NVIDIA G92 and G94 GPUs failing too?
By Donald Melanson 
posted August 12th 2008 1:33PM
posted August 12th 2008 1:33PM
As if the whole defective NVIDIA GPU situation couldn't get any more confusing, The Inquirer is now reporting that the previous batch of bad GPUs may be far from the end of NVIDIA's problems. Apparently, four unspecified board partners are now saying that they're seeing G92 and G94 chips going bad at "high rates" as well, and in both desktop and laptop cards no less. That includes 8800GT, 8800GTS, 8800GS graphics cards, "several mobile flavors" of the 8800, "most" of the 9800 suffixes, and a few 9600 variants, all of which are based on the G92. As for the G94, it seems the only card affected is the 9600GT. Of course, none of this is nearly as set in stone as the previous lot of problems, but we have a sneaking suspicion this won't be last we hear about it.
I cant help but to be reminded of the Xbox 360.
It has a failure rate of 30+ % and yet Microsoft didn't recall it, they simply decided to adjust their warranty for it.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the failure rate for the GTX 280s is also in that range, and while forums are not completely representative of the whole, I still find online polls such as the ones on the various sites ("has your GTX 280 failed") to be fairly enlightening at least.
By the same token, I wouldn't expect NV to issue a recall either, especially when their entire reputation is built on the basis of them being the preeminent *High-End* GPU manufacturer in the world.
I too would dismiss such claims as anecdotal evidence.
I'm not so sure about this one. The 8800gt has been around for a little while. And is one of the most common gaming graphics cards at the moment. Unless its only like certain batches of defective gpu's, I don't think that I believe it.
My 8800gt went bad within a month. It had a lifetime warranty, so I got another one without much hassle, but this one is starting to act flaky too. Graphical corruption and momentary freezes in several games, and this is with the fan turned way up to ensure it isn't overheating.
My 8800gt bit the dust after 6 months.. My brother has the same card is his is about to break, I think. I'm actually happy about this. Not that I'm affected by this, of course, but that this will give ATi a chance to catch up.
This isn't true, I know dozens of people with 8800GT(S,X) and only one was defective, I had a 8800gt for 2 months and it ran just perfect. (If this is true, it doesn't list the GTX 200 so I think I should be safe either way)
Rumor: An unnamed source alleges that 90% of both past generation and current generation 'news' from The Inquirer is bullshit
Far be it for me, who is not a journalist, to point out when Engadget should really be thinking more about what they post, but the Inquirer?
Seriously, until now I've gone to Engadget for my tech news, and now you're telling me that Engadget is getting their tech news from just anybody? I could re-post that kind of crap for free.
For shame.
Well Guess What one of my 8800 GTS just crapped out on me. How convenient!
Using Nvidia 8800GTS 640mb's on my quad core main comp and they're working great.
My Nvidia in my Dell laptop is working great too, just a couple of driver problems for Vista (dell 'tards) all sorted with 3rd party ones.
FYI.... any info comming from the Inquirer should be taken with a grain of salt...not to say It cannot be true it just should not be taken as the truth without other backup sources...Charlie is not exactly friends with nvidia...when he first posted a driver problem about a year ago they stopped talking to them.... ever since he has seemingly showed why they shouldn't have done that... make a journalist mad and well the rest is history.
That said what was said about the G84 and G86 chips has been coming true. that is all Mobile 8400 and 8600 series... hp and dell have confirmed this by listing the models of defective laptops which include those chips as well as go 6 series and 7 series.
Charlie thinks that since the laptop chips are bad the desktops are as well... I think that is pushing it...but my geforce 6100 on my mobo has not exactaly been telling me otherwise. bsod and the sorts (most likely driver but...)
Even if the desktop chips are bad we will not know for some time.... the laptop chips take anywhere from a few days to over a year to show up...that means desktops might take up to 2 years to see the problems (happens to be how old mine is)
you ask why the time frame....it is a heat issue but not just pure heat...its heat cycles....on off on off.... so someone that games every day then turns off his pc has one cycle per day....
a laptop user may have 2 3 or more cycles per day....
the failure is believed to be at the sub-strait level (what holds the chip together) hot cold cycles causes cracking of the subpar mateiral and it dies younger than it should.
This is why It is not an easy problem to catch find or say mine does not have it....because it could be a matter of time or it could be fine....its just hard to say but since nvidia will not say what is affected this is happening....
Nvidia just needs to be open and tell us what is wrong...otherwise they will get customers not buying perfectly good products because they want to be on the safe side...
Also for those saying they have good G80 chips (first gen 8800gts and gts) those where not on the list.
however one thing that I don't understand is how geforce go 6 and 7 series are affected but G80 (8800gtx) is not.
Right now there is extreme speculation going on... I for one will not buy a 8400 or 8600....and for that matter would buy ati over nvidia partly because my 6100 on my mobo get bsod on nvidia's latest bios...ati card works fine.
So before jumping to conclusions and Flaming each other for lying when no one really knows how bad it is...lets just wait and see.
I recently worked at one of the companies The Inq likes to write about. And I can assure you that their rumors were frequent topics of humorous lunchtime conversations. Knowing what they wrote that was right, and what was totally made up was enlightening.
Basically, when they had a product 'leak' a month or so in advance of launch, they were usually right, or pretty close because it was hard to keep a lid on things at that point (samples going out to manufacturers, reviewers, etc).
Everything else was just throwing sh-t against a wall to see what stuck.
My friends has two 8800 GT and one of them just failed about a week ago... Luckily a single 8800 GT pushes fairly well for the games he plays.
My 8800GT is still going along fine - good job it is still under warrenty though
Turns out Microsoft's xbox division had a hand in designing these GPU; just kidding.
> [...] just kidding.
I heard that parts of DirectX support - both in drivers and h/w - are actually implemented by Microsoft.
So no kidding here ;)
Even if your laptop chip doesn't fail I still see running at temps that burn your leg to be a defect.
I bought a new laptop with a 9500GS. It does get warm but nothing that alarms me yet. At least I have a 2 year ASUS warranty.
NVIDIA needs to issue a recall. If they do they are out of business but they are out of business if they don't.
Did you guys bring a glass? ATI just cracked open a bottle of champagne
I have a GTX260
I don't need it going Hiroshima on me.
Anyone know the type of problems that are reported? My 8800GT started giving me BSODs about 6 months ago.
Our 9600GT equiped PC at work is giving us BSOD.
Absolutely no warning, and no GPU over-heat, it sometimes happens when video starts in Media Player. But it might be something else..
Charlie has it out for nVidia. I don't know why, but every other thing he posts creates fear, uncertainty and doubt about nVidia.
I'd like to see a study of how many stories the Inquirer gets right over a month or so period.
I have a 8800GT, I haven't had any problems so far. By the time the Card goes bad I'd probably buy a newer card anyway, after suing nVidia ofcourse :P
Nvidia: "It's over 9000!"
I just bought an iMac with the 8800 GS in it, I don't really like this source much and think (plus hope) it's BS.
Bought 2 8800GT's - 1 from newegg, 1 from zipzoomfly. used for 3 months. noticed one board was made in china, the other in the USA. China board still going strong. USA board fried... vertical bands of rainbow colors - freeze - BSOD - Winxp 32bit. Go figure...
So this is basically like 3/4 of NVIDIA's current lineup? Sounds a bit far fetched if you ask me.
going bad at "high rates" = how many percent? 5,10,20,90?
going bad at "high rates" = how many percent? 5,10,20,90?
Is this update not compatible with the 8600m GT. My laptop has this and the nividia updater said that no drivers would be updated. I have a macbook pro with bootcamp windows xp
I've been having many a problem with my G92 8800GTS crashing my system after giving me a massive ammount of artifacting/weird video issues :/ maybe this is why...Also every crash I've had has been video-card related..
And no its not heat, because thats the first thing i checked
I think that companies like XFX and EVGA who offer lifetime warranty for their products have made stories like this meaningless.
Sure, let them fail, ill just get another one from the manufacturer. And if im lucky and they dont have my model in stock, ill get an upgraded version.
Honestly, as consumers and enthusiasts (who were smart enough to go for lifetime warranty), who gives a crap. Let the card die. I dare it!
No problem here with my G92. :)
RTFA people, that and a little statistics will get you a long way...
Just because your card didnt fail doesn't prove what Charlie wrote was bullshit, just as having your card fail doesnt prove that it was.
If you are a card manufacturer, selling tens of thousands of cards and monitoring the returns, its a different story. You start to build up a picture, x% of cards sold fail within y time. You see a trend which either looks normal, or, if the rise is steeper than expected, cause for concern.
As Charlie said, this means you can see the trouble relatively early on. Say normally 1% of cards fail after 6 months, and you have 3-4% failure rates in the same time interval. Most peolple still have working cards, yes, but you know now that far, far more are not going to have working cards in the next 2-3 years than normal.
sigh
"Just because your card didnt fail doesn't prove what Charlie wrote was bullshit, just as having your card fail doesnt prove that it was*n't*."
goddam double negatives.
9800gtx been running like a champ. Does increase the temp of my room about 6 degrees if I leave door shut tho.
My 8800GTS (320mb) went bad after about 3 months. Never overclocked it, have it on a UPS (clean power), etc. I replaced it with an 8800GT (512mb) a couple months ago. Hope this one doesn't choke too. They're great cards. When they work.
Yeah! Let the card die - Who cares! After all, you don't need to use your computer for a whole month while your card's being replaced due to shoddy manufacturing anyway, right?
Oh well.
I have been having hellacious problems with my BFG 8800GT CO over the last 2 or so mnths. For no reason the display drivers crash and the thin keeps giving bsod's every now and again. My card never goes over 64 deg C so I I am guessing there may be some truth here. I have a lifetime warranty so I am going to send it in in a week or so when I get my 4870. I may just splurge for the x2 at that price it really is worth the power. It is cheaper than a sli gtx 280 rig by far.
But yeah my 8800GT is giving me a lot of issue so I am bidding farewell to the big green and going red. I just am wonder still if NVIDIA is going to allow their gpu's to be used soley as a physX card so you can run an ati graphics set up while using a 8800GT for the Physx. To me it would ensure some sales of nvidias card if even as some powerhouse physX cards.
so anyway to test for this? or will the card just fail one day? (I have a 8800gt w/512mb ram)
Uhh... is this for real? I mean, I just got my Geforce 8800 GT last december and it's still going strong. Absolutely no problems at all. I just hope nothing else shows up soon. I'd probably understand if it breaks down 3 or 4 years from now.
may be it's true.coz i have 8800GTX and every time after 1hrs game play my computer freez.i haven't oc or any thing.
too bad to nvidia,in Chinese:雪上加霜
good luck,the guys who got G92&G94
Damn it!! My Macbook pro = =
So how exactly would I know that my 8800GTS 640MB has failed as opposed to say, my motherboard? I mean, I've been trying to pin down the exact problem with my system since it first died on me in early December after only 4 months or so of unblemished service. Now, the motherboard is definitely screwed (looks like capacitor plague with brown goo leaking from the bottom of at least one), but how do I know that the video card didn't somehow contribute to problems with the motherboard (or both are screwed independently of each other)? The motherboard is in for it's second RMA because after returning from the first the system would still power down after about 30-60 minutes of use and then after trying to treat it gingerly and diagnose the problem (and replacing the power supply) it went down again while in suspend-to-RAM and refused to come back on. It sounds like it might be heat, but other aspects seem to counter-indicate that and the temp didn't seem to be running too hot.
Aside from manifesting a graphical glitch is there any way to be certain without just sending it in and getting it replaced and lo and behold my problems go away?
I like NV a lot .. it just works easy and good .. i have bought myself a 9600gt and I have experienced no problems at all .. further more i have pieced together many computers with the 9600gt and non of them seems to fail. Friends of mine haven't experienced failure of these aswell .. when someone says that a lot more of the NV's needs repairs or r defect vs the ATI .. could that have something to do with ratio of these.. I mean .. maybe there r just more NV's out there than ATI ?
I do like my 9600gt a lot and thinking bout doing some SLI ..
Think it's a little overrated to say that you can't buy a NV because it will fail your ass, and instead buy an ATI just because of that. If you should buy an ATI shouldn't it be because ppl wanted that and not because of non-confirmed rumors about the NV's r bad.
This sounds more like a scorned reporter lashing out. Next article will suggest NVidia go out of GPU business. (rolleyes)
A casual perusal of the NewEgg user comments does not support the claim that there is a problem with the NVIDIA chip designs. There seems to be a normal failure rate as there is with all computer hardware. Phft.
I hope mine doesn't fry...