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nVidia Pays Up
January 10, 2014 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Nvidia has agreed to pay any Canadian who had the misfortune to buy a certain laptop computer made by Apple, Compaq, Dell, HP, or Sony between November 2005 and February 2010. Apparently these models contained a dodgy graphics card which was not fixed for five years.
Under a settlement approved by the court Nvidia will pay $1,900,000 into a fund for anyone who might have bought a faulty card. The Settlement Agreement provides partial cash reimbursement of the purchase price and you have to submit a claim by February 25, 2014. You will know if your Nvidia card was faulty because your machine would have a distorted or scrambled video, or no video on the screen even when the computer is on. There would be random characters, lines or garbled images – a bit like watching one of the Twilight series. There will be intermittent video issues or a failure to detect wireless adaptor or wireless networks.
The amount of compensation will be determined by the Claims Administrator who will apply a compensation grid and settlement administration guidelines. Cash compensation will also be provided for total loss of use based on the age of the computer; temporary loss of use having regard to the nature and duration of the loss of use; and reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses caused by Qualifying Symptoms to an Affected Computer.
nVidia Launching New Cards
We weren’t expecting this and it is just a rumour, but reports are emerging that Nvidia is readying two new cards for the winter season. AMD of course is launching new cards four weeks from now, so it is possible that Nvidia would try to counter it.
The big question is with what?
VideoCardz claims one of the cards is an Ultra, possibly the GTX Titan Ultra, while the second one is a dual-GPU job, the Geforce GTX 790. The Ultra is supposedly GK110 based, but it has 2880 unlocked CUDA cores, which is a bit more than the 2688 on the Titan.
The GTX 790 is said to feature two GK110 GPUs, but Nvidia will probably have to clip their wings to get a reasonable TDP.
We’re not entirely sure this is legit. It is plausible, but that doesn’t make it true. It would be good for Nvidia’s image, especially if the revamped GK110 products manage to steal the performance crown from AMD’s new Radeons. However, with such specs, they would end up quite pricey and Nvidia wouldn’t sell that many of them – most enthusiasts would probably be better off waiting for Maxwell.