NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT issues

The problem with these video chips was not solved by the BIOS change. Running the fan on low all the time keeps the temperature swings to a minimum, which is what causes the chips to fail.

The majority of problems appear to be with the 8400GT, not the 8600GT, and mostly in the M1330. I wouldn't worry about the issue. Supposedly Nvidia modified the manufacturing process earlier, so that newer chips should be OK. Dell has also added a n additional 1 year's warranty for these video chips.

The M1530 is a very nice laptop; you will like it.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1520, with a Nvidia GeForce 8600 with 256 Mb memory. Although the warranty has expired, but I am still able to download the latest drivers for free (as is the case with all products we buy). The problem is that dell is not releasing the latest drivers on time, which is causing great inconvenience to me. The version of drivers provided at your site is 175 whereas version 181 drivers are available on Nvidia's website. The drivers downloaded from Nvidia's website don't install on my laptop, hence I cannot use them. I request you to please update the drivers for video card more frequently, so that it benefits all users.

Dell issues video driver updates on a rather skimpy basis. The 17x.xx drivers are the latest for most systems. The Nvidia drivers are mostly for desktops, and will not normally install on a laptop. The Nvidia are updated often to allow specific functionality required by newer games.

There are several options. Modified desktop drivers are available from sites such as laptopvideo2go. These drivers use a modified .inf file to allow the installation. These drivers may work OK, but are not meant for laptops, so some features may not work. Power options are usuallal a problem, as are many issues specific to laptop video. There is also a post out there somewhere where someone showed how to install a desktop driver without a modified .inf file; I don't have the link, so you will need to find it.

For the most part, you don't need the newest drivers except for some new and demanding games, or when the existing drivers have a problem. Nvidia has released an official beta driver for Dell XPS M1710a and M1730s, which are gaming machines, but these are still only 17x.xx drivers. When Dell began shipping Vista with the Inspiron E1705 with the 7900GS video, there was a display "stuttering" problem which was cured with a driver update.

Updated Nvidia driver worries from Dell - or any other manufacturer for that matter, could soon be a thing of the past!?

Whilst it's always better to use drivers provided by the laptop manufactuer whenever possible, it's disheartening when they're almost a year old, and so don't include (i.e.) support for new games, and all the other features/updates included in new driver sets.

Thankfully... ATI/AMD are currently working on notebook specific Catalyst drivers.

But the good news for those of us who own laptops with Nvidia cards, Nvida has already released their first "notebook drivers" :emotion-15:

Whilst they're still in Beta, and they're not quite as up-to-date as the desktop drivers version (179.28 vs 180.84/181.00), you can get them here, if you're wanting to try them :emotion-21:

Thanks for the info and the link. The beta drivers released by Nvidia are woring fine :emotion-2: and the performance has increased. Actually I wanted the latest drivers to play GTA 4 on my laptop, and it works fine after installing the new beta drivers.

But now back to the original question: are the production issues of the NVIDIA graphics cards solved by now (18 december 2008) . This has to my opinion nothing to with drivers or whatever.  

Reloaded:

I haven't done any speed testing, but at least the power settings seem to work well. This is the biggest potential source of problems with "universal" drivers, those not written specially for a particular machine.

pbos:

Unfortunately, we are probably not going to see any more pronouncements from anyone on this.

Nvidia claims the problem was fixed, but we don't know when good ones began being sold. Perhaps we'll never know. It seems that complaints have dropped off. It also seems that the M1330 with the 8400GT was the biggest problem. I would assume that things are OK by now. Companies would be foolish to continue to sell known defective parts.