Notebook Owners Sue Nvidia Over Faulty Chips

Notebook Owners Sue Nvidia Over Faulty Chips

CIO reports that Apple, Dell, and HP laptop owners are suing Nvidia to try and force them to replace reportedly faulty graphics processing units (GPUs). If the suit becomes class-action it could affect millions of notebook owners. Nvidia reported in July of last year that it found "significant quantities" of older graphics cards that shipped in notebook PCs were defective. Though the notebook companies, including Apple, Dell, and HP, tried to fix the defective graphics card problems by software updates, the plaintiffs in this suit insist that nothing other than a complete replacement will suffice.

Full Story (CIO.com)
Via (TheInquirer.net)

 

ATI gpu cards never reported defective?

 

NVidia never lied?

 

sooooooooo which gpus were considered faulty? Mighty kind of them to report all this and not tell anyone who might be affected

 

I seriously doubt they will win... But if it does become a class action and on the small chance they do win, then Nvidia would be destroyed... They would be forced to do either massive layoffs or go Bankrupt, who would want that... I love Nvidia

 

It's about time. HP has me stranded with my tx1000.

 

The 8400M GS and 8600M GT were known for frequent failure due to overheating, thanks to an inherent design flaw. Dell gave everyone with either of these models an automatic one year warranty extension to cover the GPU.

There may be more models, but at the very least, these two are affected.

 

YES!!!! I hope they take Nvidia DOWN!!!!!!!!!

 

your joking right

 

Add these two GPUs to the list as well: Go 7200 and Go 7600. In fact massive number of users reported Go 7600 failure which means the problem was older and Nvidia tried to mask it. Add to these, the old motherboards are replaced by HP with the same defective GPUs which means it is again a case of Time Bomb. Another 12-15 months and again the GPU cooks up.

 

Nvidia needs to be made to pay for their mistakes.

I have not owned a Nvidia based GPU in years and this whole scandal is just adding onto the reason why I will never own one again... ATI FTW !

 

I like ATI but as far as I've seen they are always one step behind and Nvidia has PsyX support In my lifetime I have had nothing but great experiences with Nvidia, but that's just my opinion

 

Nope. I have a $1,500 paperweight of a laptop because Nvidia F'D me royally.

I hope they get slaughtered in court.

To add insult to injury, I babied that laptop, especially the video card. I knew full well it was just a matter of time before it was going to die so I underclocked it, ran the laptop in power saver mode, and put it on a cooling pad. I didn't play games or anything on it, I literally treated it like a premature infant, yet it still committed suicide.

I honestly hope they get socked with a $1.5 billion fine like Intel was hit with and that d-bag CEO Sun Tsu Sun or whatever gets some serious butthurt.

I just gotta figure out how to get my name on that lawsuit... I want those tools to know that when they F the consumer, we will F them back. That's why I love the EU....

 

Ill probably steer clear of this as my vostro has been nothing but great to me.

 

sorry bro, what kind of GPU did you have? and sometimes underclocking can cause complications just as dire as overclocking

 

Look at the sig

 

hmmm not a top class GPU by any means but I am surprised :? I haven't heard about any 8600 failures before

 

They are one of if not the top card to fail or be /thread about on NBR over the past year.

 

Is it the 8600 GT specifically? Or are the 8600 GS affected as well?

 

The underclock didn't cause any complications dude.

Regardless, it still would have died. I've seen about 101 different threads regarding the 8400 and it's death, and I am the only one who underclocked. The underclock did nothing but provide lower temperatures and extend it's life, probably just enough to get it passed the 1 year warranty mark, so I guess it did have a dire consequence in that regard. When it was underclocked, it wasn't pushing anything strenuous. It's not like I was trying to play Crysis or anything, like I said previously, I didn't do any gaming. I was just using it for basic web browsing. But rather than have it run at max speed just because it's connected to an external monitor, I underclocked it to sane levels. Trust me, running at top speed is a lot worse than running it at low speeds, especially when the core is not being stressed whatsoever. It's just a stupid mechanism, when it detects an external display, it automatically kicked it into high performance mode regardless of the activity level. Instead of it running at 600/400mhz and having the temperatures jump to 75C, I had it at 300/200mhz and running it at 55C. IMO, that's a MUCH better recipe for a healthy GPU. In any case, I couldn't have done anything more or less, she was going to die one way or another- everyone else out there with a dead 8400 on their hands is proof of this.

The 8400 is basically the poster child of the defective Nvidia chips.

Want to know the kicker? This was a bloody replacement laptop for my AMD/Nvidia based DV2315NR that also committed suicide and the bloody case manager picked out the Nvidia for me and was beaming about how great it was. I didn't even want it but figured heck, I'm not paying so whatever........ F it. I just hope Nvidia gets destroyed for their BS. That cocky POS CEO and his opening a can of whoop a$$ on Intel.... make non-defective chips first, buddy, and then worry about cans of whatever the heck you want. Honestly, I hope Intel squeezes the life out of Nvidia using all the anti-competitive monopolistic tactics at their disposal. That is, after Nvidia gets sued back to the Riva TNT stone-age.

 

Nobody knows what exactly is affected. The most extreme rumors say all g84 and g86 chips (which includes all desktop and laptop 8600 and 8400 cards), but there has never been any confirmation of this. It's definitely more than the 8600M GT though (the Dell update addressing this issue was for quite a few laptops that are not available with the 8600M GT).

 

IIRC, it was the g84 & g86 cores which were affected by the manufacturing defaults as the above poster said.

I mean, I suppose that for a manufacturing default, the customers deserve at least a replacement of some kind for their faulty products.

 

they still haven't fixed the faulty chips?

 

It's not possible to fix them -- they're in millions of laptops that are already in the hands of customers. The cost of doing a recall of every one of them would be truly astounding so they're much better off simply paying for replacements for people who have a warranty and ignoring people who do not.

 

Sony seems to be ignorant of this whole problem even though many of their FZ notebooks with 8400M GT failed.

 

You're kidding right? The 8600's were the most common cards to fail.

I hope Nvidia does have to fix things up - it's only fair for consumers.

ATI was first to move onto 55nm GPUs, currently has the best bang-for-the-buck performance desktop GPU (4770, if I remember the model number correctly - which incidentally also has the most graphics processing power per watt power consumption by far), just introduced the first graphics card with a stock 1GHz clock speed (4890), and more.

Nvidia is by no means uncompetitive, but it recent months it seems to be lagging behind ATI a tiny bit.

In the end, though, competition ends up benefiting the end consumer. I will go with whichever company has a superior (and nondefective...) product for the best price - which in my experiences has most commonly meant ATI.

 

The HD 4770 uses a 40nm process. The rest of their current line up is 55nm. nVidia has been lagging behind lately because they've reused their old cores, but GT300 series should see a complete redesign, while ATI's next line will still use similar cores as their current generation (then people will consider ATI lagging behind).

 

Some people associate The Inquirer with gutter journalism, but I've always found their reports are founded on substance.

For the full analysis of the nVidia GPU manufacturing problem, start here.

Also, in July 2008, L'Inq said 10 Dell models are affected. Has anyone produced a better list in the subsequent 9 months.

I would expect this law suit to have the support of the legal processes. It is what is known as a "latent defect" which means it was there from the start and waiting to be discovered. Patches such changing BIOSes to increase fan activity and reduce temperatures are not very user-friendly (almost like telling a car driver to drive with the windows open to avoid a problem with exhaust fumes).

John

 

Sure, I've had a couple of failed 8600M GS`s (in ASUS S96S) in the line of my work. 8400M G is also affected, as I can personally attest (in ASUS S37S).

Even my own 8400M GS based Quadro NVS 135M started failing on me the last week. Luckily the warranty process was painless. As a precaution, I replaced the hot-running T7300 processor with a much cooler Penryn-cored T8300. Now GPU temps in idle won't exceed 60c.

 

Hp claims that they changed my motherboard when i sent my laptop to them for the Nvidia over heating problem, now all i have is a laptop when fan on (and very loud) all the time.
Sitting with 3 friends at the library, all using their laptops, the place suddenly gets quiet when i turn off MY HP.

 

Exactly.

 

Theres really no way to tell who is right...unless they buy a notebook now that has faulty chip. Or if theyre smart and they bought one that had faulty chip and its still in the box. And they open it and it has faulty chip.

Otherwise, they could just say the owner f'd it up.

 

It has already been proven numerous times that the chips are actually faulty.