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Apple Desktops Affected by Bad NVIDIA GPUs?

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News Posted: Tue, Oct 14 2008 8:40 PM
We wrote earlier about HP's announcement about NVIDIA GPU failures in 38 of its slimline desktop PCs.  While that's bad enough, The Inquirer says it has memos from allegedly from an internal knowledge base at Apple which states that all of NVIDIA's parts based on its G92 architecture sent to Apple have had to undergo the same change in bump material required to fix the issues in the heat-related failures we've been talking about since earlier this year.

It should be noted that taking the source into account, a big fat "rumor," or perhaps "unsubstantiated" should be placed right here.

However, they're not always off the mark.  And, after all, if HP is seeing issues, why not another PC manufacturer. The Inquirer says, "a single incident does not a trend make," but let's be honest in that this NVIDIA GPU "problem" seems to be shaping up somewhat like the worldwide financial crisis currently ongoing.  That one is wide, deep, and seemed to be under control, until like a set of dominos things started to fall.  And based on how the set of bad GPUs spread from notebook OEM to OEM to OEM, it wouldn't really be a surprise, now would it?

Anyway,  here's one of the memos (somewhat redacted by The Inquirer to protect its sources):

XX-Sep-2008 XX:XX PM xxxxxx :

Request to qualify Nvidia G92 GPU bump material change for M86 for known Nvidia bump crack issue in order to support MPS and enhance package robustness.

APN: XXXXXXXX

06-Sep-2008 03:27 PM xxxxx :

NVIDIA will transition from using high-lead solder (95%Pb/5%Sn) to eutectic solder (63%Sn/37%Pb) flip-chip bump material for the G92 product family. During the transition period NVIDIA will be supplying both high-lead and eutectic bump until inventory is depleted. No other materials are being changed.

M86 refers to a desktop.  Ouch. 

Now, for those concerned about Apple's move (announced Tuesday) to NVIDIA IGPs and chipsets in their new notebooks: don't bother worrying. Those should be built with the newer bump material NVIDIA has changed to and shouldn't have any issues.  And this is still uncorroborated.  But keep an eye on things, anyway.
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ice91785 replied on Sun, Oct 19 2008 10:52 AM

Think this will also carry over to those new "awesome" macbooks being released?? Uh oh....

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Grahf replied on Mon, Oct 20 2008 12:52 AM

ice91785:

Think this will also carry over to those new "awesome" macbooks being released?? Uh oh....

Nope. Problem has been resolved.

I beat the Internet... the end guy was hard

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