It's fun reading the psychotic ravings of the red rooster lunatic here, and all the quacking tarded too base.
This was particularly revealing, the equivalent type fantasy existed in the minds of the O-bots before the illegal coronation: " doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them "
BHWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA
and this one: " It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm Nvidia part appears to be defective. "
BWEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEE HEEE!!!
Yes, the little raging red rooster retards are stupid enough to say that, and believe it.
A little news for the RETARD REDS, and their commie red losses amd/ati failing corporation crumbling suckastructure...

" Q1 Nvidia managed $982 million, while AMD shipped $409 million worth of GPUs. "

hat tip FUDZILLA
YOU RED ROOSTERS STILL LOSE TWO TO ONE! IN YOUR "BEST QUARTER" WITH "NO COMPETITION FROM NVIDIA !"
ROFLMAO !
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHA

I buy two 9800GT 65nm, one of which has been cooked for no reason, just stopped taking the drivers and not recognized as a nvidia 9800GT, and entering the setup or DOS are small red dots across the screen.
only use it for a year and never did overclock

The truth is that the nVidia simply does not have higher failure rates than AMD. In fact, nVidia and Apple has less quality problem than ATI and Intel.

This witchhunt gives leaves a bad aftertaste.

It seems Nvidia did not only mislead its investors by claiming it was only a small batch it seems that they screwd up entirely with its upcomming products too. wait until system builders find out about this no one wants to burn its fingers like Sony Dell and HP did again. this means it are golden times for AMD and its hybrid graphics solutions in notebooks. also there desktop solutions seem to sell alot better since nvidia screwd up on the high-end part but also on the lowerd-end tier as well. hey dont get upset about it. this is competition and AMD can use the cashflow to get there CPU market working again. andthe truth is AMD is on the lead no matter if they have the fastest single chip, they have the fastest single card with the option open to boost its preformance with sideport pcie support in there drivers if Nvidia is about to make a faster GTX280 or some GTX280x2 product. and by the time Nvidia might be able to deliver 40nm parts AMD will push out its RV8xx product as well. since both count on the production processes at TSMC both can have the same die shrink at the same time.
but it counts on them selfs if they have there act togheter at the same time. like we seen with AMD at the time of the ATI merge with the 29xx cards and like we are seeing now with NVIDIA's heat bugs and GTX280 fiasco

taking lead out to meet RoHS now is rubbish as all products had to conform in 06! 

a supplier of Quadros FX1700 have had 100 fail out of 320, of course NV can't admit this, it will kill them in the market and cost of replacement

Never mind the trolls and nvidiots, Charlie, I want to know when I am safe buying a new card.
I was going to look into buying a GTX 280, but now I'll hold off until this all blows over.
As a side remark, I have to laugh at all those stepping up to bat for ATI. I doubt ATI would do any better, though I admit that Nvidia holds the crown for corporate sleaziness.
And the "if Nvidia says so so it has to be true" line would be precious if it wasn't from a troll.

Hey, nv-hater, had enough fun? Ok, it's time to drop this subject now. Dead cat beaten. Boring. Thank you.

Google for 9600 GT "black screen of death". You will see that failures are so widespread that the community had to coin a specific name for it, and went looking for an explanation in the most unlikely corners of the solution space. I suffered from it, an the only cure was a standard exchange of the part. Now we know why, I suppose.

This is huge.

I don't know when the "the sky is falling" comment is coming, but I'm convinced it will be soon. I love the way journalism uses phrases like "should be", "almost exactly", and "pretty much". No opinion or jumping to conclusions there, just hard facts. Bring on the Pulitzer. /sarcasm

So they're changing the composition of the solder they use. This means defective how exactly? My guess is someone didn't get enough attention as a child.

"RoHS
Looks like they're just taking the lead out. RoHS is in these days."
posted by : Axion, 29 August 2008

Why on earth were they still using high-lead bumps in the first place?

In the beginning there were eutectic (Tin/Lead) bumps. Then RoHS threatened to outlaw eutectic bumps, before there were any reliable technical solutions for lead-free bumps. Then some manufacturers spotted that RoHS already contained an exemption for "high-temperature solders" - intended for industrial / high temp automotive use of 150C or more - and containing >85% lead. While not as good as eutectic solder (less ductile etc.), it was available, and lower risk than the immature lead-free processes available at the time (tin whiskers; brittleness; intermetallic bond strength etc. being problems).

This was a loophole due to the poor wording of RoHS, that actually served to increase the amount of lead in flip-chip devices from 37% to >85%. Hardly the intent of the directive. Clearly this was a ridiculous situation, and RoHS was subsequently amended to permit lead (of any proportion) in flip-chip bumps. That was in 2004.

So for new products, why still use high-lead in the first place? For several years both high-lead and eutectic solder have been exempted by RoHS, so this in itself is not forcing the change that Nvidia have made. In fact rather the opposite, as eutectic bumps are due to be reviewed again in 2010.

If you accept the arguments (or just the inevitability) of RoHS, you should really not be using high-lead bumps in new products (including anything 90nm and below), and you should also expect more reliability issues vs. eutectic. By now, you should be well on the way to completely lead-free bumps.

Derek: I must be one of the lucky few then, for my recently-bought Sager (with dual GeForce 8800M GTX cards) has already shown signs of failure. :-(

Having one of the GPU's that is failing I put it through some tests. If the clock speed is reduced by 10% then the GPU is stable again.

Since this problem started occuring after 90 days of thermal cycling we have an answer for Nvidia's strange behavior and statements.

They are correct there is nothing wrong with the chips. Their problem is that the machine that does the speed sorting (bin out, the characterizer) is programmed wrong and not sorting the parts properly. Something did not scale properly during the die shrink and either a resistor or capacitor on the chip is "aging" 
(changing value slightly) with thermal cycling (Nvidia runs the junction hot, 62 C). This causes the part to fail at the rated speed. The characterizer is supposed to be setup to run the GPU at the worst combinations of voltage and temperature and then run up the speed until it stops working properly. They then normally back off the clock by 10% to determine the speed bin. Obviously the program did not test all functionality on the chip properly (they do a subset, to do it all takes forever and is only done once to establish the baselines) and assigned the wrong speed bin, effectively overlocking the chip right out of the factory. Thus, like regular overclocking, some chips have enough headroom and are fine while those that do not fail.

The reason for the carrier change is to allow them to identify chips that are properly marked by the corrected characterizer program.

Tony

Hey NVidia guy (Derek, is it?). If you are officially defending NV against Charlie and his articles, how about officially answering some questions:

1.) Why did you change the packaging material of your desktop G92 chips? Isn't that expensive to do if there is nothing wrong with them?

2.) If this problem is so limited to a small number of notebooks, while are Dell forums publicly indicating that this problem is very widespread with their models that use your chips? 

3.) Why won't you identify the specific chips that have this problem and recall them? Is that too expensive for you?

You're not fooling anyone with your anti- Charlie rhetoric. So far we keep hearing more and more dirt on your company and this issue. As a matter of fact, why not clearly identify yourself and what division you work in at NV, assuming you REALLY work for them??

Rather than take a chance that your company didn't screw up an engineering design in a chip that is failing and trust you to not load the channel with both defect parts as well as "so called good ones" while not publicly distinguishing the two, I'm going to continue to trust ATI parts because they have always worked for me. The Charlie haters can have and enjoy their 8800GT's until they fry and those of you who haven't had a problem yet, we'll be waiting for you to tell us all about it when you do.

Hi there,
is the NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GT affected of this production problem ?


Derek, you keep clamoring for "What is the source?" when the only source you cite is... yourself. "nVidia wouldn't say this if it wasn't true." 

Please.

I don't have a horse in this race, I don't care for red, green, blue, or whatever. I do know that money, as well as pride, are very powerful motivators that quickly overwhelm honesty. 

No one is saying that every single chip will fail, so saying that "oh, my chip is fine" does NOT mean that everyone else is fine. What is happing is : every chip has a higher *statistical chance* of failure. 

nVidia knows this - odds may very well be on their side. And they are trying to minimize their cash outlay for this to all blow over.

I work in the semiconductor industry, and I've seen similar failures before. On a large, high powered silicon die, very frequently an advanced package technique called "flip-chip" is used. In this method, the die is flipped over and attached to the package substrate using tiny pillars of solder (die bumps). The space between the pillars is filled with an organic epoxy that supports the chip and bonds it to the substrate. This is the "underfill". Here's the problem. The thermal coefficient of expansion for the silicon doesn't match the substrate (or underlying PCB), so the underfill has to take up the stress, especially during rapid heating and cooling, when the mechanical stress is at a maximum. Recipes for package underfill are secret and proprietary, and change often, depending on performance results in the field. Heating and cooling cycles will eventually crack the solder pillar connecting the substrate to the die pad, resulting in an open or intermittant circuit on that pin. The only packages that will survive 10,000 cycles are very expensive ceramic packages that have similar thermal coefficients to the silicon. My recommendation: NEVER turn off the PC. This will minimize thermal cycling. It will still die eventually just because thermal loads during game playing will eventually cause enough mechanical cycling and stress on the die bumps to crack them. The die dumps in the edges and corners are typically the first to go, because this is where the most stress occurs. It's not really surprising that GPU's have this problem, since the industry is pushing the envelope on the package and die performance, and the product lifetimes are so terribly short. The easiest solution to extend the chip lifetime is to implement a thermal regulation scheme that keeps the die and package at a constant temperature. This will be extremely energy inefficient, but I don't see another method, short of going to military grade packages and PCB's.

I did not know that Nvidia has to give an explanation to the Inquirer for every freaking engineering change they decide to do. I actually think the Inquirer has just added Nvidia to their list of we hate them list, like Apple. Most Inquirer hacks hate Macs, probably because they are jealous or just stupid.
I like my Nvidia card in my Vista gaming rig and in my Mac, they have been working just fine.
Find a single ATI card (no dual or triple setups) that can touch the GTX 280! or even the GTX260
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-comparison,2007.html
You hacks won't!
Regulas

The company I work for sells a lot of dv6000 series HP laptops which have Nvidia chipsets, and we have had a huge number coming back with the same problem. The problem being that the chipset will start to come away from the board very slightly. We are lucky enough to have a machine for re-attaching BGA chips but otherwise this would mean scrapping the laptops. I would be very interested to find out if this is the same issue talked about here. I should also mention HP have not done anything about this so far that I know of.

Nividia's product change here is simply to reduce the lead content of their products. Lead is an extremely potent poison, particularly the the growing brains of children, for this reason western governments want lead out of products that might end up in land fill.

This move has been slow because lead based solders are very good and high tin solders have been known to suffer issues (tin whiskers) which can cause age related failures that QA testing will not discover.

The article here is wrong. The product change does not describe a product fix. If anything this new parts could be less reliable, if navidia are unlucky with their new solder.

disclaimer:
I have never worked for /owned shares in navidia. I run computers on matrox, navidia and ati graphics chipsets and apart form cost; have no complaints about any of them 



The term "eutectic solder" is what the industry calls traditional PRE-ROHS tin-lead solder. The transition to a non-RoHS compliant solder is quite unusual, and without knowing more about it is certainly cause for questions.

Note that the "high lead" solder used previously was possibly a close to pure-lead solder that is RoHS compliant under exemption for BGA parts with a very small pitch.

Article Clearly did not say, all chips are all defective, but explaining that there are some dodgy chips out there, All u Fanboys saying "i got a 8800gt and its fun and my sister has 8600gt", ye nice story, but you also have OC editions which means they dont have standard cooling and something more effecient and keep it cooler. yes there are chips that should be made more stable but the problem is there but does not mean every single chip is bad.

And to The Jian, Clearly they update chips all the time for more performance, new steppings, cheaper costs, Clearly they dont do stepping all the time because the last one was faulty, maybe because there improving it...

and 6600gt, ye wow clearly not a G92 chip...

It's business suicide. NVidia are going to ship crap with good and not let people know which is which, and this will be happening until 2009. OMFG, I will be telling everyone I know who might buy a pc/component to steer clear of anything with NVidia inside.

This is not the way it's meant to be played!

NVidia will be known for many years as the company with the chocolate chipsets, like Honda became known for chocolate camshafts in 1970's. Honda worked on quality control, will NVidia?

how come Nvidia GPU's aren't failing left and right? Quite a lot of people have bought NV GPU's ever since the 8 series was first launched. Hell, until 6 months or so ago, no one except possibly Charlie saw any reason *not* to buy NV. They had the best GPU's on the market, and unless you were a foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy theorist with an irrational hatred towards the company, you bought their cards.

Since the 8 series was first launched 2 years ago, their market share has grown hugely.

And these cards have run for what, 2 years now without mass failures. Could it be, perhaps, that the man whose complete lack of sanity he illustrated with his nice "let's kill all spammers and laugh, even if their families die too" article, is trying to blow things a wee bit out of proportion? I know an awful lot of people who are running GF8 GPU's, and have done so for a year or two. None of them have had any problems. I haven't had any problems. I haven't heard of *anyone* who had problems.

Odd, isn't it? Oh wait, perhaps they're lying! Perhaps they secretly replaced their GPU's every 3 months just to cover up for NVidia... Yeah... That must be it. It certainly can't be that some NVidia GPU's *work*. That'd be silly.

I have an (tHe major Pc manufacturer) 7600 gs laptop which has had its motherboard replaced twice and is going back again after the long weekend.

It has been a flaky piece of crap since day one and I can't get (tHe major Pc manufacturer) to do anything except RMA it over and over again.

I'm thinking its time for small claims court.

But perhaps we should start the class action lawsuit now, huh? Its the only way we're going to get our money back and get them to fess up.

Looks like the commenter that mentioned a possible link between low-lead and high-lead solder might be on to something, or the inquirer.net writer if he/you brought this possible issue to light.

I have a Toshiba A215-S7422 notebook that has video problems as well. Toshiba is covering it up and trying to run out the warranty. The screen "blanks" and the laptop freezes up. No system keys work, emergency syncing doesn't work, etc. But the cpu still is getting power because the air at the vent remains hot. The only solution when the problem hits is to hold down the start button till the lights go out and then release and hold down again for a cold reboot. I thought it was a Vista problem, but I'm dual booting Debian, and the problem appears with it too. I thought it might be a cpu throttling problem, so I forced the cpu (AMD TL-58) to stay at 800 MHz, then tried at full speed (1900 MHz) and in between. No difference. In Debian, I set up scripts to log temperature every minute, cpu speed, load, cpu utilization, etc., to see what the issue was after a lockup. No difference. Happens at any speed, any temp, any load, any cpu utilization, etc.

I was getting 20-30-40 day uptimes, but made the mistake of falling asleep with throttling turned off. Cpu ran at 1900 MHz for about 7 hours. After that, the uptimes are now a few days to a week being a really good uptime. Tried different kernels as well, all the way to 2.6.25, currently running at 2.6.24 because I think I may be getting slightly less uptime with 2.6.25. The laptop was put to emergency use running a very low hit count web site in Dec. 07 and has been performing that function since then up until now, so the laptop has been running 24/7 since then. It just freezes up, the power, logon, battery lights stay on like when it is running on ac power, and the ethernet port light remains lit, the ethernet termination at the switch remains lit as well. It just freezes up with a dark "blue" screen similar to when the screen blanks after inactivity if you don't use a screen saver.

Toshiba allegedly addressed this with a bios fix, acknowledging an "intermittent screen blanking issue". Prior to the bios fix, I was able to adjust how much system memory could be used for the video card in the bios during boot up. That ability was removed with the bios update. Now, whether during boot up phase, or directly entering bios, the ability to change amount of system ram for video has been removed. Toshiba admits this "intermittent screen blanking issue" for dozens and dozens and dozens of A215-Sxxxx and other Toshiba Axxx-xxxxx models, with the same or another bios version to fix the dozens and dozens and dozens of models that this affects. According to customer service, I should take it to a local authorized repair center. After a long conversation with the local authorized repair center manager (owner?), he admitted that the "fix" is for him to update the bios himself, which alters the throttling/cooling profiles in Vista. I described what I did to try and trace the problem and he admitted it was a bigger issue than Toshiba's "fix". He suggested sending the laptop back to Toshiba instead of taking it to him and follow up with them until the issue is resolved.

My warranty is up in the next couple of months and the reason for purchasing the laptop was to run the web site until I finally replace the "server" the web site(s) was/were running on. I'm also using the same laptop for personal use while its serving the sites, so I have a year's worth of personal info and web development work on it as well. I was able to back up months ago onto DVD disks, but now the data is quite a bit more. Every time I try to back up to a USB drive or over ethernet to the replacement "server", the laptop locks up. So for now my data is stuck on the laptop until I figure out how to get it off in between lockups so I can send the laptop back to Toshiba. Now if I could find the receipt for when it was purchased...

Charlie do you hate nvidia?

Everyone here assumes you do, but thats not necessarily true is it.

This proves what is realy going on.
Charlie is a great unbiased journalist.
exposing nvidia is not a anti nvidia job. So, you nvidiots, should shut up.
Those are clear facts with clear evidences.


I had an NV 7900 Mobile (GS trim I believe). It killed my whole laptop. For a while it worked in safe mode with the NV video adapter disabled at much lower resolution and colors. Just what I wanted on a $1300 laptop. Eventually I only got the black screen of death and it was all over. NV better own up soon to what is going on. Or the lawyers will have a hay day. 

I used to be one of the biggest fans of NV you could find. But now it's all about ATI. Which is in my new laptop. Sorry NV!

Derek I applaud your efforts. 

Now can you explain why nVidia lied about nv40 and WMV acceleration? Why did you release a broken video processor? 

Why did you guys delete or edit all the online tech sheets to cover this up?

I would love to hear the explanation on that. 

NVidia you are unethical, and have been for years. Finally the chickens are coming home to roost.

As mentioned by someone else, this isn't likely to affect the PS3. As far as I'm aware nVidia only helped design the chip and is made in oe of Sony's fabrication plants, much like how ATI helped design the 360's chip then licensed it to Microsoft for them to arrange fabrication.

So, Any comment charlie?

It's interesting to see how Nvidia's taken the time to address your complaints, I think this is the time and place to put some weight in your claims. 

I know the follow up - answer article is around the corner, it's just I can't wait.

Besides lower melting point to increase hardwired success, TIN also will increase PING or Quality of signal. Less resistance & better state change can be bad, if too much came thru at once. However here, seems problem is distance between gpu & controllers/memory. So stronger chip can be made & better quality signal transported to next unit.
Drashek Nvidia Theorum 113.

I thought the issue was the cooldown start up issue and not the "overall temperature"

cycling on and off is the #1 reason why computers die.

"Myth 3 – NVIDIA is forcing a fix on notebook makers
The idea that a supplier like NVIDIA can dictate a fix to the world’s largest PC makers is preposterous.

The truth is the notebook makers determining their own course of action and we are supporting them. "

Well of course you are supporting them as it is in the best interest for you, rather than a recall. What if I don't like HP's solution and I don't like waiting for my notebook to be returned because they are waiting for GOOD parts from you? What is my course of action?

The point is if YOU didn't have BAD chips I would have a notebook and wouldn't have to deal with HP. If HP don't get it back to me on 9/3 as promised, I'm going back to Costco as they are promising finally to do more. They found out about this about a week ago (from Wall Street Journal article) and are looking into Nvidia issues now.

Now go tell your boss people are pissed off and maybe he will wake up to the real world. Probably not though.

RoHS
Looks like they're just taking the lead out. RoHS is in these days.
posted by : Axion, 29 August 2008

As far as I can tell, only the 8800 GTX is unaffected.

Am I right?

(Guess which card I have)

Nvidia reduces the amount of lead they use in their products ... an all around good thing to do that is being done around the world by many electronics manufacturers, reducing the amount of lead that is released into the environment through manufacturing and improperly disposed of products. Something that they must do to sell parts in some markets

... And Charlie cries wolf again. Come on Charlie, environmental lead exposure obviously did a nasty number on you, so why are you against Nvidia working to clean up a small corner of the lead problem?

The previous report involved "Underfill Material" being changed from one brand to another. This report involves changing from high lead solder to low lead solder.

Two distinctly different things. Charlie is playing 'connect the dots' with two points separated by lightyears when he squeals that "the problems that are plaguing G84 and G86 are the same that affect seemingly all 65nm and now 55nm Nvidia parts"

Go back to chewing your old paint chips Charlie. No one believes you anymore.

Charlie has a gf lol, what a joke..she probably looks like a total sheman! LOL

As you know Charlie has a history of severe bias against NVIDIA. Our July announcement of the problem with notebook GPU failures (www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html) has given him lots to rant about. This new story is the latest in a series of articles in which he continues to stretch the truth in order to spread FUD. In it he asserts he paints the notebook chip failures as if it were a widespread epidemic affecting every single NVIDIA GPU in existence including desktop. Here is a list of BS and the truth.

Myth 1 - NVIDIA has denied responsibility for the failures and is blaming suppliers and partners.
In our announcements accept responsibility for the failures. We DO call out the material failure but we also acknowledge that our suppliers and notebook designs because this is true and we need to disclose this in our official statements to the SEC. We would not go on record with the SEC making such bold claims if they weren’t true. See our Form 8-K statement below. 

Myth 2 – There is an “official story” that the problems were limited a batch of a few bad parts for HP.
We have never issued a stated this. See our public statements below.

Where is source for that?

Myth 3 – NVIDIA is forcing a fix on notebook makers
The idea that a supplier like NVIDIA can dictate a fix to the world’s largest PC makers is preposterous.

The truth isthe notebook makers determining their own course of action and we are supporting them. 

Where is source for that?

Myth 4 – NVIDIA is trying to cuts our financial liability.
We put aside $200M to help partners solve this problem for consumers. As far as we know NVIDIA is the first and only chip maker to help fund the cost for repairs. 

Myth 5 – This affects desktop chips, G92, G94, etc. 
We have only seen this problem on notebooks. We just reiterated this during an official financial call. Once again we would not say this if it wasn’t true. Note we have not disclosed the specific GPUs but we have stated this impact previous generation GPUs and that current gen GPUs are not in production.

Fact
Charlie has an obvious bias against NVIDIA and he has no sources to back up his claims. Out of all of the hundreds upon hundreds of notebooks models designed with NVIDIA chips in the last few years, only a small number of these have experienced the problem. Within this small number of models, only a small percentage actually experiences the chip failure. It is highly unlike a notebook user will experience the problem. And we have never seen this problem on desktop.

Other Useful Information

“Separately, 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. NVIDIA has initiated discussions with its supply chain regarding this material set issue and the Company will also seek to access insurance coverage for this matter. “

So essentially this is a case of a missed thermal envelope, and the cheaper solder not effectively holding up to the thermal dynamics of the operating chip over its lifespan?

Who's gonna get fired for this one? I mean really, what are we talking about in cost per chip here? Vs costs to replace hardware or pay for said replacement?

Geez. someone tells a story at an exec retreat about taking one olive out of every olive jar shipped, and we end up with a mess like this.

Looks like they're just taking the lead out. RoHS is in these days.

Charlie, are you smokin' crack again?? Must be the red variety, since it seems you hate green...lol.

Come on now. There is nothing wrong with the G92 and G94 GPUs. I own several nVidia cards and none of them have any overheating problems, let along any hardware failures whatsoever. I have owned two 8800GTSs (G92) and one 8800GT since March of this year and had zero problems with them.

Stop with the "I hate nVidia" fanfair already. No one is buying it.

I've had my 9600GT for almost 4 months now.
These days my pc started to randomly freeze when playing games.
I haven't done a hard debug yet, but I'm afraid the video device might be the vilain...

anyone know if the RSX joint Nvidia-Playstation3 chips would be included in this mix?

So has anyone noticed any driver 'fixes'
for the affected desktop parts whereby the fan stays on a lot longer and runs more rpms
ala the notebook fix?

Wonder how many defensive fanboys will come to admit they should have trusted the first drafts of this story?

On the one hand, it's good to see corporate attempts to rip off the customer exposed. On the other hand, if NV goes under, what happens to the graphics market? ATI on their own aren't going to drive it, that's for sure.

Now Charlie I know some people that won't like what you wrote! =O

The materials that nvidia use are likely to be widely used in the industry. Could this be the source of the xbox woes?

NV is never going to publicly identify all of the defective parts. Isn't it misleading and therefore, Fraud, to knowingly load the channel with defective parts as well as "hopefully good" parts and not publicly distinguish the two? If we can't accurately identify the defective parts from the good ones, how and more importantly, WHY should the consumer trust NV? I personally don't. ATI all the way!!!

So since AMD/INtel etc all release new spins of their chips, they are all defective previously?

If I find a better way to make my product, are all my previous products from that line, BAD? Stupid logic. Semi's improve their products all the time and release new spins of the same cpu's all the time. You're calling good business practices bad products. I call it silly writing. 

Was it Sylvie, Charlie and Paul handing out the flyers at Nvision?...LOL. Anand mentioned 3 people handing out flyers (which you called a PROTEST...ROFL...3 people...hehe). I've never seen a 3 person protest before. That would have been a great picture for you to get.. :)

And the Nvidia bashing by Inq just keeps on coming...boring reading at best. FYI my two 8800GT's and my sis's 8600GT runs cools as can be (and all are OC editions). Just as my 6600GT, 7950GTOC, and even my old Radeon's did before it. Do you guys think this will get you back to being invited by Nvidia again? I'm thinking this is the wrong approach. Lies and Fud don't bring goodwill from companies.

i'm still laughing over a 3 person protest...That's just funny. I might have taken 1000, or even 500 seriously. But 3?..LOL.

Want to state that I am pro for nvidia/ati/ even intel on graphics. I owned ti4200, 9700 pro, x800xt, x1800 aiw, 7900 gs, 8800gt.

I mean sure the chips may be bad, but really how many defects are there really? Mine has been running strong w/o any problem so far and so have my cousin + friends. If the parts that are failing, I am guessing that it isn't a HUGE percentage. The only thing that concerns me are the laptop ones as they tend to get hot especially in my XPS m1330. Otherwise desktop, I am pretty solid that it should be okay. I for one are not detracted from buying nvidia even while hearing these news. For me I go for bang for the buck. FYI the GTX260 was on sale for $152 8/27/08 hopefully it comes, if not I'll stick with my 8800GT till maybe the 4870/260 gets to be around $150 again!

I actually believe that you're on to something of epic magnitude, its funny to watch all the people around here writing you off as Nvidia hating psychobabble bullshit. This whole thing has stunk of major corporate cover up from the word go.

being someone who owns 2 Hp laptops with G84 parts in them, i sit by watching and waiting to see when they're going to fully own up to this, and hoping it happens before the warranty expires on either of my dv9700z series laptops.

Good job Charlie, those anti-fans of yours are speechless now hehe.

I knew you were right all along :)

heres basics on stanium:

Name: Tin 
Symbol: Sn 
Atomic Number: 50 
Atomic Mass: 118.71 amu 
Melting Point: 231.9 °C (505.05 K, 449.41998 °F) 
Boiling Point: 2270.0 °C (2543.15 K, 4118.0 °F) 
Number of Protons/Electrons: 50 
Number of Neutrons: 69 
Classification: Other Metals 
Crystal Structure: Tetragonal 
Density @ 293 K: 7.31 g/cm3 
Color: white 

Know to Ancient Ancients, it has Mass from 112 to 129. However, I doubt if Nvidia is trying to save enviorment, Tin is Worse than lead(Pb). Most likely someone finally figured out how to make Vista Ultimate capable low & mid gpu, esp. 64 bit type, & whole lotta stuff is heading to new bin, called Trash. Ahso Tin melts at lower temperature, so it may involve transistor sensitivity to heat in manufacturer, yet that would have been caught much earlier.
You start at beginning, work way around & final solution appears.Its in Magic Eight Ball.
drashek