It seems that NVidia is facing a major manufacturing issue with its GPU, and it might not be only limited to the previous generation G84 and G86 models (GeForce 8400 and 8600). The Inquirer
reports that it has collected information indicating that more recent GPU from NVidia, G92 and G94 are also affected by the same manufacturing problem. If you consider that the G92 is used in GeForce 8800GT, 8800GTS, 8800GS, most of the 9800 suffixes, and a few 9600 variants, while the G94 is basically only used for the GeForce 9600GT, one can immediately identify that most NVidia from the previous and current generation are harboring a manufacturing defect that will dramatically reduce their life time. The Inquirer indicates that four NVidia's OEM partners are now indicating that they are recording high rate of failure with G92 and G94 chips hardware, affecting both desktop and laptop cards.

In addition, the fix offered by NVidia, and released by HP and Dell as a firmware update for G84 and G86-based hardware is not really solving the problem, but rather makes it less likely to occur during the warranty period... NVidia probably forgot that in many countries, regulations force manufacturers to replace at no charge hardware identified as harboring an internal defect with no warranty limit. If NVidia has to pay for the extension programs to be launched for HP, Dell, Lenovo or Apple hardware, it might well cost more than the 250 millions USD budget assigned by NVidia to cover this problem. Some think that it could even send NVidia to bankrupt.

To conclude, NVidia by not clearly explaining in details the defect reported in its GPUs, it makes consumers and computer manufacturers not confident about its current or even future GPUs. With the current GPU from ATI/AMD over performing the current offer from NVidia, the company seems to be in serious trouble. How long will it last before we know the complete story, and how much computer models are really affected?