All G84/G86 GPUs are Bad (Mobile/Desktop/Old/New)

[Aggressor Prime]

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... 84-g86-bad
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=299693
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2203
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/07/inqui ... die-2.html
http://www.techspot.com/news/30823-all- ... aulty.html
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08 ... 86.faulty/
http://www.slashgear.com/nvidia-gpu-ove ... 012483.php

It is all over the web now and will only spread. Luckily for desktop owners, notebook G84M/G86M's are dying faster. Nevertheless, expect all G84/G86 to die quicker than normal due to overvoltage.

Being an owner of a Dell Inspiron 1720 with a GeForce 8600M GT, I must say I can readily believe this, for I always had a feeling something was wrong with my system. At first I thought it was a fan placement issue, as Dell put 1 vent on the side and another below. What happens is that I only spend like 5 minutes in a game and my GPU must underclock due to extreme heat, and that thing is cooking at 90C (GPU-Z). I go from being able to run Crysis flawlessly at 1920x1200 with low settings to getting 15FPS while running Crysis at 800x600 on low settings. Sometimes it just fails, that happened to me about 10 times since I got my laptop.

Anyway, this is bad news for nVidia, and I'm sorry for nVidia being in this type of situation, especially right after their stock prices dropped 50% in a month. I really love nVidia for always leading the GPU era, but they really need to clean this up. It is not official yet, meaning nVidia hasn't come out and announced the problem yet (probably because it would be very bad for business if everyone tried to return their GPUs now and nVidia needs to get another mid-end line out based on the GT200 in order to prevent manufacturers from swapping G86/G84's with Radeons), but they will most certainly announce it soon.

As for me, I will most likely wait until nVidia announces the problem before I contact Dell and have them replace my G84/G86. And waiting for the mobile GT200 GPUs to come out may also allow me to keep an nVidia product and at the same time get better performance. Lucky for me, I can wait with a 3 year warranty. Hopefully my GPU doesn't die before nVidia announces their new GT200M's though.

[Krom]

If they replace them, most likely it will be with G92 parts. They recently did a die shrink on the G92 for the 9800 GTX+ to 55nm, odds are that part will be the smallest and least expensive to use as a recall replacement.

[Warlock]

8800 here so HA I'm safe

[Aggressor Prime]

That would be too expensive, replacing low end parts with high end. Might as well just use low end next gen.

[Krom]

Actually it works a little differently, the smallest and easiest to produce chip is the cheapest, regardless of how fast it is. Meaning it is possible the 55nm shrunk G92 can fit more on a wafer than other slower chips. Die space is everything, it costs Intel exactly the same price to construct their $1500 Yorkfield QX9770 as it does to build the $300 Q9450 (and probably the $260 Q9300, but that chip is likely one that either binned poorly or had a defective cache segment).

[Aggressor Prime]

Yeah, the die price is the same for G92's, but nVidia uses a different die for the G84/G86. This die is smaller, allowing for it to be cheaper and easier to avoid defections. But with the GeForce 9 being fully introduced, they might just replace the GeForce 8M (G84/G86)'s with GeForce 9M's.

[Red_5]

Is the Dell Inspiron 1501 included in this lot? I don't exactly know how to check...

[Grendel]

Is the Dell Inspiron 1501 included in this lot? I don't exactly know how to check...

GPU-Z ?

[Red_5]

Oh, heh heh, it's GPUs, I thought it was CPUs...

Got an ATI in there...

>slaps self in face<

[Grendel]

Looks like the Inquirer was, well, the Inquirer.. click

[Foil]

Thanks for the link, Gren.

I particularly enjoyed this phrase from the last paragraph:

The plural of anecdote, however compelling, is not data, and the very nature of conspiracy theories make them exceptionally hard to prove.