When the new Macbooks came out a few weeks ago, Nvidia stated that the chips they provided to Apple did not contain the so-called bad bumps material believed to have caused higher-than-expected defect rates in certain notebooks, namely from HP and Dell, under certain usage models. But an investigation lead by The Inquirer seems to show this not to be the case.

Nvidia has (according to sources) infringed a patent regarding PCI prefetch held by OPTi and although OPTi no longer makes PC chips, they now license intellectual property. Nvidia didn't come to agreeable terms with OPTi and has to remove the PCI prefetch feature from its chipsets.

...the problem boils down to the solder bump material, in Nvidia's case high-lead that was used in all of the firm's GPUs that were produced until late July. According to sources, Nvidia has switched to eutectic solder bumps in recent weeks and there is now a new, apparently independent research report, that claims that eutectic solder bumps, which are used for example by AMD’s ATI unit, may live much longer than high-lead versions.

Nvidia Corp. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) seem to have a difficult relationship. Nvidia is not getting the 55-nm capacity it needs from the silicon foundry giant, a problem likely to worsen as the graphics chip maker moves to the 40-nm node, says Doug Freedman, an analyst at American Technology Research.

here is trouble in Nvidialand. AMD's new graphics cards apparently have surprised Nvidia, forcing the company to cut the prices of its new cards. Nvidia is adjusting its marketing strategy to GeForce 8800 cards to avoid what has all the signs for a big sales decline on the high end. Of course, that means that it is a good time for graphics cards shoppers.