Nvidia's GPU Material Defect Cost $475.9 Million

Let's hope they learn from their mistakes and move on.

My Asus Laptop G2S had to be returned because my 8600M's solder became lose. I noticed at strange times, or strange angles of the screen it would get a green, red, or blue hue...and sometimes have red square artifacts all over the screen.

But, Asus took the laptop back not problem and gave me a M71V replacement.

Agreed. After paying that kind of money, I hope it doesn't happen again.

I don't know what are they doing with the money, since laptop companies (Dell) are still lying to their costumers when system die because of a bad GPU.

the 7 series chips suffered the same issue and even chipsets suffer the same issues and they were never listed anywhere - desktops with nvidia chipset based boards even suffer the same issues (i know this because i can reflow chips, and that solves the same issues with products other then the 8400/8600)

hell my old 6600GT AGP had the same issue and reflowing brought it back to life, along with an old 8800GT

atleast with ATi cards i know theres no point reflowing because it never fixes there cards - kinda guess its from other faults when there cards fail.

Good one nvidia

Also kinda wonder how long these new GTX480 cards will last - had a tri-sli rig at my shop doing 110ºc under load which managed to raise the room temps 4ºc atleast within an hour (room temp is always 22 thanks to aircon - hate to see how they run in summer here in Australia when outside its 35º+) - already cooked a card from a burn in test.

The underfill problem was first raised, and well documented by Charlie Demerjian.

Still lying to their customers? Please don't make blanket statements like that without examples. Also, not every video issue is caused by the GPU. I found out that the NVIDIA chipset in my associate's Dell Precision laptop was not to blame for the video problems. Dell replaced that first because they figured the recall may have affected that model (they didn't consult their L2 tech first) only to find out the issue was a bad cable connecting the LCD to the chipset.

When I worked for Dell a few years back, I remember a couple of times that the previous tech replaced the customer's Maxtor hard drive for their GX270's because "that was the problem all the other GX270's had" , only to find out that didn't fix the issue. Under the warranty contract most companies have with Dell (as well as consumer contracts), it's still important to do basic troubleshooting even for a recall or "known" issue, or at least verify the symptoms match the problem.

I don't think these things will let up until warranties expire. I guess Nvidia is figuring that will be soon. How sad that a more widespread recall was not done on this problem.

GeFail is the best way to describe it while Grillforce does the job for most. A stocked clocked GTX480 wouldn't last long in my climate and this summer has been the hottest in a long time thanks to extra solar activity. 30-35c is common while in the city near paved areas its hot enough to fry eggs. You know its bad when one walks out of a aircon building and can feel the heat through my boots right away. The worst heat index value that we have had thus far this summer was a scorching 47c and that was only three weeks ago! Todays forecast is 39c :s

I'm one of the victim. RIP G84 GPU.

The whole company is not doing too well if you ask me. It's sad because in the days of Voodoo and 3DFX I owned I owned a TNT then the "GeForce 256" and it only got better from there. But somewhere along the line the train derailed they hired some greedy a-hole that said we can charge insane prices and people will still buy our video cards. Sorry nVidia I jumped ship after my GeForce 6600 GT the ATi cards I was looking at were cheaper and had better performance. For the most part this statement is still true today. nVidia you need to fix your pricing and you need to bring the power requirements and heat levels down if you want to stay in the game.

Now that most warranties expired Nvidia is finally admitting the problem. I wonder how many customers saw there hardware going into the trash can because at that time, "two years ago or a year ago", Nvidia didn't have "much more understanding and more data".

I removed my graphics card and I'm now using integrated graphics so I don't waste more time on games.

I`ve always been a pretty solid ATI customer, since about the old 9 series. Hopefully Nvidia will make some profit this quarter and keep competition with ATI high. Glad I was not a victim, I feel for the people that got screwed.

Yeah, they didn't learn. They, and their vendors, did a tip toe dance around the issue. They did a measly 12 month extension on warranties and replaced units with the SAME defective chips. I know, my barely 2 year old Dell is has been DEAD for months and Dell/NV smile and say, "Out of warranty" even though Dell admits it is the GPU issue.

... o how many dv6000 and dv9000 series failed becouse of GF8200M and GF8400M chips...

A rolling stone gather no moss.
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Easy does it.
First things first.
One day at time.
This too shall pass.
...

thats what you get for buying nvidea garbage in the first place.

Nvidia should learn from their mistakes. I mean laptop owners suing them for faulty chips.Too bad, its hard for nvidia. I recently buyed ATi card because Nvidia card wasnt giving the performance that it used to give.

woah steep price for perfection

Perfection?

Is this the so called "bad bump" problem? Charlie talked about it long time ago but not many took it seriously and there was practically no press coverage.

lots of haters here lol I'm still rocking a geforce4 420 go! in my old laptop. thing can play WOW haha.. but on the serious side, NO NO my gtx480 will NOT die, it cant.. :s I just went through a 35 degree summer as well! but air conditioning is in play also.. and YES IT DOES GET HOT IN CANADA. besides the point sucks for you guys with the problematic chips.. sometimes you cant half ass a product and nvidia learned the hard way. Congrats, maybe they'll actually make some good quality chips from now on!.. ps. gtx 480 runs 35 to 70 degrees C with the air conditioning off. it went to 110 C with a freeze in cod6.. hacker ****'s and thats where it froze, i dont know about 3 way sli but 110 C sounds a little crazy.

And add to that all the bad publicity, and consequently lost potential revenues, nvidea suffered as a result of these material defects. I for one stayed away from all nvidia powered laptops during that time just to be on the safe side.

Granted at the time there was not much else for them to do, replace it with one of the chips they have? One they order from Nvidia that might or might NOT have the same problem?

If the video chip is on the motherboard, not really anything else they can replace it with. Separate video card? Again, is the new chip one of the still bad chips or not?

And few companies are going to upgrade a customer from one laptop to another for problems like this. That is immensely expensive. I dislike Dell and several other big box companies for other issues, but this one was not as easy for them to fix, very expensive, and was Nvidia's bad. I doubt Nvidia would pay HP or Dell for a brand new laptop with an ATI chipset.

and I'm still using my Dell equipped with GeForce 8600M and typing this comment from it, a supposedly flawed GPU that has been in use since 2007. There are a lot of variation in chips manufactured and this problem does not affect every one. Remember Nvidia is a fabless chipmaker (i.e. Nvidia doesn't manufacture chips and most of Nvidia engineers know little about chip manufacturing and materials). Material-related problem like this costly is partly if not largely the fault of the manufacturing partner.

A thought came in my mind the other day regarding NVIDIA's current situation...what if things get worst for NVIDIA and they declare bankruptcy...bad enough, I know...but let's say that Intel decides that they want to buy NVIDIA...could you imagine the "storm" that would follow? Maybe I'm over-thinking this too much, but it could happen.

I work in a computer repair shop , and the most affected laptop is the HP DV9000 series , they simply just all die ! If i see one client that come by at my shop with one of those in their hands , i dont even have to look at it , i already know that it's dead ! nVidia tried to hide the problem but for right now , I dont recommend their product because of all the defects !!!

Stop wasting time commenting on articles!

yah, i am in arizona, so i'm getting a 5870 ; and say hello to 39+oC for all summer

Yes and no. I have a DV9000 that was a 'donate' laptop. It had soda spilt on the screen. Replaced that, the inverter and cleaned it up and its good to go. But there is a rwason why my DV9000 isn't going to die. Its a 6150LE GPU.

But there was a massive recall on the DV6-9 series or laptops with the 8000 series GPUs. Sad thing is that HP fights the customers. Had a guy whos laptop was on the list of bad ones and they said he would have to pay to have his mobo replaced when it was clearly under the recall.

Maybe nVidia will earn from all this, maybe not. They seem stubborn sometimes.