NVidia and their insurance company have a falling out

[thilanliyan]

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42472/118/

I thought the money was coming out of nVidia's own pockets no?

 

[Idontcare]

"Concurrently with, or prior to, placing National Union on notice of the chip claims, Nvidia has engaged in settlement negotiations with the chip claimants and, on information and belief, has agreed to settlements and/or the material terms of settlements with respect to some or all of the chip claims," the filing says.

But, complains NUFI: "Nvidia has not permitted National Union to participate in Nvidia's negotiations of the chip claims or the determination of any settlement or agreements."

If this is true then yeah NV really screwed the pooch here.

Imagine you rear-end someone at a stoplight, fault is 100% yours. You tell the guy in the car you rear-ended that you'll pay for him to have a brand new car to replace his damaged car. You put it in writing and sign it. Then you bother to call up your insurance company with the "great" news...you negotiated settlement on their behalf, all they need do is cut a check for a brand new car.

Hmmm, the insurance company might just take exception to that little deal you cooked up there.

Now we only hear one side of the story here. But again if it is true then its almost comically sad that NV's decision makers would have thought something like this would fly.

 

[n7]

So what does the insurance company want? It wants records showing the dates of manufacture of the notebooks concerned; the dates notebooks were shipped to end users; field failures to date; specific dates of repair; which component parts were replaced; any injury to component parts other than the Nvidia chips; and document of settlement discussions as well as Nvidia's estimation of claim exposure

nV won't want the real info out there, as the number of affected chips is far greater than people realize.

The more they can cover up the fact they've been selling defective chips for years now, the better for them...

 

[Idontcare]

I must admit that when I read thru the details of the link provided by thilan I had no idea so many vendors had gone back to NV and negotiated deals for compensation of the product.

It actually puts a little more legitimacy into all the charlie rant stories of the time regarding bump shear from thermal cycling.

As you say, we only get to see the tip of the iceberg.

 

[n7]

Charlie has been bang on regarding the defective chips.

I see nearly one HP notebook every day at werk come in due to nV chipset or graphics death.

And the best part is, HP replaces the motherboard with the same defective chipset, so eventually it fails again...

For some customers, again, & again.

It's beyond ridiculous when you get to deal with it firsthand :frown:

 

[SickBeast]

I was under the impression that the notebook manufacturers were simply beefing up the cooling solutions to keep the GPU cooler to prevent the failures.

 

[n7]

No.

For example, on HP notebooks, there are BIOS updates that come thru HP Update software, & they basically just force a higher fan speed :roll:

But as HP Update is rarely run by 99% of customers, it doesn't really happen.

And forcing better cooling doesn't fix the real issue anyway, as they will fail anyway, since cooling isn't really the real issue in the first place.

HP will repair the unit up to 24 months from purchase (12 months over original warranty) if the unit is exhibiting symptoms synonymous with nV failure.
Usually no POST or no wireless adapter.
I see those two all the time.

But again, as the repair is with basically another defective board, it's a sickening cycle...

 

[SickBeast]

Well, I won't be purchasing an HP laptop any time soon based on that information.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Well, I won't be purchasing an HP laptop any time soon based on that information.

It's not only HP affected. Dell, Toshiba, Apple, Quanta, Compal, Asus, Samsung, Fujitsu-Siemens all are affected with these chipsets: G86, G86A2, G84, C51, G72, G72M, G73, G72A3, MCP67 and NV42 (from the article).

 

[SickBeast]

Yeah but I'm inferring from n7's post that HP is not doing the repairs properly.

 

[apoppin]

8200 M G is safe?
i have a compaq cq60-210us .. it runs really cool .. i can leave it on my lap

 

[SickBeast]

I think it was the 8600M that was affected.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Yeah but I'm inferring from n7's post that HP is not doing the repairs properly.

What n7 mentioned was the same fix that I've heard about from other manufacturers...make the fan spin higher. This is obviously a bandaid solution but what else can they do? The only real solution is to replace the faulty mobo/gpu/chipset package with ones that are not the affected chipsets and GPUs but that would be ridiculously expensive for the companies involved.

 

[ImDonly1]

I had to fix a laptop for someone with one of these issues. The HP forums have tons of threads about this issue and a lot of pages long. HP ignores most of the people and deletes some of the posts. HP extended the warranty for 1 extra year, but this doesn't really help most people 1 yr is not enough (many of the people affected on the forums are over the extension period).

I bought a new/refurb'd motherboard on eBay to replace a broken one for someone. After a week that motherboard broke too...

 

[Majic 7]

http://hothardware.com/News/HP...mbine-NVIDIA-Lawsuits/ Related lawsuit stuff

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Well, I won't be purchasing an HP laptop any time soon based on that information.

It's not only HP affected. Dell, Toshiba, Apple, Quanta, Compal, Asus, Samsung, Fujitsu-Siemens all are affected with these chipsets: G86, G86A2, G84, C51, G72, G72M, G73, G72A3, MCP67 and NV42 (from the article).

I thought Nvidia was claiming that it was only G84 and G86 GPUs that were affected?

I have around 8-9 Dell Inspiron D630s assigned to users in my office and there's no way I'm going to install a BIOS on them that makes the fan run all the time in order to compensate for faulty manufacturing. Why should we have to put up with increased noise and decreased battery life? If they die, they die. Dell can repair them and send the bill to Nvidia. I've already warned our employees to watch for the signs of impending video card death (double images, unexplained lines on the screen, funny colors, no POST, etc).

 

[waffleironhead]

This failing chip rings home with me. This was an older generation(6200). but every year the chip in my toshiba would go out. 3 times they replaced it with the same nvidia chip/motherboard. The fourth time it went out the warranty was past. The system is still able to be used under safe mode, but I can feel for the people who keep getting the same bad chips replaced in their systems.

 

[ronnn]

Lets hope the insurance company is trying to duck their rightful liabilities. With amd likely sinking and nvidia looking poorly - no one left to give intel a prod when they need it.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: ronnn
Lets hope the insurance company is trying to duck their rightful liabilities. With amd likely sinking and nvidia looking poorly - no one left to give intel a prod when they need it.

Are you kidding?

Europe just gave intel a huge prod right in their corporate asses - 1.4 *Billion* dollar fine
- and the US is about to do the same

fair play for an overbearing monopoly

 

[ronnn]

1.4 billion is just the price of doing business for a monopoly.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: ronnn
1.4 billion is just the price of doing business for a monopoly.

:laugh:

So true. If its only money the governments be after then it's simply a rebate that took a while to get processed.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: ronnn
1.4 billion is just the price of doing business for a monopoly.

:laugh:

So true. If its only money the governments be after then it's simply a rebate that took a while to get processed.

They probably didn't include that large a fine in their financials though which is why they're whining about it. 😛

 

[ronnn]

Looks like Charlie is pleased with his scoop. He sure has earned the hatred of nv pr. Makes fudo look like a wimp. :laugh:

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

"Concurrently with, or prior to, placing National Union on notice of the chip claims, Nvidia has engaged in settlement negotiations with the chip claimants and, on information and belief, has agreed to settlements and/or the material terms of settlements with respect to some or all of the chip claims," the filing says.

But, complains NUFI: "Nvidia has not permitted National Union to participate in Nvidia's negotiations of the chip claims or the determination of any settlement or agreements."

If this is true then yeah NV really screwed the pooch here.

Imagine you rear-end someone at a stoplight, fault is 100% yours. You tell the guy in the car you rear-ended that you'll pay for him to have a brand new car to replace his damaged car. You put it in writing and sign it. Then you bother to call up your insurance company with the "great" news...you negotiated settlement on their behalf, all they need do is cut a check for a brand new car.

Hmmm, the insurance company might just take exception to that little deal you cooked up there.

Now we only hear one side of the story here. But again if it is true then its almost comically sad that NV's decision makers would have thought something like this would fly.

So NVidia didn't want the insurance company involved in determining the settlement, which means NVidia wanted what was best for their customers, not what a cost-cutting, cheap-o insurance company would want to offer as compensation, which you can bet would be substantially less good for NVidia's image. That's how I read what you quoted.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: yacoub

Originally posted by: Idontcare

"Concurrently with, or prior to, placing National Union on notice of the chip claims, Nvidia has engaged in settlement negotiations with the chip claimants and, on information and belief, has agreed to settlements and/or the material terms of settlements with respect to some or all of the chip claims," the filing says.

But, complains NUFI: "Nvidia has not permitted National Union to participate in Nvidia's negotiations of the chip claims or the determination of any settlement or agreements."

If this is true then yeah NV really screwed the pooch here.

Imagine you rear-end someone at a stoplight, fault is 100% yours. You tell the guy in the car you rear-ended that you'll pay for him to have a brand new car to replace his damaged car. You put it in writing and sign it. Then you bother to call up your insurance company with the "great" news...you negotiated settlement on their behalf, all they need do is cut a check for a brand new car.

Hmmm, the insurance company might just take exception to that little deal you cooked up there.

Now we only hear one side of the story here. But again if it is true then its almost comically sad that NV's decision makers would have thought something like this would fly.

So NVidia didn't want the insurance company involved in determining the settlement, which means NVidia wanted what was best for their customers, not what a cost-cutting, cheap-o insurance company would want to offer as compensation, which you can bet would be substantially less good for NVidia's image. That's how I read what you quoted.

Basically. NV wanted what was best for itself, which requires it to have happy customers, so NV decided to use the insurance company's money to buy the happiness of NV's customers so NV seemed like the good guy in all this.

"What's that? My chips are failing, causing you huge amounts of customer returns? No problem, here's a huge pile of cash to ease your troubles. What's that, you want to know how come I can so easily part with all this money? Well you sees, I got me this cunning little plan, we file an insurance claim see, and then..."

If you or I did what NV is alleged to have done it would be called insurance fraud, simple as that. Which is why we see the insurance company going to the lengths of a lawsuit.

The bigger question here for us end-users is who is going to touch NV for insurance purposes going forward? (or more specifically, at what cost, premium wise, which then becomes a price we all pay in the next round of chips to come to market)

This is a big problem for them as they attempt to break into the emerging markets of GPGPU use in medical, automotive, and geophysical fields. You must carry insurance against liability of your product, your customers in those markets will require it. The last thing you want in that position is to be blacklisted for attempting to extort large claims out of your insurer on behalf of your afflicted customers.

This was a pretty boneheaded move on NV's part, you never ever ever want something like this to go public because it really can irreparably damage your brand name. They'd have been better off paying all the damages and keeping the insurance company out of the headlines if you ask me.