Users Hot Over Dell's NVIDIA Notebook GPU Fix

Last Friday Dell issued a series of BIOS updates designed to alleviate the GPU issues that NVIDIA admitted to earlier in July, when it said it was taking a $150 - $200 million charge to cover (emphasis mine):

... 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.

Comments in the blog post indicated that end users weren't too happy with Dell's response. Frankly, I wouldn't be either. There's a problem in the GPU itself, and the BIOS update just puts a bandaid on it by increasing use of the fan.

Users are also (rightly) concerned about battery life and noise. For example, Customer said:

Thanks for the update Lionel. Just curious here, but is there another resolution planned? IMHO having the BIOS activate the fans sooner to compensate for a defective chipset is a band aid solution. This will result in reduced battery time and shorter fan life - correct? Is there any data to counter this?

Dell's response?

The new BIOS updates will not have any noticeable impact on battery life. The fan may cycle on more frequently, but it will run at half or a quarter of its full speed.

Uh, huh.

Matthias said:

Well, since this BIOS update won't mysteriously change the die packaging material, the only real thing you can do is to extent warranty or premium support to the amount of years you wanna use the computer, and still then live with the fact that your computer could die on you any time.

And while it's obvious Dell is taking the heat on this issue (pun intended), it's really an NVIDIA issue, so let's hope Dell and NVIDIA get together and issue a real fix (like replacement GPUs). The one comfort? Dell's statement:

This won't be the last blog post on this topic. When I have more details to share, I will update this post with a link to the new information to help connect the dots.

Let's hope that includes a real fix.