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Laptop owners sue Nvidia over flawed GPUs

by on12 May 2009


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Apple, Dell and HP laptops affected


Five plaintiffs
have joined forces and suing Nvidia over allegedly faulty GPUs, which they are trying to have replaced.

They are accusing Nvidia of violating consumer protection laws, and if the suit is granted class-action, it could potentially include millions of laptop owners. Nvidia acknowledged the issue last summer, admitting that significant quantities of its notebook GPUs were flawed.

However, in a filing with the SEC, Nvidia blamed TSMC, notebook vendors, and even consumers for the mess. In the end, it said it would take a $196 million charge to replace the faulty chips. Notebook vendors reacted by issuing hotfixes which downclocked the chips and increased fan speeds to combat the issue.

The plaintiffs claim that anything short of replacing the faulty units is not enough, and that the hotfixes were a "grossly inadequate remedy," as they negatively impacted performance and battery lifem, whilst increasing system noise.

Last September, a New York law firm also sued Nvidia, accusing it of breaking U.S. securities laws by not revealing the existence of the issue for months.

More here.
Last modified on 12 May 2009
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