More Nvidia Cards Reported to Be Failing

[PV5150]

NVIDIA's recent financial woes may be the tip of the iceberg

Details in the news article

[Rastalovich]

Bell-curve being an exponential one that doesn`t go to infinity ? - however also goes back down on the other side ?

Being that, if u bought early u have more change of a good card - whereas if u bought l8 on, ur chances of a duff card increase dramatically.

Sounds as if 4 of their partners are outlining these increasingly high failure rates, I`d be interested in knowing who they are. If we can find out these details, we must be aware of their sources.

I would also like to point out that nVidia brought out a driverset for this generation of card(s), the 169.25 (including 5 or so revisions around it), that (without official confirmation), crippled nVidia cards when under stress - leading to a crash to desktop, often with a popup of a "recovery". If u shipped ur card with these drivers, or they were "the latest driver" at the time of RMA - as a gfxcard manufacturer ur knackered.

174.xx can along and wiped the slate clean.

Certainly stressful.

[Zoot]

God, by the looks of this Nvidia are really in deep water with the whole dodgey GPU issue. I'm just waiting for the 8600M GT in my laptop to fail...

[Rastalovich]

Holy thread revival!

Been reading some newsy things this morning, in particular:

ATI 3870s fail too !

It dawns on me that I haven`t heard anything, witnessed anything, dealt with anything, regarding any nVidia cards/laptops falling over. Sure I`ve heard of doas - u get doas everywhere. And the reports were of the tech stretching back to the generation b4 last.

I see this article about ATI, and it immediately starts off with nVidia`s failure record, woeful service.. - eh ? nVidia fanbois ? From perhaps an ATI fanboi ? I dunno, but it`s irresponsible if ur claiming to be a `reporter` to show a personal favorite.

Just made me chortle a bit, as if we take reports such as these about ATI/nVidia/etc, they would have us believe that the industry is extremely flakey, and it isn`t.

U get failures - they happen. U also get in this day`n`age a breed of customer who believe they`re full of entitlement, over-proportionally or realistic, and with the anonymous right to voice their slanderous, often grossly incorrect, opinion without reproach on the net. U can spot these people from reading a handful of lines on their forum posts.

"nVidia - yeah they suck, had 3 cards off them and they all failed - I`ll never get one of those again !"

.. but what u don`t know if that this is the person`s first build/install. The first card was an pcie and their Dell had an agp, they get another and dont attach a rear power to the card, 3rd time they knock the cpu cooler and the Dell fails to boot at-all. (ofc u don`t get to read any of this with the post, cost they wouldn`t admit it. they know everything, they do nothing wrong and every1 else is.) - there on in tho, 3 cards returned and a lifetime of bad nVidia posts. Happens that they got a repaired pc or a new one, bought an ATI card (that was luckily the right one), and it worked - even tho they still never put the power in the rear, but procede to splam forums about `why my 4870 isnt running fast! - effing DELL!!!` (procede with bad Dell posts) and on, and on, and on. .....

YAY revival thread into a rant !

[Diablo]

I think you raise a valid point that some people may break their computers because of a lack of experience. Hardware issues do occur (I have had to RMA my Striker II Extreme after about 14 days and my pico ITX after 7 in separate issues) but sometimes the weak link is the bit between the chair and the keyboard.

I have no doubt that there is a higher than normal rate of 92 and 94 based chip failiure, but some people will see these reports and RMA their board claiming "yeah, its a bad batch or summat" when they may well be at fault.

Unless a hardware failiure is obvious (e.g. scorch marks on an overclocked processor or a broken PCB, it can be hard to tell what the problem is especially if the device is completely dead.

[k4p84]

I had two of both 8800GTX and 8600GTS, both would throw up tons of BSOD.

Been the parts hoarder that i was i was able to switch out every component to see what was wrong.

Such is life, but i still went out and bought two GTX 280's.

With high failure rates on the Nvidia side could this not push them into real business trouble, like closure?

ED

[Diablo]

Only if loads of them are in warranty and people are bothered to launch class action suits/return their cards

[Rastalovich]

Originally Posted by name='k4p84'

With high failure rates on the Nvidia side could this not push them into real business trouble, like closure?

How big were the failure rates ?

[k4p84]

I don't know, i was posing a question.

I reckon many users would pursue RMA. If i spend more than a few quid on an item i do want it to work as described!

ED

[Zoot]

Originally Posted by name='Rastalovich'

Holy thread revival!

Been reading some newsy things this morning, in particular:

ATI 3870s fail too !

It dawns on me that I haven`t heard anything, witnessed anything, dealt with anything, regarding any nVidia cards/laptops falling over. Sure I`ve heard of doas - u get doas everywhere. And the reports were of the tech stretching back to the generation b4 last.

If it's true that the 3870s too are prone to failure, then I think it's rational to assume TSMC is to blame here.