Defective NVIDIA Notebook GPUs Outed by Manufacturers

Back in the beginning of July, NVIDIA's stock tumbled because the company released information saying "significant quantities" of their laptop GPUs were defective. The problem essentially resulted in higher than normal failures in production, and over heating from the company's GPUs that were included in notebooks which were already shipping.

Now, Dell and HP have released a list of affected machines, which include the GeForce 8600M and 8400M, the GeForce Go 7000 and 6000, as well as the Quadro NVS 135M and the Quadro FX 360M. There is another potential problem in the fact that this isn't a definite list, and more GPUs may have the same issues; only NVIDIA knows which ones are affected.

Something needs to be done at NVIDIA's camp, whether it include offering a recourse for computer manufacturers or a solid driver fix, if more problems show up down the road with pertaining to this heat issue, the company may have a bigger problem to maintain.

So now that HP's joined Dell in releasing information on which laptops have those defective NVIDIA GPUs, we can sort of piece together which chips are faulty -- and just as had been rumored, it looks like basically every Geforce 8600M and 8400M chip is affected. That's not good news for NVIDIA, which has been saying that only "previous-generation" chips were problematic -- unless the chipmaker is planning on updating the hugely popular 8x00 series sometime, say, now, that's not exactly true, now is it?

Source: Engadget

Sony Laptop Does Cross-Platform Hybrid Graphics

When we heard rumblings of the first 'hybrid graphics' systems, we simply thought GPU manufacturers would use the feature as a way to capitalize on the power savings afforded by hybrid graphics systems and sell more of their own products to PC and motherboard makers. For those coming late to the party, hybrid graphics systems save power and decrease idle thermal load by disabling the system's discrete GPU and reverting to a lower-power GPU, typically integrated into the motherboard's chipset. To this end, NVIDIA recently announced that all their chipset products would feature an integrated graphics processor, termed a "Motherboard GPU," or mGPU.

What we didn't expect, however, was that manufacturers might try to combine multiple GPU platforms in their hybrid-graphics systems. We'd figured that GPU manufacturers would try to lock their discrete GPU products to their own integrated-graphics chipsets for hybrid-graphics applications, but Sony has managed to combine the integrated Intel GMA X4500 graphics core on an Intel G43 chipset with an NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS discrete GPU. It's an intriguing solution, but it virtually rules out the possiblity of the two graphics cores operating in tandem via Hybrid SLI.

Sony lists the graphics system as "Hybrid Graphics" with a "Dedicated Hybrid GPU Switch" based on the Nvidia 9300M GS graphics chip and Intel 4500MHD integrated graphics silicon. What makes this unique is that the switch can be done on the fly.

Source: CNET News.com

Psystar Hires Experienced Lawyers to Face Apple

Instead of backing down and ceasing to sell their OS X bundled Open Computers, and recalling every one sold as part of Apple's request, Psystar has hired three lawyers to represent the company, Colby Springer, Robert Yorio, and  Christine Watson. Both Yorio and Springer have experience defending another company in court against Apple with the Burst.com lawsuit, when they forced Apple to settle with $10 million out of court.

Apple charged Psystar with allegations of copyright and trademark infringement, as well as "breach-of-contract, unfair-competition, and violating the Mac OS X end-user license," according to AppleInsider. This case could be an important one in the technology industry because it relates to the legal validity of user license agreements in court.

In this legal battle of David versus Goliath, it would seem that Apple has the upper hand as far as the facts go. Still, with the determination and resolve Psystar has shown thusfar, this contest could turn into a real struggle for the hardware giant.

A pair of attorneys representing Psystar in its legal bout with Apple are already familiar with the Mac maker, with whom they've clashed before and came out on top.

Source: AppleInsider