Got an Nvidia GeForce 8400 or 8600 graphics card? If you trust the Inquirier (and on this issue, I don't see any reason not to), it's probably going to fail sooner or later. Per Charlie Demerjian's scathing report: "All the G84 and G86 parts are bad. Period. No exceptions. All of them, mobile and desktop...."

This is bad news, a follow-up to reports from earlier this month that said certain (but unspecified) "older" Nvidia graphics chips had problems when installed in laptops, with Nvidia setting aside $200 million to deal with repairs and recall issues.

Demerjian says that's not going to be enough as he details the runaround he's received in trying to ferret out exactly what's going on. Nvidia (which isn't talking about the issue to press, he says, and has made no further statements on the matter in four weeks) has told analysts the issue affects only a small batch of parts that were sent to HP. But Demerjian says that all computer vendors must have received the same components, and that there's no chance that the company would have changed its production process at the end of the production cycle, as Nvidia has claimed, to cause the problem for only a small batch of parts. And yet Nvidia has maintained that the problem is confined to HP.

Anecdotal evidence says something quite different: Dell and Asus owners have been loudly complaining of graphics card failures. As Gizmodo also notes, that also "means every MacBook Pro since the Santa Rosa update has the bad cards."

Nvidia still hasn't announced fixes, but the problem can reportedly be ameliorated, at least somewhat, by running your fan more frequently (if you can), and trying to keep your computer at a relatively constant temperature. For laptops, that means less turning on and off, which causes the temperature to rise and fall drastically and will likely cause the graphics card to fail more quickly. If you have one of these chips in your laptop, you might consider not turning it off at night (though the typical recommendation is the opposite in normal-functioning systems) until the problem is repaired.

Do you have a laptop or desktop with a GeForce 8400 or 8600 card? If it has failed, please post the make and model of your PC here so we can keep track of affected systems. Thanks.

LINK: All Nvidia G64 and G86s are bad