Cunning plans
The week started with the latest dribble in the drip, drip of information being revealed about the NVIDIA die/packaging ConnectorGate issue, this time coming from NVIDIA partners.
First Dell announced a cunning plan to keep the temperature of certain NVIDIA-based laptops down lest the graphics go barking mad: keep the fan going the whole time. This is achieved by downloading a BIOS update.
Many HEXUS.community members commented that this is not a fix, possibly helped to that conclusion by Dell’s statement that, 'If you are already experiencing video-related issues like the bullet-points above, updating the BIOS will not correct them'. They pointed out that the purpose of this BIOS update might be mainly to spare NVIDIA and Dell more costly hardware replacements.
Unperturbed, HP soon followed with its own fan-boosting BIOS update for some NVIDIA laptops but, unlike Dell, it also offered what it called a 'limited warranty service enhancement'. In other words, free repairs for a bunch of notebooks, which it subsequently confirmed as being NVIDIA-based.
The symptoms HP would offer repairs against included wireless adapter and power-management issues, so we wondered if these were as a result of NVIDIA problems, too, but, to date, HP hasn't been able to give us any clarification.