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Lawsuit Claims Nvidia Execs Concealed Serious Flaw
snydeq writes "A lawsuit filed in a California court on Tuesday alleges Nvidia concealed the existence of a serious defect in its graphics-chip line for at least eight months 'in a series of false and misleading statements made to the investing public.' The lawsuit contends that Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and CFO Marvin Burkett knew as early as November 2007 about a flaw that exists in the packaging used with some of the company's graphics chips that caused them to fail at unusually high rates. Nvidia publicly acknowledged the flaw on July 2, when it announced plans to take a one-time charge of up to $200 million to cover warranty costs related to the problem. That announcement caused Nvidia's stock price to fall by 31 percent to $12.98 and reduced the company's market capitalization by $3 billion, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit seeks class-action status against Nvidia and unspecified damages."
This kind of lawsuit is what's supposed to make "capitalism" work ... corrupt businesses being actually held accountable for shady dealings.
I hope it bankrupts them.
Did you buy a card with a lifetime warranty? Both EVGA and XFX offer lifetime warranties on 8800GTs. Personally, I won't buy RAM or video cards from a company that doesn't offer a lifetime warranty, as there are more than enough manufacturers for both products offering these warranties. My current 8800GT is an EVGA, and it's nice knowing they're on the hook for this flaw if it happens to strike me. The card manufacturer has probably spent millions on Nvidia silicon, so they have clout to extract some compensation from Nvidia, whereas I do not.
These stories keep on referencing the packaging being at fault...
Now I'm no electrical engineer but when you take a working chip and put it in a machine it seems a little odd to blame the packaging it came out of for higher than normal failure rates if it works initially.
Maybe "packaging" refers to the way the actual chips are placed into the material around them? Although it seems like a very odd way of wording it as to me packaging implies something that is discarded.
If someone could explain in non-layman's terms what exactly the problem was I would much appreciate it.
Okay, so I get a $20 coupon. The 8600GT in my MacBook Pro failed this week in a way which is strongly consistent with the other reports.
The laptop is 3 months out of warranty so it's going to cost me around $1200 to get it fixed, when this appears to be a result of a manufacturing defect.
You desktop jockeys might just be able to slot in a new card and write it down to experience, but laptops are affected too. It appears my options are limited to:
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If nVidia is spending $200 million to cover these faulty items under the warranty, then why file a law suit? If your card is out of warranty, then nVidia has no legal obligation to fix it. That's what a warranty means. It might be frusrating, but if they warrant the item for 1 year and it fails in 3 years then I don't see why they are liable.
Of course, I have one of these bad chips in my MacBook Pro, so hopefully it will fail within the 2 and a half years I have left and they will fix it. If not, I'll be crying too - but probably not suing.
In my case, HP didn't do anything except ask for more money than the laptop cost new... Don't buy HP laptops. I definitely won't anymore.
not long ago?
I have to keep my drivers downgraded on my 7600gs or the tv out doesn't work and the dual-view is jacked up.
The newest driver also screws up trying to remote desktop for some reason. :|
Had?
One of the best reasons to use Vista is because the video drivers were moved into user-space, so that when the nVidia drivers crash yet again, Vista can just close and restart them and you won't lose work to a bluescreen.
nv4_disp.dll is the bane of any modern nVidia gamer, as just about any game crash will occur somewhere in its hellish depths.
That's ignoring nForce. If you're thinking of trying to set up a RAID using an nForce chipset, DON'T. You'll lose your data.
I've had two consistent problems with Windows: the nForce ethernet drivers crapping out, and the nVidia video drivers crapping out.
So, yeah, had? Try HAVE.
That sounds suspiciously like the reason I usually buy from XFX, and register promptly, except theirs is a Double Lifetime Warranty
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Just had my 7600gs fan fail after 11 months of use. Unfortunately I did not register with eVGA (new to this computer thing I guess!) so got just the standard 1 year warranty. Nevertheless, since it is in the warranty period they are replacing it. $25 in shipping back to California, and I am hoping it is in my mailbox today or tomorrow. Love the card, though. Makes UT2K4 run quite snappily!
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Yea, New Egg is nice for that. My outlook archive is a nice backup too, plus I typically keep the packing slip and I generally register the item (not allways).
I've been burned a few times by not having documentation to prove a part was under waranty when it failed. Not going to hapopen again!
I'm currently loving BestBuy for their extended waranties as well... In the last 6 years I've exchanged 4 printers, a laptop, a $600 stereo reveiver, a 32" LCD TV, 2 UPS units, and an iPod. All of these items have been replaced with one dramatically better than the original, and all I paid was the cost of a new waranty on the new device, usually a 3-5 year bonus... I've had at least $1700 in repairs done on stuff outside of manufacturer waranty as well. With limited exception, this has all actually been honest component failure. (TV and reciever got cooked by the Cable Company set top box, fed 12 volt AC out of the RCA ports!, ouch). I'm 1 repair away from getting a brand new fridge, 1 away from another free laptop, and the printer is having trouble picking up paper again so I'll be bringing it in for replacement as soon as the current model is no longer in stock (and I can be assured the latest model)...
The laptop will be the big one, it's a high end gaming machine that I got on a big sale for about $1300... Their closest "equivolent or better" machine in stock is a laptop costing over $2600... (only one with 5400RPM drive, dedicated graphics that match an x700, 2GB of RAM with support for 4GB, digital audio, DVI port, and a 64bit capable CPU)
I've paid all of about $800 in waranty costs to bestbuy over the last 7 years. I've gotten at least $4,000 in repairs or replacements back from that. I can't imagine what it will cost them if my house ever get hits by lightning!
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I bought a pen/flash drive from them. All of a sudden, it started acting up and wouldn't stay active (the pen part). Then, a few days later, their pocket clip fell apart causing the pen to fall out of my pocket and become severely scarred and the little plastic lens on the top got lost as did the clip part. Since the whole point of having flash in a pen was so that I could carry it around (and thus it was basically useless without the clip), I tried to get them to honor their warranty. They finally agreed to repair it. Then, I sent it in to them at my expense and the bastards sent it back without repair claiming that it had been "abused". No shit. It fell apart and abused itself on the sidewalk. Normal use is not abuse. I expect a pen that costs $80 to actually hold up under normal everyday use without falling apart. Further, the condition of the pen was made perfectly clear to their authorized representative when they agreed to repair it. They went back on an agreement to repair it, and I seriously considered filing a lawsuit, but my employer gave us all iPod shuffles that serve the same purpose, so it wasn't worth bothering.
Regardless, as a result of this experience, it will be a cold day in hell before I ever purchase ANY other products from PNY. If they were the last manufacturer in the world, I would go into head-to-head competition with them before I would buy any of their products again. Further, even now (almost four years later), when my friends ask me for advice about memory products, I advise them to buy "anything but PNY". The opinions I've given to my friends and coworkers alone have probably cost them many thousands of dollars worth of lost business all because they decided to screw me over an $80 ballpoint pen. I make it a point to get a similar degree of revenge on every company that screws me over. If everyone acted similarly, companies wouldn't get away with such customer abuse. To the folks at PNY, if you're reading this, treating your customers so badly is a sure way to guarantee that eventually you won't have any customers to abuse.
But to get back on topic, this whole NVIDIA thing is made far more disturbing by the number of laptop users who end up having to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on out-of-warranty repairs or even new laptops over it. I think you owe your users more than a "sorry, our bad" on this one. I think you should be held liable for every penny that every one of your customers had to pay because of your faulty designs. I think you should have to pay far more than the actual damages for every customer who bought one after you became aware of the problem because you could have taken action to prevent the harm and deliberately chose not to do so.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That isn't always the case with mechanics thankfully. We have a local repair shop here in town that our vehicles go to unless there is something absolutely preventing it. They have had the vehicle up on a lift and have said "hey, we see these other issues, if you want to have us replace them while we have it your labor costs will be the same since we already have it up, tools out, and its a minimal fuss part." (I can attest to the fact that the parts WERE indeed failing as I have a fair idea what I am doing, but being lazy, not enjoying working on cars, and being on crutches at the time makes it easier to just pay them.)
On one occassion they even drove the few blocks to our house to take a look at it (since it would be going to them if they couldn't fix it on the spot). Turns out the problem was a freak glitch. no charge.
I have run into many many sheisty mechanics over the years, and I have faced the exact same type of behavior in my early days as a PC tech. I had to get out of the PC tech business for exactly the same reason. While all of this is pretty tangent to the original point, just wanted to give you the warm fuzzy that there are indeed some really good mechanics out there.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Actually, it would come from loans. The way to manipulate inflation and unemployment is to change the loan rate. The way that works is that, well, a company judges investing in new stuff against that rate. If you pay 10% interest, then an idea which promises 11% return is worth taking a loan for, one which promises only 9% return is no reason to take a loan to implement. So by varying that you can essentially make sure that only things promising very high returns get done, at one end of it, or anyone with a 0.5% margin idea gets to make a company and hire people, at the other end.
The inflation, if you increase that to reduce unemployment, essentially comes from (A) the former margins, and (B) essentially devaluing your coin.
Basically if banks can take cheap loans, and thus give cheap loans to anyone with even the least profitable idea, you're essentially creating money. This creates jobs, but those people soon get the idea that they can ask for a raise. If enough people do that, and you can't motivate your workers with "be glad you still have a job" talks, then your only choice is to also raise prices.
That's really the mechanism that causes inflation. You _don't_ take that money from either the CEO's pay, or the R&D budget. You just raise prices proportionally. Except everyone does that. Next round of negotiations, they want even more money, prices rise again too. Lather, rinse, repeat,
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Amen, brother.
The problem that I had was that my ethics got in the way. Or, to be more precise, my job got in the way of my ethics. Fortunately, it was far easier to part with my job then my ethics. It meant taking a stand, one that may NOT have been in my best interests, financially speaking, but it was much easier to do when I looked at it another way. I simply asked myself "What example do you want to set for your children?".
Funny thing about having kids. You have to start putting you money where your mouth is.
I also got very tired of being arbitrarily lumped in with all the "bad" mechanics, simply by virtue of being a mechanic.