Apple Begins Faulty Graphics Card Replacement

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,400
Apple began the task of addressing complaints from iMac owners this week by replacing faulty graphics cards on certain models of iMac sold during a specific period of time. Owners have a three year window in which to get a replacement.

Those affected by the issue can take their iMac in for evaluation at the Genius Bar of a local Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider.
 
Impossible.... impossible I say! my mac is flawless, and designed by the hand of jobs himself. I refuse to believe that the all mighty apple I paid 5000 dollars for will ever be at fault. This is clearly the fault of another company using our name without paying us a royalty fee.

Lawyers have been contacted... you should be getting a letter soon.
 
Yes, but Apple put the cooling solution for a 6310 and Atom dual core onto a 6970m and i7.

solder fatigue just like the Geforce 8600 problem, only difference is it will be a cover up, the real problem is the Pb free solder they use,
 
And I junked that imac 27 with a dead card. Oh well, it was for the betterment of society.
 
solder fatigue just like the Geforce 8600 problem, only difference is it will be a cover up, the real problem is the Pb free solder they use,

Years back was involved with a laptop range which had constant failures as that solder was bought in, on some models only. Came down to too high heat flux from marginal cooling (not to mention dust..), uneven pressure on critical components, flex from heat, flex from holding on weak corners + less rigid cases + heavy use and you have an expensive plastic brick. mostly covered up and not really admitted to directly. Required new main-boards under warranty, sometimes one machine would go through 2 in a month or more, then they repaired with re-flow + implemented a few different aspects of assembly method, plus a physical modification to help get it through maximum possible warranty period and more reliable. This helped a bit and good on them for doing at least something to address it. Unlike many.

Of course similar issues many times in other devices from many manufacturers.
 
It's too bad we can't still have lead in everything, it makes solder so much better :(

I HATE soldering with that tin crap, I still have half a dozen spools of the good stuff.

To Plumbous!
 
Sure those customers are using their batteries wrong. Or maybe they're plugging they jewelry in counterfeit power sockets hehe
 
It's too bad we can't still have lead in everything, it makes solder so much better :(

I HATE soldering with that tin crap, I still have half a dozen spools of the good stuff.

To Plumbous!

Solder has always had tin in it. The older solder was usually 60% tin and 40% lead, but a variant was 63%/37% in order to achieve eutectic properties which meant it had a very low temperature range for the transition to liquid to plasticity to solid, as in less than 1ºF between being completely solid to completely liquid and vice versa (which helped prevent cold solder joints).

In the current lead free solders tin is still used, but instead of mixing with lead, they have mixes of tin, silver silver, bismuth, indium, zinc and other metals. Tin-Silver and Copper seems to be tbe best replacement for the older tin/lead eutectic
 
Sorry I just have to laugh. Wonder how long they will be without their Machines, Now if was a PC and a part needed changed.
 
Sorry I just have to laugh. Wonder how long they will be without their Machines, Now if was a PC and a part needed changed.

If it were a PC, you'd have to send it in to the manufacturer and wait 6 weeks. The iMac you can send in to an Apple store and have it back the next day.
 
no you ship it in, yes you have no computer or get a spare card or something, but when a company does a public, basically, recall of a product.. they screwed up..

how many faulty 7990 in PC's have people had to send back.. i would be curious to know..

Will be interesting to see the re-return rate on these.. why give 3 years time frame on this.. unless of course you knew there was an issue, said screw it, build em and sell them and lets deal with the problems later by having to get people to bring their computers into our stores....
 
no you ship it in, yes you have no computer or get a spare card or something, but when a company does a public, basically, recall of a product.. they screwed up..

how many faulty 7990 in PC's have people had to send back.. i would be curious to know..

Will be interesting to see the re-return rate on these.. why give 3 years time frame on this.. unless of course you knew there was an issue, said screw it, build em and sell them and lets deal with the problems later by having to get people to bring their computers into our stores....

So you spend another $800 out of your pocket to buy a replacement because AMD fucked up? And that's a better solution?

All manufactured products have defects once in a while. If you're the one to get a defective unit, you can give a fuck about the RMA ratio.
 
So you spend another $800 out of your pocket to buy a replacement because AMD fucked up? And that's a better solution?

All manufactured products have defects once in a while. If you're the one to get a defective unit, you can give a fuck about the RMA ratio.

Video card RMA is very vendor specific, but ive never waited longer then two weeks. Most here (not the norm) have backup cards already, not the same card...

If you mentioned HDD rma... Thats a whole different beast.
 
No, you dont buy a card of the same value, you get a hold you over card or something...or wait 2 weeks, or pending what processor you have, use the onboard video if your mobo has it.
 
I've never had an Apple repair take more than 1-2 days... 3 at most, with a weekend.

Now my Asus/Sapphire/Corsair RMA's.... :/
 
If it were a PC, you'd have to send it in to the manufacturer and wait 6 weeks. The iMac you can send in to an Apple store and have it back the next day.

Not fixed you won't. The imac I inhereted had no video, was 13 months old. The person who gave it to me said Apple wanted $1300 to fix it, they would not allow him to purchase 'applecare' since it was already broken as well. The price of a 'reman' imac of the same type was $1200.

The reason I did not fix the one I had was either the video card or the mainboard was bad. I had no way of telling without swapping parts, and you could not find the video card online for less than $600 (because there were no 'used' ones available that actually worked and a standard laptop card that would fit would not be 'apple certified...try to find drivers and have the OS with no video...) and the mainboard was $800. I did not even care enough about it to pay that much for a piece of crap apple product, even if it was 'pretty'. Fixing it was not even a concern I had. None of the parts in it were worth reusing. Not even the crappy 500GB hard drive, nor the sub-performance high latency memory it had. If I had a way to just use the monitor part of it I would have done that, but it's all propreitary connections and I could not find a wiring diagram/schematic to convert it to a standard monitor.

In short, apples flagship was built to be a throw away piece of junk.
 
The Apple hate in this thread and on the [H] forums is almost palpable. It's good that Apple is finally addressing this and I wish they were more forthcoming with issues like this.

Stuff breaks. Manufacturer defects happen. i don't care what manufacturer it is it happens.

BMW had a issue with its nikasil and alusil engines in the 90s. They issued a recall and fixed the issues on most of the affected cars. They fixed ones out of warranty but only for a few years after the recall. Does this mean BMW built cars to be throw away pieces of junk?

You are not going down to your local auto parts store to get major parts for you BMW. I could order just about everything for my Corvette from an auto parts store if I wanted to.

Does that make the Corvette better than the BMW?

I've owned both and i'd say no. My BMW (1994 740i) was great for it's purpose, it was a comfy sporty luxury car that did it's job well, when something broke it wasn't cheap and usually the part had to be ordered from a dealer. My Corvette (2001 Z06) was an all out sports car that excelled at what it did, when something broke it was pretty cheap and easy to replace.

I own both Apples (27" iMac & MBA) and PC's (4 of them) and it's the same way.
 
Back
Top