Even after Nvidia downplayed their original report that GeForce 8400-8700 cards were failing in large numbers due to overheating, Dell has issued a BIOS update for all of its machines running the affected GPUs anyway. The update tweaks the fan settings to “regulate temperature fluctuations” to keep the maybe-faulty-maybe-not chips cooler. So who do we believe here?
Granted, it’s not hard for Dell to roll out a BIOS update that bumps cooling fan RPMs, so it makes sense that they would cover their arse in this way. Although more fan means more noise and less battery life, so the update is not without its costs. Either way, Dell is taking the issue seriously, which makes it seem like the the problem is a little more serious than what Nvidia is saying.
The update is for the following systems: Inspiron 1420, Latitude D630, Latitude D630c, Vostro Notebook 1310, Vostro Notebook 1400, Vostro Notebook 1510, Vostro Notebook 1710, XPS M1330, and XPS M1530
[Direct2Dell via Laptoping]
krishna
Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 7:10 AMi am a bit suspicious.. better fan profiles cannot save anybody from such a situation, its impossible.. common the gpus are literally getting fried.. it calls for better heatsink and thermal substrate design (also better ventilation is required.. which i dont see in any of the dell laptops).. i am pretty much sure that those guys have cut corners by releasing bios versions which substantially underclock the gpu, thus “seemingly” alleviating the consumers.. never again in my life i will be buying a dell product
John
Saturday, October 11, 2008 at 6:24 AMMine just died a few weeks ago. Dell took a week to replace the motherboard, and failed to mention that this was a known problem. BTW, I changed my BIOS and it didn’t help a lick, by then the chip was already damaged. I can tell a noticeable difference in fan noise with the new BIOS, much louder (but its the most quiet notebook I’ve ever owned).
Peter Holme
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 9:23 AMHI have a Problem loading the latest Bios to a Dell 9400. Booted the lappiy, Dells instruction was type in this at the A prompt Y to start the Bios update, the machine came back invalid, so I typed in A: and then the Bios Ver 10 and it went to update!! Ok loaded the start of update and then the machine said “error”!! Power Adaptor must be connected, I checked everthing was ok and then rebooted (same thing) what causes this??? Pete