Topic: Uh oh. NVidia RRoD? (May be a malicious rumor.)

[Cobra951]

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/12/rumor-nvidias-defective-gpu-woes-worsen/

This was a bit of a shock.  I had heard nothing about defective or prematurely failing GPUs.  (It's premature if they ever fail under proper cooling, as far as I'm concerned.)

Edit:  It does say "rumor" and Joystiq has been pissing me off lately with some of their slants, so I'm less inclined to take this at face value than at first blush.

[Quemaqua]

First I've heard of it too.  That's bad news.

[gpw11]

FUCK!

[Pugnate]

Yea but they quoted the INQUIRER. It would be like my saying that GPW was caught video taping goat pr0n, but then citing the British tabloid <i>The Sun</i> as my source. Yes it <i>could</i> be true (The GPU thing, not the GPW thing), but I wouldn't worry too much at this stage.

What <i>is</i> true is that Nvidia had a big fiasco with their mobile chips and mobos that saw their stock fall from the mid 20s to the single digits, but I do not think the problem extended to their 8800 budget series. So far, I have seen posters on the popular hardware forums express their surprise at the news item, as no one has been experiencing any issues.

BTW, The INQ has a massive vendetta against Nvidia. You see, a couple of years ago, Nvidia banned them from all of their press conferences for posting rumors/gossip. In fact, at one of their press invitations, they had a huge banner that said,"NO EMPLOYEES OF THE INQUIRER ALLOWED."

Ever since, The INQ has had it bad for Nvidia, reporting all sorts of crazy rumors etc. And any good news regarding Nvidia, has always been posted in a negative light. In the end, this could still be true, but the only source of this info so far has been The INQ, so I wouldn't worry. In fact, if I needed a 8xxx GPU at this moment, I wouldn't hesitate in buying it.

[Cobra951]

Yeah, I've been taking Joystiq with a grain of salt lately, and that article does lead off with the word "rumor".  No one should panic before all the facts are in.

[gpw11]

Oh, good points.  Joystiq is one of the better blogs that masquerades as news sites by reposting shit they find through google, but in the end that doesn't change that they're still just one of those sites.

I'll worry about it when I see it on anandtech.

[Pugnate]

This month's PCG podcast discussed the INQ article as well, and all of the editors expressed their surprise.

[Cobra951]

I should find some way to spank Joystiq for this, if all it is is regurgitation of malice from someone with an ax to grind.  Sorry I even posted it, or at least sorry I didn't make it clear from the beginning that it's an unsubstantiated rumor.

[Pugnate]

Not just Joystiq... many of the other gossip sites posted this rumor, and all cited the INQ as well. I was surprised this got so much more press than the other unsubstantiated articles the INQ posts. I guess it was because of the recent Nvidia chipset fiasco that this appeared more believable.

Also, I do prefer Joystiq over Kotaku. While I find the latter to be good at breaking news before others, I find it terrible in terms of writing and humor. To me, Kotaku's success exemplifies the state of video games journalism today, and the intelligence level of the market's audience.