All G84/G86 nvidia gpus are going to fail?

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

That's crazy. Looks like I might upgrade to a G92-based card sooner if I can...

 

It's like how many people with the HIV virus will die of AIDS?

The BIOS updates which are being issued are the equivalent of drugs which may slow down or stop the development of the disease but this will depend on individual circumstances and how well the disease is already established.

John

 

You don't come here often do you? That is old news. There are several threads already on here throwing different opinions about what may or may not be around.

 

That's a great analogy

 

The Inquirer is a HORRIBLE source that makes for only a fun read. Don't take anything they say for granted. They write articles like "The PS3 has half the power of an Xbox 360" by twisting the truth covering only ERAM and not actual ram, though they do not mention ERAM whatsoever and press on saying that the PS3 is half the power of a 360.

Out of all the articles that cover the Nvidia issue, don't use the Inquirer. Sure they are much more biased and expressive, but they like to make things a lot bigger than they are, not to mention emphasis in speculation. Use a different source. Thx.

 

The Inquirer often has unacknowledged sources of information so the apparent speculation may have some foundation.

Also, by taking an extreme position, it may encourage more information to be officially released. Has nVidia provided any evidence to demonstrate that not all G84/G86 GPUs are at risk? For example, that it is production at a specific location between certain dates.

John

 

What the INQUIRER wants, is for you to all freak out and Nvidia loose business and people talk about the INQUIRER.

Does Nvidia produces things that can fail? Yeah. Does ATI? Yeah. Does Intel? You bet ya. Everyones released parts that are the black sheep and will fail. Maybe some engineer was on a weekend bender and they called him over to oversee some production and he just fell asleep.

I'd say theres a problem, but not a "200m doesnt even cover it OMGfg CHAOS" that the article is going for.

 

I'd be interested in this question as well.

This is what the SEC filing says:

page 4:
http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/xml/download.php?repo=tenk&ipage=5761000&format=PDF

I'm convinced newley manufactured products refer to G9x chipsets. I'm further convinced G8x are no longer produced, since the clearance sale of these had already lowered the gross margin of the first quarter report 2008:

page 38:
http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/xml/download.php?repo=tenk&ipage=5689173&format=PDF

A different package material would not necessarily result in a new manufactoring process, which we are kind of sure didn't change. But still it seems to me ALL G84M, G86M are defect (*). I see some evidence in the way the future products are handled:

CEO Jen-Hsun Huang:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html

once more the SEC filining of July:

Basically:
. They don't know (and also didn't know while still producing G84M, G86M) and hope that two things will change the observed failure rates:
. They change the fan control such that temps vary slower:

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/07/25/nvidia-gpu-update-for-dell-laptop-owners.aspx
. They exchanged the package material, but the fan control will also be required.

All this suggests to me that all G84M and G86M are affected.

Failure rates are natural. And those are well understood. If I explain to an average business adminstration student some common failure rate curves (most of them being exponential functions), it's quite easy to predict the variables in this function based on very few sample data. nVidia knows which failure rate it is going to expect based on former failure rate functions and sample data of returned G84M, G86M chips and that's why they needed up to set aside US$ 200,000,000.

Dell users can be happy. Just extend the warranty right before it it expires and sell the notebook once you need a new one.

Just some of the thoughts I had by trying to look at facts. There is still too much room for speculation.

(*) I shouldn't call them defect. Maybe better "design/engineering flaw that results in higher than average failure rates"

 

Excellent post 7oby, thank you.

 

Great post @ 7oby Really nice. Thanks a lot.

 

Boy!!!! is Dell gonna make a wack on the extended waranties

 

Well, I know they loose money from me, I've had 5 house calls and only had the laptop a month! Hehe

 

The failure rate will go down with the Dells, since they released a BIOS update that has the fans on constantly. However, the user will pay with battery life and the fans may fail sooner.

 

More speculation here from The Inquirer.

John

 

no thanks , we don't want more

 

For some reason I feel a fan replacement is an inadequate solution for a faulty GPU.

 

Parts of this article share the my thoughts aswell. Inquirer probably has somewhat credible sources but they just cant name.

IMO Nvidia wont release a list of affected gpu's, because they are all defective.

Disclosing the list of defective gpu's would mitigate the situation and work out better for them but yet they dont.... why?

I tried doing similar maths, except i came up with $200 per gpu (manufacturing, return/delivery, etc) /200mill. They mass manufacturer these things to keep the cost down per gpu so $200m will be alot of gpu's

 

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/31/figuring-out-which-nvidia-gpus-are-defective-its-a-lot/

 

Where can I get the BIOS update? From Dell or Nvidia? I have the M1730 with the 8700M GT cards.

 

Also, just to be sure again, I can put in 8800GTX cards if I decide to replace the 8700s, for whatever reason, right?

Can I have them installed by Dell? I saw the video on Youtube on how to replace them, I could probably do it myself, but I have a warranty that runs until 2010 so I don't know if it would void that.

 

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/07/25/nvidia-gpu-update-for-dell-laptop-owners.aspx

Or you can search for your system from Dell downloads page either with the model number or with your service tag.