Nvidia 55nm Parts Are Bad Too 372
JagsLive sends in a story (in somewhat inflammatory prose) from The Inquirer, which links to many others; they have been following developments in the alleged NVidia quality "fiasco" for some time. "Hot on the heels of its denials that anything is wrong with the G92 and G94s comes another PCN [Product Change Notification] that shows the G92s and G92b are being changed for no reason. Yup, the problems that are plaguing G84 and G86 are the same that affect seemingly all 65nm and now 55nm NVidia parts ... It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm NVidia part appears to be defective ... We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens percent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs ... To make matters worse, NVidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting ... Until NVidia comes fully clean on this fiasco, lists all the defective parts, and orders boxes clearly marked, you can't say anything other than just avoid them. Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen."
Lead free (Score:1, Insightful)
Fair and Balanced? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen"
-5 Troll
Intel... (Score:5, Insightful)
8800 and the 9600... Ouch. (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I've got ATI again but recommended everyone I know (up until 48XX by ATI) buy the 8800 or 9600....
I wanted ATI to regain some track to even the market... but this is a little much. Complete flops are not good for competition either.
Still Not Buying It (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got a two 8800 series cards (one 8800GT, one 8800GTS), and I live in a place with no air conditioning. If these cards were subject to heat failure the way the Inquirer has been hollering about - one or both would have died by now. Particularly the one in my wife's computer - it's a Shuttle box, which runs toasty. It's been rock solid, running 24/7 for more than a year now.
I'm not suggesting there is NO problem - but the Inquirer has been talking about this like all of these cards are just waiting to die. With no A/C, and temps in the house above 90F during the summer, they should be dead if the Inq is to be believed. Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I still aint buying the story.
Re:Are you a betting man? (Score:1, Insightful)
"If you're a betting man, now's a good time to pick up on Nvidia stock.
The question is, do you feel lucky, punk?"
Yes, Nvidia is worth a lot more then it currently is, if you don't think so you haven't been paying attention. Good investors look at the circumstances, if nvidia somehow stops being a good company (Execution, etc), then investors will bail, but good investors, make money on the waves the rises and falls, and get out before the damage occurs.
Lead-based solders 3 years after RoHS deadline? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is NVidia using lead-based solders at this late date? The European RoHS deadline for lead-free components was back in 2005. The NForce and 8800 parts were RoHS compliant years ago. Are these NVidia parts even exportable to Europe?
Inq? I'll believe when there's more proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because the Inquirer is such a steady and accurate news source.
I'll believe this when I see more proof.
Re:Still Not Buying It (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if your wife's computer runs 24/7 it would be less susceptible to the problem since the problem they are experiencing is exacerbated by thermal cycling. fewer cycles of heating up and cooling down = less of a chance to fail.
Re:Fair and Balanced? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think anyone, including The Inquirer, has ever claimed The Inquirer was "Fair and Balanced".
And seeing a comment like that on Slashdot makes me think we have pot kettle situation here :)
Did they hire people from Weitek? (Score:5, Insightful)
To make matters worse, NVidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts.
This sounds very similar to what finally took down Weitek, back when there were a bunch of graphics chip companies competing hotly and being shaken out if they screwed up.
Weitek had built a very fast and powerful chip. But they had goofed: While it had the mandatory basic VGA mode for acquiring the Microsoft certification, there was a bug in it.
QA told management that the bug was there and would fail them. But Software told them a driver could work around it and people would want the chip because it was so fast on graphics rendering. (Of course it could not - because to get the cert it had to work with the stock bootstrap stuff, before a custom driver could be loaded.)
So they went to production with the bug. And the customers got their prototypes, found the bug, and demanded a fix. Eventually they did a fixed version - but had maybe a couple million of the buggy ones on hand and wouldn't sell the fixed ones unless the customer bought some buggy ones, too. So nobody bought and the company folded.
Re:8800 and the 9600... Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
IMNSHO, the quality control at both companies has been terrible for several years now. What's the point of paying a premium for a good graphics card, if hardware problems make your system unstable as soon as a demanding game is loaded or the drivers take out your operating system at random intervals? It's not like this has happened only on bleeding edge cards with new drivers, either: several entire models have had basic incompatibilities with other common system components, and sometimes drivers have been unacceptably poor for the entire useful lifetime of a gamer's card.
Contrary to the marketroid reports, it is not in any way unavoidable that new cards with new drivers have to crash a significant fraction of the hottest games at release time. It's not like these kinds of problems are subtle and might be missed during a decent period of testing, and it's not like the card vendors couldn't co-operate with the game vendors on a beta test programme. This happens because commercially, it makes more sense for them to race to market with inadequately tested hardware and poorly engineered driver software and hope they can patch up any widespread problems later with a minimal PR hit. As long as both the big names are as bad as each other, consumers in the target market are pretty much screwed anyway.
It's about time something like this happened and one of the companies took a major financial hit as a consequence. Perhaps then we'll move back towards supplying hardware and drivers that actually, you know, work. Gamers the world over (other than those currently suffering from these problems, of course) should probably be happy about this, because it might be serious enough this time to make a difference to future quality control, which is much better than a significant fraction of people being disappointed with each new model but never enough of a critical mass to really punish the company that supplied substandard kit.
Re:Fair and Balanced? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between a car with failure of engine or brakes, and a videocard with a failing GPU...
Failing brakes could kill you, or others, the legal fallout could easily bankrupt a company making such cars...
On the other hand, the engine or brakes make up a relatively small part of the overall cost of a car, replacing them would still be expensive but it's unlikely to bankrupt an auto maker. They are also much easier to repair than the inner workings of a silicon chip, so there's no need for thousands of units to be scrapped.
Re:Still Not Buying It (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like what Xbox fanboys were saying when word of the 360 being defective reached a fever pitch.
"Well, MINE works fine, you all must be using it wrong!"
Course a week later Microsoft admitted to it and shelled out $1 billion.
It's not too hard to overstate... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is hard to overstate how bad this is.
This will end all life on earth.
That wasn't hard.
Re:Not an issue, ATI/AMD is better anyways (Score:2, Insightful)
- Linux support
Really? [nvidia.com].
Also, I use FreeBSD. Unless something has dramatically changed with ATI drivers on FreeBSD in the past year, the drive quality argument goes right out the window.
What a bizzare article... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am neither an NVidia or ATI fanboy (heck, my current GPU is an integrated Intel), but this article is a steaming pile of crap.
Somehow, he takes a report of a routine running change to the production process (a new kind of solder), and magically turns this into some wild tale of how NVidia is shipping thousands of defective parts that will remain in the field.
Completely lacking is how he corresponds the running change to some defect...
SirWired
Re:Fair and Balanced? (Score:3, Insightful)
*cough* Rydermark! [wikipedia.org] *cough*
Mod -5 for making shit up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Charlie Demerjian (Score:1, Insightful)
Fuad has been The Inquirer's middle name when it comes to nVidia for a long time.
The problem isn't "it's only hte gpu, the rest of it works fine," it's the fact that you are all taking an article from The Inquirer seriously. Doubly so since it's about nvidia.