nV GPU failures could be affecting certain desktops as well

[taltamir]

I could have claimed warranty for both but it would have cost me shipping/handling so I didn't think it was worth it since I always have problems selling high-end cards locally, plus I wanted to move to a different card.

When I was deeply UNSATISFIED with a specific product I STILL paid for shipping and handling to RMA it, and then I sold it on ebay for a profit. I have no idea why you would REFUSE to do so on something as easy to liquidate as a video card.

 

[thilanliyan]

UPDATED with nVs response:
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15720

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

BFG, give me your cards and I'll pay for shipping. I'll RMA them. If possible, that is. You're the only one that I know that does not act on their rightful warranty. Instead, you would have two bricks (at one time expensive bricks) holding down paper on a windy day to save a few bucks shipping/handling.
That doesn't sound very rational IMHO. In fact, it's quite strange.

Well the 8800 GTS 640 is fine because I sold it just before it died, but it crapped out for the next person shortly thereafter.

With the 8800 Ultra, the rationale behind it is a bit more complex. I don't do online selling and due to the physical size of the card and power consumption, selling it locally second-hand would be almost impossible as the only people that could run the card would be those moving to the GTX280 anyway, which means the fee I'd pay for RMA would go towards a dead-end investment. That?s one of the main reasons I picked up a 4850 as an interim card as it will be very easy to sell later.

Honestly, I?m not at all concerned about the shipping fees, I only mention the dead cards to point out two G80s died in a row shortly after one year of operation.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

BFG, give me your cards and I'll pay for shipping. I'll RMA them. If possible, that is. You're the only one that I know that does not act on their rightful warranty. Instead, you would have two bricks (at one time expensive bricks) holding down paper on a windy day to save a few bucks shipping/handling.
That doesn't sound very rational IMHO. In fact, it's quite strange.

Well the 8800 GTS 640 is fine because I sold it just before it died, but it crapped out for the next person shortly thereafter.

With the 8800 Ultra, the rationale behind it is a bit more complex. I don't do online selling and due to the physical size of the card and power consumption, selling it locally second-hand would be almost impossible as the only people that could run the card would be those moving to the GTX280 anyway, which means the fee I'd pay for RMA would go towards a dead-end investment. That?s one of the main reasons I picked up a 4850 as an interim card as it will be very easy to sell later.

Honestly, I?m not at all concerned about the shipping fees, I only mention the dead cards to point out two G80s died in a row shortly after one year of operation.

Ah, I see. Well, if you change your mind let me know. I'd pay you for the shipping of the Ultra. You know I can run that without any problems. Forgive me, but sometimes I forget you are in another part of the world.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: nRollo
As far as your "investigation" goes, you'll never be able to put together anything here except anecdotal evidence. There are MILLIONS of these chips in the wild, we're just a couple guys here.

Unfortunately, since Nvidia usually keeps completely tight-lipped regarding any situation that might involve bad PR, that's all we have to go on.

Originally posted by: nRollo
I didn't say it shouldn't be discussed, I said it's interesting to see such drama on an enthusiast board about IGPs. Personally, IGPs are pretty far below my radar. I guess they technically qualify as "video" but I think of the video forums as a place to get discuss gaming cards.

We have Dell D620s and D630s at our office (which are affected models) and most of them are around 6-8 months old, so the solder fatigue (if that's what the problem is) probably hasn't had a chance to set in yet. So now I need to keep a close eye on them for early signs of failures, especially once the warranty is close to expiring.

 

[apoppin]

i KNOW this was posted earlier ..

*NVIDIA RESPONDS!**
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15720

In his recent commentary on chip packaging, Mr. McLellan makes a number of speculative assertions about NVIDIA's people, products and philosophy. In his interview McLellan asserts that High lead bumps are more prone to fatigue. What he fails to note is that AMD currently uses High lead bumps on their CPU line -- a device well known to undergo high thermal stress, and also go through lots of power cycling.

The choice between High Lead and Eutectic is complex. There are trade-offs in using one vs. the other, as even Mr. McLellan points out. The electromigration issues associated with printed eutectic bumps can affect long term reliability of a high current device. Electromigration is when a high current causes metal to separate over time, and creates an open circuit. This is one of the main reasons why so many devices are still manufactured with High lead bumps today.

In fact, 10s of billions of semiconductor devices have been shipped with High Lead bumps by world class companies including AMD, Intel, IBM, Motorola and TI.

While McLellan implies that AMD is unique in its use of a "power redistribution layer," this isn't true. In fact use of a power redistribution layer is industry practice, and has been used in every flip chip GPU NVIDIA has shipped.

NVIDIA is committed to delivering lead free devices by the 2010 requirement. Our engineering team has been working on this important initiative for the past 18 months, and is fully engaged in this effort with our manufacturing partners.

NVIDIA uses industry standard packaging material and we have passed all industry standard (JEDEC) component package qualifications. We stand behind our products and we will continue to work with our partners to ensure the best visual experience.

we got on the phone with GeForce General Manager Ujesh Desai and GeForce Senior VP Jeff Fisher to ask some follow-up questions. What exactly causes Nvidia chips to fail in the first place? Can the same failures occur in desktops, and is that what we're seeing in the HP systems we talked about earlier this week? What of the GeForce 9400M "motherboard GPU" in Apple's new notebooks?

Predictably, we couldn't get a more concrete answer on the specifics of the failures. Desai was, however, willing to point out that the failures only affect a "small percentage" of notebooks, and the problems depend on a combination of factors, so "you can't just . . . point back to our chip."

Fisher was notably chattier on the topic of potential desktop failures:

There is no evidence that this issue exists in desktops as we know them. And in fact, Mr. McLellan has no evidence to even imply that. The fact is that lead bumps?he's saying that lead bumps will fail, and therefore you should expect to see failures on everything, and that's completely out of balance from an educated operations guy like he is. . . . I think most industry people would say lead bumps are not a cause of failure and are in fact very reliable. And his soda-can analogy and attempt to drag in desktops is irresponsible from our view and a huge reach.

About the failing HP systems, Desai specified, "It's not 38 different systems, it's actually a single design, and the model numbers that were reported . . . are actually model numbers that refer to different configurations of the same product." He went on to say Nvidia is "working closely with HP to determine if or how the Nvidia chips are even involved in the failures."

 

[jiffylube1024]

I've been preaching for years that stock cooling is inadequate. Almost every single video card I've bought in the last 5 years or so - an X800 Pro, X1900XT, 7800GT have gotten aftermarket coolers installed because I was not comfortable with the stock cooling. Temperatures just get too high; that's not good for anything!

I recently bought an ATI 4850HD (my current card) and it crapped out temporarily because of the stupid ATI fan bug - the fan was running at 3% all the time, even at load! I thought the card was toast and even filled out an RMA form but then I did some research on the fan fix, and decided to try up my card to see if it was really gone. The card booted no problem, but was still running way too hot, at about 65C+ idle and going over 80C and overheating at load.

First I got the fan fix and set the fan to 35% (which is a modest ~2500rpm or so and pretty quiet), and then finally I got hold of one of those bios flashers and totally redid my card's fan speed curve. The card is only audible in gaming now, and it idles at ~50C load in Vista, and goes up to 70C or so in gaming. Why ATI shipped an entire generation of new cards with this fan speed problem is totally beyond me...

 

[Nemesis 1]

Originally posted by: apoppin
i KNOW this was posted earlier ..

*NVIDIA RESPONDS!**
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15720

In his recent commentary on chip packaging, Mr. McLellan makes a number of speculative assertions about NVIDIA's people, products and philosophy. In his interview McLellan asserts that High lead bumps are more prone to fatigue. What he fails to note is that AMD currently uses High lead bumps on their CPU line -- a device well known to undergo high thermal stress, and also go through lots of power cycling.

The choice between High Lead and Eutectic is complex. There are trade-offs in using one vs. the other, as even Mr. McLellan points out. The electromigration issues associated with printed eutectic bumps can affect long term reliability of a high current device. Electromigration is when a high current causes metal to separate over time, and creates an open circuit. This is one of the main reasons why so many devices are still manufactured with High lead bumps today.

In fact, 10s of billions of semiconductor devices have been shipped with High Lead bumps by world class companies including AMD, Intel, IBM, Motorola and TI.

While McLellan implies that AMD is unique in its use of a "power redistribution layer," this isn't true. In fact use of a power redistribution layer is industry practice, and has been used in every flip chip GPU NVIDIA has shipped.

NVIDIA is committed to delivering lead free devices by the 2010 requirement. Our engineering team has been working on this important initiative for the past 18 months, and is fully engaged in this effort with our manufacturing partners.

NVIDIA uses industry standard packaging material and we have passed all industry standard (JEDEC) component package qualifications. We stand behind our products and we will continue to work with our partners to ensure the best visual experience.

we got on the phone with GeForce General Manager Ujesh Desai and GeForce Senior VP Jeff Fisher to ask some follow-up questions. What exactly causes Nvidia chips to fail in the first place? Can the same failures occur in desktops, and is that what we're seeing in the HP systems we talked about earlier this week? What of the GeForce 9400M "motherboard GPU" in Apple's new notebooks?

Predictably, we couldn't get a more concrete answer on the specifics of the failures. Desai was, however, willing to point out that the failures only affect a "small percentage" of notebooks, and the problems depend on a combination of factors, so "you can't just . . . point back to our chip."

Fisher was notably chattier on the topic of potential desktop failures:

There is no evidence that this issue exists in desktops as we know them. And in fact, Mr. McLellan has no evidence to even imply that. The fact is that lead bumps?he's saying that lead bumps will fail, and therefore you should expect to see failures on everything, and that's completely out of balance from an educated operations guy like he is. . . . I think most industry people would say lead bumps are not a cause of failure and are in fact very reliable. And his soda-can analogy and attempt to drag in desktops is irresponsible from our view and a huge reach.

About the failing HP systems, Desai specified, "It's not 38 different systems, it's actually a single design, and the model numbers that were reported . . . are actually model numbers that refer to different configurations of the same product." He went on to say Nvidia is "working closely with HP to determine if or how the Nvidia chips are even involved in the failures."

Hay you get back here. I have zero to say on this but I would ask ya whats wrong with the Bolded part here.


Also Nv saying Apples is launching its greatest product ever with there chipsets. So I guess Intel on Apple was a nothing event.

Comply.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1

Originally posted by: apoppin
i KNOW this was posted earlier ..

*NVIDIA RESPONDS!**
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15720

In his recent commentary on chip packaging, Mr. McLellan makes a number of speculative assertions about NVIDIA's people, products and philosophy. In his interview McLellan asserts that High lead bumps are more prone to fatigue. What he fails to note is that AMD currently uses High lead bumps on their CPU line -- a device well known to undergo high thermal stress, and also go through lots of power cycling.

The choice between High Lead and Eutectic is complex. There are trade-offs in using one vs. the other, as even Mr. McLellan points out. The electromigration issues associated with printed eutectic bumps can affect long term reliability of a high current device. Electromigration is when a high current causes metal to separate over time, and creates an open circuit. This is one of the main reasons why so many devices are still manufactured with High lead bumps today.

In fact, 10s of billions of semiconductor devices have been shipped with High Lead bumps by world class companies including AMD, Intel, IBM, Motorola and TI.

While McLellan implies that AMD is unique in its use of a "power redistribution layer," this isn't true. In fact use of a power redistribution layer is industry practice, and has been used in every flip chip GPU NVIDIA has shipped.

NVIDIA is committed to delivering lead free devices by the 2010 requirement. Our engineering team has been working on this important initiative for the past 18 months, and is fully engaged in this effort with our manufacturing partners.

NVIDIA uses industry standard packaging material and we have passed all industry standard (JEDEC) component package qualifications. We stand behind our products and we will continue to work with our partners to ensure the best visual experience.

we got on the phone with GeForce General Manager Ujesh Desai and GeForce Senior VP Jeff Fisher to ask some follow-up questions. What exactly causes Nvidia chips to fail in the first place? Can the same failures occur in desktops, and is that what we're seeing in the HP systems we talked about earlier this week? What of the GeForce 9400M "motherboard GPU" in Apple's new notebooks?

Predictably, we couldn't get a more concrete answer on the specifics of the failures. Desai was, however, willing to point out that the failures only affect a "small percentage" of notebooks, and the problems depend on a combination of factors, so "you can't just . . . point back to our chip."

Fisher was notably chattier on the topic of potential desktop failures:

There is no evidence that this issue exists in desktops as we know them. And in fact, Mr. McLellan has no evidence to even imply that. The fact is that lead bumps?he's saying that lead bumps will fail, and therefore you should expect to see failures on everything, and that's completely out of balance from an educated operations guy like he is. . . . I think most industry people would say lead bumps are not a cause of failure and are in fact very reliable. And his soda-can analogy and attempt to drag in desktops is irresponsible from our view and a huge reach.

About the failing HP systems, Desai specified, "It's not 38 different systems, it's actually a single design, and the model numbers that were reported . . . are actually model numbers that refer to different configurations of the same product." He went on to say Nvidia is "working closely with HP to determine if or how the Nvidia chips are even involved in the failures."

Hay you get back here. I have zero to say on this but I would ask ya whats wrong with the Bolded part here.


Also Nv saying Apples is launching its greatest product ever with there chipsets. So I guess Intel on Apple was a nothing event.

Comply.

No sense. Why bring Intel into this?

 

[Nemesis 1]

I wasn't bringing intel into this . NV said NV chipset was the biggest event in Apples history . Which honestly Keys is laughable. Jobs said the Biggest improvement was the case . To me that says something differant Apples case pawns Intels 45nm chip and NVs chipset . Really keys I not going to bash NV any more . No need . Stock holders will handle this. Papers are being served. To all involved as we speak. NV gets to have its say in court. Thank you very much .

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
I wasn't bringing intel into this . NV said NV chipset was the biggest event in Apples history . Which honestly Keys is laughable. Jobs said the Biggest improvement was the case . To me that says something differant Apples case pawns Intels 45nm chip and NVs chipset . Really keys I not going to bash NV any more . No need . Stock holders will handle this. Papers are being served. To all involved as we speak. NV gets to have its say in court. Thank you very much .

Hey, if you're happy, I'm happy.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: thilan29
UPDATED with nVs responds:
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15720

Nvidia is "working closely with HP to determine if or how the Nvidia chips are even involved in the failures."

 

[Nemesis 1]

Hay keys I am happier than I ever been in my life. But it has nothing to do with Computers. He weighs about 38 pounds . Thank you vary much.

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: thilan29
UPDATED with nVs responds:
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15720

Now I know nvidia's 90% leaded whatevers are better than amd's 37% leaded bumps and should last longer. Still I feel leaded out - hope these 2 leaded polluters hurry up and get with the program. :disgust:

Their responses were much more vague on what exactly is failing.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
I wasn't bringing intel into this . NV said NV chipset was the biggest event in Apples history . Which honestly Keys is laughable. Jobs said the Biggest improvement was the case . To me that says something differant Apples case pawns Intels 45nm chip and NVs chipset . Really keys I not going to bash NV any more . No need . Stock holders will handle this. Papers are being served. To all involved as we speak. NV gets to have its say in court. Thank you very much .

Wait till Jobs dumps Intel out of Apple for AMD inside instead

that will be progress, for Apple

and much a bigger event to celebrate

:Q

all i have to say to Nvidia is ...

. . . hurry up and get the LEAD OUT!

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Wait till Jobs dumps Intel out of Apple for AMD inside instead

AMD's stock is so low Apple could just buy AMD.

I think going with the top 2 vendors was a smart choice for Apple. They get the best performance and features available.

 

[taltamir]

the game is how low can it go... everyone knows it is going lower, but the longer you wait, the more likely some random person is to buy AMD instead of you...

 

[Zap]

NVIDIA is committed to delivering lead free devices by the 2010 requirement.

This explains much. Charlie@TheInq was digging up every NVIDIA "materials change" document showing a change away from high-lead solder as proof that the affected product was faulty.

About the failing HP systems, Desai specified, "It's not 38 different systems, it's actually a single design, and the model numbers that were reported . . . are actually model numbers that refer to different configurations of the same product."

That totally makes sense. For instance, IIRC several Dell models use the same Foxconn G33M motherboard, the Inspiron 530, Vostro 200 slim, Vostro 200 and Vostro 400, with endless configurations possible within those models. With companies like HP that sell "off the shelf" systems in retailers, each different configuration is a different model number even if it is the same base system.

Example: A system with 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD and an E2180 CPU is a Vostro 200. A system with 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD and an E4600 CPU can still be a Vostro 200. With your HP computers in Best Buy, the first system might be a Pavilion a6508 while the second might be a Pavilion A6620.