Nvidia Class Action Suit Settled

For clarification, only Macbook Pro's from 08/09 are affected. The new 2010 Core i3/i5/i7 models aren't affected. The 300M is a solid card.

Laptops and notebooks were the only places where thermals really mattered, and where the end-customer ultimately noticed an issue.

For the most part a chip that is running 5degrees, 10degrees, or even 20degrees hotter than intended really doesn't make a whole lot of difference in an desktop computer where system components all exhaust their heat into a central location. A desktop chassis has to remove the heat from the hard-drives, central processor, motherboard, and everything else from basically an air tank. Desktop chassis have an additional factor that weight really doesn't matter. Yes, somebody will notice when a desktop chassis weighs more than 50lbs. For the most part though, most users won't really notice the difference between a case that weighs 10lbs and a case that weighs 20lbs... because they won't be moving the cases on a regular basis.

A laptop / notebook doesn't have that luxury. Heat needs to be exhausted through sometimes very limited devices. There isn't space in a laptop to have a massive copper or aluminum heatsink, and that means laptop vendors have to very specific heat measurements in order to make sure their product has the capability to exhaust the heat the system can generate with a specific weighted envelope.

This is where Nvidia's "admission of wrongdoing" is a big deal. Nvidia flat out lied to OEM's and ODM's over the actual thermal properties of Geforce chips. The OEM's and ODM's built their laptops against a lower thermal output than the chips actual thermal output.

Now, why did Nvidia lie? Well, lots of reasons, ranging from being confident that the manufacturing partner's (TMSC or UMC) second generation chips would have the advertised thermal properties, and that issues with the first generation of chips would be written off as teething issues. Then there was / is the problem of AMD, whose products were / are cheaper to manufacturer with better performance per watt ratios.


Now, Nvidia's thermal issues have reared themselves, in quite an ugly manner, with the recent Starcraft game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCra...ngs_of_Liberty

Blizzard posted the following on their message board:

The problem is, this line, is complete and absolute bull excrement, which even Blizzard admitted:

All consumer processors are sold by maximum enabled clockspeed. You buy an AMD processor at 2.8ghz, you expect it to run at 2.8ghz. You buy an Intel processor at 2.8ghh, you expect it to run at 2.8ghz. You buy a RadeonHD 5850 at 850mhz, you expect it to run at 850mhz. You buy a GTX 480 at 700mhz, you expect it to run at 700mhz.

The maximum clockspeed also means there is a hard-limit to how many instructions a chip can possibly compute at one time, also known as instructions per clock, or I.P.C. The hard limit of any chip's I.P.C. means there is a hard-limit to the amount of work a processor can accomplish. Since there is a hard-limit to the amount of work the processor can accomplish, there is a hard-limit to how much heat a processor can put off.

This hard-limit is referred to as Maximum TPD, or Maximum Thermal Design Power. Chip vendors generally tell the OEM's and ODM's what the Maximum TPD's for their chips are, allowing the OEM's and ODM's to properly prepare and manufacture appropriate chassis for the chip products. Some chip vendors, such as Intel and AMD/ATi go a step further, producing their own reference heat-sink designs, and cutting down the research and design work required for an OEM or ODM.

Under most default circumstances then, outside of direct user-intervention, processors should not experience a situation where the chip can overheat.

Now, in all fairness, The Starcraft II overheating fallout wasn't entirely Nvidia's fault. There were quite a few users whose problem basically boiled down to dust clogging up the air-flow.

That being said, Nvidia cards were associated with the Starcraft II overheating incident for a different reason. I've been stating for several months now that I would only buy from a few specific Nvidia vendors because I knew the other vendors were using cheaper parts.

The market reality is, since AMD's 3x00 series RadeonHD parts, manufacturing a RadeonHD board to Sapphire produced Factory spec cost a lot less to produce a Geforce card with equivalent performance. Over the years Nvidia's board partners have been shaving costs by using less mylar layers in the printed circuit boards, more aluminum instead of copper in the heatsink, lower quality capacitors, lower quality digital to analog converters, lower quality memory, and other such cost saving measures.

It got to the point in the latter part of 2009 that Nvidia started having to pay vendors to take stocks of Geforce GTX 200 chipsets in order to stay market competitive. Eventually Nvidia was forced to end of life the Geforce GTX 200 series, but not before loosing exclusive Partner XFX, and starting the eventual bankruptcy of exclusive partner BFG.

It wasn't really a surprise to anybody who had been tracking Nvidia's problems that the thermal issues with the laptop / notebook market were eventually going to spill into the Desktop realm... and Starcraft II was one of the first games where Nvidia's out of control thermal issues nearly bit them in the rear end ... again.


Now, as to this specific class-action lawsuit settlement listed here, the list of affected computers does not affect all of the known to be recalled computers containing Nvidia parts: http://nvidiasettlement.com/affectedmodels.html

I suspect that the list of computers in this class action lawsuit are likely the ones where the lawyers are confident that they can prove Nvidia was guilty of possible criminal or civil liabilities.

There's also a tagline on the settlement:

So, even if you do try to participate in the class-action settlement, there seems to be a broiler-plate clause allowing somebody to dismiss at their leisure which computers are illegible for action under the class-action.

Technically, I'm not entirely sure that is entirely legal, but whatever. I didn't ever buy one of the exploding laptops, so it's not really my dog in the fight outside of trying to keep those who are / were / will be involved informed on the background of the cases.

Bzzt:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...27&postcount=1

Already been one public recall of the 300M series. Are you sure you want to say it is a solid card?