NVIDIA DISASTER: thousands of GPUs faulty

"NVIDIA has admitted to a major manufacturing screw-up, which is seeing
thousands of its GPUs overheating, burning out and failing... If you bought
a laptop with either the NVIDIA Geforce 8400M (M for Mobile) or 8600M in it,
you can now stick yourself in the pile for people with bad luck."

http://apcmag.com.au/nvidia_disaster...pus_faulty.htm

DRS wrote:
"NVIDIA has admitted to a major manufacturing screw-up, which is seeing
thousands of its GPUs overheating, burning out and failing... If you bought
a laptop with either the NVIDIA Geforce 8400M (M for Mobile) or 8600M in it,
you can now stick yourself in the pile for people with bad luck."

http://apcmag.com.au/nvidia_disaster...pus_faulty.htm



The whole manufacturing process of the package substrate or some such
compound was flawed over an entire generation of product, much like the
'bad capacitor formula' scenario of years back. Failure rates due to
heat cycling could be as high as the XBOX360's heat related failures.

It gets better, nVidia has a plan...pull out of the motherboard business!

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20080801VL203.html

Of course, they deny it half heartedly...but the writing on the wall is
there, SLI serves no real purpose and Intel's MCPs are better. Ever try
and use an nvidia on-board network solution...HAH.

A tough battle is being fought in the GPU sector and now their main
board sector is in play, good thing their drivers and software
departments can really crank out those performing and robust
drivers..supporting Linux and Vista and XP with equal capacity. :/

"Mr.E Solved!" wrote in message
...


Of course, they deny it half heartedly...but the writing on the wall
is there, SLI serves no real purpose and Intel's MCPs are better. Ever
try and use an nvidia on-board network solution...HAH.

Actually, I'm using nvidia on-board network right now. ASUS A7N8X
Deluxe - Nforce2. I haven't had any problems with it over 5 years, but
I haven't used any of their other chipsets, either.

Mr.E Solved! wrote:
DRS wrote:
"NVIDIA has admitted to a major manufacturing screw-up, which is
seeing thousands of its GPUs overheating, burning out and failing...
If you bought a laptop with either the NVIDIA Geforce 8400M (M for
Mobile) or 8600M in it, you can now stick yourself in the pile for
people with bad luck."

http://apcmag.com.au/nvidia_disaster...pus_faulty.htm


The whole manufacturing process of the package substrate or some such
compound was flawed over an entire generation of product, much like the
'bad capacitor formula' scenario of years back. Failure rates due to
heat cycling could be as high as the XBOX360's heat related failures.

It gets better, nVidia has a plan...pull out of the motherboard business!

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20080801VL203.html

Of course, they deny it half heartedly...but the writing on the wall is
there, SLI serves no real purpose and Intel's MCPs are better. Ever try
and use an nvidia on-board network solution...HAH.

A tough battle is being fought in the GPU sector and now their main
board sector is in play, good thing their drivers and software
departments can really crank out those performing and robust
drivers..supporting Linux and Vista and XP with equal capacity. :/


Boy oh boy you can smell the bull**** from here...

SLI implementations have been around since the days of 3DFX and even
though the hardware patents have changed and the GPU's are different,
SLI and Crossfire have always been either the biggest E-Penis enhancer
you can buy or a useful addition to realtime visualization. It's never
been a gimmick, it works quite well; but for regular users, it's
overkill and only hardcore enthusiasts have ever needed it. Certain
games are better than others or scale up better. You can't do anything
about that when trying to artificially parallelize rendering.

And as for the rest of the pile, "nvidia on-board network solution" is
actually the same damn Realtek and similar onboard ethernet controllers
used in millions of motherboards. It's nothing special, but has worked
in every Nforce 2, 4, and 590 board I've had. Don't like the name
Nvidia? Find your chip and download reference drivers.

Pulling out of the motherboard business? Sounds like wishful thinking
by a competitor. They pretty much have a monopoly on AMD chipsets
lately, and if that's not enough for you, talk to the horse:

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15240

Ya think competing with Intel's next integrated GPU might be important?
Perhaps. Oh but I know, they're ****ing liars right? Staw-man indeed.

deimos wrote:
Mr.E Solved! wrote:
DRS wrote:
"NVIDIA has admitted to a major manufacturing screw-up, which is
seeing thousands of its GPUs overheating, burning out and failing...
If you bought a laptop with either the NVIDIA Geforce 8400M (M for
Mobile) or 8600M in it, you can now stick yourself in the pile for
people with bad luck."

http://apcmag.com.au/nvidia_disaster...pus_faulty.htm


The whole manufacturing process of the package substrate or some such
compound was flawed over an entire generation of product, much like
the 'bad capacitor formula' scenario of years back. Failure rates due
to heat cycling could be as high as the XBOX360's heat related failures.

It gets better, nVidia has a plan...pull out of the motherboard business!

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20080801VL203.html

Of course, they deny it half heartedly...but the writing on the wall
is there, SLI serves no real purpose and Intel's MCPs are better. Ever
try and use an nvidia on-board network solution...HAH.

A tough battle is being fought in the GPU sector and now their main
board sector is in play, good thing their drivers and software
departments can really crank out those performing and robust
drivers..supporting Linux and Vista and XP with equal capacity. :/


Boy oh boy you can smell the bull**** from here...

SLI implementations have been around since the days of 3DFX and even
though the hardware patents have changed and the GPU's are different,
SLI and Crossfire have always been either the biggest E-Penis enhancer
you can buy or a useful addition to realtime visualization. It's never
been a gimmick, it works quite well; but for regular users, it's
overkill and only hardcore enthusiasts have ever needed it. Certain
games are better than others or scale up better. You can't do anything
about that when trying to artificially parallelize rendering.

And as for the rest of the pile, "nvidia on-board network solution" is
actually the same damn Realtek and similar onboard ethernet controllers
used in millions of motherboards. It's nothing special, but has worked
in every Nforce 2, 4, and 590 board I've had. Don't like the name
Nvidia? Find your chip and download reference drivers.

Pulling out of the motherboard business? Sounds like wishful thinking
by a competitor. They pretty much have a monopoly on AMD chipsets
lately, and if that's not enough for you, talk to the horse:

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15240

Ya think competing with Intel's next integrated GPU might be important?
Perhaps. Oh but I know, they're ****ing liars right? Staw-man indeed.


SLI's drawbacks are numerous and in precious few cases can you justify
an SLI configuration over a single card solution. Either the cost of
multiple cards is prohibitive and unwise compared to a single card
solution or performance varies wildly based on the specific application
and or SLI'ed cards.

You have to go out of your way to manufacture a scenario where SLI is
the correct solution, this then is the issue: why build SLI chipsets
that no one will use but everyone has to pay for? SLI is niche and
should be niche. Not installed on every mobo. That serves only nvidia's
needs, not ours.

I'm glad you never had issues with nvidia network controllers or network
software, but those issues are real and present. In addition to the
marvell and Realtek NICs also present on-board as most nvidia mobos have
two NICs, not just one. So you are telling me you have avoided the
nvidia NIC and used the other one.

The problem is that the nforce chipset drivers default to the nvidia NIC
and unless you prevent installation you are stuck with mediashield and
network shield and all that other crap that doesn't work. Intel NICs
outperform onboard NICs by every measure..on paper and installed even
when the onboard NICs are functioning properly.

Take an nvidia mobo, subtract SLI, subtract their NICs, don't need to
subtract soundstorm if it ever existed (remember that?) and what do you
have left? Not much other than the PCI and I/O basics and certainly not
enough to be a compelling buy over Intel's offerings..but that's the way
it has always been.

You like SLI, but are you using SLI? The last SLI I used was the
Voodoo2, and that was because it did things no one card could do.

I tried 7950GT SLI, what a mistake that was. 30% improvement in the best
case, 100% failure in the worst. Can't have that if you want my
recommendation. Yours too I would hope.

* deimos:

Boy oh boy you can smell the bull**** from here...

I can, too.

And as for the rest of the pile, "nvidia on-board network solution" is
actually the same damn Realtek and similar onboard ethernet controllers
used in millions of motherboards.

Only if your mobo manufacturer decided to not use the Nvidia network
controller and use something else.

It's nothing special, but has worked
in every Nforce 2, 4, and 590 board I've had. Don't like the name
Nvidia? Find your chip and download reference drivers.

So where do you get the reference drivers for the nForce4 integrated NIC
from? FYI: it contains an Nvidia NIC, and the only place for "reference
drivers" is Nvidia. And that is the case for other nForce chipsets as well.

Benjamin

Mr.E Solved! wrote:
snip

SLI's drawbacks are numerous and in precious few cases can you justify
an SLI configuration over a single card solution. Either the cost of
multiple cards is prohibitive and unwise compared to a single card
solution or performance varies wildly based on the specific application
and or SLI'ed cards.

This has been an argument against any SLI like technology for a long
time; it's an enthusiast's feature and benefits them most. It has
always been this way. You think high end graphics cards costing 600 USD
at launch cater to the every-day user or OEM's? No, they're for the
enthusiast segment that has money, time, and technical ability to handle it.

You have to go out of your way to manufacture a scenario where SLI is
the correct solution, this then is the issue: why build SLI chipsets
that no one will use but everyone has to pay for? SLI is niche and
should be niche. Not installed on every mobo. That serves only nvidia's
needs, not ours.

It's an option, you don't have to use it, and 2 or more PCIE 16x slots
on a motherboard hurts no one. I dare say MOST new motherboards are
currently manufactured in this configuration. Eventually you won't need
to have a motherboard chipset support one or the other (SLI/CF), but for
now that's what we have.

I'm glad you never had issues with nvidia network controllers or network
software, but those issues are real and present. In addition to the
marvell and Realtek NICs also present on-board as most nvidia mobos have
two NICs, not just one. So you are telling me you have avoided the
nvidia NIC and used the other one.

I didn't say any such thing; indeed my boards have had a Marvel Gbit as
well as Realtek, both work just fine. You may be confusing the optional
NForce Armor/firewall software with the base driver.

Certainly the gigabit performance is nothing to expound about, and I've
run into an issue on an MSI board where you could not use certain PCI
network adapters instead of onboard, but overall most people have few if
any problems with the integrated chips. They are simply nothing unique
in comparison to every other modern integrated motherboard. I find them
equal to Broadcom chipsets I use at work.

The problem is that the nforce chipset drivers default to the nvidia NIC
and unless you prevent installation you are stuck with mediashield and
network shield and all that other crap that doesn't work. Intel NICs
outperform onboard NICs by every measure..on paper and installed even
when the onboard NICs are functioning properly.

I take it you've been frusted in the past? I've not had a similar
problem so I can't tell you what's wrong. Intel adapters work just
fine, so do Broadcom, so do Via integrated, so do Realtek. I don't know
what benchmarks you're referring to (10/100 performance?, gigabit?) either.

I use a Netgear GA311 myself, just for CPU usage and geeky-ness. But
all this has little to do with a poorly written FUD article from the OP.

You like SLI, but are you using SLI? The last SLI I used was the
Voodoo2, and that was because it did things no one card could do.

I neither like nor dislike SLI. It's a performance feature and I don't
feel pressured or obligated to use it.

I have a single 8800GT that's working just fine, but I've heard of great
results where people have SLI'd 8800GT's together and match or beat
8800GTX/9800GTX levels of performance.

Some games don't have much of an improvment, others have no profile yet
or need a custom one made with nHancer. But it makes no difference to me.

It should be noted that the 'scanline-interleave' method of 3DFX and
current distributed rendering like abilities of SLI/CF are very much
different and scale in complete different manners.

I tried 7950GT SLI, what a mistake that was. 30% improvement in the best
case, 100% failure in the worst. Can't have that if you want my
recommendation. Yours too I would hope.


Pleasant evening to you.

Benjamin Gawert wrote:
* deimos:

Boy oh boy you can smell the bull**** from here...

I can, too.

And as for the rest of the pile, "nvidia on-board network solution" is
actually the same damn Realtek and similar onboard ethernet
controllers used in millions of motherboards.

Only if your mobo manufacturer decided to not use the Nvidia network
controller and use something else.

It's nothing special, but has worked in every Nforce 2, 4, and 590
board I've had. Don't like the name Nvidia? Find your chip and
download reference drivers.

So where do you get the reference drivers for the nForce4 integrated NIC
from? FYI: it contains an Nvidia NIC, and the only place for "reference
drivers" is Nvidia. And that is the case for other nForce chipsets as well.

Benjamin

It's not an NVidia manufactured chip (at least not on my board). The
gigabit portion is handled by a Marvell chip.

"Mr.E Solved!" wrote in message


[...]

The problem is that the nforce chipset drivers default to the nvidia
NIC and unless you prevent installation you are stuck with
mediashield and network shield and all that other crap that doesn't
work.

I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium S939 Nforce 4 motherboard. I have the Nvidia
Ethernet driver installed but not MediaShield, etc. To date I have had no
problem with the Nvidia Gigabit Ethernet port.

Either way, I don't see what this has to do with the growing scandal over
the faulty G84/86 GPUs that Nvidia at first denied utterly and still insists
(against all the evidence) that it is a minor problem only affecting a small
number of users. Nvidia has been caught lying through its corporate teeth
at every stage and the problem just keeps getting bigger. If the Inquirer's
estimates on the number of potentially affected users is even close
(http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...vidia-problems)
this could bankrupt Nvidia.

* deimos:

It's not an NVidia manufactured chip (at least not on my board). The
gigabit portion is handled by a Marvell chip.

Yeah, on your board. Just because the manufacturer of your mobo avoided
the terrible Nvidia chipset-integrated NICs and used a NIC from another
vendor instead doesn't change the fact that Nvidia indeed does make NICs
and that these NICs are *not* just OEM products of NICs made by another
manufacturer.

Let's talk about BS again.

Benjamin