Gráfica Nvidia Reports Problem With Laptop Chips

[muddymind]

NVIDIA denies rumors mass GPU failures

NVIDIA on Wednesday denied rumors that the majority of its GeForce 8M mobile graphics chips are flawed. The video hardware maker contradicts the earlier reports that all G84 and G86 video chipsets are more likely to fail and tells Ars Technica that only a subset of its graphics processing units (GPUs) are at increased risk, with just a "very small percentage" of that group likely to die early. When that happens depends entirely on the specific notebook and is more likely to happen with systems running intensive tasks or in warm climates, the company says.

The chip designer has already taken the steps of developing a software driver that downclocks affected chips to prevent them from overheating, and has made sure that none of its in-production chips suffer the same flaw. Desktop parts have never been affected, the copmany says.

NVIDIA's assertions haven't been corroborated elsewhere but potentially assuage worries that all of the affected chipsets would die early. The G84 and G86 platforms are used throughout much of the company's GeForce 8M series and are used in many mid- to upper-range notebooks, including those from Apple, Dell, HP, and other major PC builders.

fonte

 

[El Pinguim]

tenho um Tsunami Speeder 8755SE com uma GPU GeForce 8600m GS

em idle costuma estar entre uns 60-70, mais pos 70 e a jogar CoD4 chega por volta do 85º!!!

Será que é mais um???

 

[muddymind]

tenho um Tsunami Speeder 8755SE com uma GPU GeForce 8600m GS

em idle costuma estar entre uns 60-70, mais pos 70 e a jogar CoD4 chega por volta do 85º!!!

Será que é mais um???

A asus confirmou que a minha 8600m gt do meu g1s é uma das afectadas e as temps sem cooler no portátil chegam aos 103ºC em LOAD o que ao pé das tuas não tem nada a haver no entanto a tua apenas tem 16sp's e clocks inferiores o que não garante que não esteja afectada.

[]

EDIT: Acabei de ser contactado pela asus e "garantiram-me" que os rumores espalhados por aí sobre que a asus disse que o g1s e o C90 estejam afectados por isto são falsos e que até agora não foi detectada nenhuma anomalia...

 

[DJ_PAPA]

NVIDIA DISASTER: thousands of GPUs faulty

NVIDIA has admitted to a major manufacturing screw-up, which is seeing thousands of its GPUs overheating, burning out and failing.

NVIDIA have had a long history of making great graphics processors but lately there's something terribly wrong coming out of their factories.

If you bought a laptop with either the NVIDIA Geforce 8400M (M for Mobile) or 8600M in it, you can now stick yourself in the pile for people with bad luck. This includes laptops from the following brands (take a deep breath): Acer, Apple, Asus, BenQ, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, LG, MSI, NEC, Sony, Toshiba... to name a few. Now it's not with everyone, of course. If you hit your Control Panel and find yourself using either the 8400M or 8600M graphics processor, you're affected; everyone else can move on.

What's wrong with your computer might you ask? Something small that can affect it in a large way. Quite a few of the graphics chips NVIDIA have been producing are defective. We know that the rumour of every 8400M and 8600M chip being bad is probably true, but now we're hearing that it might extend to other models like in the mobile NVIDIA chips running off of the 6000 and 7000 designs. That's a lot of graphics chips and this can cause your computer to overheat, lock-up, and possibly not work.

What's troubling about all of this isn't so much that it's happened but the way in which it's being handled. While this news has been out for a week or two now, only two companies have really responded.

Both HP & Dell have released "fixes" for the issue at hand -- BIOS updates that will cause affected computers to fire up the fan when it's needed to cool down the problematic graphics chips so that they, you know, don't die. But this isn't really a solution. This is a fix in the same way that say putting a plank of wood over a hole in the road fixes a dodgy stretch of road. This is a quick fix that has its own issues.

On the one hand, updates that force your computer to cool itself down not only kill your battery life further but also leave you running the risk that now with the extra needed fan cycles, that cooling system built into your laptop might die sooner than expected. As a result, these "fixes" can be as damaging as the whole chip issue in the first place.

But at least Dell and HP are doing something about it. What about everyone else?

For instance, where is Apple amongst all of this and why aren't they informing their MacBook Pro customers that their shiny silver laptops might just stop working and provide issues? APC has previously covered the fact that the current-generation MacBook Pros are plagued with graphics glitches -- it seems likely that the NVIDIA hardware fault and Apple's on-screen graphics corruption is related, but Apple just isn't saying.

The real problem in this whole thing is that the companies using NVIDIA chips in products probably won't want to tell the public. Computers that die all of a sudden will be easier for them to replace on a one-by-one basis. Telling everyone that "your computer has an issue and needs to be returned" will only result in a ridiculous loss of face & money, and that's probably going to happen to NVIDIA too. They're already being sued by memory makers Rambus and now this has happened. It's not good news for NVIDIA at all; very bad news for computer makers that have got the faulty NVIDIA chips soldered onto their motherboards, and awful news for consumers who may have to fight tooth and nail to get their computer repaired, and then, be without it for weeks as technicians work through the backlog.

http://apcmag.com/Content.aspx?id=2750

------

Ten Dell models have defective Nvidia GPUs
Analysis NV is still stonewalling customers and analysts
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/27/dell-models-defective-nvidia

HP pays half for Nvidia's graphic problems
Analysis The numbers game
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/31/hp-pays-half-nvidia-problems

 

[CruDeLioS]

Não vejo a nvidia a admitir nada na notícia acima do meu post... Só vejo especulação! O título nada tem a ver com a notícia.

Eu tenho um 8600M e não tenho razões de queixa. O GPU corre quente, é certo (65-80ºC), mas isso é porque não tem ventoinha própria e partilha o heatsink com o CPU.

Alguém daqui já teve concretamente problemas com este GPU? Porque só quando vir algo de concreto é que começo a ficar preocupado.

 

[Inacio77]

Tenho uma GeForce 8600M GS num HP Pavilion dv9750ep e a temp do GPU anda sempre pelos 65-80 C.
Vou estar atento as temperaturas e as noticias.

 

[JDi]

Tenho uma 8600M GS num asus Z53Sv e em load ela anda a volta dos 90º.

 

[apenas_nuno]

A AMD, num outro artigo num outro site, já veio a público dizer que o problema da Nvidia tinha sido o tipo de solda aplicado na junção do package..

a AMD usa uma outra técnica de solda que a Nvidia..

 

[DJ_PAPA]

Dell, HP Lists Reveal Defective NVIDIA Mobile GPUs

HP and Dell break out a list of defective NVIDIA GPUs in their respective notebooks

NVIDIA was recently forced to defend itself against allegations that it was preparing to exit the chipset business. In addition, the company reported weaker than expected earnings, thanks to a charge of $150M USD to $200M USD to cover "defective GPUs" on its mobile offerings.

When this news broke many were curious -- which GPUs were affected and what exactly is the problem? Well the answer to the latter is relatively simple -- a number of NVIDIA mobile GPUs had extremely poor thermal tolerances thanks to defects. This leads to early chip death and faulty behaviors, such as artifacting, as chips start to fail.

The answer to the first question -- how many -- is just now becoming clear. It appears appears that NVIDIA's mobile offerings are much harder hit than initial conservative estimates. Dell and HP, the two largest computer manufacturers have just released lists of what computers have defective chips.

It turns out virtually all the NVIDIA mobile chips are defective. NVIDIA tried to brush off the issue stating that the issue was a "previous-generation" problem. However, it turns out that virtually all 8400M and 8600M chips are defective. These chips make up the bulk of NVIDIA's higher end graphics offerings. While NVIDIA started to roll out the first of its 9 series mobile chips, the 8 series represents the flagship line of its mobile offerings.

The low to middle end chips are also virtually all defective. Among the defective lines are the GeForce Go 7000 and 6000 lines, as well as the Quadro NVS 135M and the Quadro FX 360M.

In order to respond to the problems HP is offering extended warranty support. Information is available here. Dell offers a driver fix which attempts to deal with the heat issues by pumping up fan speed, on top of its standard warranty support.

According to Dell, signs of GPU failure include multiple images, random characters appearing onscreen, lines on the screen, or no video at all. Dell claims the updates will not affect battery life. Its new Vostro line of notebooks is shipping with the fix preinstalled.

While Dell's solution may provide a decent stopgap to carry chips outside the warranty, it seems unlikely to be able save the chips from a shorter than average lifetime. In the end both with Dell and HP the warranty charges will eventually be passed on to NVIDIA.

Also, the fact that the bulk of its mobile GPUs, a major source of business, are defective is also extremely troublesome for the giant. However, as ATI/AMD showed with its latest series of GPUs, in the graphics industry you can never rule out a comeback.

For those with mobile GPUs from other manufacturers, please refer to their respective pages as many of them have posted or will be posting information on the problems.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=12553

O impacto está a ser enorme e com encargos tb para os fabricantes OEM. Curiosamente quer a HP, quer a Dell, Toshiba entre outros nos ultimos portateis optaram por graficas ATI onde antes por muito tempo sempre tinham usado GPU´s Nvidia.
Isto vai ter impacto não so em reparações, mas tb futuramento no rendimento do seu mercado Mobile.

 

[vjoe]

Alguém sabe se as 9500m GS têm mesmo problema?

 

[transistorTJB]

Alguém sabe se as 9500m GS têm mesmo problema?

Diz que não. O que li no engadget foi que as séries afectadas seriam a 6xxx, 7xxx e 8xxx (incluindo alguns dos modelos quadro).

 

[Spiderman]

Então não eram só alguns modelos da 8xxx??

 

[transistorTJB]

Tens aqui o link para a engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/31/figuring-out-which-nvidia-gpus-are-defective-its-a-lot/)

"So now that HP's joined Dell in releasing information on which laptops have those defective NVIDIA GPUs, we can sort of piece together which chips are faulty -- and just as had been rumored, it looks like basically every Geforce 8600M and 8400M chip is affected. That's not good news for NVIDIA, which has been saying that only "previous-generation" chips were problematic -- unless the chipmaker is planning on updating the hugely popular 8x00 series sometime, say, now, that's not exactly true, now is it? Other affected chips appear to be in the GeForce Go 7000 and 6000 lines, as well as the Quadro NVS 135M and the Quadro FX 360M, but that's just looking at model numbers, and we can't be exactly sure. We'd say that if you've got a machine with any one of these GPUs, it might be wise to call in and see what your laptop maker is going to do -- and it would be smart for NVIDIA to come right out and say exactly how big and how bad this problem really is."

btw, "só" alguns modelos da serie 8x00? A grande percentagem de vendas da Nvidia é da 8400M e 8600M... a 8700 e 8800 são para nichos de mercado! Portanto, quase todos os portáteis que têm gpu's da nvidia estão afectados.

 

[Joeski]

o meu GPU do portatil bem aquece, 68ºC atm. 8600m gs.

 

[Spiderman]

Então, mas como é que eu sei que a Go 7600 que tenho no portatil também é afectada ou não?

 

[possessed]

Então, mas como é que eu sei que a Go 7600 que tenho no portatil também é afectada ou não?

tás como eu, também não sei se a minha 7200 é uma das afectadas. É capaz de ter sido já que já lhe mudaram a board, só não sei o que morreu, às tantas até foi a GPU. Um amigo que comprou um igual ao meu aconteceu-lhe o mesmo uns meses antes

 

[microcris]

Então, mas como é que eu sei que a Go 7600 que tenho no portatil também é afectada ou não?

Boa pergunta lolol
o meu tem uma 7700 que em idle atira-se para os 66 graus... assim de repente nem sei se é muito ou não :S

 

[JAFoNEXUS]

a minha 7700 já me pregou uns sustos , mas espero que seja do calor e não deste problema

 

[DJ_PAPA]

Nvidia G92s and G94 reportedly failing

Desktop boards this time

NVIDIA IS IN DEEP trouble over the defective parts problem, and from what we're being told, this is only the tip of the iceberg. NV still insists on stonewalling and spinning because the cost of owning up to the problem could very well sink the company.

If you haven't been following the story, the short version, up till now, is that all G84 and G86 chips are bad. Nvidia is blaming everyone under the sun, but denying they have any hand in the failures. While this may sound plausible, technical analyses by people intimately involved in the requisite semiconductor technologies tell The INQ that it is a bunch of bull: NV simply screwed up. Badly. If it was a problem with the suppliers, NV would not be paying out more than the chip cost, much less gagging OEMs: it would simply be passed along.

In any case, the official story is that there was a small batch of parts given only to HP that went bad. That was comprehensively proved wrong when Dell, Apple, Asus, Lenovo and everyone else under the sun also had problems. NV AR recalled the parts and recanted the story about it only being an EOL test run. Bad fibbers, no cookie. They still stuck to the story about it being only laptop parts, and that it was under control.

If you think it is under control now, the following is part of an email sent Monday by a very tech-savvy reader. "We just got our first casualty from the Nvidia mobile graphics [expletive deleted]. Laptop used by one of our senior engineers started acting up this past weekend. Won't boot except in SAFE mode. Called Dell, they tried a few things, gave up, stated it was the graphics module, and said that because they were SO swamped dealing with that issue, they were just going to send a completely new laptop!"

There are two messages here which have echoes in earlier emails received over the past few weeks. First is that Dell is replacing full laptops over this, contrary to what they claim (read the comments here and here for more). The second is that the small 'under control' problem is far from that. If they had a handle on it, they would not be so far behind and drowning in backorders. Anyone want to bet Dell isn't going to get stuck with the bill here?

To make matters more laughable, the fix that NV is forcing on Dell, HP and everyone else does not fix the problem, it simply makes it less likely to occur during the warranty period. With HP now offering an extended warranty period, and Dell looking likely to do the same, this will only multiply the cost. Add in the fact that Nvidia is sending out defective parts as replacements (there are no good ones), and you have a recipe for a long and expensive tale.

That is where we stand now - NV is simply stonewalling everyone and the costs are adding up. How adult of them. The question of why still remains though, and with another little tidbit of information, it becomes quite clear. There was a digitimes article on July 25, here if you are a subscriber, that said: "Due to Nvidia not clearly explaining the details of the faults reported in its notebook GPUs, some channel vendors have demanded graphics card makers issue a recall for desktop-based discrete graphics cards using the same GPU core, according to sources at graphics card makers."

Reading that, it sounds a mite odd: why would Nvidia keep the partners in the dark like that? They have to be told what the real story is for business reasons, right? When you see stories like these, it is very likely that they are not what they seem, and that the story is simply a nice face-saving Asian 'hello' applied with a backhand.

A little digging revealed what this, and more, is all about, and it's far uglier than just the 'notebook' version. It seems that four board partners are seeing G92 and G94 chips going bad in the field at high rates. If you know what failures look like statistically, they follow a Poisson distribution, aka a bell curve. The failures start out small, and ramp up quickly - very quickly. If you know what you are looking for, you can catch the signs early on. From the sound of the backchannel grumblings, the failures have been flagged already, and NV isn't playing nice with their partners.

Why wouldn't they? Well, the G92 chip is used in the 8800GT, 8800GTS, 8800GS, several mobile flavours of 8800, most of the 9800 suffixes, and a few 9600 variants just to confuse buyers. The G94 is basically only the 9600GT. Basically we are told all G92 and G94 variants are susceptible to the same problem - basically they are all defective. Any guesses as to how much this is going to cost?

From the look of it, all G8x variants other than the G80, and all G9x variants are defective, but we have only been able to get people to comment directly on the G84, G86, G92 and G94, and all variants thereof. Since Nvidia is not acknowledging the obvious G84 and G86 problems, don't look for much word on this new set either - if they can bury it, it will drop their costs.

In the end, what it comes down to is that the problem is far bigger than they are admitting, and crosses generational lines, process lines, and OEM lines. Nvidia is quick to point the finger at everyone but themselves, but after a while, the facts strain those cover stories well past breaking point. There is a common engineering failure here - this problem is far too widespread for it to be anything else. The stonewalling, denials and partner gagging is simply a last-ditch attempt at wallet covering.

With OEMs extending warranties, Nvidia is going to have to cover a lot of laptops for a long time. Desktop boards are going bad as well now, contrary to the statements of Nvidia PR and AR, and the hole keeps getting deeper and deeper. I wonder if they can ever come clean and survive. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/12/nvidia-g92s-g94-reportedly

 

[Boobaloo]

Nvidia G92s and G94 reportedly failing

Desktop boards this time


http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/12/nvidia-g92s-g94-reportedly

Acho esta história demasiado esquisita, normalmente as companhias fazem o recall das peças defeituosas, mesmo que seja um recall brutal, se não a longo prazo as pessoas deixam de querer comprar à companhia.

Espero que isto não seja verdade, pois é necessário uma Nvidia forte se não o que aconteceu à dois anos com a Nvidia vai acontecer com a ATI e vamos ver outra vez uma escalada forte nos preços das placas.

É que este problema não poderia acontecer em pior altura para os verditos.

Mas já li em qq sitio que existe uma certa alergia do Inq para a Nvidia, para o bem de todos nós espero que seja mais isso do que o problema em todas as peças produzidas.
****************

Lembrei-me é de uma coisa, se por acaso for verdade (não acredito muito em teorias da conspiração) e a Nvidia está a esconder o jogo, será que o problema não se encontra nas placas mais recentes 260gtx e 280gtx, pelo menos os primeiros batchs e só não foi detectado por users pq não existe esta versão para Notebooks e a dos desktops demoram muito mais tempo a dar (se derem) problemas?