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Nvidia 55nm Parts Are Bad Too
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."
At risk or not?
Also, this sounds like a class-action waiting to happen.
If you're a betting man, now's a good time to pick up on Nvidia stock.
The question is, do you feel lucky, punk?
It's been a long time.
I don't get people who show any sort of devotion to a GPU manufacturer. I just don't. The author of this article is one of them. That doesn't mean it's not true, but he's written a number of articles that later proved to be completely false in the past, for instance saying that the 8800 series would doom nV because of low performance and high power usage compared to the 1900 or 2900, whatever ATI was releasing at about the same time. I'd suggest you not take any article written by Charlie seriously until it's been confirmed (not just repeated, as often happens) elsewhere.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Okay, i hear about supposedly deffective nvidia GPUs all the time now, but why are we not seeing forums crowded with people with these failed graphics cards? i believe this issue is being overblown substantionally out of it's actual proportions.
Based on personal experience with the 8800 GT boards, I think this problem is vastly overstated... Running 4 of them in my house, and three friends also running them in SLI config, and no failures. That's with the boards overclocked by a bit.
Additionally, failure rates based on NewEgg reviews seem very low (and we all know people love to post a nasty review if they get a bad one).
The cards do run nasty hot, at least until you set the fan to turn on at something under 180F.... who the hell came up with that turn-on temp?
Years ago (like 5 years or something) he got some official info from NV and then turned around and leaked it. In response NV stopped having any official contact with the Inq, Charlie specifically. Charlie took this personally or something and has been on a vendetta against NV ever since.
No, you are just most likely American. The problem for you guys is as a customer you have next to no rights, very limited warranties removes the need to make proper products.
In EU however, most places now require 2 year warranty, that means all the good hardware is being shipped here because they don't want to be stuck with a customers problem 1,5 years down the road.
I wonder if we'll ever see graphics card makers use socket GPU's (or maybe it's been done before).
Could be a useful thing if they start coming out with multi-GPU cards... if you can't afford a dual-GPU then add it in later.
I don't understand why a full recall would be needed. Most cards in desktops are completely stationary, which drastically reduces the likelihood of failure due to interconnect stress, and many are not even thermal cycled often (e.g., computer always on, no stressful games), which is the other big source of physical stress on the interconnects. If the failure rates are in the teens, the reasonable solution is to extend the warranty to cover all instances of interconnect failure e.g. 5 years from sale, which is a lot cheaper than a recall.
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nVidia needs to take a page from Intel's FDIV days (ca. 1993) and just do a no-questions-asked recall and replace.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I did. Wow, reading /. you learn something new about yourself every day. Can you tell me anything else about me I didn't know?
-Charlie