Dell, HP Lists Reveal Defective NVIDIA Mobile GPUs

From DailyTech: It turns out virtually all the NVIDIA mobile chips are defective. NVIDIA tried to brush off the issue stating that the issue was a "previous-generation" problem. However, it turns out that virtually all 8400M and 8600M chips are defective. These chips make up the bulk of NVIDIA's higher end graphics offerings. While NVIDIA started to roll out the first of its 9 series mobile chips, the 8 series represents the flagship line of its mobile offerings.

The low to middle end chips are also virtually all defective. Among the defective lines are the GeForce Go 7000 and 6000 lines, as well as the Quadro NVS 135M and the Quadro FX 360M.

In order to respond to the problems HP is offering extended warranty support. Information is available here. Dell offers a driver fix which attempts to deal with the heat issues by pumping up fan speed, on top of its standard warranty support.

According to Dell, signs of GPU failure include multiple images, random characters appearing onscreen, lines on the screen, or no video at all. Dell claims the updates will not affect battery life. Its new Vostro line of notebooks is shipping with the fix preinstalled.

While Dell's solution may provide a decent stopgap to carry chips outside the warranty, it seems unlikely to be able save the chips from a shorter than average lifetime. In the end both with Dell and HP the warranty charges will eventually be passed on to NVIDIA.

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