You cant judge the whole apple products by just a few threads of 30-50 people complaining, while millions of other apple users are quiet because there is nothing to complain about.
I have to admit.. people on macrumors forums are obssessed.
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New MacBook Pro's have bad nVidia chips says Inq
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You cant judge the whole apple products by just a few threads of 30-50 people complaining, while millions of other apple users are quiet because there is nothing to complain about.
I have to admit.. people on macrumors forums are obssessed.
Can you honestly tell me that Apple QA has gone up since steve came back? In my 10 years with apple this is the first time i have had to return 3 laptops. I think they are the best laptops they have build, but choosing nvidia was a mistake.
The two MBP i returned were not because of a crooked key or ill fitting case cover, it was because the system was crashing. So unless Apple comes out and says that the new MBP cannot be used for gaming, i am using it for what it was built for and its failing.
Mate, 30-50 people on one site, on a forum = thousands, tens of thousands of real world users who A. do not know about this site, B. Do not blog. Where i work we support some major sites, we are talking about 70K people a day...we had a major problem on a site for 2 weeks, that is 980 000 unique visits...how many complaints did we receive, 3. Yes 3 complaints.
There are also people on this site that are obsessed with telling others that they have perfectly working MBP (probably cause they do not use them under the same conditions) and that others should stop complaining....also very annoying .
So to be blunt, i am on this thread because i believe that my MBP suffers from a fault nvidia gpu, hoping that someone might have advice on how i could actually game on the MBP without crashes, and you are here for???
Not just laptops and MBP's I'm afraid. I had to RMA a XFX Nvidia based videocard the other day and found forums like this:
http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=54
Where a large number of people were complaining their 8600/8800/9600 desktop cards were suffering the BSOD in Windows while gaming or not. Leads me to believe that late generations of Nvidia products are unreliable. It was a good choice then I bought one of those XFX Nvidia cards with lifetime warranty, although, I figure with another RMA, the shipping costs would warrant another card altogether.
No.
The problem comes from a design defect. It's called a root cause. It's what's discussed in the Nvidia article, which apparently 95% of the people in this thread either didn't read or didn't understand or just choose to irrationally ignore because it suits them.
Poor fan management, playing World of Warcraft too much, etc... that's not the issue folks, lol. Those are _effects_ from the root cause. And to fix those issues in particular does not fix the problem, they're just bandaids. The problem still exists.
Now, what the article doesn't address is whether or not the issue is a small sample (ie. NVidia is mixing in a small amount of GPUs with the old process) or if the process hasn't been changed at all. But the fact remains, in their sample of 1, it is present.
BS. They have to test the system as a whole, put it through a suite of usage scenarios that simulate real world use. They also have to inspect and thoroughly test samples of components that go in their machine. It was a lack of thorough testing, probably due to time to market issues.
And guys, let's be real. This is a big corporation. They may have already known before the first product was released. It comes down to dollars and cents and weighing which will be costlier - hold back the product to fix the issue up front vs. the cost to warranty based on likely rate of incidence & loss of revenue due to consumer confidence issues.
If you don't believe companies do this stuff, study up on what the auto industry does on crash analysis, known issues vs. death/dismemberment rates.
On the Pinto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto):
"Ford was aware of this design flaw but allegedly refused to pay what was characterized as the minimal expense of a redesign. Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. Mother Jones magazine obtained the cost-benefit analysis that it said Ford had used to compare the cost of an $11 ($57 today, allowing for inflation) repair against the cost of paying off potential law suits, in what became known as the Ford Pinto memo.[4][5] The characterization of Ford's design decision as gross disregard for human lives in favor of profits led to major lawsuits, criminal charges, and a costly recall of all affected Pintos. While Ford was acquitted of criminal charges, it lost several million dollars and gained a reputation for manufacturing "the barbecue that seats four."[6] Nevertheless, as a result of this identified problem, Ford initiated a recall which provided a dealer installable "safety kit" that installed some plastic protective material over the offending sharp objects, negating the risk of tank puncture."[7]"
Or the procedure (test) was done incorrectly, the new architecture doesn't react the same way as the previous, the problem is limited to either the 256MB or 512 MB versions of the card, or the Inquirer needs a boost in traffic . . .
To that effect, I can't believe people are blaming the black-screening on this possible flaw. The bumps gradually crack causing card failure.
Anyways, after new Vista drivers, I hace no freezing, blackscreening, or other problems gaming. It does get hot . . but that's expected for a thin laptop.
What was done incorrectly? They cut it open, put it under an electron microscope, evaluated that the substrate has 95% lead.
Where is the fallibility? Please, highlight where their testing methodology could have gone wrong. This appears incredibly cut and dry to me.
What are the tester's credentials? Would any kind of educated Chemist / scientist / computer engineer actually fail to specify their test subject or know that there are, in fact, two versions of the card? There is very little reason not to be skeptical of the testing.
Inquirer article seems to have been removed.
Inquirer article seems to have been removed.
Article was moved, not removed.
New link:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer...le-macbook-pros-have-nvidia-bad-bump-material
The test subject is clear. It's an off-the-shelf unibody Macbook Pro.
The testers credentials are "It was then secreted to a small lab of mad scientists who do not wish to be named, fearing repercussions from Nvidia and Apple."
This is journalism, remember. We are only seeing the results as reported to fit the point of the article. And as much as biases can be introduced, it's pretty cut and dry, paraprhasing - "we gave them this chip. They analyzed it. Here the results for you to look at that clearly display 95% lead content in the bump material."
They got me fooled. And I'm a sr. software engineer currently managing R&D on a supply chain inventory management system.
I can assure you that Apple was taken by surprise on this one. The engineering samples they had (of the 8600) pre-manufacturing didn't fail because the fail is something that evolves over time as the substrate goes through heat/cooling cycles. Inherently this takes quite a while and requires conditions aggravate the problem in a very particular way.
The fact that Apple is staying pretty damn tight lipped on this one has more to do with Apple corporate culture than anything else. The company is made up of hundreds of little NDA cells that only know what they need to do what's in their particular NDA'd project scope. There's also a well known procedure of Apple's that aggravated the supply issue: Apple buys HUGE quantities of it's sub components a year or more in advance to prevent supply issues and make it possible to deal very aggressively with issues like this.
Raising the Pinto is irrelevant and sensationalist at best. If you're going to talk about corporate testing failures look to the manufacturer of the part that failed, not to the company who is as much a customer as you and I.
New Information from Anandtech
Check this out, read page 2 about the manufacturing process in bumps and underfill and how ATI changed materials in 2005 to avoid this Nvidia fiasco. The article is on the new "Jasper" series of Xbox360's.
QUOTE: "Traditionally GPUs had used high-lead bumps between the GPU die and the chip package, these bumps can carry a lot of current but are quite rigid, and rigid materials tend to break in a high stress environment. Unlike the bumps between the GPU package and a motherboard (or video card PCB), the solder bumps between a GPU die and the GPU package are connecting two different materials, each with its own rate of thermal expansion. The GPU die itself gets hotter much quicker than the GPU package, which puts additional stress on the bumps themselves. The type of stress also mattered, while simply maintaining high temperatures for a period of time provided one sort of stress, power cycling the GPUs provided a different one entirely - one that eventually resulted in these bumps, and the GPU as a whole, failing.
The GPU failures ended up being most pronounced in notebooks because of the usage model. With notebooks the number of times you turn them on and off in a day is much greater than a desktop, which puts a unique type of thermal stress on the aforementioned solder bumps, causing the sorts of failures that plagued NVIDIA GPUs.
In 2005, ATI switched from high-lead bumps (90% lead, 10% tin) to eutectic bumps (37% lead, 63% tin). These eutectic bumps can't carry as much current as high-lead bumps, they have a lower melting point but most importantly, they are not as rigid as high-lead bumps. So in those high stress situations caused by many power cycles, they don't crack, and thus you don't get the same GPU failure rates in notebooks as you do with NVIDIA hardware."
Interesting read for those interested...
Check this out, read page 2 about the manufacturing process in bumps and underfill and how ATI changed materials in 2005 to avoid this Nvidia fiasco. The article is on the new "Jasper" series of Xbox360's.
QUOTE: "Traditionally GPUs had used high-lead bumps between the GPU die and the chip package, these bumps can carry a lot of current but are quite rigid, and rigid materials tend to break in a high stress environment. Unlike the bumps between the GPU package and a motherboard (or video card PCB), the solder bumps between a GPU die and the GPU package are connecting two different materials, each with its own rate of thermal expansion. The GPU die itself gets hotter much quicker than the GPU package, which puts additional stress on the bumps themselves. The type of stress also mattered, while simply maintaining high temperatures for a period of time provided one sort of stress, power cycling the GPUs provided a different one entirely - one that eventually resulted in these bumps, and the GPU as a whole, failing.
The GPU failures ended up being most pronounced in notebooks because of the usage model. With notebooks the number of times you turn them on and off in a day is much greater than a desktop, which puts a unique type of thermal stress on the aforementioned solder bumps, causing the sorts of failures that plagued NVIDIA GPUs.
In 2005, ATI switched from high-lead bumps (90% lead, 10% tin) to eutectic bumps (37% lead, 63% tin). These eutectic bumps can't carry as much current as high-lead bumps, they have a lower melting point but most importantly, they are not as rigid as high-lead bumps. So in those high stress situations caused by many power cycles, they don't crack, and thus you don't get the same GPU failure rates in notebooks as you do with NVIDIA hardware."
Interesting read for those interested...
I hate to repeat this again, but there are two different Macbook Pros with different video cards. It's entirely possible that the defective cards are only the 256MB or 512MB cards. It's also possible that there are a mixture of defective and 'new bumped' cards. This study is pointless in that the sample size is so ridiculously small that it proves nothing besides the fact that they picked up a half-defective one. Sure, it raises the probability that the entire line is defective, but if you browse previous Inquirer articles, they've been saying the 94xx/96xx were defective long before they did this little 'trial'. Which also makes me believe that this study/testing might be quite biased/skewed.
Testing for the issue?
So aside from running graphics heavy games on one's system, is there any way to test whether you have an issue with either of the NV chips? I just ordered a new MBP 15" from MacConnection and am set to receive it on Monday. I really don't do any gaming, but I do use Photoshop and other photo/graphic intensive programs, so I doubt I would run into the issue at this point. I really don't want to have to deal with a failure or a major repair down the line, though. My last powerbook (Sept. '03) had an issue with the gray dot on the screen which required a complete screen replacement and I swore I would never be an "early adopter" again, but I really need a new machine! What to do-- refuse delivery on Monday or just go with it and see what happens?
So aside from running graphics heavy games on one's system, is there any way to test whether you have an issue with either of the NV chips? I just ordered a new MBP 15" from MacConnection and am set to receive it on Monday. I really don't do any gaming, but I do use Photoshop and other photo/graphic intensive programs, so I doubt I would run into the issue at this point. I really don't want to have to deal with a failure or a major repair down the line, though. My last powerbook (Sept. '03) had an issue with the gray dot on the screen which required a complete screen replacement and I swore I would never be an "early adopter" again, but I really need a new machine! What to do-- refuse delivery on Monday or just go with it and see what happens?
Yeah, but the Vram is not integrated on die. So the amount of Vram doesn't enter into the equation at all. This problem is between the die contact and the organic substrate only.
As for sample sizes, this isn't a random defect, so there is no need for large sampling, if you proved that even just ONE unit has a defect of this type, all the other units are now suspects due to the streamlined manufacturing process with soldering. Batches are relabeled when something changes in the manufacturing line, so it is more than safe to conjecture that the entire batches and similar batches will have this high lead solder.
Anyway, I'd rather opt for no problems post investigation.