The issue affected a number of Dell, HP, and Apple laptops, and spread across what can only be called a huge number of different models. The statement NVIDIA made on July 2nd, 2008 admitted the issue, and that the company was taking a $150 - $200 million charge to cover:
... anticipated customer warranty, repair, return, replacement and other consequential costs and expenses arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of our previous generation MCP and GPU products used in notebook systems. All newly manufactured products and all products currently shipping in volume have a different and more robust material set.Among the symptoms exhibited by affected systems were:
- Distorted or scrambled video on the notebook computer screen
- No video on the notebook computer screen even when the notebook computer is on
- Random characters, lines or garbled images on the notebook computer screen
If you've already had your computer repaired and have the documents to prove it, NVIDIA has set up a $2 million pool to be divided among consumers. On the other hand, if you have been sitting waiting with a defective GPU keeping your laptop out of action, and you have a Dell or Apple MacBook Pro, you can get the faulty GPUs replaced free of charge. HP owners, on the other hand, will get a replacement system (as parts to repair the old systems are no longer available).
Owners of HP laptops will receive a Compaq Presario CQ50 notebook computer, while netbooks will be replaced with an Asus EEE T101MT-EU17-BK.
The affected compuer models are listed here. They even include gaming models such as the Dell XPS M1710 and M1730.
