Alright its fact now - 8800 Series GPU'S are defective - what does that mean for us with 9800GT?

nVidia manufactured the silicon/pcb, which is what's failing. Regardless of the cooling efficiency of the system the cards are put into, cards are failing across the board from Dell to HP to whoever so it's not as simple as crappy cooling.

 

I think there is a problem with lead free soldering, maybe it is too new as a technology?

 

Whoa. this is honestly a huge huge problem ESPECIALLY for us future M860TU/NP8660 Users.

They don't make laptops like they used to anymore. I have this one HP from 1997 that stil runs strong.

Paladin44: it's great that you offer the 1 year full warranty and 3 year labor but we're basically talking about cards with a major history of failure. M15X and now it's official that the problem is witht he 9XXX series cards as well.

Consider this: the m15x has a high failure rate and this laptop is now ONLY the 2nd one in the world to be released with essentially the same card. Doesn't that in and of itself just give you pause? And we can all praise clevo like they are thermal gods but fact is is that we are the 2nd test subjects with this card and that's a scary thought - especially when thermal defects are being found in the 9XXX series as well.

And if the laptop breaks after three years people are going to be very angry (gpu overheating issues). Because think about it when the GPU overheats it just increases the entire temperature in the laptop making all the other parts prone to failure overtime.

Clearly there is room for a future mass civil litigation under 23B3 or 23B1B. If I get my laptop and within three years the laptop dies there's gonna be heads rolling at Nvidia. The enthusiast community will not truly see the actual effects of these 8XXX and 9XXX series cards until some time within the next couple years (because frankly it does take some time for these cards to go caput).

When I get my laptop MX2 THERMAL PASTE is going EVERYWHERE. That's all I know.

 

Guess I have to pray I won't end up with a bad batch of 9800 ...

 

Hopefully my $300 warranty will be worth it then.

Except I can't take advantage of paid shipping. ****it.

 

What was that website that offered extended warranties again? Donald gave it to us....

 

www.safeware.com

they offer a any case scenario no deductable warraty

 

Thanks bud - i think a lot of us will be needing this.

 

I am just waiting Sager and Clevo to over extended warranty ...

 

I'm going to be so unhappy if Sager begins offering 3-year extended warranties for free.

 

lol i hope they do

 

^--^
You have nothing to worry about.

 

me too... I think Clevo or Sager have to if nVidia reimburse them...

 

Nobody is gonna get upgraded to a 3 year warranty for free.
The warranty upgrade is quite possibly the single highest profit item assuming you have made a reliable product.
With clevos track record? its gotta be high profit, unless all the video cards crap out.

 

Well, the Clevo's have always been built well, but if we're following what the Inquirer says, basically any laptop running Geforce 8 is a ticking time bomb. Then again, even if Clevo shells out some cash for warranty work, they can probably bill Nvidia for it, similar to what happened to Sony when they had their battery fiasco.

 

I just don't get it ... what is the sense of buying and shelling out $2000+ for so called quality laptop and then be FORCED to get a 3 year warranty just to protect yourself against faulty NVIDIA graphic cards ...

Meanwhile NVIDIA is laughing all the way to the bank ... getting fatter!

G!

 

Not sure about the laughing and getting fatter From what I see, they're getting pretty shafted by this situation, they just posted a $120M loss for Q2, of which $196M was to replace laptops and GPUs.

http://firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20757

Though yeah, otherwise I agree with Gonwk, it really sucks for anybody who didn't get that extra warranty. Though personally I feel the worst for those who bought budget laptops, as it could be that they aren't so well off financially, scraped together just enough to afford a laptop, and watched as it went down the drain as the GPU failed out of warranty.

 

I would NEVER buy a notebook for over $1,500 WITHOUT a 3-year warranty. Quality or not, components fail, no matter what make. Hard drives will fail, video cards will fail, LCD panels will fail... SOMETHING is bound to fail soon enough, for someone. Why not "insure" the notebook for 3 years for a fraction of the cost ($245 for me on a $3,570 notebook, about 7% of the total cost)? I have a piece of mind now for my investment.

 

^^but some people switch laptops every year, or even half year.

 

Assuming Nirvana is talking to me, that is very true, but my heart isn't out for people who have enough money to do so . Although it is a PITA, it's not earth shattering if you can just buy a new one to replace it, as opposed to be a poor uni student or something. Maybe I'm weaving the sob story a little thick, but I'm sure this has affected more than a few people who couldn't afford it.

 

Laptops are a lot easier to sell when you have a good amount of warranty left, even if you only keep it for 6 months to a year. No one wants to buy a laptop that doesn't at least have 90 days warranty left on it.

Now, as for the ticking time bomb theory. I for one prefer to believe what I see reported here in this forum, and the Compal forum, and the MSI forum, and what our service records report on the failure rate of the Sager and PowerPro laptop's nVIDIA video cards. The answer is no greater failure rate than any of the cards, either ATi or nVIDIA, before it.

So, why is it the nVIDIA has already had to pay out these great sums to some major national brands (meaning the failures have already happened), and yet we still don't see anything unusual with our laptops...and we don't see people streaming into all these threads telling us about how the nVIDIA cards in their Sager or PowerPro laptops are failing?

The answer is simply that they are not failing at any unusual rate.

 

My hp pavilion zt300 from four years ago still works well without any problems.. so I disagree with you that warranty is important ...

 

Hm...that's possible, and this is kinda being blown out of proportion, but 200 million per quarter seems to be a bit much for repair and replacement. It could be that it was just a batch problem and that the $200M will only happen this quarter or something, which is what Nvidia is claiming.

I know that Dell's responded to this problem (their solution is a BIOS update modifying the fan profile) and HP's also released a BIOS update along with a list of potentially affected models ( http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...7&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1842189&lang=en). But from your end, there haven't been any problems? Does Dell/HP (or others) have a seperate supply chain from Nvidia that would give them messed up GPUs while sparing Sagers?

 

Yes, they absolute have a different Channel.

 

Yeah, I thought they did but I didn't know if it would cause just them to get faulty chips as opposed to sending a nice mix to everyone. Either way, sounds good.

 

Enquirer is just pushing the story. I highly doubt the 8800 series are defective.

Ive only noticed a high failure rate on 7xxx and 8xxx. (mine failed within 6 months of normal use)

It would still be nice if Nvidia released the list of this 'small batch' thats affected.

 

Everything might break down, but not in the first few years unless you are unlucky or there is a problem with the specific item installed, or you just don't take care of your system.
That's one thing. Having a component with a design/manufacturing fault, that has increased chances of going to the other world, is another.

If the problem appeared only after 3+ years, I have my doubts that Nvidia would already be losing hundrends of millions of $ due to this only. If the problem with these cards only appeared (or mostly) after the first 3 years, I doubt it would be such a huge deal for everybody, including Nvidia.

I want to believe that it isn't such a big deal, but I'm just not sure if I (we?) am just telling myself everything is going to be alright when deep down I know it is only a matter of time when things go wrong because of this problem.

Yes, even if the hardware was perfect there would be a chance that it would break down in the first week. Then again there is a chance right after I click "submit Reply", I will die.


As I said before, I just can't understand how it is possible for Nvidia, knowing in advance about the problems with the G84 and G86 (and my guess is before any of us in the public), could just repeat the SAME mistake with the 9xxx (and perhaps the rest of the 8xxx, but that is irrelevant) series. If they are not to fault and it is the manufacturer, they didn't deal with him/them before starting production of the units? If the problems are 100% Nvidia's fault, and they didn't do anything to fix the issue with the 9xxx, how can anyone defend them unless they work for them?

They release in public a whole line of products, while knowing there are serious defects with them that in the best case scenario limits the life of the product if not the whole machine. This must be illegal, somewhere, right?

 

It's like no one is paying attention to what is really going on.

 

Shyster said:

"Also, "defective" is a relative term, given that everything breaks down eventually."

Defective systems mean that it does not work accordingly to the specifications including safety. Just becouse something can breaks down it does not mean it is defective. Nevertheles it is a serious thing when a company admits that the material used is not really up to the spec. Indeed specification is what regulatory bodies for comecialization (I think in the US in this case is the FCC) use against samples (samples of the final product) and market standards to validate them to be fit for consumption.

I think there are two ways for Retailers and ODMs (Clevo AW etc etc) to go about this:

1) Simply state they track records show no evidence of malfunction even though chip makers (NVIDIA) already state that a lot of their chips are defective. As such no preventive action is needed and we will take as it goes.

2) ODM's cross reference their batches with NVIDIA identified batches for potentilally defective chips (like HP did) and issue a list of cards that that might contain this issue and do something about it. This amongst other preventive actions they might feel it is needed.

On the first method the cost (finantially or whatever) is indeed potentially transfered to the customer as people seam to forget not only that tech products are indeed suppose work with no major problems years after their warranty has expired. Not a few years as some people seam to suggest, as evidence show that computer systems work for twice or even more years after a warranty has expired (all my systems did, all my systems colegues did, and friends and so on). Indeed most people I know change PC not becouse they break but becouse they are no longer fit handle the demands of software. More so when we are talking about premium video cards and laptops guys.

The second method is more costly to ODM's and chip makers but indeed it is the correct thing to do.

Corporate behavioural evidence shows that unless there isn't an identified danger to the user well being (safety), usually defective batches of HW aren't given such a fuss by the chip maker and ODM's such as HP. But in this case companies such as HP are already taking preventive action, which lead me to conclude that there might be potential for the damage to go beyond a dieing video card. It does not matter if it happens during warranty or after.

I honestly would like people to be presented with more technical info including safety about the identified problems and its impact. For instance, If I leave my computer on at home, the defective HW burns during normal operation, causing other circuits to burn, cousing the plastic to melt then the wood table to burn, the house to burn I would like to see if people come up with track records to justify the lack of preventive actions.

So I would like this issue to be taken seriousely, and some official statement to be made by Clevo since their video cards are NVIDIA based.

Trance

 

i doubt any company outside of nVidia (if this all is more then speculation) will make an official statement since it is not thier product that is in question.

maybe there was a bad batch, bad packing, bad whatever for a few thousand units....and it is all being put under a scope and magnified 5000 times to make it seem like a worthy story.

just a few thoughts....

 

I will not say anything more about this, as I think it is just silly to argue my point otherwise. HP already have taken official preventive action, that by it self counts as an official statement from their part! I'm sure others will follow.

Minimizing the issue is just as bad as magnifying it. By all means I'm not magnifying it, I'm just stating that due to lack of official information people can speculate whatever, and that is not healthy at all. Something is wrong that concerns products and their consumers, and needs to be corrected and that is a fact!

Trance

 

by HP taking corrective action, it, in and of itself, is simply them protecting themselves and thier products. it in no way acts as an official statement, unless you accept it as such personally.
if this whole debacle is true, then i imagine the retailers and resellers will back-bill nVidia for any losses.

and as you - i rest on this topic....

 

I love warranties. I love warranties. Oh, yes I do.

 

Yep, sorry guys, I'll shut up about the time bomb theory, but I think we'd all like Nvidia to just come straight about this, and who's affected, mostly my friends who own Nvidia 8xxxm based laptops.

 

Well, you can be sure that the US Military didn't buy any machines with 8600's in them. Unless they have a military spec 8x00 nvidia chip out...

Parts do fail. That's because upper level management is looking at the bottom line. If engineers had more say in the design, the parts would last much longer than the 2-3 years of which a warranty would be in effect.

Of course that would make the PCs loads more expensive. Maybe in the range of $100,000 for a machine that lasts 100+ years? Heh...

 

I guess we will never really know about failure rate(if there is one) until we see people posting about it.Personally my self I have been using my laptop with a 8800 GTS with absolutely no problems for about almost a year and runs at the same temps now as it did from the start.
If they do start failing you know stories are going to start coming out,news like that would spread like wildfire on the net.
Does this remind anybody of the Xbox 360?

 

Ahah, yeah it does. Red ring of DEATH. I don't think I have one of those though....I hope.

(Un)Fortunately, this isn't as spectacular as the Sony batteries.