14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA announced in July that the company had put aside $150 - $200 million to cover "anticipated customer warranty, repair, return, replacement and other consequential costs and expenses arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of our previous generation MCP and GPU products used in notebook systems".
The news spread really fast, and lots of users began to fear that they might be the owners of such a card. Although NVIDIA initially said that only some notebook manufacturers/vendors had been supplied with defective G84/86 cards, after a few weeks, both Dell and Hewlett-Packard announced that their users had experienced problems with their machines and released BIOS updates meant to fix the problem. Overall, about 34 notebook models and versions were reported to pack faulty chips.
Beside the already reported mobile PCs, the latest news shows that MacBook Pro owners might have defective NVIDIA cards included in their systems as well. Apple did not announce any problem with its machines, yet the forums began to show that the issue affects the company's customers, too. Users seem to wonder whether Apple will extend its warranty for the inherently flawed systems that the company sold.
Many MacBook Pro owners have already reported video problems similar to the previous ones. Following a post on the Apple forums, which first indicated blank screen at boot, other users posted similar problems that appeared on their machines.
NVIDIA said that "All newly manufactured products and all products currently shipping in volume have a different and more robust material set". On the Apple forum, some users that experienced problems stated they have rather new machines, which means that the problems should not occur. Still, there are a lot of reports posted on the forums, which means that Apple should consider looking into the problem and provide with a solution.