HP’s Action on Defective NVIDIA GPU’s

By Dave • August 4, 2008

Dell let their users know last week as to what action they were taking in regards to NVIDIA’s defective GPU’s and this week sees HP do the same. Although NVIDIA are staying tight-lipped about the whole affair, still.

HP’s announcment also lists the models of affected laptops and they look like they have a much bigger problem. Their action reflects this with much bigger steps for their customers. The Compaq Presario and HP Pavillion are the makes affected while HP list specific model numbers in detail (not all are entitled to repair). There are detailed instructions for finding your model number and what to do about it. If you do find that you have purchased an affected model HP are offering a “Limited Warranty Service Enhancement” as well as an update to the BIOS, depending on the symptoms which are a lot worse than those reported in Dell’s.

There is list of symptoms much like Dell indicated but these from HP look to be far more problematic and include such things as; no video, no power, boot failure, mysterious “beeps” and wireless adapter failure. Under these conditions HP is offering the Limited Warranty Service Enhancement (as they should). This includes free shipping, repair and 24 months warranty since the initial warranty start or 90 days. Plus they say that they will have your laptop back to you within 10 - 14 days.

Under the extreme circumstances of a terminal PC that they describe they have no option but to make these offers. But I would hate to be NVIDIA right now who will no doubt be sent the bill. Although as said previously; you would not know what they are thinking.

NVIDIA have a lot of work to do to restore customer confidence and it could not come at a worse time. I remember when NVIDIA was the only GPU, they ruled the graphics market. This blow to their reputation is going to hurt and I know that I may just think twice before looking at another one. But then every company has it’s up’s and down’s; you only have to see the rise and fall of CPU’s. This hurts the computer distributors and they may not be so forgiving.

I can not help wondering if this is the then end of the wedge, how many more issues are going to crop up over time? Especially given this has been identified by Dell and HP as an overheating problem, it is likely that shorter than expected life of GPU’s and potentially whole laptops will be experienced by customers. The longer that NVIDIA remain silent then the more likely they are of effectively achieving plausible deniability and the greater probability that this lot of defective chips are pushed over their warranty period.

If you own a HP and want to check to see what you should do then follow these instructions.