NVIDIA Lawsuit Settled - Why Has ATI Not Been Sued For T4X?

[closersource]

I searched through the posts and could not find a discussion on this.

By now many of us have heard about the NVIDIA class action lawsuit...
http://www.pcworld.in/news/nvidia-lawsu ... s-37242010
Even though NVIDIA admits no wrongdoing it has negotiated a settlement to repair afflicted Dell / HP / Apple Mac laptops.

EDIT: The problem is not the same with the ATI chipset. Nonetheless they are caused by a similar issue of defective manufacturing. It's also not limited to IBM either as Toshiba Tecra S1 models and other Radeon 9XXX also experienced this failure.

My question is why has there not been a similar class action lawsuit against ATI - now a subsidiary of AMD? The problem is just as widespread if not more... Are they basically getting away with it?

[Troels]

There's no so-called "defective soldering" in this lawsuit.
The Nvidia lawsuit concerned an on-chip defect, i.e. an integrated circuit error which is clearly Nvidia's own fault. The ATI stuff on the T4x series is not ATI's problem, but the company who made the motherboard PCB layout (IBM, Foxconn?) combined with the people who thought out the mechanical design of the affected thinkpads. You can't blame ATI that their product is not used as inteneded... similarly to if it was cooled improperly accroding to design specifications.

But why sue? If within warranty IBM will replace the motherboard. If out of warranty, one is out of luck just like it is the case with all other out-of-warranty products in existance. At least they tried to fix it down the line by adding epoxy.

[dr_st]

My question is why has there not been a similar class action lawsuit against ATI - now a subsidiary of AMD? The problem is just as widespread if not more... Are they basically getting away with it?

Why? Because nobody thought about it at the time, and now it's old news and nobody cares anymore (slight exaggeration of course on my behalf, but not far from truth). Although like Troels said, probably IBM would have to be the recipient of the lawsuit in the T4x case.

[closersource]

I am just surprised that it was never brought up. The reason it should be directed against ATI is because it wasn't just IBM and their factory contractor with the issue. Toshiba among others had it too. The fact remains it affected almost exclusively ATI chipsets and not the Intel ones within the same model family. The assumption is that ATI provided the instructions and specifications for the mating of the chip and the board.

Anyway I agree these things are way past EOL so the problem is dropped and in effect the responsible parties get off free.

[underclocker]

I'd say that neither GPU issues is as bad as the recent battery issues with T6x/R6x/Z6x/X6x machines. Basically, good batteries just show irreparable damage and stop working. I've seen more bad batteries than bad T4x or T6x machines combined.

[Troels]

The fact remains it affected almost exclusively ATI chipsets and not the Intel ones within the same model family. The assumption is that ATI provided the instructions and specifications for the mating of the chip and the board.

I don't know Toshiba laptops very well - but the little i know of them (older cheap Satellite models) is that the build quality and sturdiness left a lot to be desired - but it might have improved since. So you may be right regarding those.
The T4x models with integrated graphics do not have the problem because the northbridge is located further towards the screen compared to where the ATI GPU is located on a board with discrete graphics. ATI, Nvidia, Intel etc. don't tell the manufacturers where to locate the chipsets, but i'm sure they have some general instructions on how to apply the BGA correctly.
The Intel southbridge is also located at a very risky location, and has also caused lots of trouble on the forum.

A lot of laptops of that era had many problems caused by flex. Manufacturers were used to solder with lead contents which are nowhere near as brittle as the lead-free solders they were/are more or less forced to use.

[poshgeordie]

The Nvidia issue is due to poor chip design - read this for more background information.

The ATI issue is due to all manufacturers being compelled in law to having to use lead-free solder, which as we all know which is simply not as good as the older leaded.

Also while we're talking about this then Intel Southbridge chips are becoming just as unreliable, again due to the use of lead-free.

So who do we sue - the legislators, the chip manufacturers, the laptop manufacturers?

[ajkula66]

poshgeordie wrote:

So who do we sue - the legislators, the chip manufacturers, the laptop manufacturers?

How about all of them...something just might stick...

[virge]

How about all of them...something just might stick...

That's what is called the "shotgun" method in law school...