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Nvidia 55nm Parts Are Bad Too

Posted by kdawson on from the or-so-they-say dept.

JagsLive sends in a story (in somewhat inflammatory prose) from The Inquirer, which links to many others; they have been following developments in the alleged NVidia quality "fiasco" for some time. "Hot on the heels of its denials that anything is wrong with the G92 and G94s comes another PCN [Product Change Notification] that shows the G92s and G92b are being changed for no reason. Yup, the problems that are plaguing G84 and G86 are the same that affect seemingly all 65nm and now 55nm NVidia parts ... It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm NVidia part appears to be defective ... We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens percent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs ... To make matters worse, NVidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting ... Until NVidia comes fully clean on this fiasco, lists all the defective parts, and orders boxes clearly marked, you can't say anything other than just avoid them. Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen."

3 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. Charlie Demerjian by Qhartb · · Score: 5, Informative

    I stopped reading when I got to "By Charlie Demerjian."

    Seriously, this guy is to NVIDIA as Jack Thompson is to video games. It's just not as common knowledge that you shouldn't take him seriously.

  2. Re:Still Not Buying It by Curien · · Score: 5, Informative

    They say failure rates are "in the teens percent". Figure 20%, just for kicks. That means your chances of either card failing is 1 - (1 - .2)(1 - .2) = 36%.

    For some reason that I don't understand, the vast majority of people have innate misconceptions of the rules of probability.

    --
    It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
  3. Re:Fair and Balanced? by AcidPenguin9873 · · Score: 5, Informative
    The person who submitted this story to Slashdot left out an important link on that text from the original Inquirer article (linked again here for your convenience). In the original story, that sentence reads:

    Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen.

    At that link, you'll find The Inquirer's (however flimsy and speculative) financial analysis of a full-scale Nvidia recall of the bad parts.

    The Inquirer doesn't and has never claimed to be a fair and balanced news source, so they are free to put these sorts of quips on their stories. People there are pretty knowledgeable, and appear to have connections and sources in the industry, which is why people keep reading The Inquirer and don't really complain about stuff like that.