NVIDIA announced today that they will be taking a $150 million hit in order to repair faulty graphical processing units (GPU) and media communications processors (MCP). The problem is apparently only an issue in notebooks where the unusually large amounts of concentrated heat causes the chips to fail. Even though NVIDIA has come forward they have yet to say exactly what systems are affected by this issue. The only thing they said in their investor-focused announcement was that it’s their “previous generation” that has the abnormal failure rates:
NVIDIA plans to take a one-time charge from $150 million to $200 million against cost of revenue for the second quarter to cover anticipated warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses, arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of its previous generation GPU and MCP products used in notebook systems. Certain notebook configurations with GPUs and MCPs manufactured with a certain die/packaging material set are failing in the field at higher than normal rates. To date, abnormal failure rates with systems other than certain notebook systems have not been seen.
A quick fix that they are apparently trying to employ on computers with the “defective” chips is to force the fans to turn on earlier by pushing out a driver update. Adrian Kingsley over at ZDNet has thrown out his guess that the Dell m1330’s and m1530’s are among those affected. They are powered by the GeForce 8400M GS, and some have had to get their motherboards replaced due to overheating issues. I actually know someone that purchased a Dell m1530 about two months ago, and after a week of owning the system they had to get their motherboard replaced because the laptop wouldn’t even turn on. Dell didn’t say what the issue was, but they were quick to replace the motherboard without running any diagnostics.
It would be nice if NVIDIA came forward with what chips are affected by the problem, but I don’t think they want to take any more of a loss than they already have. Their stock has already fallen 30% since this morning (now at $12.49), and so they are probably going to do anything they can to keep it from going any lower.
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Tags: Hardware, Computers, Dell, Laptops, Notebooks, Processor
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I’m pretty sure the GeForce Go6100 is in there too. I have an Acer notebook running one of those, and without fail, every time I start up I get a “Nvidia display driver has stopped working, but Vista, being the amazing Micro$oft OS that it is, has recovered for you”. The really sucky thing about NVidia is that if you bought a notebook, you have to get the driver update from the notebook manufacturer “because of configuration differences with the chipsets”. So I’m still waiting for Acer / Nvidia to provide me with a Vista driver update 15 months after buying the computer…
I own a dell m1330 and experiencing some difficulties. When I am running a 3D app and unplug my laptop, fps drops from 60s to 20s. I always thought it was some kind of problem related to Dell but now it made more sense. Unplugging affects cooling systems, cooling systems affects my GPU. the problem ends when I reboot though. Well i will get my motherboard changed now
Hopefully you guys can get your problems resolved. It is pretty frustrating how NVIDIA isn’t the one who provides the drivers directly for the notebooks though.
Aaargh i have an Acer aspire 5920 which has a 8600M card, im pretty sure its on the affected list :S. Il jus have to stick to my desktop while playing games…