There's been increasing talk of problems with NVIDIA's G84 and G86 graphic cards (e.g. GeForce 8600M GT). It's been said that these graphic cards have a much higher than average
failure rate. (I should also acknowledge here that
nixgeek has mentioned this topic in another thread.
) MacRumors have mentioned in July that these cards are
widespread in PCs, as well as being present within
MacBook Pros (also see
ZDNet's article).
Unfortunately, it seems Apple's MacBook Pro support forum has
quite a number of users complaining about issues with their graphic cards and
ConsumerAffairs also states that, with the cards having widespread usage, this could be a very big issue for NVIDIA.
MacFixIt and
xlr8yourmac.com both carry stories about the issue too. The article that is perhaps most famous, but also seems rather strong in tone, is an article in
The Inquirer, which states: "The short story is that all the G84 and G86 parts are bad. Period. No exceptions. All of them, mobile and desktop, use the exact same ASIC, so expect them to go south in inordinate numbers as well."
If this is true, it could create a headache for Apple, with large numbers of laptops facing recall or repair, and it will cause major problems and financial expense for NVIDIA. I thought I'd pass on the information, but this is not intended to be a "the-sky-is-falling" post! I suppose we have to wait and see how this pans out, but it is worth people knowing in case they need to keep an eye on their machines (and their warranty dates!).