Allegations, denials of 'bad' Nvidia chips in MacBook Pros
Bad bumps? A U.K. tech site is alleging that the latest Apple MacBook Pros contain Nvidia graphics chips with the same "bad bumps" problem that Nvidia addressed this summer and said was rectified.
Nvidia said in a phone interview on Tuesday that this is dead wrong.
First a little background. Nvidia issued a statement July 2 saying it would take a charge of up to $200 million to cover repairs due to a "weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of its previous generation GPU and MCP products used in notebook systems."
Both Hewlett-Packard and Dell have come out with statements addressing the issue in laptops. And both companies have programs that try to fix the issue.
U.K. tech site The Inquirer is saying that bad bumps--"tiny balls of solder that hold a chip to the green printed circuit board"--are still present in the GeForce 9600 graphics chips that ship in the newest MacBook Pros. An issue that The Inquirer claims is the root of the problem.
The Web site said it took a MacBook Pro off a store shelf, disassembled it, desoldered the chips, sawed them in half, encased them in Lucite, and ran them through a scanning electron microscope equipped with an X-ray microanalysis.
As a result, The Inquirer alleges that the MacBook Pros with the GeForce 9600 chips have the older, defective high-lead bumps, while the MacBook Air and MacBook have the newer eutectic solder (newer, low-lead bumps).
So, in essence, the MacBook and MacBook Air are fine, while the MacBook Pro is problematic.
Nvidia vehemently disagreed with the allegations, calling them completely untrue. The Inquirer's "initial analysis of problems with some of the older chips was already flawed," said Michael Hara, vice president, investor relations and communications at Nvidia.
The Inquirer reporter "believes high-lead bumps are bad. That's his underlying theory. It's not true," Hara said.
He continued: "When you build a device, it's the material properties and everything in combination that leads to the robustness of the design. What we call the 'material set.' It's a combination of the underfill (a kind of a glue that helps hold the chip down) and the bump together that creates that stability in that connection," he said.
Hara talked about how the original problem announced by Nvidia on July 2 was rectified. "A more robust underfill would have taken the stress off the bumps and kept that (original problem) from happening. What we did was, we just simply went to a more robust underfill. Stopped using that (previous) underfill, kept using high-lead bumps, but we changed the underfill. And now we don't see the problem."
"Intel has shipped hundreds of millions of chipsets that use the same material-set combo. We're using virtually the same materials that Intel uses in its chipsets," Hara said.
Hara also said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) ships a "staggering" number of chips to many companies worldwide with high-lead bumps. TSMC is the world's largest contract chip manufacturer and makes chips for Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and many other companies.
Nvidia also issued this written statement: "The GeForce 9600 GPU in the MacBook Pro does not have bad bumps. The material set (combination of underfill and bump) that is being used is similar to the material set that has been shipped in 100's of millions of chipsets by the world's largest semiconductor company (Intel)."
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
But realistically, nVidia has had a lot of issues with this generation of chipsets in all the laptops they have been installed in regardless of brand. The chips run too hot, partially melt the solder and you end up with cold joints or intermittent contact. Some models that have cooling challenges even with a normal situation (MacBooks, Dell Lattitude, Toshiba Portege, HP business laptops, etc), keep these things cool would be hard enough.
It may take a while before this generation of chipsets can fade into memory and nVidia can regain some of their reputaiton.
nVidia sounds a bit shady on this.
Clever of nVidia though - they don't actually say "bad bumps" at all in their statements or emails.
Anyway, I would be curious what the current density of the Lead bumps that are currently installed in their package is. Too much current draw and perhaps they are just popping them. This might explain why people are seeing the "black screen of death."
Overall - while I like reading the INQ, I suspect that the designers at Apple probably looked the different options prior to rleasing the MACBook Pro to the world, as having lots of issues with ones bump 'mounting' isnt exactly a good thing for profit or stock price. I suspect these same designers probably have a bit more inside information than the chaps at the INQ.
This does NOT mean that the combination of materials they initially provided (original underfill + original high lead solder) meant the bumps were bad... Only that the chip failed.
It also doesn't mean that the new material base ('new' underfill and high lead solder) makes for a working chip.
While the Inquirer may be incorrect in positing that the problem is still present because high lead solder is still in use, that doesn't make them automagically wrong either. Their article laid out that it's a combination of all the bits that really counts (though they more or less said all of the bits were chosen poorly).
I find it suspicious, and potentially telling, that if you follow MacbookPro support threads, you find a host of 'black screen of death' situations. Many are mitigated with fan software, implying a thermal fault. Many users report no problems at all. The users that report a problem are consistently using the discrete processor (not the 9400, which the Inquirer article reports has eutetic solder now). The users reporting the problem consistently are gaming (though it's more specific games, not gaming in general). And the ones who have changed only the 'logic board' with a hardware replacement have sometimes seen the problem go away. Without changing any of the software involved.
That last part suggests to me a hardware issue. If you change the motherboard, and NOTHING ELSE, and you get a fix, something in the motherboard gets voted the most likely culprit. Combined with the accusation that good is being shipped with bad, with no good way for an end user (or Apple themselves) to tell which is which aside from if it fails, and you have a disturbing situation.
Compounded that if it IS a thermal issue from a bad batch, any software fix might extend the life, but not fix the issue... but would help push the issue outside the warranty window if possible. If you know the parts are bad, but you just try to get them to last long enough that you don't have to replace them, isn't that borderline criminal?
I'm a new unibody MBP user who is affected by this. Basically, in playing higher-end games, the GPU overheats and shuts the system down. The frame rate is superb! It's just that things get crazy hot (85-100 degrees C according to temp monitoring software).
There are a LOT of posts on Apple's site and individual game sites about this problem. Google "Macbook pro black screen while gaming" to see some of the stuff.
Apple asked if I'd be willing to send my machine in to their engineers for analysis. So, kudos to them for trying to find the problem. While I was very frustrated at first, the company is making a lot of efforts to take care of me. I'm happy with the progress.
- by DarkElfa December 17, 2008 3:22 AM PST
- While I have little doubt that the research is true, I also take into account its source. The Inquirer is known for stretching the truth at times and is a long time anti-Nvidia site which at one time had the audacity to claim it was unbiased while being covered in ATI ad boxes. Not to mention the fact that The Inquirer reporter in question is none other than Charlie Demerjian, The Inq's #1 Nvidia hate monger and that isn't a stretch at all. Take my word for it, we'll play a little game. Go to The Inquirer and look for any story who's title has an anti-Nvidia slant and say "this must be Charlie Demerjian's work" and then open it and be amazed at your own physic powers.
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