any verifiable confirmation that the 9000 series are fixed? I'm curious. I haven't had an outright GPU failure on any of my recent notebooks yet (probably because I don't hang onto them long enough) but it's worth noting that performance-wise, many of the 'new' NVidia GPU's are performance rehashes of previous-generation chips.

Bearing in mind the secrecy concerning the 800 series, who's to say they weren't still working on bugfixes to the next generation and just relabelled the chips to buy them time?

 

the go6600 in my old computer never goes above 68C....thats the max temp even after hours of gaming

 

Well if you think HP and Dell are acting like idiots then sony have to be the leaders in that department. Up to now they don't acknowledge the problem and they are not moving at their £700 repair cost for a motherboard replacement. Even when i mailed them links to http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=268277 or nvidia/hp/dell official statements acknowledging the problem they still claimed that Nvidia engineers never reported to sony engineers about ANY problems with the GPU's. Yeah right...

GPU fried up 2 months after warranty expired...so next laptop (which of course wont be a sony) will be purchased with minimum of 3 years warranty...

 

Sorry for the bump, but does anyone know if Toshiba has done/said anything about this?

 

Not heard much about Toshiba since they are not much widespread in my area. You can however contact them and state your problem and hopefully they will be helpful to you.

 

Whats the likelihood of ASUS sending me a replacement motherboard/CPU if I enough?

Also, am I correctly diagnosing my issue as a GPU failure if artifacts aren't noticeable on every screen <mostly black seems to be okay> and I can boot in Safe Mode?

I'm running an ASUS G1 with an Nvidia GO77OO

 

If you're still under warranty ASUS will probably upgrade your G1 to the G1Sn with a Geforce 9500M GS. If not then you're out of luck, cause last I remember both the MXM Geforce Go 7700 GPU's and the motherboards were becoming more rare by the day.

 

Because I had the misfortune of buying the computer through Best Buy, the warranty expired already. Otherwise, it would've been the two year warranty through Asus.

If Asus does have the motherboard (which wasn't immediately apparent through their e-store), do you have any idea how much it would run?

 

Unfortunitly it can neither be found here:

http://estore.asus.com/shop/category.asp?catid=551
or here
http://www.asusparts.eu/index.php?cPath=67674_73347_73348_73349

There's one on ebay for $365:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ASUS-G1-G2-MOTH...4|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50

 

8400GS on my friend's HP died 3(!!!) times, last one out of warranty. Still, HP did replace the motherboard for free and took all the shipping expenses. I was impressed big time.

 

I bought an Acer Aspire 5920G 1 year ago with an 8600M GS, and it's overheating a lot lately. When it does so, everything becomes terribly slow, and I have to close the laptop for a long time to cool down.

I hope it won't die before I buy another laptop.

 

I could be wrong, but I think there are some misconceptions about this issue. To the best of my knowledge:

1) The fault in the GPU does not cause overheating. It is related to temperature in that variations therein (which naturally occur when the laptop is turned on and off as well as when the GPU goes from idle to load) eventually cause a part of the GPU to break, but when this happens, you generally know it because the GPU begins to display artifacts and shortly stops working altogether. All laptops run hotter after you've owned them for a while, but this is simply because of dust buildup and you can resolve it by cleaning the fans.

2) Last I heard, this particular problem is restricted to the low-end and mid-range cards of the GeForce 8 series so issues with GeForce 7 cards are a separate matter. There may be a problem with those as well, but it is quite possible that they simply die of old age (they're pretty dated by now).

3) I have seen no convincing evidence that this affects all 8600M and 8400M cards. It affects a substantial number of them, but I called the store that sold me my laptop (which has a DDR2 8600M GT) and they said that this is the first they've ever heard of this issue. Also, if the temperature issue works the way I think it does, then what I've been doing for my laptop should quite likely have caused it to break by now (I turn it on and off at least once a day and three times a day during weekdays).

 

Ditto That ! 7600go! HP tells me to take a hike, so I bought a Sager !

Never again, Dell, HP, Gateway !

 

Is 2 years a reasonable expected lifetime for a mobile GPU? Seems rather short to me. Is there any reason to expect the 9xxx series to last any longer than the 'issue free' 7xxx series?

 

Well after the HUGE overheating problems with my m1330´s 8400gs I decided NO MORE nvidia for my next laptop. Ill go with ATI.

 

It's not as if ATi is all that innocent when it comes to faulty GPU's. Back in the day ATi Radeon 9700 and 9800's overheated and died on people. This time around Nvidia screwed up. Plus after previously owning an ATi Radeon card I'd still take a Nvidia Geforce card over its much superior driver support than ATi.