NVIDIA

[duke1]

is there just one NVIDIA card that came on the t61? or two models?? How much better is it compared to the intel? and when did they fix the NVIDIA chip bug? and why have they not recalled these laptops? someone should sue.

[miro_gt]

long story.

but there are two models, the 140m and the FX that came with the T61. Further those two on the 14" laptops had only half the memory, so I guess 4 different nVidia total.

I have the smallest one. But it happens to overclock like crazy, lol.

I dont believe they fixed anything. So as long as you take care of the card, it should work long time. Such as mine - over 3.5 years while heavily overclocked ( cough .. over 50% ... cough)

good luck.

[TuuS]

There is more misinformation about this issue then anything I've ever read about. I've looked into this at great length, and I believe the following is the only "truth" you can rely on.

First of all, the nVidia chips WERE redesigned to correct this "problem" (which nVidia denies exists "officially"). The updated chips were silently and slowly rolled out with no revision number changes, so you cannot tell a old/new chip by looking at it. Because of this it lead Lenovo to scrap thousands of good boards back in July 2008, replacing them with boards made with a shipment of the improved chips from nVidia. I've uncovered direct (1st hand) physical evidence that suggests the old and new chips were manufactured with the same date codes simultaneously, so the ONLY reliable way to tell if you have the new chip is by the date of manufacture on the laptop. If you have a unit that was built NEW (not refurb) on 08/08 or later, then it has the updated chip, but since the T61 line was replaced the following month, these are rare. I have had some units built in september 2008 (08/09), and after going through over 100,000 serial numbers in corporate databases, I've found only 3 units built in October 2008 (08/10).

There were without doubt some good chips used prior to 08/08, but exactly when they begun shipping is highly debatable.

There have been lawsuits against nVidia that were settled out of court with no admission of wrongdoing, or of any defect. If you live in the USA, some states will allow you to directly sue a manufacture like Lenovo, but the court is going to look at this one basic fact... did the unit survive the warranty period? and if not, did the manufacture honor the warranty? If lenovo wins on those two points, then you're likely to be assessed the legal fees incurred by the defense, which could be enough to buy a truckload of used T61 units.

In addition, Lenovo publicly agreed to fix out of warranty units that are confirmed to have failed from bad nVidia chips. They agreed to do this for an extended period of 13 months, regardless of state of warranty. No one forced them to do this, and in my opinion, any court is going to see a claim about a 3-4yo laptop needing repairs as frivolous. I can't imagine any court forcing a manufacture to fix units so old, it's unprecedented.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not siding with Lenovo, I lost one of these too. I paid a lot of money for my T61 back in 2008, but when it died 3years later it was out of warranty by 2years, and although some would look at it as a $1500 loss, that's just crazy because the system was only worth $300 if it worked, and a used (tested) board can be purchased for about 150, or a remanufactured Lenovo board for $575, but the last bit of logic is undeniable... electronics fail!!! it's just a fact, so to expect them to last forever is unreasonable.

What makes this problem worse then it could have been is the fact that the video isn't replaceable without replacing the entire systemboard, so even though the actual numbers of failed units is low (estimate close to 1%, but no official numbers are released), it doesn't seem insignificant to the person who's effected.

I personally would have like to see them help more people, instead of free replacements for some, offering a $99 replacement to all would have been more then fair, and would have probably cost the same amount of money in the end. Anyone complaining about paying $99 for a replacement board for a 3-4yo system out of warranty is delusional, I think it would have been beyond fair, but for whatever reasons they decided to offer them free for a limited time. They didn't foresee the angry people who's boards died after the deadline as a problem until too late, so the odds of getting a free repair now are somewhere between zero and none... but people still try, posting angry rants in their forum.

All I can say is I wish people would use such energy and passion for things that really matter, then we might have clean air to breath, food for the hungry, less endangered animals, and clean fuel alternatives.... basically things that are important, instead of ranting over a 3yo+ computer that's easily fixed at a reasonable fee.

That's how I see it... but if you have a failed unit and need a board, shoot me a PM and I'll help you find one, if I don't have one already.

TuuS

[miro_gt]

mine is from the end of 2007, September as far as I remember, bought new from Lenovo.

I think most of the failing GPUs were the FX ones and the reason for that was most likely the temperature. Heck I've seen FX chips to idle at about 80 deg C back in the day, lol, no wonder with some work those chips went to 90+, and then many people complained of failure.

therefore my conclusion - keep the GPU as cool as possible and that should do the trick. Also try not to impose sharp temperature changes, if possible. My personal red line is the 80 deg mark, so everything above that is a no go. So far I've managed to keep up to 76 deg C max while overclocked and with both CPU and GPU working continuously on 100%.

And then I've seen some complain of dieing GPUs at low temps ... so who knows. I've also seen some of the first models (my guess) that came with thermal pad between the gpu and the heat sink, so thinking that mine came the same I opened it up to put thermal paste instead - only to find out that mine came with paste, lol, so that might have something to add to the problem as well.

[JeffCullen]

Get a T400. Then you don't have to worry about any of this, plus you can buy cheaper RAM!