NVIDIA says "significant quantities" of laptop GPUs are defective, stock tumbles
By Nilay Patel 
posted Jul 2nd 2008 10:48PM
posted Jul 2nd 2008 10:48PM
If you're the type to watch the late stock tickers, you might have noticed that NVIDIA's stock just took a pretty big hit, down 24 percent to $13.56 -- that's because the company just informed investors that "significant quantities" of previous-generation graphics chips have been failing at "higher than normal rates," and that it's lowering its Q2 estimates due to pricing pressure. NVIDIA will be taking a $150M to $250M charge against earnings next quarter to cover the cost of repairing and replacing the affected chips, but didn't specifically announce what products were defective, just that they include GPUs and "media and communications processors." Laptop makers have apparently already been given an updated GPU driver which kicks in fans sooner to reduce "thermal stress" on the GPU, and NVIDIA says it's talking to its suppliers about being reimbursed for the faulty parts. That's great and all, but we'd really rather know which chips specifically are failing -- if you're serious about playing in the big leagues, you better come clean, guys.
Chips are fattening
Can't believe no one said this yet but...
Epic Fail
I work for NVIDIA, and I can tell you this. It wasn't my Fnuking fault. If you ask me is was that Assbag Carl over in RD! The SOB show up drunk every damn day. SHIPOOPI!
Are ge force go 7800 gtx afected
I know for a fact this is true because my friend bought a laptop with an 8600M, and I know computers pretty well I build my own and I went through everything I could think of and the GPU was acting extremely weird. It stopped registering as an 8600M and I didn't know what to do. This has to be the problem.
I'm assuming it's also the 8600M GT. I've had some major/minor problems which I believe are caused by overheating.
The 8400M GS in my m1330 has given me nothing but problems...
Just one hour after I heard about this, my Quadro NVS 140M (actually a GeForce 8400M) in my T61 started acting up on the simplest of animations and Flash.
uh oh
I just ordered an M1330...
My M1330 has been fine. Plays TF2, WoW, everything great.
Yup, the same story goes for my 7 month old Dell m1330's Nvidia 8400GS. Rainbow-coloured spectrum of vertical bands, Vista BSOD's, and system crashes come more frequently than successful boot-ups.
I am on my 4th motherboard in my M1330 as 8400M GS failed each time. I am told by the engineer that the T7700 chip creates too much heat next to the GPU and it gets stressed (its on the same heat pipe). I am sure it is just a matter of time until it fails again.
I can barely run fucking TF2 or Portal without them crashing at startup. TF2 I have to switch to Task Manager or something else quickly, otherwise it minimises and maximises so damn fast that I can't even switch out of it.
Portal just doesn't work unless I force it to run in the background by clicking on the taskbar while the game's loading. I'm presuming that's the card itself anyway. I haven't had any epic flails yet, and current drivers have the card running okay, but I'm sure I should be getting higher framerates than this.
i have 8600M GT in my dell vostro 1500. it get so hot that i can't touch the left side of my laptop when i play games. but other than that, it works pretty fine.
My HP Pavilion dv9610us has a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M and it has the same overheating issue. If I leave the laptop alone playing videos, the left side (exhaust) would overheat.
m1330 with 8400 here - i've only played portal a couple times on it and have had no problems.
I'm willing to bet it also has to do with the low yields and sales of the GTX280s.
media centric gpus overheating have alot to do with high end 600$ graphics card. Please post with sense next time. Oh and about the sales of the 280 gtx thier selling just fine which is about the same as the 8800 ultras sold which is decent but slow compared to the other models which nvida knew would happen when they put the huge price tag on it which happens to be lower than the ultras were
@Defpo3t
You have a release of an early financial statement or something? Where the hell could you possible know the rate at which their 280's are selling when they've been out maybe a month.
I HIGHLY doubt this time around given a mid ranged price competitor that is pretty close to the 280 for half the price. A similar product didn't exist with the 8800 series's release or not even soon there after.
I'm marking this as a win for common sense over some random dude spouting BS on the internet again unless you have something to back all that up.
well let's see. The 8800 ultras cost close to and some times over 700$ and they sold well with the enthusiths (gawd I suck at spelling) and due to the profit that they make on each card they do well concerning the 280 gtx market about other nvidia market detials i know about as muchnas they have told the public. I do know that history repeats itself the 6800 and the high end cards that followed sold decently ornas bout as well as they were expected to.
@DefPo3t
I don't really care about the actual content of your post, but for god sakes you need to learn how to write correctly! Your spelling is horrendous and punctuation is worse! The LEAST you could go is use Firefox's inline spell checker!
lol, my nvidia 6600's fan just gave out yesterday and now overheats......hopefully it might be covered?
ouch. not good for NVIDIA.
$13.56? NVDA looks as low at $18.00, where did the 13.56 come from?
I also don't understand the 13.56 number
It's after-hours trading:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=nvda
Their stock fell 24%! Wow... My inner investor is whispering in my ear that tomorrow I should become a part owner of Nvida.
shhh! don't tell anyone
Great information!
exactly what chips are we talking about here
could explain why my dv6000 with the geforce 6150 (which is currently in repair for wireless tanking) runs so freaking hot
The article says previous generation chips.
That would be the 9 series, yours is the 6 series.
So this is unrelated to your situation.
@Tony
Which previous generation, exactly?
Oh yeah, from TFA: "It didn't say specifically which of its products were affected."
I say wait for the laptop manufacturers to start issuing driver updates and check the details of the release. Bit of a PITA process of elimination. However most laptops get the original factory release of the graphics drivers with updates only being released by the manufacturer when there is a problem to be addressed or a SIGNIFICANT benefit to the customer. Unless Nvidia comes clean with the models, this could be only way of finding out.
That would explain why the HP dv6000 I use is flaming hot to touch on the touchpad.
@ jay.viz
True, I guess I just assumed that previous would imply the one directly before the latest.
HP laptops have been returned in droves due to that wireless issue. The problem was eventually pinned on nVidia communication hardware (the North Bridge chip is my guess).
@Tony
The difference between the DV6000 and DV9000 isn't the time of it's release, it's size. They were both released at about the same exact time. The DV6000 is a 15.4" model and the DV9000 is the 17" model.
I agree with KeegdnaB and Jeff regarding the HP DV series. I was told by an HP "case manager" that HP has a sort of "internal recall" regarding the DV2000 (14.1"), DV6000 (15.4"), and DV9000 (17") series laptops that are Nvidia based. I have had to send in 8 of these over the last several months already for repair/replacement (all with the Nvidia 6150 chipset). Most issues were due to overheating and/or the wifi becoming unrecognizable, even after a module replacement. They will even do the repairs out-of-warranty.
So Nilay, there's a definite answer for one of the affected chipsets I think.
@ Josh
I'm pretty sure it was clear I was referring to graphics cards.
I'm on my third HP dv6000 laptop. Had to send the other 2 back, they stopped working dead, the techs noted that each time they needed to replace the motherboard for a burnt out chip.
This particular model has both the nvidia 6150go and the nforce4 MCP (both of which are potentially affected by this notice) I wish they'd just get on about it and tell us which of their products are ticking time bombs.
Sounds like my dv6000's affected too...same problems with overheating, battery, and that AC adapter. The only thing that got me really mad is that a month after I got the laptop back in April, I started having the overheating problem again. (HP has an extended support program specific to these models. 2 yrs after the original warranty.) I called in and the Indian woman on the phone kept saying, "I don't see any extended warranty on your laptop, sir. Did you purchase one?" Sigh...you can probably see where that's going >_> Never really tried after that. Maybe I should try calling again.
@ Predator.Z6
Try having the indian man tell you you warranty is expired when you've had it less than a year.
I had to spend hours on the phone the other day to avoid paying 430 bucks to fix mine.
No crap, my Geforce 6100 Go seems to IDLE at 70 degrees C.
My DV6000 had the exact same problem. HP never admitted anything was wrong so I was stuck with a dead notebook for 6 months. They finally admit it and are offering repairs. Now the video card may be defective. It gets extremely hot when I play games, not even really demanding games like half life 2. So I may be affected.
I have no idea. Just one damned problem after another.
Thanks for an information-free post. What chips? What laptops are affected? ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!
Totally unrelated: how is it that Tampa Bay is kicking azz in the American League? Is this one of the signs the Bible speaks of as signaling the impending apocalypse?
sports on engadget. ! I think that qualifies as one of the seven deadly sins
Read the last sentence of the post, homeboy -- NVIDIA's not saying which chips are affected. We're just as frustrated as you.
Thanks for linking to this Nilay, please keep us informed if a list pops up of computers or cards effected. I got 2 G1S's under a service plan, both GPU's have issues overheating and causing stuttering, and I'm worried they will break after the warranties expire, which would be my luck. As soon as someone admits it is on the list, I'm taking it in for replacement.
I like and use Nvidia products, so doing the right thing with the defective GPU's would score big points with me and keep me as a customer.
The GPUs are failing because of overheating, so If your laptop burns to the touch when you play games, then you are affected, just make sure you get your fans spinning nice n fast.
My 7600 failed, after 15 months, burnt out. I had to wait a month to get it back because so many failed around that time, that there were big supply issues.
So I guess the 7600 is affected.
Fairly simple
Thing is, yeah, Nvidia didn't want to say jack, but isn't it then Engadget's task to beat more information out of them for our benefit? If anybody would have a Ronco(tm) Pocket Taser handy, you'd think it'd be Engadget.
And it's not really "sports," it's more like reporting a bizarre anomaly, like, "hey, there's a giant green meteor with otters on it headed this way, and hey, Tampa Bay doesn't suck this year!"
OH SNAP!
Hopefully the 8400M GS in my M1330 isn't affected
Yeah really, I just ordered the Ubuntu Inspiron 1420N with the 8400m gs, it would suck to have to send it back in..
If you're still under warranty you'll be fine. Nothing ever breaks until right after the warranty runs out.
Go 6150 Pleaaase!
That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm running a Compaq Presario with that Go 6150 and it runs way too hot for its own good. 68 idle, 72 right now and I only have Firefox open, and it gets to the upper 80s or 90s if I'm running Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Believe me... I cleaned my vents with compressed air.
this might be a good time for ATi to try and take back its laptop GPU crown. Mobility 4850 anyone?
If it had been an option on the machine I bought, I would have gone with them over nvidia in a heartbeat regardless of this whole mess.
Dude, the integrated Radeon 3200 owns pretty much any other integrated GPU ever made. ATI is probably going to take over the laptop GPU market because of that, and the 3650s are no slouch either, although a bit slower than the 8600M GT I believe. But if there is a 4650 mobile, you can bet it will rock.
its got to be the 7 series. I had a xps2 with the 7800gtx in it and it died in only 6 months.
Seven of my friends and I bought the M1330 with the GeForce 8400 and the 7 got the motherboard replaced due to a faulty GPU.
From what i read on some forums i am pretty sure that it's a common problem so i guess it's definitely one of the faulty GPU
Any idea where we can get this updated driver?
I'm someone who has had to deal with this. The 8400M/GS chip in my Dell XPS M1330 has recently become defective. Horrible feeling..., but yeah ...damn NVIDIA
Crap, that's two of you with that chip I just ordered..
My laptop has dual 8800's. Crap.
Pretty big epeen you got there. TWIN 8800s.
I pretty sure anything with dual 8800's isn't actually a 'lap' top.
I've had quite some problems with my 8600M GT, wonder if it's on their list?
Problems include BSOD's when playing newer GPU demanding games for 10 - 15 minutes or occasionally using the GPU for DXVA acceleration.
I have the same video card in my laptop (Dual vid cards).
The drivers from Toshiba suck! SLI mode did NOT work, and dual screen mode was buggy.
I did find some hacked updated drivers that seem to have helped SLI mode works (somewhat) and overall grafx preformance is better...
I suspect that even IF this grafx chip is on the list, I doubt that Toshiba will release the drivers. Many laptop makers seem to be lazy when it comes to releasing updated drivers for their embedded devices.
I swear to god, my 8600m GT acts up in my MBP, I'm gonna ...well yeah...get it replaced?
So this is why my MacBook Pro is so hot! Seriously, the other night the SMC controller stopped responding, and it go so hot that I could melt hot glue on the bottom and the top of the laptop.
This was due to some Apple driver problem in Windows for the fan control I believe. The GPU was 180F when I restarted back into Leopard, and the fan was only running 1000RPM. I tried to set it higher with the SMC control program but it failed to respond. I reset the SMC controller by turning off, unplugging, disconnecting battery, holding power button down for 5 sec, hooking everything back up, and turning it on. Upon turning it on, the fans kicked right into high gear and quickly cooled it down to 120F. I do love the laptop overall minus the heat and battery life.
I have a 15 inch MacBook pro and I love it. I get about 4 to 4 and 1/2 hours of battery life in OS X. It can get very hot when taxing the CPU.
If I boot it up under Vista, my battery life goes to about 1 1/2 hours and the thing gets so hot you can fry an egg on it.
It has the 8600 video and I wonder if that's why it gets so hot. I never boot under windows now and hardly ever try and do more with it than basic email and surfing under OS X as I'm afraid I'll melt it. You'd think for $3000.00 they would remedy this. Making the fan come on sooner and faster is just going to eat the battery faster and not fix the core problem.
Dissipating heat so it doesn't melt your components IS the core problem. Making fans come more IS the fix.
If you are worried about battery life, don't let it get hot as heat stress will permenantly degrade li-ion battery capacity
I got a lil notebook cooler for my lappy, (after my 7600 gpu failed the first time) only cost me £10 and keeps it at body temperature. Glows blue as well!
Well, I hope they take care of this /before/ they build and ship my new Ubuntu Inspiron to me, I'd rather have it delayed some than have to mess with sending it back in to Dell.
My inspiron definitely had issues with its nvidia graphics card. It just fried itself after a couple years. Unfortunately my warranty ran out, but I suspected heat damage. The truth finally comes out.
Pretty sure they're referring to the Dell M1330 GPU's, which is failing like clockwork to many people according to this huge thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=204772&page=75
I hope there's a hardware fix soon, because I don't want to wait until my M1330 craps out on me.
We should start a petition to get nvidia to say which cards are affected. I have a feeling a huge number of cards are affected...
dammit nvidia, thanks for making me have to deal with HP's horrible customer service
It is the mobile C51 meaning the Go6150.
HP already issued a recall couple months back.
Really? I just got an HP laptop with a Geforce go 6150, it's one of the HP tx2000z's. I was kicking myself for getting it after they refreshed it with the tx2500z and the Radeon 3200 which is an order of magnitude faster, maybe this will lead to a recall and I can try to swap in for a cheap tx2500?
Wow! The luck on these guys!
Had to replace the mobo on my m1330 due to a GPU failure (8400). The driver began restarting spontaneously, and then the display went dead showing pretty vertical lines. This laptop is just over a year old. I'm glad I bought the extended on-site warranty.
i just noticed that the 8400m gs just got an update via dell drivers as of yesterday which are in countless numbers of laptops including the 1330 and 1530.
wow.. no wonder my GForce chip in my notebook started to cook my food like microwaves /gg
Ahh should've realized to proof read when I'm tired...
Revised:
I HIGHLY doubt this time around given a mid ranged price competitor
that is pretty close to the 280 for half the price that they're
seeing the same sales as with the 8800. Maybe in cards ordered by
retail outlets stores but that counts as inventory and not final
sales.. which has to be lower based simply on logic.
A similar competing product didn't exist with the 8800's release or
anytime soon there after. Then the 7800
ect series was used as midrange and it only got worse for AMD.. from
what I remember that is.. I didn't pay attention during the
7800 series. Basically utter domination by Nvidia
almost all around last time. Now they've got competition on
everything but extremely high end. Add a growing number of unemployed
teenagers this summer - some of whom buy your product - and
cyclical bottoming in all of tech stocks during summer time (due to a
decline in sales and thus profits during Q1 and Q2) and a typical
rise towards the end of the year and then you have yourself a
delicious decline in NVDA's stock.
If you own stock though.. I wouldn't worry too much... it should pop
based on panic selling after hours, I'd average down... but the best you'll probably see is 50-60% from this ($13).. and that's 5 months from now (overall economy sucks). I'm also just going to guess that you do own stock cause I'd only be tempted to call someone an idiot if
they said something that made me fear that I'm going to loose a bunch
more money than I already have. Unless, of course, they were doing it
to someone else who made perfectly valid argument ;-).
I'm marking this as a win for common sense over some random dude
spouting BS and flaming someone else on the internet (what?? on the internet?!?!?!?! :P). Unless
you have something to back yourself up... in that case I completely
apologize for this long ass post.
Why are you giving stock advice on a blog comment?
If the 8600m GT is not included in their slit of defective GPU's, I'll seriously be shocked. The overheating on my 2 Asus G1S's have been so aggravating, ruined what could be a great computer. Just search G1S temp problem, or G1s stuttering and you'll find way too many results. I don't believe for a second it is Asus fault, I've always felt it was a driver or technical issue with the GPU.
I can imagine, the chips over heat, so the software they release kicks in the fans sooner, draining battery power in laptops? This really isn't good for nvidia who has recently been doing a lot of "shit talking" to intel . At least they admit the problem though , instead of just covering it up.
No update yet for my GeForce 4200 Go in my Inspiron 8500, but I've gone through 4 of them in 4 years, and it gets ridiculously hot.
I had no end of problems with that machine - mobo, CPU, video, optical, LCD - all replaced, usually more than once.
-jp
Is this what was inside that "can of whoop ass" they promised to unleash on the competition?
I have an HP laptop w/ GeForce Go 6150...I noticed there was a Windows update last night from Nvidia.....hmmm....
@Tony
The difference between the DV6000 and DV9000 isn't the time of it's release, it's size. They were both released at about the same exact time. The DV6000 is a 15.4" model and the DV9000 is the 17" model.
I agree with KeegdnaB and Jeff regarding the HP DV series. I was told by an HP "case manager" that HP has a sort of "internal recall" regarding the DV2000 (14.1"), DV6000 (15.4"), and DV9000 (17") series laptops that are Nvidia based. I have had to send in 8 of these over the last several months already for repair/replacement (all with the Nvidia 6150 chipset). Most issues were due to overheating and/or the wifi becoming unrecognizable, even after a module replacement. The will even do the repairs out-of-warranty.
So Nilay, there's a definite answer for one of the affected chipsets.
Oh blah. This was in response to a post on the first page. Don't I feel foolish.
(yes I do)
I have a HP dv9610us with GeForce Go 7150M
I have a 7900 GS go that is burning the Microsoft genuine XP and serial sticker under my laptop.... Nvidia's got some explaining to do. I could fry a damn egg on this thing...
Yeah, my sticker is almost completely gone. It first bubbled up a bit, then starting falling to pieces, not much left of the Microsoft sticker now.
I bet the last MacBook Pro's were effected.
Let me be the first to say:
ATI ! ATI ! ATI ! ATI !
err, AMD.
There seems to be an epidemic of GeForce 8600M GTs failing in MacBook Pros. One morning, mine wouldn't wake up, although I could still access it with VNC. When I checked system profiler, it showed an Intel X3100 instead of the 8600M. I had to have the logic board replaced (which was still under warrantee).
NVIDIA's gonna get a bigger stock rock in 6 months when the sales stats of N's gpu's come out and wall street learns that everyone bought 4 series ATI instead.
I've had an NVS 135m die... a 2500m just went.... both started displaying graphical artifacts. When the 2500 went, Dell said they are going to replace the WHOLE laptop. I think Nvidia has a pretty serious problem on their hands. One laptop is a D630, the other a Precision M90.
I have a 7900GS in my crappy dell laptop which already broke twice. I'm now with the third one after waiting 2 months for the dell guy to repair it. Do I have a right for refund after this story?
Incredible but I kept telling those polish dell support guys that it wasn't my fault... bc there were already 200 other people in forums complaining about this. Yet I had to pay 250 swiss francs to get them to repair my lappie.
I had an ASUS Z71V with a 6600 Go and it died, I hope these are recalled so I can get that perfectly good laptop working again.