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avkills wrote:

Vista runs fine at work on the MacPro with nVidia 8800; although I have not stressed it all too much.

-mark

I'd expect that; the G92s in well-cooled desktops will live a lot longer than the mobile chips. Meanwhile, there are better fans and other, more exotic cooling solutions available. It'd make sense to thin the profit margin a bit while the new line gets established and the chips improve. It has potential.

I suspect this scenario plays into it a large degree. In deference to the profits they can get from gamers, graphics chip makers are pushing the display power as much as they can lately without a real focus on thermal & electrical efficiency. In a well ventilated tower they can get away with it but in something a bit more compact it has repercussions. Apple pushes thing a little further than most space wise and fan wise so they have more incidents but thing are far from limited to them.

Sound right Bat?

Uh-oh.

Please note the last three characters, the "-B2" part, this means the Macbooks are using the B2 stepping of chips. The letter connotes a major revision, the number a minor stepping, counting from zero. Parts start out with 'first silicon' being labeled A0, then minor fixes make A1, A2... Ax. GPUs and chipsets are usually marketed by A1 or A2 silicon. Seeing a B probably means something went really pear-shaped, and as it could not be fixed with several minor changes, a ground-up rethink was needed. Seeing a Bx in the first version of a chipset on the market is a really, really bad sign. B2 means this is likely the sixth stepping of the chip, including some major redesign work.
..

A trip to Taiwanese mobo makers in September by The Inquirer answered that with a definitive 'not yet', but weeks later, we had the new Macbooks. Calls to mobo techies gave us the answer, confirmed by moles at Nvidia, they are seriously cherry-picking parts for Apple. Mobo makers are getting the high power-draw parts, Apple is getting the ones that meet spec. Barely.

This means that there are far more borderline chips out there than anyone feels comfortable with, but products must launch when products must launch. The black screens and lockups are caused because the GPU is overheating and crashing, something that is pretty obvious given the 20/20 hindsight of the chip's troubled gestation.

Is there hope? Sure. Several mobo makers all said they put out the bare minimum number of boards at launch, there are a total of five 9300 and just one 9400 SKUs at Newegg right now, but more were on the way. All said they would put out more models when the B3 stepping (Remember kiddies, that is the 4th rev of the Bx parts) comes out in January. Those will likely hit Macbooks about the same time... so in two months, this will be a non-issue.

Until then, you are looking at Nvidia admonishing you for doing such crazy things as using your notebook for running a game, or in general, 'customer use patterns' that cause their chips to cook. You would think they would engineer things right rather than blame customers, but hey, this is Nvidia.

Apple isn't at fault here, they are equally victimised by Nvidia's inability to get things right, but unfortunately the customer ire is aimed at Cupertino.

At least they are aware of the correct company to blame. µ

My bold. At least the scrolling problem should be easily fixable. I'd avoid this one until the B3 stepping.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ … g-macbooks

Another smashing success by Nvidia!

wellfleation wrote:

Rule #1: Never buy a 1st generation product from anyone.

Rule #2: That goes double if it's from Apple.

Rule #3: See above rules.

Fixed it for you

I agree with the first gen buying guide. Yet, I've been waiting for a year for this version of the laptops. I'll post anything remarkable about the way it behaves in the way I intend to use it.

General_K wrote:

You peeps use your 'Books for gaming?

Yeah, I know you can, but why? I'd rather not work the thing that hard. That's what I built a gaming rig for.

QIA

Quoted in agreement

General_K wrote:

You peeps use your 'Books for gaming?

Yeah, I know you can, but why? I'd rather not work the thing that hard. That's what I built a gaming rig for.

Some people buy one computer and use it for everything.

Yeah, I don't get it either, but

I use my mini for gaming all the time. It may not be for the latest and greatest, but I have lots of fun with it. The new video chip in MacBooks would only make my gaming better (yeah, yeah. If it didn't burst into flames    )

Maybe it is the latest in virtual reality and force feedback ...

-mark

Well... this is beyond sad.

IT LOOKS LIKE Nvidia finally has a solution to the defective chips fiasco that it keeps covering up. The short story according to documents seen by VR-Zone is to not buy them, just buy the newer ones.

No, really, we're not kidding. To quote some of the latest memo, ".....NVIDIA strongly recommends that customers transition to this latest revision of the NB8E-SET GPUs as soon as possible. These latest revision units utilize "Hitachi" underfill packaging material that improves product quality and enhances operating life by improved thermal cycling reliability." We know what you are thinking, there is no problem with the chips, they said so. Many times. With a straight face.

Then again, we did say we believed otherwise. And then Nvidia denied it. And so we printed copies of the technical docs on the problem that we saw, note the part about Hitachi underfill and the date. And once again Nvidia denied it. We publicly mocked them, and so Nvidia spun harder. Whee, look! The shreds of the company's credibility are twitching!

Now Nvidia is urging its partners to do what we said to do, not buy the defective parts, for the reasons we said. What a shock, it is almost like we understood what the problem was, even though they called everyone involved crazy. Luckily, Apple agrees with our version, read the knowledgebase neo-rant to see how that company feels. Sadly for Apple, it is not just confined to the old MacBooks, but the desktops as well, and likely continues into the shiny new unibody parts.

In the end, you can make up your own mind who to believe. From our point of view, this charade and cover-up has gone well past sad and on to pathetic. Nvidia needs to come clean on this, but is the company culturally capable of it? Sadly, no. Pathetic. µ

Nvidia recommends not buying its defective chips

Many links in article. If you enjoy reading long tech articles about underfill, bump materials, temperatures of glassification and so on, the latest, long article in a series is here, complete with electron micrographs:

Nvidia chips show underfill problems

Mine fried today.  Wasn't gaming, just watching joost and youtube.  I believe de-soldering occured when the screen went blank and a thin line of snow was streaking across top of screen...

two questions:

1)  could hard drive de-soldered as well and can I retrieve data

and

2)  I have the applecare protection, will they replace?

I will call tomorrow or the next day if I have time, anyone have experience with getting the unit replaced?

Thanks to this Board and our Community

Tino

MacBook Pro Fall 2008 release, 15 inch