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Nvidia settles Bumpgate class action lawsuit
GPU DESIGNER Nvidia has reached a settlement in the class action lawsuit that was brought against it by owners of laptops affected by Bumpgate.
The dodgy engineering in a number of the firm's mobile Geforce processors resulted in Nvidia forking out $200 million to replace chips all over the world. Now it has reached a settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by owners of laptops that were brought down by Bumpgate chips. This chould mean more financial pain for the Green Goblin, given that Bumpgate affected just about all of the largest laptop manufacturers including Dell, HP and Apple.
Nvidia and the plaintiffs reached a settlement on 12 August, when the firm said, "Nvidia has denied, and continues to deny, all allegations of wrongdoing or liability whatsoever" and is only agreeing to the settlement "solely because it will eliminate burden, expense, management distraction and uncertainties of further litigation."
What it has agreed to do is pay $13 million for the plaintiffs' legal fees, deposit $2 million into a reimbursement fund in an interest bearing bank account, and undertake a programme of chip replacement remedy, or basically replace any faulty GPUs.
The $2 million fund is available to those who have experienced one or more of the "identified failures".
Although the financial aspect of this settlement is hardly threatening to the survival of Nvidia, its reputation has been severely tarnished and that will cost far more than the $215 million that it has forked out.
That figure doesn't include future bills it can expect to face from OEMs as they continue to replace GPU cards and laptops affected by Bumpgate. Nvidia might continue to get hefty invoices in the post over Bumpgate for a while. µ
Tags: Nvidia
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If you are an HP notebook owner affected by the NVIDIA GPU class action suit, please visit http://fairnvidiasettlement.com to fill out a declaration form.
This form will allow HP class owners to petition the court to force NVIDIA to follow the court-approved settlement term.
Their current replacement proposal, CQ56-115DX or Asus netbook falls far short from the settlement language.
I have one of the HP dv9 laptops and originally stated that they would be replacing it with a computer that was of like kind and price. WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP. They are replacing it with a Compaq Presario CQ50 (15 inch basic model)priced at approx $500. Nothing at all like mine. My computer was a 17 inch with more features and memory and mine cost $1200.
What a crock of crap.
Since the computer started to malfunction, it now has stopped all together.
Unfortunately the settlement is flawed because it doesn't even cover all the affected laptop models.
Mine was an HP dv2000t with the Nvidia 7200 chip and it died with no video. Back when HP was paying for some repairs, the model number RM669AV wasn't on their approved list.
Now it isn't on the model list in the proposed Nvidia settlement either. I will be writing to the court to protest the settlement and you can do the same. But you must write by Nov. 5, 2010. Details at:
www.nvidiasettlement.com
---Larry
What is appalling is lawyers who go after the reseller because they know they are not good enough to sue the REAL culprits-nVidia, HP, Dell, etc. The fact is 98% of retailers had no idea that there were problems with these units. I myself am a very small retailer who has had to repair-at my expense-several defective computers which I only now know the source of the issue. You state yourself that HP kept quiet about this, yet you claim that we resellers are supposed to have known about this.
What a load of crap. Nvidia gets to deny they did anything wrong but is still going to pay out that much money? Sure..
They shouldn't have settled. They should have seen the case through, and had the blame properly placed on Nvidia for screwing their chips up.
What irks me even more is that I hear people swearing off entire laptop brands because they got shafted by these bad chips..
Hello all,
Well the class action finally came to an end with Nvidia denying any wrongdoing and paying £2,000,000 into a reimbursement fund.
This list of affected machines is, in my opinion, wholly inadequate and masks the true scale of this problem.
I run a UK based forum at www.nvidiadefect.com and have done for over a year now. The number of laptops that I see that are affected by this defect is astronomical.
I provide engineers reports on these affected models in order to help the owners receive a refund or replacement laptop.
I know for a fact that the manufacturers list of affected models are wholly inadequate.
I have proof that a whole raft of manufacturers laptops including Asus, Samsung, Sony, HP, Advent, Acer etc are failing in huge numbers due to overheating and the failure of the Nvidia GPU.
We are constantly taking legal action against the retailers of these laptops and have been successful on each and every occasion. Why? well, the retailers are unable to defend what is the indefensible.
That is that they sold laptops that were doomed to fail prematurely.
Take HP for example.
They released a BIOS update for a number of models of laptops and the purpose of the BIOS update was to "Update the fan control algorithm to reduce the likelihood of future system issues"
This basically switched the fans on from the moment the laptop was powered on to the detriment of the battery and increasing the noise being emitted.
What is more galling about this update is that HP allowed the continued sale of the affected laptops.
Customers really should have been told at the time of sale that there was a potential for the laptop to overheat and fail prematurely.
HP kept quite about this to the detriment of their loyal customers.
The whole situation is a shambles with manufacturers and retailers alike denying that there is a real problem and worse, trying to charge owners of inherently defective laptops for the repair.
How wrong is that?
For our part we will continue to help customers receive what is their right in law, which is either a refund (partial or otherwise) or a replacement laptop.
Why not join the growing community at www.nvidiadefect.com
With over 1,900 members I am sure we can help you.
Best wishes
Paul
www.nvidiadefect.com
"Nvidia has denied, and continues to deny, all allegations of wrongdoing or liability whatsoever"
WTF??
That's a reason to reject the settlement right there.
I used to be rabidly in love with Nvidia products ever since the 6000 series. Then I got the last AGP they made, the 7800, and I couldn't WAIT for the 8800 prices to come down. Finally I got an 8800 GTS... with, not just the G90, but the newer G92 chip! Smaller, faster, cooler. Yaaay!
But my excitement, as it always is about everything, was short lived. The 8800 died in a couple of months. I hadn't saved the receipt because, hell, it was nvidia! So I bought another one and didn't keep the receipt for the same reason. Sure enough, it died in a couple of months too. When a THIRD one died, I started thinking something funny's going on, and I read, to my horror, that nvidia G92 GPUS were ALL defective and die in a few months, every single one, that nvidia knew about it, lied about it, and kept selling them anyway.
The last straw was when I read Charlie's shocking horror stories about makes-you-want-to-throw-up marketing dishonesty Nvidia does, like at trade shows.
So I wrote to Nvidia telling them why I'm switching to ATI and that I'd start recommending ATI to all the people who ask my advice. I'm sure they didn't give a %$#@.
I had abandoned ATI years earlier because their drivers are written by a special-ed typing class. Their software was grotesque. But now I had to switch back from one Christmas color to the other again, so I did, and chalked it up to yet another capitalist market failure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure)
-- faye kane
Everyone who posts here who gave Charlie Demerjian all the grief over the course of time on this issue needs to head over to his new home "SemiAccurate" and give him some kudos for being the only journalist who had this issue "dead to rights" from the very beginning.
Some of you more vitriolic posters should really be ashamed right now over the lambasting you gave Charlie.
While its true this made Nvidia bleed, the harsh reality is most of the failing family are now gone. And the parts are now well past a 12 month warranty period and so on.
This is diminishing losses now for Nvidia in most cases, and where they have been dragged kicking and screaming, in general, to OEMs anyway, they are paying up, fixing, replacing.
So, while its been fun, it is drawing down now.
unfortunately if you bought your video card retail you're S.O.L.
the settlement only covers video cards sold as part of a system, not individual card/chip models.
http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/affectedmodels.html