Question about nvidia graphics card issues

So, I've heard about the issues with the 8400 and 8600 chip cards, and I have a question. Does this mean that all MBPs(from after the SR update) with those chips are affected?

 

Theoretically yes, there's pages and pages of people with issues on the apple support forums. Seems like all mbp's with the 8600gt are affected. That's why I got applecare, haha...

 

Well, that's worrisome.

I wonder if it will affect me since I don't do a lot of graphics intensive stuff?

 

probably wont affect you. not a guarantee though.

 

If the **** does hit the fan. Nvidia better own the hell up. Apple has a big problem too. They will have thousands of angry MBP owners with faulty, non-functioning GPUs with possibly no applecare coverage. That will turn a lot of people off.

My brother has a Santa Rosa MBP...hopefully it doesn't fail or he will be raging mad.

 

It's all about luck mate....it's your luck

 

Please read my post on the thread link below as to my opinion on the legal reasons Apple don't want to/won't own up to it. I can't copy paste it cause i'd breach double-posting rules. Don't mind the 1st paragraph, that just me trying to get an answer from a Apple fanboy who never defends his propagandist posts

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=284454&page=3

I'm sorry Liuman51086 but that is completely crazy in my opinion. If you bought a product, from Apple or otherwise, you are entitled by law to have a product without a latent defect. Paying that same company more money because you believed they may have sold you a faulty product and want service if that product fails because of that defect is ridiculous. If I come over to your house and install plumbing you think is dodgy and I think may be dodgy and you pay me for it do you then pay me more to contract me to come back and fix my crap workmanship when it bursts a pipe. If you do tell me where you live, I'll be over in the morning.

To the OP: Nobody knows (apart from Nvidia and Apple) if each and every MBP 8600 is effected. Since Apple know they won't make any money by commenting on it they don't believe their customers deserve a response on the issue. They will however censur their forums on the matter.

It should remain irrelevant for the most part if you do or don't run graphics intensive tasks on your MBP. If it is latently faulty it will be faulty. Your GPU is ALWAYS running if your laptop is running. As I asked above please read my post on the othre thread and know your rights if the issue ever arises. I hope it doesn't for you.

 

I see your point, but it's not like I got applecare just to cover the gpu problem. It's simply to protect my investment, just like how so many other people buy it as well.

Also, from what i've read on the issue, running graphics intensive tasks like games WILL affect the life if your 8600 is affected. It seems like the heating and cooling cycles tend to bring out the defects on the chips faster since it's a packaging issue.

 

Ahh thats cool. I thought from your earlier post you only got it for the Nvidia fear.

 

And it looks like Dell have now just given a response to their customers on the issue and extended warranties by 12 months. Considering how much we have paid for the privilege of owning an Apple and every fanboy telling how much better Apple's customer service is than Dell's how come Cupertino's richest haven't done this already but prefer to stonewall their customers instead. Also bear in mind that Dell have been much more open about the issue and have already divulged lists publicly of what it believes may be effected models. HP have also acted more responsibly than the fruit company.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/18/...rranty-enhancement-for-nvidia-gpu-i/#comments

 

Well I've already had a gpu failure, but like I've said before, and other people, if you don't use you gpu (ie play games, etc) youll probably be fine.

If you do play games, or use gpu intensive applications, overtime using their applications, I wouldn't be suprised if the gpu fails. Mine did.

But there are many people who own a MBP and never touch the gpu, and theirs will probably be fine. It isn't known yet if overtime the general heat of the laptop will affect the gpu, but im guessing it wont cause it to fail.

If youre really concerned, either wait till the next refresh where hopefully there will be some kind of change, or get apple care incase it does fail you have a replacement.

 

Wrong. I didn't even play any games on my GPU before I encounter problems with my GPU in my MBP. Just normal daily stuffs like iTunes, Front Row and QuickTime movie playback is enough for it to crap out on me.

 

Been playing games almost every day for about a year and still going strong! All about the luck I guess

 

Sorry Sulkorp I'm really really not having a go at you but comments like that make me bloody furious. Its not because I think Applecare doesn't bring benefits, its because YOU DON'T NEED AN EXTENDED WARRANTY OR APPLECARE TO COVER A MANUFACTURING DEFECT. Guuuurrrrrrr!!!!!!!!. I want people to stop telling others on this forum that they should pay Apple AGAIN for an extended warranty for a latent defect in their laptops to be repaired or replaced. You do not. You the consumer have been wronged by the manufacturer in that situation having been sold pub-par goods. It is exactly the same as their issues with their power adapters and other design flaws outed on numerous occasions. It is THEIR responsibility to ensure the product is without fault, it is they who must pay to have it rectified if it has an inherent fault. If your going to get Applecare for other reasons then by all means do so, if its in case of a failing latently defective gpu that your getting it your pissing your hard-earded down the drain and essentially paying for a multi-billion dollar multinational corporations responsibilities out of your own pocket while their lawyers laugh. People spend decades trying to get these legal rights for consumers and then they just throw them away. Its unbelievable.


P.S: Again Sulkorp I'm not aiming at you man, this thing just gets my back up as a legal-head, cheers dude

 

I see what youre getting at jurisprudence.

But right now, if someones gpu fails (out of warrenty), apple has no plan to replace it. (As far as I know)

So if a users gpu fails, and they bring it into the apple store and they say "sorry", then they'd have to buy a 1k logic board themselves, and then the labour of replacing it.

I guess its more of insurance, until apple figures out what they are going to do. But personally, after one failure, I'd rather have applecare, then have to wait with a broken laptop until they make up their minds.

 

I do hope NVIDIA comes clean and all the manufacturers adequately address this. So far the Dell and HP fixes aren't fixes but just bandaids...and Apple hasn't said anything yet. Hopefully they do!

 

I wouldn't get my hopes up. It seems like to me that it's just going to be swept under the rug and move on with the next MBP release.. No one wants to own up to this massive failure because; 1, it might bankcrupt them, 2, I'd suspect there's a whole load of chips that are affected, which leads it back to point 1.

 

I imagine that the problem is that there IS no fix, and likely never will be. Fifty bucks and a plate of chickpeas says that the 8xxx line is no longer even in production, so it's not like Nvidia is churning out "good" versions of the chip for use as potential replacements. They're all suspect. As such, bandaids are just about the only thing available.

The warranty extension from Dell is about all they can do, really. I'd expect a similar response from Apple at some point.

 

Been playing games for a year now. Almost every day. Still no issues.

 

I think NVidia should be offering something to OEMs so that they in turn offer us something, like Dell's warranty extension. I just don't trust that company anymore (NVidia that is). I hope apple gets heavy with ATI in the next cycle.

A question for the gurus here; can a GPU failure be subtle? As in, can it act up before complete failure? And what kind of symptoms show when the GPU is suspect? I don't think I've had any GPU-related issues (yet) but yesterday for the first time, pages rendered with Safari had graphical anomalies (like white lines through text etc...) and the problem went away after a reboot. Should I be worried?

I do have applecare (and no, I got applecare before this NVidia fiasco went public) so I'm not that worried, but still.

 

Usually signs of video card failures include artifacts.

Though for me, it just went.

 

Just generally speaking, how much would it cost to fix if my GPU were to stop working?

 

If you don't have warranty on it, it'll cost you over $1k for the board since the gpu is soldered on plus labor.

 

Yeah, its connected to the Logic Board so everything will need to be replaced. I do hope Apple addresses the issue with extended warranties covering the graphics cards, at least.

 

Hey ATC, I'm no guru but until the real ones here reply I'll give some Irish gibberish instead (I am sober BTW).

I think the problem for owners is that they haven't been told what to look for. Without being told 'how it dies' everyone is up it the air. Its a bit unsettling really. It could be artifacts forming, outright instant failure, thermal ramping before collapse, anything really. I wouldn't be too worried about the artifacts on safari if it only happened the once (was it just once and only on safari and had you your lappy attached to an external monitor??). Honestly the method of GPU failure on laptops could show as a subtle thing before complete failure. I believe its a weak die substrate issue which could easily result in intermittent issues before complete failure.

I reckon the prob for Nvidia is that to repair a really large amount of failures takes serious money from logistics, engineers, CS, PR, share price hits, the list goes on. If it cost Sony $240 million just because of easily replaceable batteries a GPU that can't be removed without engineers could easily hit the high single figure billions in recoupable / chargeable losses to Nvidia even before you consider manufacturing retooling to restart production of the finished 8000 series, a reduction in manufacturing capability for new series because of that and the aforementioned share valuation hit. The look on the face of Nvidias CFO when he found out must have been priceless.

 

Unfortunately, that wouldn't help me. Since I don't have Applecare.

Also, which MBPs are specifically in danger? Like, is it all MBPs? Or just the 2.2 ghz with 128 MB(or was it GB)?

 

Any mbp that has the nvidia 8600gt is reported to be affected. No one besides Nvidia themselves know the actual number.

 

nVidia seems to be staying hush-hush (as in LYING about it) but it's suspected that every single 8600 is effected.

 

I agree, I think it's important for apple and other OEMs to release info about how to detect a faulty GPU. Transparency, especially by NVidia, would be good right about now.

As far as the glitch that I had; yeah it was just the one time (so far) and after a reboot it was fine. The thing is, I don't really work my GPU much. I don't game or do much else that would test the GPU which is why I'm interested in knowing what subtle things we should be looking for in a bad GPU (before a total failure that is).

 

I would never ever buy another Nvidia products again in my life time.

 

My boss' Macbook Pro video card just died today.

 

One of my MacBook Pros got the infamous blank screen of death. Apple repaired it out of warranty for free. But I can't add AppleCare to it now. So if it dies in another year, it's dead. I will probably have to add AppleCare to my two other machines. I've never purchased an extended warranty for anything. Computers are not supposed to break. The MBP is the first computer failure - I have 13 systems and this is the first to fail. Some of the others are very old but they still work and these include laptops.

nVidia is off my product list. If Apple continues to use their parts, then Apple is off my product list. I do not put up with vendors that treat their customers like dirt. If Apple comes out with a new MBP in October as rumored with an integrated video option or an ATI card, then I'll take a serious look at selling my existing equipment and upgrading. I don't like the idea of using a laptop that could die at anytime. The uncertainty is the real problem - suddenly losing the use of your system for a week.

 

It is a potential risk, and I agree that Apple should definitely consider alternative GPU's to NVidia's in the next revision/upgrade. It sucks even more that both Apple and NVidia are not fessing up to the problem entirely. I think Dell made some special BIOS for laptops with NVidia GPU's to resolve this issue by running the fans a bit faster and longer to reduce the chance of failure. That speaks worlds about what NVidia is hiding.

 

His laptop is 1 year and 2 weeks old, Apple declined his request to repair it under warranty. Total cost will be $1100 to buy a new logic board and put it in.

After reading mmoy's comment above, I'll suggest him to try again.

If he changes the logic board, will they give him a new one that has the same friggin' defect GPU???

 

Yes, since the MacBook Pro only has one option for the GPU. It's not worth paying the $1100 to fix it, as its essentially like buying a new computer at that point.

There are rumors that a new MacBook Pro is coming up in October, so see if he can wait until then. If it's imperitive for him to get a replacement ASAP, then umm... well, he'll have to pay up the $1100 to fix it.

The stock supplies of the current MacBook Pro's has been dwindling due to Apple ceasing supply of them for the anticipated updates.

 

Is this outside the US? They wanted to charge me $320 for the motherboard replacement. This was a depot repair. The in-store repair was a lot more - maybe the $1100 quoted.

 

This is an in-store repair in Canada (Quebec City).

 

After calling Apple back, he managed to get it repaired and (but?) it will have a 90-day warranty afterwards.

The sad thing is that they will be putting it a defect part...

 

So he's paying the $1100 to get it fixed? Or did the store offer a better price this time around?

 

Sorry for the confusion, Apple agreed to repair it for free via the local retail store.

 

$1,100 to $0 is a bit of a difference. Any chance you could tells us how he managed it. I presume he had to speak to someone above the usual 1st level techs. I reckon if Apple and Nvidia refuse to disclose the extent of the GPU issue their customers have a greater entitlement to demand free repairs of 8000 series GPU enabled laptops with GPU failures which die outside of warranty. Reasonable belief in lieu of conflicting evidence.

 

He politely asked to be redirected to Customer Relations when he called back. He says he didn't say anything special other than explain the problem and that he was aware of the nVidia problem. They have the proper authority.

 

Just a follow-up: he got the logic board replaced a few days after my previous post. But yesterday it died once again. This time it will be easier to get a new one since the repair itself is still under warranty.

But what's the point? In another month, it will die once again.