Shipping dodgy chips cost Nvidia another $119.1 million
GRAPHICS CHIPMAKER Nvidia has admitted that it cost $119.1 million over the last four months to fix a faulty die and weak packaging material which was used in its graphics chips.
It is the second time that Nvidia's has had to spend money on this particular problem. Last year it recorded a $196 million charge to cover warranty and product replacement costs.
The trouble kicked off last July when it was reported that some Nvidia graphics chips were overheating. Nvidia said it was all down to weak packaging materials then. Later the INQ discovered that there was a problem with the soldering on the chips, although Graphzilla denied it.
The chips had been used by Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple. They had to change BIOS settings to run laptop fans continuously and replace PCs that failed due to the faulty chips. The costs of those programmes were shared between Nvidia and the manufacturers.
Nvidia said that the costs were higher than originally anticipated, and would not estimate whether the company would incur further charges related to the flaws.
A company spokesman said that the costs were "a small distraction" and haven't impacted Nvidia's ability to launch new products.
The company recorded a net loss of $105.3 million, compared to a net loss of $120.9 million reported in the second quarter of last year. If it had not had the charges it would have made a slight profit.
Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of Nvidia, told Network World that Nvidia's business was recovering. Product demand was improving, and its strategic investments were leading to new growth.
He added that new products such as Tesla, a graphics processing unit for high-performance computing, and low-power Tegra chips for mobile devices should start contributing to the company soon and the outfit should be rolling in dosh. µ
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A welcome gift to AMD.
ATI for me , Ati for you , trala la la trala la la... ]:)
I would think this latest admission of the impact of dodgy chips by Nvidia would be a source of concern to most Nvidia investors. (If there are still any out there) After all, they have been saying all along that it wasn't their product that was at fault. The SEC needs to step up and investigate the company for making false and misleading statements. (The exact same shenanigans that Bank of America was recently fined $33 million dollars for.) Also, what has all this lying done to the goodwill of the company? I know I would never purchase another Nvidia (or HP) product ever again after losing out major big time with an HP laptop that contained a fried Nvidia chip the company refused to fix. Like the previous comment: ATI for you, ATI for me!
Dodgy chips? What dodgy chips? We have no dodgy chips. Who said we have dodgy chips? Must be some mustake cause we gotz no dodgy chips except the ones that overheat.
Based on Nvidia's arrogance for many years, it would seem like what goes around comes around.
Charlie will rightly be grinning smugly about now
I don't think we want nvidia to go out of business. Without competition progress will slow down, r&d budgets will shrink, and the graphics card era of the last 10-15 years will be at an end. Just look at how long it's taken to get core i5/i3 on the desktop or an affordable replacement to x58? Intel has no motivation whatsoever because amd isn't competitive. If they were, i5 would have been out a year ago. I don't like nvidia either but we definately want them to still be around.
Kinda like apple, they lie, overcharge, treat their vendors and customers like total crap, think we're idiots... but they happen to make the best looking pc's and phones.... and wish as we might that any other company could get their act together and make nice looking gear with a sweet interface, it seems to be a pipe dream. For whatever reason....
So apple needs to stay too.
terrible isn't it...
Why do I get so much pleasure watching Nvidia squirm? LOL
Because you're an AMD Fanboi. Personally I would be worried if Nvidia went under. AMD/ATI wouldn't have any real competition. Larabee? Gimme a f*cking break. The last Intel graphic card worth a damn was the i740 and they bought that product / team. They then bastardized it into Intel "Extreme" graphics that are more 3D Decelerators than Accelerators.
Yeah, that'll kill any competitive drive for AMD/ATI.
:(
I'm expecting Q3 isn't going to be all that delightful either. I've just had 2 8800M GTX cards replaced in my Dell M1730 in the last month and a half. Judging by the other people I've been speaking too and the forums I'm reading, it doesn't show signs of slowing just yet. Especially considering they replace the parts with refurbishing units, not new ones. Clever.
I think the idea is to keep them being replaced for long enough until your warranty is up. Then you can go and f**k yourself.
the INQ has overlooked 1 massive thing in the whole 14 months it has covered this, I still haven't received information on models that are affected, sure you have said G84 chips are stuffed, but what it the corresponding models and retail part names that we the consumer see. also what serial numbers or part nos so we can check?
I called nvidia and they said if the card hasn't failed then it doesn't matter and they will only fix it if it fails, personally I want a new product if it is poorly made so please provide the full retail names and numbers please INQ
stewart:
all of 'em. good god man; stop pleading, do some reading, and work it out yourself.
What's scary about this is, apart from tech-heads (And everyone reading this probably qualifies) nobody seems to know about this.
I'm the guy most of my friends go to for info when buying a pc; none of them have ever heard of this issue. I'm pretty sure that most of you think this is "old news" (Which it is) and "everybody knows" but I assure you that the mainstream does NOT know and Nvidia has invidiously been keeping it this way.
I always advise my friends:
1. Don't buy anything with integrated graphics
2. Don't buy anything with Nvidia inside
3. Don't buy a machine with Vista, especially not a laptop.
4. Buy something with ATI inside.
I always advise my friends:
1. Don't buy anything with integrated graphics
2. Don't buy anything with Nvidia inside
3. Don't buy a machine with Vista, especially not a laptop.
4. Buy something with ATI inside.
---
1) So grandmaw / maw / paw / grandpaw / non-game need anything more than crappy (in our mind) whatever graphics? Gimme a break. Most people I've met that buy PC's consider Pogo to be "PC gaming."
2) That's as dumb as saying "don't buy a Ford / Chevy / et al." and it's the surest sign of fanboi infection. All companies have bad product runs. Don't get me started on the early ATI X series that ran like power sucking, second rate, space heaters compared to Nvidia cards at the time. I joked that those cards were ATI teaming up with Intel in the Pentium Prescot cores to heat people's homes.
3) I guess you're gonna tell'em to buy XP when "7" comes out. After all Windoze "7" is simply Vista SP2 with a couple of UI changes. /snicker
4) Depends, right now, not so bad. Six months from now, we'll see. Then we'll see 6 months after, and 6 months after that, ad nauseam. Only a fanboi idiot assumes his preferred company will maintain top dog status.