14 DAY TRIAL // Although it’s been quite a while that NVIDIA's faulty chips issues made all the headlines, more details on them have just recently emerged. This time around, it’s the company's upcoming chips that are getting all the media attention, in regard to the same issues that have also caused some of the G84, G86 and G92 GPUs in notebooks to fail. Despite no direct indication that NVIDIA's yet-to-be released graphics processors will suffer the same fate as well, there's a strong belief that these GPUs could deal with the same problems.
According to industry sources, cited by TGDaily, the Santa Clara-based green company has decided to use the same high-lead solder bumps used in the G84, G86 and G92 GPUs for its upcoming next-generation graphics cards. Unfortunately, for the time being, it is yet uncertain which of the upcoming cards will be manufactured with the high-lead solder bumps, but this tidbit alone comes to raise serious questions about the company's next-generation cards.
As a reminder, NVIDIA is expected to unveil a new iteration of its already upgraded GTX 260 graphics card before the end of the year. Manufactured using a 55nm process technology, the new GTX 260 will come with the GT206 codename. In addition to this card, the company is also expected to unveil a new GT212-based card, sometime in Q1 next year. This one will become the company's new flagship model, and will be designed to compete with AMD's currently high-end, dual-chip Radeon HD 4870 X2.
GPU failures have only been reported in portable computer systems, and it appears that the desktop-focused GPUs are unlikely to be affected as well. However, the news comes as just another load on NVIDIA's shoulders, seeing it also has to deal with two lawsuits that have been recently been filed against it over the defective GPUs. Both lawsuits claim that the Santa Clara-based chip maker has failed to correctly inform its customers about the extent of the reported issue.