An anonymous reader writes "According to a research report out of UCLA, released this morning, NVidia's high-lead bump packaging could last anywhere from 1/10th to 1/100th as long as AMD's advanced eutectic bump approach. (TG Daily has picked up the claim.) NVidia is currently in the midst of a $200M recall of bad GPUs, and the report suggests that the issue could be much deeper than NVidia's PR department would have us believe." The report lends credence to the strident claims of the Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian, which we discussed a month back.
I've had an ATI X1950 Pro for 3 years now and while the card works great, the newer games render it near obsolete. So yes, I can have a card forever but what good is that going to do me if I need to upgrade anyway?
Resale value would suck and why would anyone want to spend 50$ on a 3 year old card when they can get a 1 year old "better" card for 90$. (I pulled the numbers out of thin air but you get the idea).
Well,I don't know how long "1/100 of an ATI" actually is,but I just sold one with a 16Mb Nvidia Vanta in it that worked fine,I have a buddy that still plays games on his old Geforce 2,but I have to agree it eventually becomes a "what is the point" situation.
I mean I have a 64Mb Geforce 4000 PCI that was bought back when that was a decent card,and that thing has survived being placed in several different machines,multiple moves,and being left in a dead PC in a shed for a year. And the thing is still purring
But we are talking about a bad batch,not a bad company,which was what I was pointing out. The deskstar got named "deathstar" due to a bad batch,but I have sold several of the new Hitachi deskstar drives without a problem. Same thing with Maxtor,which sucked in '02 but have no problem now. Same thing with Dell and the bad caps,etc.
The point I was trying to make is the 8xxx series is an anomaly,nothing more,nothing less. No company with even the tiniest bit of common sense is going to stick with a formula t
I'm skeptical about the report, especially given the lack of any field studies with it. The useful life of a piece of computer equipment is usually 3-5 years; high-end graphics cards are probably shorter, because the main customers are gamers who need cutting-edge performance to kill orcs with.
So does "10-100 times longer" mean that significant fractions of nVidias are failing in 10 days - 3 months due to bad solder joints? Or does it mean that the solder joints in an ATI will last 30-300 years, long after anybody except a few retro gamers are interested in a graphics system that's mounted on a card in a separate box and doesn't interface directly to their optic nerves?
It could just mean that if failures occur along a normal distribution, which they probably do, each point is approximately 10-100x higher than the ATI cards, which would be a Big Deal.
Most companies offer at least a year long warranty; if they have significant failures in that year, like 10-100x higher than normal, that may put too much pressure on their warranty policy.
And let's not forget nVidia's partners in selling cards (you know, all the non-nVidia nVidia cards). Those people may see high failure rates of nVidia parts, and all of a sudden using another chipset just got a heckuva lot more attractive.
So, the moral of the story is, there is no set 'time' that a card will die. It's not like after 10 months all of them will just conk out. But if there are higher failure rates than normal in their warranty period, not to mention harm done to their reputation, it could end up costing them greatly.
why would anyone want to spend 50$ on a 3 year old card when they can get a 1 year old "better" card for 90$
Perhaps someone only has $60, and still wants to eat for the rest of the day.
*shrug*
Generally, your "insightful" rhetorical question is absurd, like this: Why would anyone want to spend $50,000 on a 3-year-old Corvette when they can get a better 1-year-old Corvette C6 Z06 for $90,000?
I think that the real killer is laptops. Virtually nobody ever upgrades the laptop's GPU, indeed this is generally impossible, and the laptop's life is pretty much equivalent to the GPU's life, barring very expensive service.
With desktop systems it isn't so bad; by the time the card dies, equivalent performance will be considerably cheaper(or the card will still be under warranty), and swapping it out will take maybe 10 minutes. With laptops, not so much.
"Eutectic" is a materials science word; it means (more or less, and I'm refreshing my memory from Wikipedia) a mixture (alloy) that does not separate/segregate into its original metals when it freezes; it has the lowest melting point, and passes immediately from liquid to solid phase. If, say, you have a solder that has more lead than the eutectic mix, when it freezes, it will segregate into (tiny) bits of lead and a eutectic remainder as it cools.
The advantage of a eutectic mix is that the melting point is lower, and when it is melted, it is all melted, and flows nicely. There are probably some caveats and quid-pro-quos for how it behaves in contact with other metals, which will certainly go ever-so-slightly into solution and change things.
What I can't believe is that a companies PR department would knowingly release false or misleading information in an effort to keep their stock price up.
Solder is actually hypoeutectic, meaning it melts at a lower temperature than any of its component metals alone (and still remains the same alloy, which you mentioned).
There's also hypereutectic which means the opposite, obviously. A lot of pistons are cast with a hypereutectic alloy to keep costs down (forging is expensive) while increasing the melting point.
"Silicon doesn't wear out; microchips were effectively immortal. The Wig took notice of the fact. Like every other child of his age, however, he knew that silicon became obsolete, which was worse than wearing out"
The silicon may not wear out but I've seen pictures from an electron microscope that show that the metal interconnects can deteriorate and fail. See electromigration [wikipedia.org].
But to prove my point, electromigration happens, and IS an issue within ANY time span.
You point is valid. On-point, even. But what makes Nvidia's alleged misdeeds significant is that electromigration, along with other factors, makes the interconnects in the 8xxx series GPUs fail in an unreasonably-short time span. Without elaborate external mitigation strategies*, within warranty.
And that's the other factor in the significance in this story: Nvidia is alleged** to have made a point of downplaying, denying
I have an old (circa 1980) roll of rosin-core eutectic solder, that I don't use any more because of the lead.
I also have a recently purchased some mgchemicals 4900-112G [mgchemicals.com], it is 96.3Sn, 0.7Cu, 3Ag, with a "no clean" flux.
It works ok with my old soldering ironing, flows nicely, no idea how it does with tin whiskers.
I'm not getting a lot of trouble with cold joints, and I do push my luck (lots of free-hand work, for instance, in-place soldering of LEDs for under-cabinet lights).
I use 70/30 and 60/40 both at home and at work. I have some 70/30 circuits I soldered up in 1974 that are still working. High-tin solders are harder to work with: it doesn't flow as easily and doesn't seem to be willing to bead up on a pad, so if you try and self-locate a small package -- a BGA or LLP -- using solder, it won't: it'll just bridge all over the place. Thankfully, at work we provide engineering samples, not commercial stuff, so we don't have to worry about RoHS and can keep using leaded solder
Nvidia has already switched away from high-lead solder.
So, should I plan on buying a new card soon, when my solder snaps, or do I have a good one? How do I find out? Is this why my 7600 gave up the ghost so quickly? Have I already been a victim of this problem?
NVidia began to update their manufacturing process in the middle of the life cycle of several chips. They switched to eutectic pads and a new underfill material (which has a lower glassification temperature). They stuck with high-lead solder because the bumps are laid out very early on and changing them would be a major undertaking. Basically, this causes shit to break down faster because the parts are now much more susceptible to thermal stress. NVidia knew there were problems. Laptop parts started failing at very high rates. OEMs knew about the failures in November of 2007, or earlier. NVidia blamed OEM designs creating thermal issues. NVidia offered to foot half of the bill (replacements, handling customers, fixes, etc.) with DELL and HP. DELL and HP jumped at the chance to have the massive bill cut in half (this kind of offer is unheard of). NVidia's "fix" was to crank up the fans with a BIOS update. OEMs found desktop parts were failing at alarming rates as well. OEMs were forbidden from speaking out about the real issue (lumped in there with that "we'll pay half" deal). OEMs find out that their designs do meet NVidia's recommended thermal and electrical constraints. NVidia continues to sell existing bad cards that are on shelves, and makes no mention of any of this to customers or retailers. NVidia switches away from high-lead solder, completing the updates to it's manufacturing process, and may now be pumping out good parts. But these new parts have not had any power distribution / control changes to accommodate the new solder material. These new parts will likely have higher-than-normal failure rates as well. NVidia does NOT designate the new parts in any way on the box. NVidia does not designate the new parts in any (official) way on the actual hardware. News comes out (last week) that NVidia based chipsets (motherboard chipsets, e.g. nForce) are bad too.
I have tried three different ATI cards - all three ATI cards up and died on me within one year of usage, and I don't even play any graphics-heavy FPS games. After my most recent ATI card croaked (A Radeon X550, I think) I switched to Nvidia. So far my current Nvidia card has outlasted any ATI cards I've ever owned.
Hey unless my SLI nVidia cards die before I upgrade in another 6 months to a year, who cares? I didn't read TFA, but if we're talking 1 year vs 100 years, I couldn't care less. They work, they're fast and stable.
This study does NOT specifically address or study AMD or NVidia's Chips.
It does not specifically address or test the exact chemical makeup of chips belonging to AMD or NVidia.
The conclusions being drawn as to the relative life spans of those manufacturer's chips appear to strictly belong to the bloggers who want a big headline, and not to the authors of the study. The study authors specifically note that in order to determine the life span of real chips, the real chips in question should be studied. Quote:
"For life-time prediction, the real microstructure of these two kinds of flip chip solder joint should be studied and actual failure rate should be measured. "
The study states that they are ignoring various factors that would come into play in the real world in order to simplify the study, and that they are making a number of assumptions about various testing conditions and about the makeup of the materials themselves.
From reading the study linked, it's not even clear to me that they actually tested anything, and it appears from their wording to be only a theoretical exercise.
In no way should the results of this study be used to state that brand X's chips will have a longer lifespan than brand Z's chips.
"£GDl/h' = 13.5/10. Clearly the strain in the eutectic SnPb layer (in the composite solder joint) is about one order of magnitude higher than that in the homogeneous eutectic SnPb solder joint."
What fucking dipshits! I can't believe those morons at NVidia didn't realize this. Any judge is going to take one look at this in a class-action lawsuit, and NVidia is HISTORY, man!
"Since the plastic energy produced in the eutectic SnPb layer in the composite joint is about 100 times larger than that in the homogeneous eutectic SnPb joint, we expect the cycle times needs to fail the latter will be 100 times longer. But the above model is ideal, nevertheless it is reasonable to say that it is at the least 10 times longer. "
A) They didn't test ANYTHING.
B) They admit their ideal model is probably not realistic, and actual difference could be much less
C) They admit this does not mean actual life-time of products and explicitly suggest testing in that regard.
D)/. needs to stop posting sensationalist crap like this. The article is interesting, the title is bullshit. If I want sensationalism I will turn on my TV.
The sheer number of connections on these things can numb the mind.
Typically the silicon bit [ die] is connected to an internal jumper wire ( Connection 1 and 2) die surface to bonding agent - bonding agent to internal jumper
The jumper wire is connected to the inside of the package connector (Connection 3 and 4)
The outside of the package connector to the pc board (Connection 5 and 6)
In the RoHS directive there is an exception for
high-lead solder used in flip-chip style packages.
TFA mention a mixed scenario where you mix
high-lead and eutectic solder. Not sure if that is
excempt and also not sure that this combination
have been used by nVidia.
"NVidia is currently in the midst of a $200M recall of bad GPUs"
Last I checked, they reserved $200M on their financial sheets in case they needed to deal with the chips. I've heard nothing about an official recall? Only thing I can find is a lot of angry resellers who are demanding a recall.
I had an early ATI Radeon card (7xxx something I think), which had terrible driver support, but I lived with it (and subsequent headaches of bad driver errors, the old "uninstall BEFORE you install the new drivers" nightmare). Then I got a 9000 Pro which was OK, until it became obsolete. I switched to an nVidia FX 5700 LE ("Lame Edition") which had good driver support but was woefully underpowered. Then I went back to ATI (what can I say, I was trying to support a "Canadian company") for an x800, which was
I have an older 9550 ATI in one box and my more powerful machine has an 8800 nVidia in it.
As far as large, clunky drivers go, ATI is king of the hill... their setup that requires.Net to install, the bloated and resource hungry Catalyst Control Center... it's ugly.
nVidia on the otherhand seems to be far more lightweight and fits in better with Windows.
But performance wise I haven't really had anything to complain about though, and I can't think of instances of actually cursing the drivers for not working...
I've never been loyal to either really, when it comes time to do an upgrade I research on the web what card people are saying gives best bang for buck in my pricerange, I don't give a hoot who makes it.
i've been a fan of ATI for a long time, there was a time where i tried out nvidia, but i picked the wrong company, and it tainted my feelings about nvidia's approach to letting other people make the cards while they make the chips. since then i've been using ati in everything except systems where price was more of a factor. but given the news against nvidia, i probably won't be building any nvidia systems ever again.
then again i haven't had many people have me build them systems lately, and it's not just
Give it another 6 months, the 'almost latest' radeon and mesa in 8.10 can just about support kde4 composition (and id guess compiz) with a few problems, but the advances made in the last year mean im fairly confident that by 9.04 composting will be fully supported and by the time i leave university ill be able to game on the opensource drivers.
Anyone familiar with Nvidia's hiring practices could've predicted a disaster of this magnitude. They have absolutely moronic screening quizzes (yes, quizzes)... canned technical questions with only one "right" answer. Throw original thinking out the window, they just want to hire drones to do their dirty work. You know what Nvidia, you get what you deserve. Maybe they had a majority of good employees at one time, but the way they treat their people, I imagine there's been alot of brain drain.
It's a clear sign of a failing company when they rely on marketing & sales to hide shoddy engineering. You had agood run Nvidia, but the last stop is coming up. Get off while you can, the train derails up ahead.
Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know, but they sound terhiphic.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Watching grammar nazis making fun of innocent mistakes just makes me sickick!
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Tooshay, my deer frend.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had an ATI X1950 Pro for 3 years now and while the card works great, the newer games render it near obsolete. So yes, I can have a card forever but what good is that going to do me if I need to upgrade anyway?
Resale value would suck and why would anyone want to spend 50$ on a 3 year old card when they can get a 1 year old "better" card for 90$. (I pulled the numbers out of thin air but you get the idea).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Well,I don't know how long "1/100 of an ATI" actually is,but I just sold one with a 16Mb Nvidia Vanta in it that worked fine,I have a buddy that still plays games on his old Geforce 2,but I have to agree it eventually becomes a "what is the point" situation.
I mean I have a 64Mb Geforce 4000 PCI that was bought back when that was a decent card,and that thing has survived being placed in several different machines,multiple moves,and being left in a dead PC in a shed for a year. And the thing is still purring
Re: (Score:3)
But we are talking about a bad batch,not a bad company,which was what I was pointing out. The deskstar got named "deathstar" due to a bad batch,but I have sold several of the new Hitachi deskstar drives without a problem. Same thing with Maxtor,which sucked in '02 but have no problem now. Same thing with Dell and the bad caps,etc.
The point I was trying to make is the 8xxx series is an anomaly,nothing more,nothing less. No company with even the tiniest bit of common sense is going to stick with a formula t
So Do nVidias last 3 months, or ATIs 30-300 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm skeptical about the report, especially given the lack of any field studies with it. The useful life of a piece of computer equipment is usually 3-5 years; high-end graphics cards are probably shorter, because the main customers are gamers who need cutting-edge performance to kill orcs with.
So does "10-100 times longer" mean that significant fractions of nVidias are failing in 10 days - 3 months due to bad solder joints? Or does it mean that the solder joints in an ATI will last 30-300 years, long after anybody except a few retro gamers are interested in a graphics system that's mounted on a card in a separate box and doesn't interface directly to their optic nerves?
Parent
Re:So Do nVidias last 3 months, or ATIs 30-300 yea (Score:5, Informative)
Most companies offer at least a year long warranty; if they have significant failures in that year, like 10-100x higher than normal, that may put too much pressure on their warranty policy.
And let's not forget nVidia's partners in selling cards (you know, all the non-nVidia nVidia cards). Those people may see high failure rates of nVidia parts, and all of a sudden using another chipset just got a heckuva lot more attractive.
So, the moral of the story is, there is no set 'time' that a card will die. It's not like after 10 months all of them will just conk out. But if there are higher failure rates than normal in their warranty period, not to mention harm done to their reputation, it could end up costing them greatly.
Parent
Re:So Do nVidias last 3 months, or ATIs 30-300 yea (Score:4, Interesting)
Typical failure models use an exponential distribution, rather than a Gaussian distribution to model time-to-failure.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can confirm the putting pressure on the warranty part. Dell just ran out of replacement Nvidia cards for the D620. 15 day wait list if yours fails.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
why would anyone want to spend 50$ on a 3 year old card when they can get a 1 year old "better" card for 90$
Perhaps someone only has $60, and still wants to eat for the rest of the day.
*shrug*
Generally, your "insightful" rhetorical question is absurd, like this: Why would anyone want to spend $50,000 on a 3-year-old Corvette when they can get a better 1-year-old Corvette C6 Z06 for $90,000?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
With desktop systems it isn't so bad; by the time the card dies, equivalent performance will be considerably cheaper(or the card will still be under warranty), and swapping it out will take maybe 10 minutes. With laptops, not so much.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
"Eutectic" is a materials science word; it means (more or less, and I'm refreshing my memory from Wikipedia) a mixture (alloy) that does not separate/segregate into its original metals when it freezes; it has the lowest melting point, and passes immediately from liquid to solid phase. If, say, you have a solder that has more lead than the eutectic mix, when it freezes, it will segregate into (tiny) bits of lead and a eutectic remainder as it cools.
The advantage of a eutectic mix is that the melting point is lower, and when it is melted, it is all melted, and flows nicely. There are probably some caveats and quid-pro-quos for how it behaves in contact with other metals, which will certainly go ever-so-slightly into solution and change things.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
What I can't believe is that a companies PR department would knowingly release false or misleading information in an effort to keep their stock price up.
It's unheard of.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
There's also hypereutectic which means the opposite, obviously. A lot of pistons are cast with a hypereutectic alloy to keep costs down (forging is expensive) while increasing the melting point.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
2. The word is not a misspelling as much as it is a thinko [wisegeek.com].
So that's what it's called in English... I always called it lapsus cerebri.
Grahiphics :O (Score:5, Funny)
I was going to Google for that word but then I realized that kdawson was involved.
Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
The report lends credence to the strident claims of the Enquirer's Charlie Demerjian
As in National Enquirer?
As in Real news?
--
Oh Well, Neutral Karma and all . . .
To Quote from 'Count Zero'... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Silicon doesn't wear out; microchips were effectively immortal. The Wig took notice of the fact. Like every other child of his age, however, he knew that silicon became obsolete, which was worse than wearing out"
Re:To Quote from 'Count Zero'... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:To Quote from 'Count Zero'... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But to prove my point, electromigration happens, and IS an issue within ANY time span.
You point is valid. On-point, even. But what makes Nvidia's alleged misdeeds significant is that electromigration, along with other factors, makes the interconnects in the 8xxx series GPUs fail in an unreasonably-short time span. Without elaborate external mitigation strategies*, within warranty.
And that's the other factor in the significance in this story: Nvidia is alleged** to have made a point of downplaying, denying
More data please! (Score:4, Interesting)
What does 1/10th and 1/100th actually mean in standard solar days?
Can someone please provide a plot of the various solders and their performance vs. temperature and time?
I would like to see the plots for ====>
90Pb10Sn
60Pb40Sn
97Sn2.5Ag0.5Cu
99.3Sn0.7Cu
96Sn4Ag
99.25Sn0.75Cu
What is the risk associated with Tin? Especially Tin whiskers.
What kind of solders does the slashdot community use?
Re:More data please! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:More data please! (Score:4, Informative)
I have an old (circa 1980) roll of rosin-core eutectic solder, that I don't use any more because of the lead.
I also have a recently purchased some mgchemicals 4900-112G [mgchemicals.com], it is 96.3Sn, 0.7Cu, 3Ag, with a "no clean" flux. It works ok with my old soldering ironing, flows nicely, no idea how it does with tin whiskers. I'm not getting a lot of trouble with cold joints, and I do push my luck (lots of free-hand work, for instance, in-place soldering of LEDs for under-cabinet lights).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Flux fumes really aren't that bad, unless you're working with excessive amounts of it.
In any case, you're correct in that all you need to do with the lead solder is to make sure you wash your hands before you eat.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I use 70/30 and 60/40 both at home and at work. I have some 70/30 circuits I soldered up in 1974 that are still working.
High-tin solders are harder to work with: it doesn't flow as easily and doesn't seem to be willing to bead up on a pad, so if you try and self-locate a small package -- a BGA or LLP -- using solder, it won't: it'll just bridge all over the place. Thankfully, at work we provide engineering samples, not commercial stuff, so we don't have to worry about RoHS and can keep using leaded solder
Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Nvidia has already switched away from high-lead solder.
The Inquirer reported on this whole fiasco.
People shit on The Inquirer a lot, but there are 3 awesome things about that site:
Their writers do not sign NDAs.
They have writers all over the world - not someone they send out, but people who live there.
Their writers intimately know people in the industry - from the people up top to the people at the factory floor.
And if you already own a card? (Score:2)
Nvidia has already switched away from high-lead solder.
So, should I plan on buying a new card soon, when my solder snaps, or do I have a good one? How do I find out? Is this why my 7600 gave up the ghost so quickly? Have I already been a victim of this problem?
Re:And if you already own a card? (Score:4, Informative)
That's the whole point of this fiasco.
NVidia began to update their manufacturing process in the middle of the life cycle of several chips.
They switched to eutectic pads and a new underfill material (which has a lower glassification temperature).
They stuck with high-lead solder because the bumps are laid out very early on and changing them would be a major undertaking.
Basically, this causes shit to break down faster because the parts are now much more susceptible to thermal stress.
NVidia knew there were problems.
Laptop parts started failing at very high rates.
OEMs knew about the failures in November of 2007, or earlier.
NVidia blamed OEM designs creating thermal issues.
NVidia offered to foot half of the bill (replacements, handling customers, fixes, etc.) with DELL and HP.
DELL and HP jumped at the chance to have the massive bill cut in half (this kind of offer is unheard of).
NVidia's "fix" was to crank up the fans with a BIOS update.
OEMs found desktop parts were failing at alarming rates as well.
OEMs were forbidden from speaking out about the real issue (lumped in there with that "we'll pay half" deal).
OEMs find out that their designs do meet NVidia's recommended thermal and electrical constraints.
NVidia continues to sell existing bad cards that are on shelves, and makes no mention of any of this to customers or retailers.
NVidia switches away from high-lead solder, completing the updates to it's manufacturing process, and may now be pumping out good parts.
But these new parts have not had any power distribution / control changes to accommodate the new solder material.
These new parts will likely have higher-than-normal failure rates as well.
NVidia does NOT designate the new parts in any way on the box.
NVidia does not designate the new parts in any (official) way on the actual hardware.
News comes out (last week) that NVidia based chipsets (motherboard chipsets, e.g. nForce) are bad too.
Parent
Re:Old (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't screwing one's sources against the journalistic ethic?
Try the veal!
Parent
Whatever. (Score:2, Informative)
I have tried three different ATI cards - all three ATI cards up and died on me within one year of usage, and I don't even play any graphics-heavy FPS games. After my most recent ATI card croaked (A Radeon X550, I think) I switched to Nvidia. So far my current Nvidia card has outlasted any ATI cards I've ever owned.
Re: (Score:2)
Study does not relate to AMD vs NVidia (Score:5, Insightful)
This study does NOT specifically address or study AMD or NVidia's Chips.
It does not specifically address or test the exact chemical makeup of chips belonging to AMD or NVidia.
The conclusions being drawn as to the relative life spans of those manufacturer's chips appear to strictly belong to the bloggers who want a big headline, and not to the authors of the study. The study authors specifically note that in order to determine the life span of real chips, the real chips in question should be studied. Quote:
"For life-time prediction, the real microstructure of these two kinds of flip chip solder joint should be studied and actual failure rate should be measured. "
The study states that they are ignoring various factors that would come into play in the real world in order to simplify the study, and that they are making a number of assumptions about various testing conditions and about the makeup of the materials themselves.
From reading the study linked, it's not even clear to me that they actually tested anything, and it appears from their wording to be only a theoretical exercise.
In no way should the results of this study be used to state that brand X's chips will have a longer lifespan than brand Z's chips.
Fans? (Score:4, Insightful)
The chips on my cards have always outlasted the fans on my cards. I have owned both nVidia and ATI cards.
Just because the chip - or at least, one aspect of the chip *could* last longer doesn't mean the card will.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fans can be replaced. I have replaced the fans on video cards on a number of occasions.
It's obvious (Score:3, Funny)
From TFA:
"£GDl/h' = 13.5/10. Clearly the strain in the eutectic SnPb layer (in the composite solder joint) is about one order of magnitude higher than that in the homogeneous eutectic SnPb solder joint."
What fucking dipshits! I can't believe those morons at NVidia didn't realize this. Any judge is going to take one look at this in a class-action lawsuit, and NVidia is HISTORY, man!
Not Good News! (Score:5, Funny)
Sensationalist crap, On my /.? (Score:3, Informative)
Creating Life may be easier than assembly of these (Score:3, Informative)
The sheer number of connections on these things can numb the mind.
Typically the silicon bit [ die] is connected to an internal jumper wire ( Connection 1 and 2) die surface to bonding agent - bonding agent to internal jumper
The jumper wire is connected to the inside of the package connector (Connection 3 and 4)
The outside of the package connector to the pc board (Connection 5 and 6)
1500 pins on one of these things
9 000 connections - best case
you get a bad run - its all over
So how can they sell these in Europe? (Score:4, Interesting)
With the lead content, they're not RoHS-compliant.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In the RoHS directive there is an exception for high-lead solder used in flip-chip style packages.
TFA mention a mixed scenario where you mix high-lead and eutectic solder. Not sure if that is excempt and also not sure that this combination have been used by nVidia.
What recall? (Score:3, Interesting)
"NVidia is currently in the midst of a $200M recall of bad GPUs"
Last I checked, they reserved $200M on their financial sheets in case they needed to deal with the chips. I've heard nothing about an official recall? Only thing I can find is a lot of angry resellers who are demanding a recall.
Correct me if I'm wrong?
Down to the drivers (Score:2)
I had an early ATI Radeon card (7xxx something I think), which had terrible driver support, but I lived with it (and subsequent headaches of bad driver errors, the old "uninstall BEFORE you install the new drivers" nightmare). Then I got a 9000 Pro which was OK, until it became obsolete. I switched to an nVidia FX 5700 LE ("Lame Edition") which had good driver support but was woefully underpowered. Then I went back to ATI (what can I say, I was trying to support a "Canadian company") for an x800, which was
Re:Down to the drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an older 9550 ATI in one box and my more powerful machine has an 8800 nVidia in it.
As far as large, clunky drivers go, ATI is king of the hill... their setup that requires .Net to install, the bloated and resource hungry Catalyst Control Center... it's ugly.
nVidia on the otherhand seems to be far more lightweight and fits in better with Windows.
But performance wise I haven't really had anything to complain about though, and I can't think of instances of actually cursing the drivers for not working...
I've never been loyal to either really, when it comes time to do an upgrade I research on the web what card people are saying gives best bang for buck in my pricerange, I don't give a hoot who makes it.
Parent
Re:Down to the drivers (Score:5, Informative)
1] Download full CCC installer.
2] Don't install the CCC, just the drivers.
3] Download a copy of ATI Tray Tools [guru3d.com].
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
i've been a fan of ATI for a long time, there was a time where i tried out nvidia, but i picked the wrong company, and it tainted my feelings about nvidia's approach to letting other people make the cards while they make the chips. since then i've been using ati in everything except systems where price was more of a factor. but given the news against nvidia, i probably won't be building any nvidia systems ever again.
then again i haven't had many people have me build them systems lately, and it's not just
Re: (Score:2)
Give it another 6 months, the 'almost latest' radeon and mesa in 8.10 can just about support kde4 composition (and id guess compiz) with a few problems, but the advances made in the last year mean im fairly confident that by 9.04 composting will be fully supported and by the time i leave university ill be able to game on the opensource drivers.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Anyone familiar with Nvidia's hiring practices could've predicted a disaster of this magnitude. They have absolutely moronic screening quizzes (yes, quizzes)... canned technical questions with only one "right" answer. Throw original thinking out the window, they just want to hire drones to do their dirty work. You know what Nvidia, you get what you deserve. Maybe they had a majority of good employees at one time, but the way they treat their people, I imagine there's been alot of brain drain. It's a clear sign of a failing company when they rely on marketing & sales to hide shoddy engineering. You had agood run Nvidia, but the last stop is coming up. Get off while you can, the train derails up ahead.
So you didn't get the job then?