Nvidia Laptop GPU’s failing in the field could affect Dell Customers
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Nvidia have announced that some of their Laptop video cards are failing at higher than normal rates.
From their press release:-
“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.”
However they haven’t disclosed which are the affected products/models.
That isn’t good enough. We now know there is suspect Nvidia products on the market but unwitting customers are likely to be buying affected laptops as I write.
The bad news is this directly affects OEM’s like Dell who for example offer Nvidia video cards in their:-
XPS, Latitude, Precision and Vostro product lines.
Until we know which Nvidia products are affected how confident can consumers be!
Tech Tip: If this issue is a concern consider the Dell Studio laptops as these come with ATI based video cards.
Tech Tip: I always recommend 3 years on-site warranty, as this would cover you for this type of issue.
It is believed Nvidia have told OEM’s to issue software based updates that force the hardware cooling and fans to kick in earlier to combat these issues.
So a quick look a support.dell.com reveals a July 1st 2008 update to their XPS M1330 running Nvidia GeForce 8400M series cards.
This is significant as Dell are notorious for never updating their 3rd party video drivers.
Make of that what you will. This of course could be completely unrelated.
One way to find out would be for the companies selling the technology to tell us.
July 4th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Here at ndc we refurbish hundreds of Dell laptops every week. Previously we used to refurbish other brands but to be honest the problems we are seeing with the Dell laptops are the same as we have seem with other brands previously. GPU problems have always existed as the chips tend to run quite hot, the issue isnt so much to do with the nVidia chip itself but the solder balls attached to the BGA IC. As the chip gets hotter so do the solder balls, this coupled with the pressure of the heatsink above the IC leads to problems with the solder balls. The issue becomes more prominent when the laptop experiences hot/cold temperature changes. Numerous times we have had a laptop running fine for days, switched it off overnight only to find the following morning the fault has re-occurred.
The reason the problem isnt as apparent on the ATI based laptops (although it still exists) is the chips are not as high performance and do not run as hot as the nVidia chips. Take for example the older Inspiron 9400, the ATI X1400 had a lower failure rate than the nVidia 7900GS alternative, but the performance of the ATI is a fraction of the nVidia counterpart in 3D graphics test.
Other issues like the air vents being blocked dont help either. A lot of people tend to use the laptops in bed whereby the duvet smothers the venting, or against a wall where hot ait just builds up.
Generally speaking if the laptop is treated carefully the issues don’t arise often. Rarely have we seen the actual nVidia or ATI IC go faulty, usually it is just the solder balls or the solder balls attached to the associated onboard memory IC’s. It is just a a generic problem to all BGA type IC’s, and obviously the hotter they run, the more the chance of the problem occurring.
July 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Thanks for that useful information Hamid.
Colin