If your laptop overheats, Nvidia may be the culprit

I am solely on the Nvidia side of the fence, unfortunately they made an announcement that could be the cause of all the heat issues. Here is the release from PC World. I even recall some threads talking about a recent driver. I guess time will tell.

"Nvidia has uncovered a problem with some older graphics chips that shipped in "significant quantities" of laptop PCs, the company said Wednesday.
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Nvidia hasn't determined the exact cause of the problem but said it relates to a packaging material used with some of its chips, as well as the thermal design of some laptops. Modern processors generate considerable amounts of heat.

To tackle the problem, the company is releasing a software driver that will cause system fans to start operating sooner and reduce the "thermal stress" on the chips. The driver has been provided to laptop makers directly, said Derek Perez, an Nvidia spokesman.

Nvidia will take a charge against second-quarter earnings of US$150 million to $200 million to cover the expected cost of repairing and replacing the products, which include graphics processing units and media and communications processors. It didn't say specifically which of its products were affected.

The products have been failing in the field at "higher than normal rates," Nvidia said. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, it said it was talking to its supply chain about getting reimbursed for some of the costs.

The company also had other bad news on Wednesday. It said it was lowering its revenue forecast for the second quarter due to pricing pressure and delayed product ramps. The company now expects revenue to be between $875 million and $950 million."

 

Subscribed.

Could someone *eventually* update this thread with any new info about which GPU's are affected, or a link to original press release?

I love my T61p's 256MB Quadro FX 570M, but so far every game I've tried it with (WoW, TF2, Portal) has caused it to overheat in as little as 20 minutes (usually a bit longer, though), rendering the game unplayable, and often necessitating a system restart. I chalked it up to the fact that the T61p was not designed to be a gaming laptop, but perhaps it's this.

 

They dont yet say which is affected.

 

Well, on the other side, while my laptop gets hot, I don't believe that it locks up due to overheating.

I've played Crysis, Bioshock, SoaSE, Assassin's Creed with no problem.

I've played TF2 for 8+ hours in a day with no problem.

Nowadays I keep a small minifan to cool the keyboard area, but that's just being precautionary.

 

My t61 never locked up because of a GPU overheat, however it was running a little high in temperature. So I removed the stock thermal grease and put some OCZ freeze, bent the GPU heat pipe a little to apply more pressure, bent those clips that hold it down for more pressure and finally undervolted the cpu.

Damn I think I just killed my chances of getting anything done if a recall is issued.

Oh well at least its running much cooler now.

 

I wonder if running our laptops on modded drivers made for desktop cards, could be part of the problem?

 

Possibly, but then aren't the mobile versions of the chip supposed to be held to higher standards given the heat issues of being confined to smaller spaces?

I know the mobile version of the C2D (T7500) is supposed to be ok up to 100C

 

Are you running a 15.4" WSXGA+ T61p? I imagine it might put out more heat than the 128-bit version in the 14" T61p, or if you're running the games at a lower resolution than 1680x1050. I imagine there are build quality differences, though...some peoples' just get put together better than others. I've heard of other WSXGA+ T61p owners gaming without problems as well.

 

I would say definetely not. The modded driver community is probably about 10% of the nvidia based mobile market if that. The chips are overheating without the use of modded drivers. Looks like the future may hold some good hopes a getting some sort of compensation if yours is getting hot. I would imagine that Nvidia will release batch numbers or specific core number on which chips it applies too. This will keep the scamming down to a minimum.



Here is a little more that I found from basic searching.
"Nvidia’s statement was a bit vague on the matter, but the SEC filing gave a little more detail on the problem. Overall, it sounds like the company is still investigating as well as sorting out what models specifically are impacted. In any case, Nvidia needs to detail what models are impacted by this problem pronto.

Overheating is the big issue. In the filing Nvidia said (emphasis added):

The previous generation MCP and GPU products that are impacted were included in a number of notebook products that were shipped and sold in significant quantities. Certain notebook configurations of these MCP and GPU products are failing in the field at higher than normal rates. While we have not been able to determine a root cause for these failures, testing suggests a weak material set of die/package combination, system thermal management designs, and customer use patterns are contributing factors. We have developed and have made available for download a software driver to cause the system fan to begin operation at the powering up of the system and reduce the thermal stress on these chips. We have also recommended to our customers that they consider changing the thermal management of the MCP and GPU products in their notebook system designs. We intend to fully support our customers in their repair and replacement of these impacted MCP and GPU products that fail.

(Note: I’m trying to find a Nvidia advisory for this download, but the drivers are based on the model of chip. The rub: Nvidia hasn’t detailed what systems are impacted by this glitch. In a nutshell, this driver may be available, but good luck finding it on Nvidia’s site–it appears to be an OEM first strategy).

Update: Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has more on the issue. He notes that there have been problems recently with Dell’s m1330 and m1530 related to overheating. These machines are powered by the GeForce 8400M GS. It’s not confirmed, but it’s a trail to follow. Also see this driver download and this one from Dell on July 1.

In any case, Nvidia’s timing is terrible. For starters, Nvidia is warning in a market that’s unforgiving. How unforgiving? Check out this carnage. And analysts are lowering Nvidia’s price targets and cutting estimates at a rapid clip."

On the competitive front, Nvidia’s stumble would appear to be an opening for AMD’s ATI, which is also likely to be the rival putting on the pricing pressure that helped ding margins. ATI and Nvidia have both launched new products, but ATI has gone with a more moderate price approach that appears to be resonating.

In a statement, Huang said:

“Although the failure appears related to the combination of the interaction between the chip material set and system design, we have a responsibility to our customers and will take our part in resolving this problem. The GPU has become an increasingly important part of the computing experience and we are seeing more interest by PC OEMs to adopt GPUs in more platforms. Recognizing that the GPU is one of the most complex processors in the system, it is critical that we now work more closely with notebook system designers and our chip foundries to ensure that the GPU and the system are designed collaboratively for the best performance and robustness.”

 

I've noticed that my 8400 in my 14.1" T61p gets really hot really fast, and it will start to stutter.

Time for us to keep an eye on the updater, if this 'driver' shows up, I'm going to ask for something to be changed.

I have an 8800GT G92 that got affected by Nvidia allowing their partners to overclock on the stock pcb. Turned out the pcb/ram/gpu wouldn't handle the clocks, no warranty, no recall, just a bios update that set all the factory OC models back to stock clocks.

Once bitten, twice shy.

 

see:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080703/tc_pcworld/147911

for original post on heating problems.

 

Mine is 15.4" WSXGA+

I run TF2 at 1440 res and it's smooth enough for me.

 

I use a T61p WUXGA Quadro FX 570m and a T61 1440x900 with Quadro NVS 140m. I play Oblivion, Morrowind, SpellForce 2, Quake Wars and UT3 four hours and never have an issue (even with OC'd GPU).

So it seems it's not happend to all GPU. Perhaps only some batch are defective.

 

Thanks Rick, I see it made the front page on NBR too: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4483

Here's the "official" NBR discussion thread for it: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3570145

 

I have the Quadro FX570M in my T61p and haven't had any overheating problems. I got my laptop about a year ago. That does suck that people are experiencing so many problems. Good luck.
Tim

 

Thanks elfroggo, Pascal_TTH, and Tim--your shared experiences help a lot. I would bet money that my hardware is fine, it's just a bad thermal interface on my GPU or something like that. I'd be very tempted to open it up and see for myself, but the overheating/stability problems I had while gaming helped break me of my gaming habit a while ago. Being an unreliable gaming laptop might have been the best thing it's done for me so far...

 

Hate to be an "i told u so" ... but feeling a little vindicated from before

LOL

 

/confused ...

 

it's an old thing when you weren't here last summer.

 

I figured it was something like that, and was curious. thanks

 

I took Delivery on July 2nd of an HP9700T with the Nvidia 8400 chip. when i heard about this problem, I called HP. Of course, the sales people knew nothing. Finally, they said that HP would give a 2 year extra warranty. Not good enough for me! I waited a few days, still no knowledge of this issue by the sales people. Thats criminal. I'm not waiting for it to overheat. I sent mine back within the 3 week grace period. I'm very discouraged that HP, Dell and others are continuing to sell new, expensive ($1000 +) notebooks with this known problem.

 

Yep, me too. This is the reason why I'm risking not buying a new laptop right now. I really need one for the start of classes on Aug. 25, but I'm not shelling out $1500 for a piece of scrap metal that I'll just have to send back and forth to get that GPU taken care of. I'm just going to wait until the new T500 or W500 are out from Lenovo. Kind of sucks, but what can you do?

I feel like those that are ordering from Dell especially are getting taken advantage of since those laptops there with an 8400 or 8600 are quite expensive.