All NVIDIA 8400M / 8600M chips faulty?
By Nilay Patel 
posted July 10th 2008 3:07PM
posted July 10th 2008 3:07PM
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]
My 8600m destroyed my logic board and superdrive in my MBP 3 months after receiving it. After all were replaced, the new one is still overheating, Nvidia needs to fix this or concede to the fact that no one intelligent will ever buy another computer with their chips in them.
Well, fuck. My MacBook Pro is crying inside.
It's a plot from NVIDIA to sterilize us all.
Well If they want me to feel good about the 8600M in my Vostro it's on a board that's replaceable. 512 9800M would satisfy me. Heck I'd chip in for that upgrade. At the very least release drivers that allow the fan to kick on more.
Since it's the heating/cooling cycle that's causing it having the fan kick in more would be good at the start of using the GPU, since it would heat up slower, but then they'd have to also make it shut down quickly after you use the GPU so the cooling goes slower, and it would not fix/delay disaster that much especially if it's true that that ASIC isn't covered by the fan at all.
Crap I just bought an Acer Aspire 5920G with the 8600M GT 4GB DDR2 Penryn T9300, for $450 on Craigslist. Should I sell for a profit and get myself something else, or should I wait and see?
No wonder the new Acer Blue Gemstones switched to ATI cards.
so if i have one of the chipsets on my sony laptop, what recourse do i have for it messing up so often. i bought it at bby
CRAP! I just got my Dell M1530 like a month ago with a 8400 card in it... It ran games incredibly smoothly for a laptop the first month, but I tried playing yesterday, and it was struggling to run on low settings :(
not luck, I just bought MBP with 8600m 2 months ago. We need offcial affected chip list. NV is losing credibility because they disappointed everybody.
ya my HP dv9540us with the m8600GS crashed a couple of times when i was playing games. most likely due to overheat. so i placed bottle caps underneath the rubber stands which raised the whole thing about an inch off the tabletop. it has never crashed since then.
This isn't about crashes die to the GPU overheating.
due*
I think HP sort of knew about these problems cause when i was at work today, they just put out a brand new HP laptop model out for sale and it had an ATI card in it, instead of the usual nvidia that we all expected. I guess its gonna be ATI for now....
here's the laptop if anyone is interested:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4486
Aww crap. This vostro 1400 has it :( Its only a few weeks old though, so fingers crossed.
i was about to buy an 8600 cuz its cheap.. not anymore...
AKA. now is the time to buy NVIDIA stock.
I am afraid NV will go bankrupt ...
Nvidia just needs to grow a pair and man up. The lack of any solid information from them is simply unacceptable.
I wonder how they will fix this, send everybody a new card? then they'd have to set up a new production-line for non-bugged ones first or expand their factories to make thousands of their latest non-bugged ones, or will they open a factory that takes the old cards and replaces the affected parts? If that's even possible,
Or (unlikely) will they just buy everybody a whole new notebook? Or will they give everybody 200 bucks and say 'life sucks, deal with it'
Or perhaps they'll just send everybody a 10 cents heatsink to stick to the card, that would certainly save them a bundle.
I have the same problem!
I have a ASUS laptop F9S with NVDIA 8400M G and Windows Vista Ultimate 64, the programs doesnt work very well (Google Earth don't detect DirectX Mode, cant open XPS Document i think that it can't render). Should I contact ASUS to make change of chipset?
I have the same problem too, when I install the DNS update my zonealarm stops internet access, should I contact nvidia?
(That was sarcasm on how people don't read what this is about and link more and more unrelated stuff to it)
My Acer Aspire notebook overheats. I thought it was due to its processor. I hope my 8600GT card will be replaced :)
7600 GO (mobile) G73, dead within 12 months.
Temp used to hit 80 deg c. Thought it was a mistake, obviously it wasn't.
Nothing caught fire.
Replaced with 8600 M performance is terrible temperature, hits 65.
Class action.
My new Ubuntu Inspiron 1420n with geforce 8400m gs does a hard halt after around 10 minutes of 3d gaming or 1080p video playback.
..and the dell diagnostic partition is somehow corrupt. Dell's techs keep jerking me around because they're scared of anything that's not windows, even though this is a /hardware/ problem.
So I'll have a fun time getting them to replace this. *sigh*
I think I can confirm the problem. I had this problem for a couple of months: the screen flickers and turns off after a while. It gets worse the longer the computer is on. It's a Acer 5920G with the 8600M GT GPU. I have been thinking about sending it in for the warranty, but the problem is sporadic. I guess I'll wait to see what will nVidia do.
If anybody found a problem please let me know.
My nvidia 8600M GT in my Macbook pro just died yesterday. My warranty ended 8 day ago. Way the go nvidia. I wonder if apple is going to do anything about it?
dont worry mate, your not the only one.
Check out my reply.. I got the exact same problem with the same laptop. I use modded inf drivers but the flickering it the same.
It flickers for about 5 seconds.. then the screen turnes off.. and the display driver is recovered. Meanwhile, the game has crashed.
It depends on the game you play. Guitar Hero 3 has never crashed but ProStreet crashed about every 10 (!!) minutes.
Sony tech support told me over IM something like "NVIDIA made these chips specially for Sony" in regards to the 8400m GT in my vaio vgn-fz4000, and he told me not to worry and linked me to the originally shipped drivers. My call is BS. does anyone know what the deal is for sure?
penryn macbook pro with 8600M has video crap-out on wake everytime when running windows on vmfusion. also grey lines, also flicker. this was the highest end MBP. Not to mention the headphone jack-out audio gremlins/artifacts. Not the most impressive build so far needless to say. I am glad I have applecare
Ohhhh NOW I SEE.
I've got an 5920G with a 8600GT and have been using it for gaming for exactly 1 year now. It crashes about every week.
A game just instantly hangs, audio is looped in a very annoying way and it either reboots or reports the nvidia display driver has crashed.
"Display Driver nvlddmkm Stopped Responding and Has Successfully Recovered"
YEA It recovered! That's a good thing... you think. Rivatuner reports the GPU/MEM clock is tuned down to 30% at that point and gaming becomes impossible.
Tried about 15 different (modded inf) drivers but all have the same problem. The fan-vents at the back are lifted up in the air and a USB fan is aimed at them. It lasts a little longer now but I should still watch it.
Step 1: Get In-home Repair Warranty
Step 2: Leave laptop on running GPU intensive applications 24/7
Step 3: ...
Step 4: Get replacement laptop w/ new GPU?
My Vaio FZ180e just kicked it--- one month after warranty.
The GPU area just got hotter and hotter until it started freezing up and stopped booting...
The fan noise was driving me crazy anyway.
Not real confedent that Sony will do anything about it.
Well this explains why my m1330 failed a few weeks ago. My video card was apparently fried, all I was getting was colored vertical lines down the screen whenever I turned it on. Dell came out and replaced my motherboard, really glad I got an extended warranty, so everything is fine now. I do play games quite often so if heat is what causes them to fail then that would explain it. I really see no other reason why my gpu should fail after 6 months.
I have an ASUS G1S-B2 with a 256MB NVidia 8600M GT in it. It has blue screened about once per week since I got it 5 months ago. Graphics intensive games crash about that often too. Two weeks ago, my frame rates dropped by about 30. I just got a laptop cooling pad, and the FPS jumped back to their norm. However, my keyboard stopped working.
I'm just confirming the overheating problem with the 8600M. Cooling pads work.
I'm curious if every chip is affected by this error, since I hava a xps m1330 with the 8400M chip and the first 6 months it worked perfectly with both vista and ubuntu.
But then someday the motherboard was fried (so not the video chip), a technician came to replace it and from then within days the laptop started freezing and showing vertical lines @ startup.
I'm hoping (and all of us ofcourse) that not all of the chips have this miscalculation, otherwise a revised chip or a free warranty upgrade and a technician repair time compensation would be the best options.
I sure don't like to see Nvidia get bankrupt since I like to use ubuntu now and it's so crappy to make ati drivers work :-)
Guess we will w8 and see ;)
cheers
Rather than type it out all over again, I'm copying my post to DELL on their blog site, maybe it will help someone else from going down my long road to nowhere!
--------------------------------
I posted back when this blog was first posted, about prior problems with my Inspiron 9300 and it's Nvidia card (that went bad). At that time I had just purchased another DELL Inspiron 1720, and had problems with it the first time I booted it up.
Since then, I've been following the suggestions and contacted DELL support, have updated the Bios, (no good) used the DELL chat several times (no help).. wrote to TECH support too many times, and was told to do this and that.. and all would be well (NOT). I even went ahead and sent it in to the repair depot, got it back and within 2 days the same problem reared it's ugly head.
So, I wrote again to the Tech support, and explained this to them (along with some minor issues about the condition in which my laptop was returned, scratched and with some goo on it)~ explained to them that the problem wasn't fixed and asked just what they did when they "repaired" it?
Was told the card had been replaced.(?) Tech says, send it back again and I promise it will really be fixed this time...and he needed to "check the series of batch of video cards we have to look in the video card that is present in the system". So, I asked him if this was the case, WHY wouldn't they have checked this PRIOR to installing it? The reply?
I would like to inform you that there is no such issues going on with any batch of video cards. It is just a rare chance that you have got the issue again in the system.
I am BEYOND frustrated, and so I checked back here to see if there was any NEW news on the subject, and find nothing really new, and MY system isn't even included in the list of ones that will at least get an extended warranty (so I can spend the next 2 years sending it back in every two weeks!).
I've taken photo's of the many different times since August that the card has tweeked and garbled my graphics or caused a spontaneous shutdown.
NOT a happy DELL customer!
D.Hughes
ps here's a link to someone who feels as I do and has the same problems:
http://techinhiding.com/shane/2008/09/dell-nvidia-gpu-issues/