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This press conference has reached critical mass. We've enough journalists - Intel Spin Doctor
Ten Dell models have defective Nvidia GPUs
IT LOOKS LIKE Nvidia wasn't entirely truthful when it last talked to analysts. The outfit's G84/G86 statement about problems being confined to only HP was just blown out of the water. Dell has now unofficially admitted to the same problem in ten models.
The G84/G86 story is just getting messier, and NV is refusing to come clean, mainly because the problems just might sink the company if it does. The short story is that all G84 and G86 chips are bad, period.
Nvidia isn't owning up to it, and worse yet, it is telling different stories to many different people, none of which seems to be anything close to the whole truth.
At first, the firm told an analyst (note the singular) that it was only a small batch of chips sent only to HP.
Dell has admitted that ten models are affected through the time honoured channel of buried BIOS updates.
Note the date and the fixes
The Dell problems, coupled with the fact that we know that all of the G84 and G86 chips are bad, blows the 'HP only' story out of the water. Several analysts we talked to all gave a completely different story about what they were told by NV IR/AR. This gave us some food for thought
In any case, since Dell came out with a BIOS that 'fixes' the non-existent problem almost two weeks before the disclosure in the Nvidia 8-K on July 2. They knew HP laptops were bad, they knew Dells were bad, and we know the chips are all bad, but NV keeps stonewalling and spinning very different stories to analysts. They haven't mentioned Apple and Asus yet, but if you look at their forums, they both seem to have a high rate of early Nvidia GPU related failures.
That brings us to the next problem, namely full and fair disclosure. Dell and HP know the extent of this, as presumably do other OEMs. Is it collusion when they do not disclose an event likely to be material to both them and Nvidia? Not a peep from Apple and the others yet though. Apple never admits to even crippling failures of its products, it might damage its halo. When the first lawsuit hits, the documentation of who knew what, when is going to be REALLY interesting.
Next on the list of questions is when is NV going to come clean over this? We know there are at least four manufacturers having failures, and the damage control, stonewalling game is being played out to almost masochistic levels. Nvidia has utterly failed damage control 101, and now they are moving into territory where investigations are born. We wonder how deep this rabbit hole is going to go, and how many zeros are on the end?
Moving on to another problem, this one is owned by the consumer, and that is the alleged 'fix'. First of all, it isn't a fix, it simply delays the problem to the point where the warranty is (hopefully) expired, then it isn't the problem of the OEM, and therefore not Nvidia's problem. Basically they are trying to delay the failures until they can disclaim liability.
The 'fix' simply turns on the laptop fan much more than usual. We hear it is basically on all the time, but we don't have an afflicted laptop to test. If anyone has one of the affected models, can you comment below or write directly and tell us the effects of the BIOS 'upgrade'?
The problem with this 'fix' is that it degrades the functionality of the laptop retroactively. Instead of a theoretically quiet machine, you get one with the fan screaming away 24/7. Who would enjoy that? Even if your tastes in music lean toward the loud and obnoxious like your correspondent's.
Also, laptops have batteries and fans take power to run. This means when the fan is running, your battery is being drained. The 'fix' keeps the fan on much more and destroys battery life. Once again, if you have put in the 'fix', can you write and comment on battery life before and after?
In essence, the 'fix' is not a fix at all, it is a delay that actively degrades the user's laptop in both acoustics and battery life. Both HP and Dell are hurting the customers to avoid a recall and to protect Nvidia until they can disclaim responsibility. If Ford had a problem with engines blowing up, people would not stand for a 'fix' that halves your gas mileage simply to keep the engine from grenading until the warranty ran out. That would result in a class action coupled with a torch bearing mob in Dearborn, Michigan. Why this isn't resulting in the same treatment for Santa Clara is beyond me, buyers are directly and provably damaged by the 'fix', and there is no restitution offered or even hinted at.
Last week, Nvidia was claiming that desktop parts are not affected, contrary to our information that they are. Given their utter lack of disclosure, and how often they have been proven wrong so far, it is not surprising to see that desktop part vendors are demanding a recall as well.
Now, Digitimes is a news organization with a bunch of excellent sources in Taiwan. If they say that this is the case, they likely have gotten it directly from the manufacturers. The manufacturers have either been given engineering information from Nvidia and know the extent of the problem, or they have not. If they know the extent of it, and it will not affect them, this story would never have been leaked, they would have no reason to complain through the back channel. If it does affect them, Nvidia would likely have taken care of it silently to prevent stories like the one you are reading. So far, this has not been the case.
The other option is that Nvidia is stonewalling its partners, and given the number of them who have told me that they don't have a clue what is really happening, this appears to be the case. If NV is not telling them the whole truth, there are two options, there is no problem, and there is a big problem.
The no problem scenario is not a likely one because if it was, Nvidia would just give them the engineering docs and be done with it. It is a relatively simple matter to clear the air, and there is no downside to doing so. The only reason to not give your NDA partners the all clear is that they have a big problem, and you are trying to hide it until your responsibility, aka the warranty, runs out. Given Nvidia's behaviour, and the fact that Digitimes is being used to out grumblings, it is pretty clear what is happening in old Taipei.
So, in the end, we have the largest PC makers in the world giving a very muted mea culpa, very muted indeed. Nvidia is telling different analysts different stories and not publicly disclosing either what they are saying to the analysts, or what is really going on. The OEMs are also not disclosing the problems, even though some of them have cut deals with Nvidia to pay for half of the recall cost. All of this is material to investors, and quite possibly runs afoul of some pretty serious laws.
The saddest part is the people left holding the bag are the customers. They get flaky laptops that are popping like zits when they are used. To them, they have the pain of dying machines that are out of service for an extended period of time without compensation, and the not dead (yet) machines are given a fix that actively degrades and devalues their machines.
Nvidia needs to come clean, ASAP. The firm needs to tell all the analysts what they told some of the analysts. They need to tell customers who are adversely affected by their defective products, and make things right. They just need to come clean. Fat chance, but they need to. µ
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I like power. I'm a gamer and I like my games to run fluid all the time.
I have bought quite a few Nvidia cards up to now, but I have to say the Nvidia's behavior is not exactly what I feel like endorsing with another purchase.
ATI and Nvidia have always been good competition - I'll leave it to the rabid to argue who was on top longer, but the fact is that the continued existence of both was good for everyone.
Unfortunately, there has been an obvious outbreak of the Melon-Head Syndrome at Nvidia, and it has been a while already since that should have been treated. Now it looks like the ill-will that Nvidia has generously handed out in all its previous dealings is going to come back for some comeuppance.
I can't say that I feel sorry for Nvidia and its cheating CEO, but I am convinced that we will all end up sorry if Nvidia tanks for good.
3Dfx caught the MelonHead, and it tanked, leaving the path clear for Nvidia to come and royally screw up SLI.
If Nvidia goes under, what hope will remain for the power-hungry among us ? Is Intel really going to be competition for ATI ? I have trouble visualizing that happening.
And if all that is left to keep ATI going is Intel, well I don't expect that the power curve will stay the way it is now.
All that because some blockhead thought he was King Of The World and could start calling the shots the way he wanted it. Yes, Huang, I'm talking about you. Thanks for all the good years, but thanks for nothing now, idiot.
Yeah, thank you Nvidia. I just bought a Dell Inspiron with one of the bad cookies in them a month ago, after the ATI chip in my ancient Acer went bust. The latter has been repaired, but I'm thinking about keeping it instead of giving it away. The Dell is running ten hours a day in a hot room, leaving a queesy feeling in my gut region.......
Failing to own up to partners that your GPU is broken will only cost your money in the end.

Why? & How? Well.

By not owning up nVidia have made a rod for there own back companies like DELL will know be shifting to ATi for the HD4*** series cards. See all that big headedness about there G8 series and they thought they could do a fast 1 on the G200 cards.

ATi should be the next choice there HD 4*** is the card to have at the moment decent prices and v.good performance. I aint promoting ATi just because there AMD owned and I run AMD CPU's but if your a company selling pre-built PCs. You want to have a happy customer base for your high powered media centres and failing GPU's is not needed here.

Money talks and business is business
This Nvidia mass customer back-stabbing is just the shot in the arm that AMD/ATI needed! For example, I just ordered a new ATI card and "shelved" my NV 8400GS card. I cannot afford to have an unreliable system, nor can I afford to purchase from an unreliable and apparently dishonest manufacturer like Nvidia. Besides, Nvidia also will not open source their drivers, much to the Linux kernel maintainers' frustration (I am a Linux user). I just cannot trust Nvidia anymore, and will not recommend that others buy any of their products in the future.
After applying the BIOS update to my laptop, the fan seems to be turned on permanently. Before it was silent most of the time, but not anymore. I'm not really concerned about the battery life, as I use that laptop as a "desktop replacement", but it's pretty annoying, and I'm not happy at all to know that my laptop has a short life expectancy because of this problem. Yeah, it will last more than the warranty (one year), but my old Asus laptop with an Ati 9600 video card has been alive and kicking for 5 years.
i'm glad that i have a 79xx series card in my desktop.

(my next build will be using ATi parts for sure)

+

my laptop is intel integrated chip.
(i am safe from G84 & G86)


but most of my friends had the G84 & G86 chip for their laptop, LOL, and out of warranties, LOL 

(unless you have the M8800, but i doubt there are many users have that, usually M8700 was the "only" best choice back then.)

murahaa haa haa haa haa XD HAA HAA-A

so... who is the laugrabee now?

Nv is going down, after its glory days, laughing at ATi, "rabee" jokes on intel, and now what goes around comes around... sad... as a Nv fanboy, my loyalty were washed away since the release of 7950GX2 shortly after my 7900GTX purchase, pissed me off so badly.
(same goes for the price drop for 280 & 260, i laughed so hard when i saw forum posts crying about USD$700+ then now USD$450 with rebates)
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

too bad AMD/ATi doesn't really have a strong laptop graphic chip :/

ATi FTW period, CHEAP & STRONG are what consumer needs.
I got a Dell 1720 with 8600 M GT. The bios is the newest one which came preinstalled. I noticed when I installed Ntune that the fan in automatic mode is forced to 100% all the time.

I don't really remember this ever being the case before with any nvidia mobility graphics.........
How does one feel when his brand new notebook is doomed from the start?

No official recall and a lot of notebooks failing will result in the distrust in the brand.

In my case Dell.

Now I wish I got a mobile HD 3450 instead of the 8600M GT.

Worst part is, even if I return my notebook for repairs I will get another faulty notebook in return.
Does anyone knows for sure that how far Nvidia's heat problem goes back to...

Because I'm having a huge heat problem on Toshiba P25-S607 17" laptop with Nvidia GeForce Go 5200 (Its over 2 year old but very rarely used as I use desktop most of the time)

It barely stays for 30 minutes and abruptly shuts down on its own...And when it shuts down the base gets hotter than a boiler... 

All three fans are working just fine (unclogged) but stays on all of the time.

And like many others here, from now on ALL my desktops & laptops gonna be with ATI for sure.

Its time to DUMP nvidia. Adios Nvidia.

(BTW if anyone is wondering, Toshiba tech support is , um, not very good hence except this lappy all of my Servers, Desktops & Laptops are DELL)

- jags
If Nvidia is playing to keep the failures from occuring until the "warranty" runs out, then disclaiming responsibility, they are in for a very rude awakening. All anyone has to do is show that Nvidia was aware of the issue during the warranty period and guess what? They will still be found liable. Just look at all the vehicle recalls from car manufacturers after warranties have expired. The U.S. government in the form of the Consumer Protection Agency will not sit idly by and let Nvidia hide from their problems, no matter how long it takes to resolve.

The best resolution though, is to avoid Nvidia products like the plague. Good thing it's so easy, seeing as how there are competitive products. And if you are planning on purchasing from a retailer like Dell, just tell 'em you're not buying until they offer something that you'll purchase. They'll get the message soon enough.

Oh, and send an email to Nvidia and let them know you're not buying ANY of their products until they 'fess up and make right.

Won't do much if only one person does it, but if we ALL do it......much harder to ignore, even harder to ignore is collapsing sales.

So be vigilant, my children, and refuse inferior products. Take the time to find out, and if your retailer won't tell you, then take your business elsewhere.

And don't give me any excuses, there are none.
I own the XPS from Dell and i updated last week to this bios.
Before my fan only ran very loud when i was playing WoW or something.
Now when i'm surfing this settings kicks in and is very annoying. 
I'll be rolling back to an older version.

Regards,
Chris
If a product is defective due to an 'inherent' fault, as is the case here ... then under 'Sale and Supply of Goods Regulations 2002' you are able to claim compensation for up to six years from the date of sale in England (five years in Scotland), or a full refund, if this is within a reasonable time of the sale.

While better than nothing, I'd prefer a laptop that wasn't due to fail in the very near future.

I have one of the new Dell 1720 Inspirons that came with fan set permanently at 100% ... and I'm not happy with this at all!
news,reviews facts and FICTION!
My Dell M1330 had an 8400 in it, the Nvidia driver started crashing taking the machine down, and eventually started blue-screening, it took about 1 week from the first symptoms to being unusable. 

Dell replaced the motherboard, with exactly the same Nvidia chip. How long will this one last?
I cannot believe what I'm reading, but this just confirmed what happened to vostro 1500 fully loaded, I paid $1000 just 3 months ago. the video card started giving me serious issues, I'm a system engineer so I know what I'm talking about. I spend almost $500 fixing it, because I send it to Europe as a gift to my parents, I replaced the 8400M video card with a 8600M 256mb, thanks god I found it on dell online as a refurbished one and paid almost 200 bucks for it plus the lcd cable, total 300 hundred. After replacing those, my parents laptop now works great, shame on nvidia and shame on dell as well. Will never buy anything with an nvidia component ever.
Unlike Ford, whom I dispise after growing up with POS one, I do like nVidia. They're an aggressive company who have historically turned out very strong products and have always attacked their weaknesses. So it just sucks to see someone you like screw up like this. nVidia seems to have remade the Ford Pinto of the 1970s. I just really hope that this problem isnt fatal and that they can bounce back. Id much prefer they remain an independent corporation than get beaten down and swallowed up by Intel.
I recommended Dell Laptops to two people this year, I am waiting for the class action so I can send them the link to join. It is only a matter of time.
"Why this isn't resulting in the same treatment for Santa Clara is beyond me"

From what you wrote, it could be that Dell didn't respect the thermal conditions of the chips. Who told you this is impossible?

Nvidia, in fact, blamed laptop design, among other reasons, for the problems.
Assuming this defect does indeed affect desktop video cards, I'm curious as to how it will affect those manufacturers offering lifetime warranty for their products. Take Evga, for example:

http://www.evga.com/support/lifetime/default.asp

Who pays for the extended warranty anyway? nVidia or the card manufacturer? If it's the later, I'd really hate to be them (or own any of their stock ;-).

Either way, keep your receipts!
After applying the BIOS update to my laptop, the fan seems to be turned on permanently. Before it was silent most of the time, but not anymore. I'm not really concerned about the battery life, as I use that laptop as a "desktop replacement", but it's pretty annoying, and I'm not happy at all to know that my laptop has a short life expectancy because of this problem. Yeah, it will last more than the warranty (one year), but my old Asus laptop with an Ati 9600 video card has been alive and kicking for 5 years.
...is Dell still selling this part? In fact, it is listed as a "Dell recommends" "upgrade" for the XPS1330

I bought an Asus M50Sv (9500M GS) recently, runs hot and buggy with CoD4 (artifacts and driver crashes). Guess I'm screwed, too.
I should be prepared to sue ATI because my new HP laptop never shuts off the f*cking fan, EVER. This is the scenario even right after I've blown the dust out of the unit. My friend's Asus unit, same thing with an ATI.

I suppose the fact that both of those fans are on all the time are all Nvidia's fault. Either that or Nvidia isn't the only one with a problem.
Just in case anyone doesnt know and would like to monitor their temps , thought it might be worth mentioning Speedfan by Almico.
Handy tool, also does a realtime indept report of your HDD SMART, showing up bad sectors etc.
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php.

Just to keep it fair & balanced, 'Motherboard Monitor' does a similiar job on temps
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=311
Firstly, thank you for bringing this up, as owner of an affected laptop I am very grateful for this information.

I can confirm that the new BIOS (A12) for the Dell M1330 does indeed run the fan most of the time; it is very much noticeable while before it was silent unless running graphics-intensive (e.g. DirectX/OpenGL) problems.

I have not done extensive testing but the 3-cell battery does seem to last very little now - while in the past it would keep me going for ~3h. OK, the battery is older - but still less than 1 year.

The graphics card has failed once already and the mainboard has been replaced, after 1 week of wrangling with Dell support.

The new mainboard has worked fine but now is "acting up" - while I hope they are driver related, the previous problem started the same way until it failed completly. We'll see.

If you read the Dell blog, Dell has attacked HP over many "issues"; while HP has replaced the mainboards with ATI/AMD graphics, Dell has not said anything about what they will do for their customers yet. Empty rhetoric?

Like other customers, I strongly believe Dell should either match HP or issue complete laptop replacements or refunds.

While I do not blame Dell over this, the way they will deal with this issue will show whether they are worth my future custom or not.

I hope Dell will do the right thing and not wait for customers to be forced to take them to court.

Adrian
they might not want to,but its beyond them,oem business and repuation is at stake.info about the problem is spreading like a virus on the net.
3 mths down the road if not dealt with,the problem will reach levels where the consumer will be steering away from a laptop when they see an nvidia sticker on it,because they read somewhere or heard from somebody that nvidia is no good and it will give you trouble,thats 99% of retailers and they neednot know what even is a mobility 8400 m or anyother tech info,how?why? thats just the way it works.
so you can bet that this problem is gonna be dealt with at anycost,its beyond what nvidia wants to do.
I have a 1720 from dell and the bottom side heat up pretty fast (maybe 85F) after 5 minutes of booting only to windows. Is that a symptom? The fan would kick in during word processing which seems weird to me. The computer keeps reporting insufficient power (or insufficient voltage) from the adapter when i boot it (it is plug into a 120v wall jack). I ran some old graphic bench mark on 640x480 resolution and the laptop heat up to 90F+ while sitting on cold marble floor. Any opinions?
I agree that it could possibly be that "Dell didn't respect the thermal conditions of the chips". I have a latitude D830 with a Quadro NVS 135. This is a G86 is it not? I have the latest bios update for this laptop (revision A12), the fan is always quiet and it hasn't cooked my knackers... yet. 

So it could we be that laptop design comes into play here? But then, this problem is not Dell-specific... 

Does anyone have ideas why only a few models are effected?
good news! my month old M1730 with dual 8700s is going to go tits up!

thanks nvidia! I really appreciate spending what equates to an arm and a leg on a really neat looking paperweight. 

I won't be updating my bios- gonna burn this mother up BEFORE the warranty expires.
Deny, deny, deny
Atleast you most if not all of you are in a Dell direct country and can get parts replaced for free!!! I am in Pakistan and its a Dell indirect country.. dealers here are telling me to pay 8% of my retail cost as service charges to get things that my extended warranty.. that I purchased in UK with my hard earned money.. said IS free!!! I always used Dell but now Dell is really starting to blow.. I am seriously considering not going for Dell in the future.. I always used ATI and am regretting going for NVidia.. but my main disappoinment is Dell asking me for money to replace parts which MUST be done free under my warranty..
"Nvidia, in fact, blamed laptop design, among other reasons, for the problems."


All the manufactures with these chips all design bad laptops???

Who are you kidding.

Spoken like a true fanboy and exactly why and where the name "Nvidiot" comes from. Flame on Nvidian's...

ok, so i need more evidence. i want you guys to grab 1 fatal1ty 8600 and put it through major heat cycles and see how it fares... its a cheap gpu now.
Looks like the Quadro NVS line too. So that adds Toshiba Tecra's to the list.

I've got three in house now. Argh. 
You guys are acting like Nvidia actually made these chips...ROFL. Badly manufactured silicon is the problem which NV will not pay for. You're also acting as though they're hiding something when in fact it's most likely they don't even know how big the problem is yet. I mean, they didn't manufacture them, they have no fabs...DUH!

I would think any NV lawyer with half a brain would wait until the evidence is in before bringing lawsuits against the makers of their chips. What if you sue for 100mil and it costs you 500mil in the end? What, you go back to the judge and say you didn't ask for enough the first time? LOL. How can you announce what you do not know yet? It would be different if they actually MADE THE CHIPS. They could say X chips will be bad from our test results then. But in this case they are probably waiting for X manufacturer to tell them what is really up. They already told which chips were affected, and that it was corrected in later silicon (no doubt TOLD to them by X manufacturer).

NVIDIA doesn't have fabs. Pull your heads out already. ATI fanboys (and Nvidia/AMD/Intel for that matter) really crack me up. Nvidia doesn't even know what the hell is going on yet...LOL. When Intel makes a bad chip you can claim this crap. They actually MAKE THEM and know how many will go bad. When NV/ATI (until AMD makes them in their own fabs) has a bad chip incident neither is to blame if it's BAD SILICON. It would be their fault if it was BAD DESIGN, but it's bad manufacturing and NV even said they plan to sue for all the damages. Since Charlie brings up cars, when ford makes a truck with bad tires I think ford sues the tire manufacturer AFTER they find out how many people sue them over the tires. :)

FYI, those TINY fans barely use any electricity so I wouldn't worry about your battery life. Jeez, you can get 120mm's that don't use more than a few watts. Guess you cheap A$$ES should have bought the extended warranty...ROFL. I can drop mine and still get it replaced :) For 4 years... :) With all the Dell discounts I basically got 3 of the 4 years free.
Conspiracy theorists of the world, unite! Obviously if Charlie says that all chips are bad then it must be true!

Charie - maybe choose the screenshots for your proof more carefully? The BIOS update lists Intel as well as Nvidia video BIOS changes, so I guess an argument could be made that "all DELL laptops are bad". Hmm...

I have a Vostro 1500 with 8600M, running fine with everyday use since Nov 2007. I just don't get the hysteria. You don't have to flash the new BIOS and kill your battery life, you know. If the laptop actually fails then send it for warranty repairs.
I make a living maintaining PCs - I probably have to swap out graphics cards in customer's laptops two or three times a week on average.

I swear to god that EVERY ONE of them that has failed due to apparent overheating of the GPU has had the heatsink airflow completely or near-completely blocked by a mass of dust or hair. Nine out of ten of the owners of machines that have met this demise are completely clueless when I recommend buying a $4 can of compressed air and keeping the damned thing clean from then on out to prevent such malfunctions.

I don't think it's Nvidia's problem - and I've been saying this for years - if manufacturers could just pound it into customers heads that they need to keep their machines free of filth and debris; a huge percentage of heat related issues previously blamed on the box builder and/or OEMs would disappear.
Don't sit around and let Dell get away with this!

Call them, e-mail them, write them! 

Tell them this is unacceptable and we demand a true fix, not just some BIOS to make our fans constantly draining our batteries. This is unacceptable and Dell won't do anything about it until we make them.
The answer could be that the laptop cases most manufacturers use, are used for Intel and Nvidia solutions, and might (I say might) not being appropriate.
It's just a thought, but the Inq hasn't proven anything yet.
I feel like lighting up a cigarette after reading this! LOL Finally this company is going to get what is coming to it and to make it better its because of its own dodgy practices which is even better! Hopefully it will tank them, I suspect it will can you imagine when all the OEM'S realise the public fall out from this and collectively get together and sue Nvidia. Can you imagine the apple crowd when this catches on, they are a minority but my god they are vocal! This is going to destroy Nvidia and I could not be happier. All your driver cheats, your dodgy hardware, your over bloated pricing, your minimalistic performance increases have all caught up with you. Judgment Day!

I know whats going to happen though when Nvidia tanks and ATI goes dominant market share this will open the door for Intel to buy Nvidia when its on its knees. Because lets face it kids Larrabee is not going to be much chop and intel knows it! Not for conventional rasterisation anyway.

It does not matter because ATI has better engineers anyway! They always have. They just lost their way for a while there.

So much for that can of whoop ass! Unless you meant opening one on yourself that is! LOL

Some laptops with X700 Mobility had a similar problem.My MSI megabook 635 doesnt but my friends Acer had.the acer had the gfx dead after extensive gaming.Afterwards i read the service manual on the msi.It had a line like this:thermal update open the laptop and apply good thermal paste on gpu.and noone noticed (you need to play for prolonged hours to be affected so its not exactly the same thing but still...).
It's pretty funny that middle of the road 8 series GPUs are having any thermal issues at all. Seriously, these chips should just need passive cooling for normal tasks and maybe a fan for gaming. 

My 6800Go doesn't even need a fan, which I discovered when the cooling fan broke. Sure, it's 20 degrees cooler with a fan, but it's nice to know it's not going to roast itself when the fan fails again.

Guess I'll have to wait for the next generation of cool running high performance GPUs.
Knowledge is useless unless you have the will [power] to do what the knowledge confers … for your true self, and not for your greed or your fear. We either operate on the level of, “Don’t get caught”, or we are dutiful to our Self [in order to evolve within every lifetime to become fully human for through the gateway of the human brain, is Joy & Love]. Insecurity props-up anger/guilt as a defensive shield until it is brought to its knees or it manages to slime out of an exposure. Whatever it may become, it will do no good other than to keep the wheel of ignorance [of Reality] spinnning for the sake of collateral damage. Any person who cannot see that most [semi] human activities lack sanity is lacking sanity himself. ALL causes & effects are mere lessons for us to witness & learn and not so much as for us to participate and be drawn-in. Is there anything new that such behaviour is revealing? Don’t we ALL know what fear/greed gets up to? It’s all for eliciting excitements [or for the sake of “news”] in order to destabilise - to generate activity for those sitting on the sidelines to plunder. 

Innocence/Gravity/Magnetism was created immediately after The Big Bang to maintain the whole “superstructure” of Truth/Love and this is also reflected within the body as antibodies [manufacturered in the sternum & distributed through the skeletal system]. When a person becomes truly human, he becomes an antibody without the human body – a vehicle for Truth/Love/Detachment. Action & reaction produces nothing real other than all that is imaginative and of fantasy. Seeking attention is merely trying to memerise [to possess] or be possessed and polarised activities are ALL about the battles for Attention [which dwells within the liver].
Strange. I updated to A12 on my M1330 with 8400 and I cannot tell any difference in fan usage at all and battery life is pretty much the same. It most certainly does NOT turn on all the time. I wonder if some of you guys are just looking for things that don't really exist in classic mass hysteria fashion.

That said, I certainly hope they have this information available to their customer service so that if the chips do die, we do not have to run through hoops to get it replaced.
Good work Charlie,

A bad chip design escapes into the laptops of manufacturers, who NVidia is sure to be pressing to not disclose the magnitude of the failures. NVidia knew about it. That much can already be proven. HP and Dell know about it. That much is evident. Suggesting the download and install of a bios update to run the fan at high RPM just to prolong the problem enough to pass the warrantee expiration? Surely that can be proven to be illegal, proof of knowledge of the problem, and conspiracy to defraud customers by passing on the problem as beyond warrantee so "Not our fault". I wonder if this problem will affect the GeForece6150 chipset in my Compaq Presario? Wonder how the GeForce 8500GT I have on order will work? So far it's been laptops. I'm going to see what the 8500GT desktop card will do and report back here....
because the customers will end up screwed over, and some employees will end up sacked to match the cost burden.

NVidia surely have some sort of insurance for this sort of thing, right? Can't you get manufacturing insurance, and limited liability? Just a guess.

I hope NV survive. Apart from this blip their stuff has been ok.
Dell Latitude D630 with Nvidia NVS135M goes without any problems prior bios A12 update. When I updated bios to A12 video card crashes begins. It is not possible to revert because only A12 has video bios update - all earlier versions of Dell D630 bios changes only system bios. So if You revert to the older bios, crashes remains. Be carrefully!
Good work man. Glad to see you're still carving 'em up. What cracks me up is that there aren't any negative comments towards you here anymore. Guess the nvidia fanbois have got their tails between their legs now...?

Best wishes,
Cam
Thanks for this article, saw it just in time. I ordered a 1330 with all the trimmings on Saturday, it arrived on Monday, right after I read this article and some of the other ones. I cannot afford to have any problems. Didn't even open the box, Dell was very cooperative about the return. As soon as this mess gets straightened out I will consider another laptop but for the time being my 1210 will do just fine.
Hey guys i called Dell twice complaining about the computer getting hot, and the fan running non stop. I told them that my computer will fail, and about the defect, and how i want it repaired. They are sending me a box to send it to them to repair. Lets see if i get the graphics card replaced.
Note I did *not* say the fan runs all the time at full speed but that it does run (with BIOS A11/12) while in the past it was generally off completely.

You only need to use a monitoring utility or put your fingers at the grill at the back to feel it.

Even during normal usage (email writing, web-browsing, etc. with 0-4% CPU usage) the fan is spinning slowly while with older BIOS versions it was off.

As I said, I do not have hard battery discharge rate graphs before and after the BIOS update. My subjective opinion is that the 3-cell battery does not last as long as before.
It is Dell and HP's responsibility to inform their customers that these systems are defective. Any complaint about nVidia's OEM parts should be directed at the system integrator. This is how business works. If nVidia came out and told the world that the GPUs in Dell and HP laptops were defective, they would likely get sued into the ground by these guys.

By "stonewalling" journalists, nVidia *is* protecting their customers. More specifically, their biggest and most important customers (Dell, HP and whoever else buys GPUs by the thousands).

Once again Charlie, your nVidia hate is misdirected and juvenile. But please don't stop; your temper tantrums are far too entertaining.
Talking about NVidia, my previous desktop video card was a 7900GS. It failed after 6 months, and I got a replacement card which failed again after 13 months. @.@ And now the video card sitting in my PCI-E slot is a HD4850!

Perhaps it's just coincidence?
I purchased an Acer Aspire 5920G which has a 8600M GS chipset.
I am hopefull that it will last a year as I buy a new laptop each year. But what of the resale value after that? Will ebay and co. be flooded with 8400 and 8600 based laptops?
The fear-mongering got to me, so I extended my warranty on my Vostro 1400 with an 8400gs by a year to Dec. 2009.

Hope it's worth it...
(yes, i know I just paid more money for something that shouldn't have been a problem to begin with)
At least they got Nvidia to acknowledge these problems. But what about all the other problems that Nvidia refuses to address?

Like problems with the 790i and constant blue screens and not being able to run memory close to the rated speeds? Problems with video drivers past 169.25 that result in crashing? They still have not completely fixed the fan speed problems on the 9800gtx cards - Auto still runs 4-39% (90+ degrees!) and sometimes manual fan speeds are reset to auto if the fan speed is applied after the card temp hits 60 degrees....

This is a company that goes months without releasing driver updates to fix very serious issues that never should have existed in the first place, because they rush every product out long before it should be suitable even ready for public beta testing and forget about it to get on with the next release.

This is a company, who rather than fix the 680i, opted to release a whole new chipset with a whole lot more problems (and not even offer so much as a discount to 680i owners who they left hung out to dry).

I've had my gripes about ATI in the past, but right now the 4850 or 4870 is a far better bang for the buck than anything Nvidia has ever released, they release driver updates every month and would never have had any of the same problems in the first place.
I too have had my Nvidia 8400 graphics card fail, the same symptoms as other users. Blue screens followed eventually total graphics card failure. Dell support was particularly poor, they made me do a system restore first even though I told them EXACTLY what the problem was.

I then rang again and told them the problem and was told I needed to send my laptop away for a motherboard replacement. So much for on-site warranty coverage.

I am going to have to buy a warranty extension to make sure that when the card fails again (almost 100% sure it will). Does anyone know how much it would cost to pay Dell to replace it, outside of warranty?
I found a bunch of Dell BIOS here:

http://ftp.dell.com/bios/

Does anyone knows if you can downgrade a BIOS? i.e. if my computer (expected delivery date 8/5/2008) comes with the non-stop noisy fan "fix", will I be able to downgrade the BIOS?

Thanks

-z
The Video on my Dell D630 started acting up. After researching the symptoms on the net, I first suspected Vista/Nvidia driver problems (which there seem to be a lot of), and now I roll across this hardware concern as well. Wondeful. I'm currently running in VGA mode with the Nvidia vid card disabled, and the computer is working fine. I'll have to check into the Dell warranty to see whats up with that - assuming it's still covered, then we'll if Dell backs their product. Even so, I might be better off just buying a new motherboard for this laptop with the lower-end Intel Graphics chip. Although I'm not happy about this problem, I'm kind of glad it happened - I've was preparing to buy a second Dell laptop with an Nvidia card, but have put off that decision now - I will definitely avoid the Nvidia card, and may end up avoiding Dell too (that will depend on how well they stand behind their product)
I starting having problems this week with my Dell XPS M1330 which I bought in September of 2007. The screen would freeze and wired lines would appear and eventually the system would shut down. I repeatably trying to restart and running Vista's recovery I noticed a note saying that the graphic card driver failed. I went to Dell's website and downloaded the most recent driver and now my fan keeps blowing on maximum all the time. After researching this issue on the web I noticed that many users have the same problem. This is pretty annoying especially since I paid over $2000 and of course my warranty just expired. My old Dell laptop lasted 8 years and is still running.
Hello
My dell xps gen 2 has a faulty video card = Nvidia 6800 Go. I have seen on the forums that other xps gen 2s are affected too, but my laptop is out of warranty and Dell would not help.
I upgraded the BIOS to A15 and now the fan runs from the moment I turn it on to the moment it shuts off.
This is not a solution to the problem... it just delays it! It is also noisier and the battery runs down quicker.
Dell have extended the warranty on some laptops because of this problem. Google for more info.
My dell precision m70, quadro go1400
has failed... gets random characters on the screen, and cant use drivers.. only safe mode.. lol..
I bet nvidia has a hand behind it...
the only problem is they shoot their own foot..