All NVIDIA 8400M / 8600M chips faulty?

NVIDIA's stock took a pretty big hit last week when it announced that "significant quantities" of "previous-generation" GPUs and mobile and communications processors were defective and that it would take a $250M charge against earnings to repair and replace the affected chips, but the company didn't say which chips specifically were faulty, nor how many. That might be because the problem is much worse than it even sounds -- according to a report in The Inquirer, every single G84 and G86 GPU in the 8400M and 8600M series of cards is affected. Apparently both chips share an ASIC, and the core design suffers from the same heat-related issues. That certainly implicates a "significant quantity" of chips, all right, but this is just a rumor for now -- one that's probably best handled by NVIDIA stepping up and letting its customers know exactly how big the problem is.

[Thanks, Rich]

[Uprising @ Jul 10th 2008 3:12PM]

Boooo.... My M1330 is crying :(

[waiownsyou @ Jul 10th 2008 3:14PM]

Screw your Dell. My $3000 MacBook Pro is like, "WTF NUBZ?"

[Totalfixation @ Jul 10th 2008 3:23PM]

I also have a Dell XPS M1330, Nothing seems to be wrong for the last few months. Would there be a problem in the long run?

[nerdtalker @ Jul 10th 2008 3:32PM]

@waiownsyou

You do know that your MacBook likely has an affected chip as well, and... Unlike the Dell's discrete graphics, which are modular most of the time, apple will need to replace the entire motherboard to effectively change which GPU you have.

I think all of our affected comps are crying, respectively. I'm with ya.

[Jevanzz @ Jul 10th 2008 3:50PM]

And my M1330 has just started having graphical issues... time to call Dell methinks :'(

[Jack Chance @ Jul 10th 2008 4:42PM]

My MBP has a radeon chip.
so i'm *pretty* sure it isn't affected.

I used to be a huge ATI fan (canadian patriotism partially)
but the GPU war has become so ridiculous....

[Ellianth @ Jul 10th 2008 7:10PM]

A couple of my other m1330's would overheat and shutdown all the time. This one has been behaving though. But i've been scared to run anything on really high settings.

[dw2surf @ Jul 10th 2008 9:59PM]

same here

[retro77 @ Jul 11th 2008 9:26AM]

I have an XPS1530 and the video goes out all the time while I am gaming. I have a laptop cooler and it still goes out.

[ddub @ Jul 10th 2008 3:11PM]

I don't think we should be getting our tech news sources from The National Inquirer.

[majortom1981 @ Jul 10th 2008 3:18PM]

Did you even visit the link? Its not nthe National inquirer. Has the same name but its a tech news reporting site.

[ddub @ Jul 10th 2008 3:23PM]

I guess you didn't get a good look at my comment as it flew right over your head.

PS - Yes I did read the link as well.

[nerdtalker @ Jul 10th 2008 3:27PM]

The inquirer has been carrying this story for a long time. My understanding is that the GPU and substrate bond (I assume they're using some sort of epoxy, or some sort of underflowed bonding material) was slightly off-spec. That means that it doesn't share the same coefficient of thermal expansion as the substrate, and the GPU.

Everyone knows that Heat-Cold-Heat stress shocking causes extreme wear on that bond, and it's apparently just a matter of time before the affected parts fail. It's a problem I work with every single day in the CCD fab I'm part of.a There was speculation for a while that Nvidia knew about this since the A1 and A2 revisions of the 8600 GPUs had different core voltages, which was rather curious.

On an unrelated note, my big question is whether the Geforce 8700 M GT is also affected, as I have two of those in my XPS M1730. Those share the same ASIC as the 8400 and 8600, so that means they're bound to fail as well. I wonder if this means I can talk Dell into giving me dual 8800s...

[OneLove @ Jul 10th 2008 3:36PM]

Everyone who bought the 8400M and 8600M series will recieve a new 8800 gt as a replacement.

[arnuple @ Jul 10th 2008 3:38PM]

The problem with Nvidia is their boastfulness with Intel by telling them that their processors are dead because of their GPU's. It seems that everything are backfiring to them.

[BIlly G @ Jul 10th 2008 8:24PM]

Yeah, my Dell has a QuadroFX 1600m, which is basically an 8700M... so I'm wondering about this too. Like you, nerdtalker, I'm thinkin free upgrade (Quadro 3600m) :D

[junk @ Jul 10th 2008 8:08PM]

Yikes!!!!! Really bad timing with ATI coming up on their heels!

[dubbbya @ Jul 10th 2008 3:14PM]

HAHAHA all you nVidia owners are getting what you deserve for hating on ATI.

[Dan @ Jul 10th 2008 3:19PM]

Still doesnt change the fact that your a loser but ok.....

[dubbbya @ Jul 10th 2008 3:22PM]

That never was a fact, in-fact.

[Shinigami @ Jul 10th 2008 3:22PM]

Who said we hate ATI?

[DESTOS @ Jul 10th 2008 3:45PM]

Hating on ATI? Hell, I'm praising ATI for making nVidia's chips cheaper!

[jordn @ Jul 10th 2008 4:29PM]

on a related note, ATI stocks are up! lol

[initialxy @ Jul 10th 2008 6:12PM]

we love ATI for being a good competitor and keep the cost down. we can't be nvidia owners if we can't afford their sky rocketing price right?

[TavisJohn @ Jul 10th 2008 7:31PM]

Screw you! There was not any ATI based gaming laptops out there when I purchased my Toshiba SLI1 in Jan!

And SHIT, I have an 8600M chipset!

[initialxy @ Jul 10th 2008 3:14PM]

crap! i have 8600M GT. i think those ones are the most popular chips for current gen mid-end laptops.

[Shinigami @ Jul 10th 2008 3:17PM]

They are! Relatively inexpensive and powerful enough to play games.
Don't know if they are most popular, but popular indeed.

[Andrew Tranchina @ Jul 10th 2008 3:15PM]

I have a Dell M1530 with an 8600M and they have yet to release new drivers to me (even if they are a band-aid over a gunshot).

[lolento @ Jul 10th 2008 3:20PM]

Inquirer's report is incorrect. The failures are due to the C51 chipset. The mobile version of this chipset overheats and is not protected by the system (CPU) fan. Specifically, the PCIe interconnect portion of the die overheats. So anything connected to the PCIe bus in notebooks are affected.

[Dan @ Jul 10th 2008 3:15PM]

My 1330 has the 8400M chip on it and does get very hot when playing games after awhile. What scares me is that the fan takes tooo long to turn on... NVIDIA has yet to fix this or Dell..

Personally I have to look for a way to have it done manually instead of waiting for them.

[dubbbya @ Jul 10th 2008 3:25PM]

You're right, I am a loser, my tablet has a nVidia gpu.

[Ray-- @ Jul 10th 2008 3:42PM]

Download RivaTuner... it will do the trick and do it very well.

[Dan @ Jul 10th 2008 3:48PM]

@Ray

I havent used RivaTuner since the 6800 Ultra. Thanks imma check it out again and give it a try.

[AlekZander @ Jul 10th 2008 3:15PM]

FAIL

[Shinigami @ Jul 10th 2008 3:16PM]

Guys I need more info on that. Like - will there be any refunds? Or replacements? Because BOTH my laptops (they're the same, for me and my sister) are overheating like hell in the video card area (ok I don't know if the video card is there but my best bet it is, it has a cooler and its the hottest part of the laptop, going insanely hot during gaming, and its the part where there was a video card in a laptop upgrade video on internet). And guess what? Both use 8600M GT 512mb graphics card. Acer 5920G laptop.

Any refunds/replacements? Any info?
Thanks.

[Mike @ Jul 10th 2008 8:02PM]

Try elevating your laptop at least an inch off the table (figure out how). You should notice a difference.

[Uprising @ Jul 10th 2008 3:16PM]

Mine was up at the top :( How did this happen

[Shinigami @ Jul 10th 2008 11:25PM]

Its just not your day...

[jonathan @ Jul 10th 2008 3:17PM]

I will be the first to say that I saw this coming from a mile away. All the OEM's can deny this whole thing as much as they want, but the fact is, ALL 84/8600M's are bad. Just take a look at Dell's forums, posts get deleted every day now with people that have bad chips, same goes with HP and every SINGLE OEM out there that is using these chips. Doesnt matter who they are, and this INCLUDES Apple.

nVidia is TRYING to cover this up the best they can, and say its not a big deal, but let me tell you...this is HUGE deal and is going to have a HUGE impact on everyone in customers.

I dont care of you a re fanboy of ATI or NVIDIA this something nVidia KNEW about, and kept shipping the cards and told OEM's to turn the fans on higher, come on...nVidia should be sued off their a** for this whole thing.

Good luck if you have a laptop with this card.

[Salman Anjum @ Jul 10th 2008 3:18PM]

I dont know if this is true or not, having all your graphic cards faulty is pretty big but i have a sony fz laptop with a nvidia 8400m gt graphics cad and it had to go back to sony who had to change the chip since the screen kept displaying random pixels, turning it into a fireworks display!

[Noah @ Jul 10th 2008 3:17PM]

That's annoying, although it would explain why my MacBook Pro (Penryn Multi-Touch) runs extremely hot sometimes, without provocation, and why the GPU is always very warm, in fact warmer than the entire system by a margin of 10-20 degrees. Oh well.

[Nozomi @ Jul 10th 2008 3:28PM]

Yeah, it's the same with my Santa Rosa MBP as well. My GPU is idling at 65C while the rest of my system is idling at temperatures between 35-50C. If my computer is going to inevitably break due to a faulty GPU, I want compensation for it.

[o29 @ Jul 10th 2008 6:35PM]

Your GPU should be putting out higher temperatures than your HDD or CPU, so yours may be fine (for now). It's not uncommon for a GPU to get above 100°C under load.

[iofthestorm @ Jul 11th 2008 1:20AM]

GPUs are always hotter than the rest of the system, even when idle. That's not very odd.

[Moby Disk @ Aug 1st 2008 12:27PM]

My MBP overheats all the time but only when playing 3D games. The fans kick-in full force, but I still have to prop it up so it has a few inches of clearance or it will overheat. A friend of mine has one 3 months older than mine that uses an ATI card, and he has no problems.

I also think it is getting worse over time.

[ddub @ Jul 10th 2008 3:17PM]

I'm glad I got my lame comment in first to make this guy look like even more of a dufus.

[Night141 @ Jul 10th 2008 3:19PM]

So my Dell Inspiron 1520 has a 8600M, and when I played Counter Strike: Source for a long period of time (45 minutes and up) I would get a hang in the system for about 30 seconds and would be thrown to the desktop where it would say the graphics card's driver "crashed" or some related message. Also the GPU was be extremely hot at this point as well, guess it's time to call dell.

[Robert @ Jul 10th 2008 3:23PM]

yeah, i have the same laptop with the same problem. I don't think Dell will do anything though, not until nvidia officially releases the list of chips affected at least.

[Archdoom @ Jul 11th 2008 6:37AM]

I've got an Inspiron 1520 too, with an 8600M.
So far haven't had any problems, but that is likely due to the fact I don't have any games that would push the graphics card at all.
Was planning to get a few though, so now I'm worried. More information and such from Nvidia and such would be nice.

[Robert @ Jul 10th 2008 3:19PM]

Dam it, i have an 8600M :( They better give us compensation for these faulty chips.