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29 Comments
- zeth006, on 05/20/2009, -0/+26Last year, I read articles on Digg and outside Digg about quality issues Nvidia was facing with its graphics cards, most notably the 8600M's. At that time, I was in Korea so I knew it would be difficult for me to use my warranty if my card's silicon parts were to melt was was being reported by other notebook owners with that card.
Over a year later after my warranty died, I'm finding that my card flickers and pixellates occasionally. I'm told it's a chronic overheating issue and have installed software tweaks to keep fans running at 100%, which almost completely defeats the purpose of having a notebook with a battery power of at least 2 hours. I've changed numerous drivers and have found that the 185.2 Vista X86 drivers seem to work best. The card still works fine when playing movies but it seems to get messed up once I start playing Guild Wars.
I won't say "***** Nvidia" just to get diggs. But what I WILL say is I'll most likely pause before buying a notebook with a Nvidia card if Nvidia doesn't mop up the quality control issues. Sad part is neither Dell nor Nvidia will acknowledge liability since my warranty's been long dead. - OPR8R, on 05/20/2009, -5/+16This has been AMD's best month, evar...
- inactive, on 05/20/2009, -0/+10Get an air compressor, open the back up and blast both chips with 120psi. Keep your finger on the fan though, if it spins, bits will go to Saturn..
- KibibyteBrain, on 05/20/2009, -2/+11You must not have been around during the Netburst era...
- t4m5t3r, on 05/20/2009, -0/+6erm, have you contacted dell? all systems with an affected chipset have 5 years warranty from the day it was purchased regardless of what warranty you had on it. If your system is a dell and has a dead nvidia chipset they will replace your motherboard!
I know this applys to latitude and precision systems, not sure about the inspirons, etc.
also remind them that they sold you a faulty product, it was faulty when you bought and was always going to fail even if you put in the new bios the first day you used the system (the bios update downclocks the GPU and makes the fan start at lower temps, its not a "fix" as such its a stall to make it take longer to fail, it allowed dell to get a decent stock of v2 mobos before the calls started flooding in.)
and if all else fails tell them it bust into flames (with sparks flying out, (thats important!)), you'll get a new notebook within 2 weeks! - ingotanarchist, on 05/20/2009, -2/+6Man, Nvidia just can't win lately.
- FyberOptic, on 05/20/2009, -1/+4I won't shed a tear on the day Nvidia fades out for good. Not only do I know many people who have had countless problems with their junky hardware (myself included), but I was an avid fan of the excellent 3Dfx hardware back in the day. I can't really forgive them for eating that company up and then shelving pretty much all the technology. 3Dfx cards were superior in almost every way, particularly raw horsepower, but their financial problems were the end of them. The only thing I'm aware of that Nvidia even brought into the fold after the buyout was "SLI", and that was strictly by name only, not 3Dfx's implementation of it.
ATI is the only thing worth buying at the moment, but that's strictly from a lack of competition. Intel should really step up and make their graphics chipsets a true competitor. And hey, I wouldn't mind seeing others get back in the game either, like Matrox.
Of course, these companies would be irrelevant if we stopped putting so much horsepower into video cards these days, and just started using extra cores in the primary cpu itself to handle graphics processing. If my video card is going to be practically as fast as my computer, and start to use almost the same amount of ram, then it's kind of silly to keep cramming it all on a single expensive piece of hardware. A good example of this kind of technology in action, except on a much less powerful scale, is that Propeller microcontroller. It has multiple cores, which are hardware multitasked, and all cycle through independent code execution, but still have the ability to communicate with one another. One core can be dedicated purely to VGA signal generation, while another can handle like input, another deals with the main program, etc. It's a great idea, we just need to translate it to the PC world, and then stop paying hundreds of dollars for video cards that are more powerful than entire computers I owned a few years ago. Individual CPU cores could handle everything from 3D graphics, to physics, to mpeg encoding/decoding. And then when they weren't in use for those kinds of tasks, they'd just be generic processor cores again, for running all your multi-threaded apps. - PlanckTime, on 05/20/2009, -0/+2This explains what happened to my computer. Just blanked coming out of sleep one day, a year and a half after warranty ended. Mine's an Acer and they took it back and fixed it as though it were under warranty. Kudos to them even though it took several months. It still goes down and comes back up with a driver failure warning for my NVIDIA chip, though. I would personally recommend against getting a computer with this chip as even the replacements seem to be less than reliable. A shame too as it worked great for the first couple of years.
- truck87bp, on 05/20/2009, -0/+2Thanks, patiently waiting for an Asus.
- keyo, on 06/06/2009, -0/+1So can anyone tell me what the 9000 series chips are like? If I buy a new macbook it won't crap out?
- mrBitch, on 05/20/2009, -1/+2RE: " This doesn't help people like me, who bought their laptop from say Zepto. They have denied that their is a problem, and warranties will not cover this without an additional charge."
Wow, that's a huge disparity between the way Zepto treats their customers, and the way Apple treats their customers:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/10/apple-nv ...
"... NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected." However, Apple's own investigation revealed that these chips in MacBook Pros were in fact failing.
... An internal (Apple) investigation has narrowed the problem to faulty NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT GPUs, which Apple is now replacing for free." - darkNiGHTS, on 05/21/2009, -0/+1How were any of those the best month compared to this one? Athlon 64 outperformed Pentium 4s, but Intel still sold more.
- inactive, on 07/07/2009, -0/+1Go with a a better company next time. Even if NVIDIA is the problem, since ASUS doesn't even want to address it from their end, then hell, write a complaint to their customer service dept. That's not the best way to do business, ASUS!
http://www.businessways.com/ - truck87bp, on 05/20/2009, -1/+2Nvidia, are there any heat problems with the new ION chip? Patiently waiting for my new Netbook.
- PunkyFeople, on 05/20/2009, -1/+2I'm currently struggling with one of NVidia's defective chips. I bought the ASUS G2S about a year and a half ago which uses the 8600M graphics card. It failed in exactly the manner the article describes. Its still under warranty so I sent it away to ASUS, its been gone for 2 months now with no replacement or word on its status. What is even more worrying is that I contacted them asking them to replace 8600M with another card since it is known to be defective. ASUS refuses to provide an alternative to the defective component, so even after I finally get my laptop back it will just be a ticking time bomb until it fails again - except this time, with a warranty that is about to expire, I'll be SOL.
This is really frustrating for me as a student, I invested $2500 in this laptop, which is a huge outlay of cash for me, but it seemed ideal for the traveling and intensive graphics required for my program. Now the computer I expected to last me through school didn't even get me half way there and I'm in no financial position to replace it. It is maddening as this is something I desperately need for the work I do yet ASUS sold me a defective product and refuses to do anything about it. - SuperRoach, on 05/20/2009, -1/+2Some companies have stood up and realised the problems nvidia have bought out - namely dell, and apple to a lesser extent.
This doesn't help people like me, who bought their laptop from say Zepto. They have denied that their is a problem, and warranties will not cover this without an additional charge. I can be sitting on a desktop and have very high gpu idle temps, but that doesn't mean much. Gaming isn't fun at all, as i'll stutter frequently after 10 minutes, and often lockup/pause after an hour. Of course, that would likely apply when using it for anything else as well, such as after effects or any 3d using apps. Boo nvidia, for the 8600. - FyberOptic, on 05/21/2009, -0/+1Nvidia fanboys are a sad sight. It satisfies me that they're failing so hard.
- zeth006, on 05/21/2009, -0/+1Nope, it's a Vostro...
- krisrm, on 05/20/2009, -2/+2I agree with your first 2 paragraphs (mostly)... but the rest is absolute nonsense. A CPU is excellent for general-purpose computation; GPUs are highly specialized devices, designed *solely* for redrawing those pixels on your monitor in brilliant ways just as fast as it damn well can. It's not enough to just dedicate a couple cores of a generic do-it-all CPU, if you want intense graphical applications to run, you'd better give them some dedicated hardware.
So, in other words: no, that wouldn't run Crysis. - Commodus, on 05/20/2009, -1/+1It's from a newer generation and a different process -- you're safe.
- CanIGetAWitness, on 05/20/2009, -4/+4Poor Nvidia, and due to competition coming back, they can no longer charge out the ass to pay for all the lawsuits. Guess they will have to break into the piggy bank.
Couldn't of happened to a nicer company. - barktwiggs, on 05/20/2009, -2/+2I wonder if they sell insurance company insurance?
- darkNiGHTS, on 05/21/2009, -1/+1Why are you blaming ASUS? Their source is the problem, not them. They aren't going to pay for it out of their pockets, that's NVidia's job. No one else has been getting their laptop back any sooner, my friend with an Acer had his laptop gone for 3 months. They just need to get the correct chip from Nvidia.
- PunkyFeople, on 05/21/2009, -1/+1Because I am a customer of ASUS not a customer of NVIDIA. ASUS provided me with a defective product and thus far refuses to correct the issue. If ASUS has an issue with any of their suppliers that is their own, internal problem that they need to address..
- Jernej, on 05/20/2009, -2/+1If 3dfx had so much better cards, then how was it that nvidia's hardware sold better? hmmmm? your arguments are full of *****.
- ChrisCoCal, on 05/20/2009, -1/+0I wonder what everyone's reactions will be when they realize National Union is one of AIG's biggest (and very profitable and solvent) subsidiaries...
- Midnitte, on 05/20/2009, -8/+3And yet they still suck.
- rdaryl, on 05/20/2009, -9/+3nVidia... i think it's time you switched to Geico!
- descrysis, on 05/20/2009, -14/+3I was going to say something witty, but ***** slipped my mind. Digg me down, yayy
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