RSSDell cures some Nvidia GPU woes with BIOS update
By Tim Conneally | Published July 28, 2008, 4:12 PM
Dell has issued a BIOS update to prevent its notebooks equipped with faulty Nvidia graphics cards from overheating.
Notebooks equipped with certain Nvidia GPUs were reportedly failing at abnormally high rates by the graphics company itself in an SEC regulatory filing. At the time, however, the company did not list which configurations were failing, saying only that it was one sold in significant quantities.
Reports soon arose claiming that most GeForce 8-series graphics cards (below 8800) were the products in question in Nvidia's filing. The company did not issue a confirmatory statement, but said it expected to lose between $150-200 million fixing the problem.
Dell has issued a system update to ten of its notebooks, including many of the popular Vostro line, which addresses the problems found in Nvidia's GPUs. Confirming speculation that sub-8800 8-series GPUs are the unnamed faulty family, many of those notebooks listed in Dell's BIOS update contain 8400M and 8600M GS graphics cards.
Dell echoed Nvidia's SEC filing in saying that the issue is attributable to "weak die/packaging material set," but goes on to list the symptoms found that indicate an overheating graphics unit. These include: multiple images, random onscreen character generation, lines in the display, and total loss of video display.
Dell Expects the BIOS update will reduce the likelihood of failures, but it's possible some computer systems may need a replacement GPU installed.
I've got series 7. a Quaddro or Geforce Go 7400 with supposedly 512 mb ram, however I've never quite understood it's definition. I think it's really 2 256 chips. Either way if I'm running say Painkiller, expect one hot laptop. Hence why I have fans running under it. (latitude D820)
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|This is a horrible ordeal, you cannot fix a hardware problem with a software patch? Making fans work overtime for something that is clearly nVidia's fault. I'm kind of lucky I guess with a 4yr warranty, if the GPU doesn't kick it within that amount of time it probably won't for awhile afterwards but still... what about the folks with a 2yr warranty? Suddenly their GPU fails and they are sh*t out of luck, having to fork over the cash for their faulty hardware.
nVidia and Dell need to work together on some sort of compensation package, no doubt folks will be losing their hard earned money over this
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|What are they doing?
I will be so pissed if my laptop GPU fails that I ordered last month that is on that list.
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|So...
Are they underclocking the cards now or what?
What magic mojo did they work in that BIOS patch to keep them from overheating?
I'm 100% serious. I have a D630 right in front of me running Vista with Aero enabled. Are they going to screw performance by underclocking?
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|Yah, I have a M1530 that should arrive in a couple weeks.
Slow Dell...
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|They are going to make the fan work overtime from what I have read.
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|From what I hear the BIOS update results in the fan that cools the NVIDIA card being on constantly. Loud and kills battery life.
Software to fix a hardware problem. Not really a solution.
...but from Dell's perspective it may be a fix. It probably keeps the video card functioning just long enough until the warranty expires. Then we're SOL.
I sure hope Dell does the right thing and replaces the faulty hardware.
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|and the overworked cooling fan dies along side the GPU at warranty expiry!
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|Hmmm...
I suppose that's a touch better than underclocking the GPU, but seriously....
What a joke. This is a business-class system. When Dell had issues with capacitors, they replaced them next-day upon failure.
I can only hope it is their intention to do the same with this issue.
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|Gotta love that subtle sound of a breeze. Reminds one of a Daiquiri at the beach bar I guess...
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|If I had one of these systems I didn't want a stinking patch throttling my broken hardware but a replacement.
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|Exactly. Agreed 100%. If they reduce performance to keep the heat down, they are going to have a *lot* of pissed off users.
They can send me a new freaking laptop with proper heat dissipation.
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|I sure will be pissed if thats the case!
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|But didn't u say in another post in an unrelated thread that you had integrated gfx on your Dell lappy? Wouldn't that be an Intel chip set?
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|Actually, I was going to ask the same thing as preinterpost. :)
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|Hahahaha.
Try having an Inspiron 5160.
There's a wiki article devoted to the s***tyness of the heat dissipation of it (and the 5150).
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|The Inspirons are not business class. They were made to be s***ty. Sorry. ;)
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|If it's in a laptop, it's integrated (IMO).
Not enough room to call them discrete, plus, even though it does have *some* discrete RAM, it also utilizes system RAM.
So also, IMO, using system RAM=integrated.
Either way, it's all crap compared to a real desktop solution. :p
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|Good to know , thanks betanews.
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