Dell cures some Nvidia GPU woes with BIOS update

Dell has issued a BIOS update to prevent its notebooks equipped with faulty Nvidia graphics cards from overheating.

Notebooks equipped with certain Nvidia GPUs were reportedly failing at abnormally high rates by the graphics company itself in an SEC regulatory filing. At the time, however, the company did not list which configurations were failing, saying only that it was one sold in significant quantities.

Reports soon arose claiming that most GeForce 8-series graphics cards (below 8800) were the products in question in Nvidia's filing. The company did not issue a confirmatory statement, but said it expected to lose between $150-200 million fixing the problem.

Dell has issued a system update to ten of its notebooks, including many of the popular Vostro line, which addresses the problems found in Nvidia's GPUs. Confirming speculation that sub-8800 8-series GPUs are the unnamed faulty family, many of those notebooks listed in Dell's BIOS update contain 8400M and 8600M GS graphics cards.

Dell echoed Nvidia's SEC filing in saying that the issue is attributable to "weak die/packaging material set," but goes on to list the symptoms found that indicate an overheating graphics unit. These include: multiple images, random onscreen character generation, lines in the display, and total loss of video display.

Dell Expects the BIOS update will reduce the likelihood of failures, but it's possible some computer systems may need a replacement GPU installed.