Nvidia's GPU Material Defect Cost $475.9 Million

News
By Marcus Yam
published

Nvidia has weathered the storm.

Nvidia weak die/packaging material gaffe was one of the worst and most damaging for the GPU company. Certain versions of previous generation MCP and GPU (G84, G86) products shipped before July 2008, especially in notebooks, would fail due to the bad material, which led to a ripple effect of in and out of warranty claims.

Years later, the charges against Nvidia are still taking their toll. In the most recent quarter, Nvidia reported a charge of $193.9 million which includes additional remediation costs over the GPU error.

With this $193.9 million on top of the $282 million of net charges from previous statements, the total net charge over the GPU material flaw totals $475.9 million.

Nvidia may have reason to be optimistic, however, as it believes that it may be finally done paying for its mistake. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang believes that the $193.9 million could be the enough to put the problem behind the company.

"It's our best estimate," he said, talking to Cnet. "With much, much more understanding and more data than we had two years ago or a year ago. And we've had the opportunity to work with every single PC (maker) out there. So we think it's near the end."

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
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49 Comments Comment from the forums
  • pbrigido
    Let's hope they learn from their mistakes and move on.
    Reply
  • zampolit
    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. :)
    Reply
  • mavroxur
    pbrigidoLet's hope they learn from their mistakes and move on.

    Agreed. After paying that kind of money, I hope it doesn't happen again.
    Reply
  • jojesa
    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.
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    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.
    Reply
  • Reynod
    The underfill problem was first raised, and well documented by Charlie Demerjian.

    Reply
  • bourgeoisdude
    jojesaI 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.
    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.
    Reply
  • 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.
    Reply
  • nforce4max
    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
    Reply
  • arfrxz
    I'm one of the victim. RIP G84 GPU.
    Reply