Nvidia on C51 recall

[trinibwoy]

Nvidia has responded to the Inquirer's claim (http://www.theinq.com/?article=27129) that all C51/6150 based motherboards have been recalled. From http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=58539

An article has appeared today on the Inquirer claiming that NVIDIA has "pulled all of the C51, GeForce 6100 and GeForce 6150 motherboards as it discovered some serious flaws."

These claims are entirely false. NVIDIA has not ceased shipping or pulled back any NVIDIA nForce products. Our recently announced GeForce 6150, GeForce 6100, and NVIDIA nForce 430/400-based GPU motherboards are in full production and are selling very well for us, as are all of our NVIDIA nForce products, including NVIDIA nForce4 SLI, which continues to set the standard for dual GPU configurations.

In its story, the Inquirer article makes many factually inaccurate statements. The first claims there is a problem with our ActiveArmor Firewall on dual LAN motherboards.

The Inquirer claims that boards with two LAN ports would cause confusion for consumers who would not know whether or not they were protected by the NVIDIA Firewall. As you may know, the NVIDIA Firewall is built directly into the NVIDIA networking driver. It was designed this way to stop possible hacking attempts when booting up your PC.

For those motherboards with a secondary LAN port, the end user would have to install a third party network driver that would normally be supplied by the motherboard manufacturer. How the LAN ports are marked/named/designated on the actual motherboard backplane is up to the motherboard manufacturer.

Because the NVIDIA Firewall is built into our networking driver, it of course only works with the NVIDIA LAN port. An end user would have to install a standalone Firewall application to protect the secondary LAN port, if enabled. This is not new information, and in fact, was disclosed when we launched our first NVIDIA nForce3 product a few years ago.

In addition, there are no dual LAN GeForce 6100/nForce 400 motherboards in development. So, the assertion that this “developmentâ€￾ would somehow force us to pull back NVIDIA GeForce 6150/6100-based GPU motherboards is untrue.

The Inquirer article then goes on to say that some users have experienced "data corruption issues with this chipset." The article provides a link to a thread on "forums.nvidia.com", which was only started on October 9, 2005, where a few end users have described a problem doing multiple copies of the same file. However, a posting from today, October 21, 2005, claims the issue is related to a hard disk drive firmware issue and includes a link to the firmware .zip file.

As we do with all end-user comments, we are investigating this thread as we are not aware of any such issue relating to any NVIDIA nForce products relating to data corruption.

How the Inquirer makes a connection of a recent Web thread to a theoretical worldwide pull back of our entire new product portfolio is beyond us.

Again, just to be clear, we have NOT ceased shipping or pulled back any NVIDIA nForce products. Our recently announced GeForce 6150, GeForce 6100, and nForce 430/400-based GPU motherboards are in full production and are selling very well for us, as are all of our nForce products, including nForce4 SLI, which continues to set the standard for dual GPU configurations.

If you have already bought one of these products, we thank-you for your patronage and continued support of NVIDIA and our partners in the retail channel. We hope you enjoy using these products as much as we have enjoyed designing it and bringing it to market.

For those of you interested in purchasing GeForce 6100/6150-based GPU motherboard solutions today, please check out such leading e-tail sites such as www.newegg.com where there are a wide variety of products currently available, including:

BIOSTAR TForce6100 Socket 754 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
BIOSTAR TForce6100-939 Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
GIGABYTE GA-K8N51GMF-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
BIOSTAR iDEQ 330N AMD Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 FX/Athlon 64/Sempron NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Barebone - Retail

All of these products are terrific for your home, business, and small form factor use.

Bryan Del Rizzo
Senior PR Manager
NVIDIA Corporation

 

[Geo]

Hmm, between this and the reply to Ratchet re SM3, I have to wonder if we're seeing a shift in NV PR policy.

 

[IgnorancePersonified]

Yeh that'd be a nice change from the NVPR I'm used too.

Interetsing to watch this one develop. I read the article last night. I was a believer from my expierience with early IDE drivers from NV.

 

[Geo]

Yeh that'd be a nice change from the NVPR I'm used too.

Agreed.

Quick, somebody see if they'll let Emmet Kilgariff come play at B3D now.

 

[Rys]

Oh dear.

 

[bigz]

I've been waiting for something like this to come up...

 

[nAo]

Quick, somebody see if they'll let Emmet Kilgariff come play at B3D now.

Why do you think he's not already playing here?

 

[trinibwoy]

Hmm, between this and the reply to Ratchet re SM3, I have to wonder if we're seeing a shift in NV PR policy.

Well you must admit that an article about the recall of an entire shipping product line is a bit more serious than the usual Inquirer rumour drivel. I think that deserves some response.

 

[Sinistar]

From INQ

We learned about it from a manufacturer that had to withdraw all of its boards as it might cause very unhappy users.

I wonder who the manufacturer was?

 

[Geo]

Why do you think he's not already playing here?

Well, I meant as himself, having removed his Clark Kent glasses.

 

[IgnorancePersonified]

was waiting for this.

Bit strange it took so long. Inq isn't shy of putting in a retraction (limited as this one is by caveats) when they gaff but I guess it was the weekend.

 

[Sxotty]

That was not a good enough retraction in my opinion. But we will have to wait and see what the deal really is.

My feelings about the Inq is that they are being used, but hey what do I know...

Anyway lets wait and see, if there is nothing more concreter, I expect the Inq to post a much better retraction than that as well as an apology...

 

[trinibwoy]

Not much of a retraction at all especially with the extremely sardonic last paragraph.

Big motherboard manufacturers don’t recall their boards for a small reason and Nvidia implies that it has to be the motherboard manufacturers' problems, not Nvidia's as its chipsets are flawless.

 

[Geo]

Not much of a retraction at all especially with the extremely sardonic last paragraph.

Well, I look at posts #5 & #6 in this thread, and I suspect there's more to the story yet to come. I would think it'll leak out over time --it usually does when it gets at least this far into public view.

 

[Sxotty]

Well, I look at posts #5 & #6 in this thread, and I suspect there's more to the story yet to come. I would think it'll leak out over time --it usually does when it gets at least this far into public view.

Well geo, we shall see. But the Inq did mess up by linking that random thread about data corruption, that was admitted by maxtor to be their fault...

Anyway a comment such as "oh dear" and "I was waiting for something like this" does not tell me that it is fubared, but it may well be.

Personally I truely doubt it is as Nvidia could get pretty hosed if they have knowledge of such a flaw and publicly categorically deny its existence. That is not to say that they did not pass it through lawyers who somehow informed them that there was a weasel hole which their may be...

 

[Geo]

Well geo, we shall see. But the Inq did mess up by linking that random thread about data corruption, that was admitted by maxtor to be their fault...

Anyway a comment such as "oh dear" and "I was waiting for something like this" does not tell me that it is fubared, but it may well be.

Personally I truely doubt it is as Nvidia could get pretty hosed if they have knowledge of such a flaw and publicly categorically deny its existence. That is not to say that they did not pass it through lawyers who somehow informed them that there was a weasel hole which their may be...

Those posts don't tell me that it is fubared, and I did not mean to imply they do. They do tell me that the worthies involved were not surprised that the general topic had leaked into the public domain, suggesting there has been some roiling about something or other in the background about it prior to the appearance of the initial Inq piece and NV's reply. If they want to tell us more about what they know, I'm sure we're all ears.

My sig here used to be about never asssuming malice when incompetence is a reasonable explanation. Sort of Occam's Razor applied to foul-ups. Which is just to say that I do not find that the NV statement upstream is either a knowing lie by the author or literally true in all its particulars to exhaust the possibilities. Finger-pointing amongst techies is usually in good faith initially, tho often at the end of the day when truth is finally arrived at, one side or the other might wish they'd done less of it.

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

This mess looks like what happend to VIA about 3 years ago with there 686B south bridge. The 686B south bridge IDE controler would give ata corruption with large files.

 

[IgnorancePersonified]

I read that from between the line, or in one case - words, above too geo.
I don't think however that the inq is naive enough to be used like a cheap ho though. I reckon without really knowing so this may be me talking out my arse that they would get quite a stream of FUD through the inbox in any given week. Sorting the FUD from the clay so to speak.

 

[BRiT]

This mess looks like what happend to VIA about 3 years ago with there 686B south bridge. The 686B south bridge IDE controler would give ata corruption with large files.

That's understating the problem. I had one for slightly over 106 Windows XP installs. It occured on each and every install I tried with using 7 different install cds, 5 different cd/dvd-rom drives, 4 different hard drives, 8 different memory sticks, 3 different cpus, 3 different PSUs, and 2 different BIOSes. Needless to say, after 6 days I returned the hunk-of-junk and picked up a nForce-2 motherboard. I've been VIA-free since then.

 

[Geo]

That's understating the problem. I had one for slightly over 106 Windows XP installs. It occured on each and every install I tried with using 7 different install cds, 5 different cd/dvd-rom drives, 4 different hard drives, 8 different memory sticks, 3 different cpus, 3 different PSUs, and 2 different BIOSes. Needless to say, after 6 days I returned the hunk-of-junk and picked up a nForce-2 motherboard. I've been VIA-free since then.

I feel your pain, my brother. Not that I had that particular problem; just felt you needed a hug right then.

For some years, any time I considered my first AMD since the sainted dx4/120, I would read another post about the horrors of "4-in-1 drivers" and run like hell in the other direction. There is no doubt that NV is to be thanked for bringing some user confidence to that arena. I just hope this won't be an incident that puts a ding in the reputation they've earned in this area.