ATI may have dropped the ball at launch

schwartzvald

schwartzvald

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Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but for those that didn't already know:

http://forums.nintendo.com/nintendo/board/message?board.id=wii_tech&message.id=33963

Before I had the Wii, I had a "Made by ATI" Radeon x700 that did the EXACT same thing--it eventually led to Windows XP failing to boot. So in my opinion, ATI is the culprit. And now my Nintendo Wii is affected. After a lot of research, I'm pretty sure it comes from GPU memory corruption.

Heat may be a factor too... which means the excessive heat during "WiiConnect24" standby is probably helping these ATI manufacturing defects along.

I wish my Wii wasn't broken, because I was excited about getting Sonic in a few days. I don't hate Nintendo, but I feel like free repairs under warranty isn't enough compensation for such a defect.

And it's a hard defect to detect... it started out very subtle, and at first, I thought it was just a bad reflection on the TV. It seems to only happen when certain portions of the graphics memory are accessed, too. The rain in Hyrule Castle in TP REALLY sets it off. So if anyone else is worried about their Wii being affected, that's a good place to look for it.

I'd guess that quite a few launch Wiis are affected, or will be, as players log more hours on the system.

I just hope Nintendo can fix it, or send me a newer replacement. One guy on the Nintendo boards got a defective replacement system...
 
I had the same problem, it really sucked. I'd recommend just getting a replacement system unless you've spent a lot of cash on VC games.
 
Has your replacement shown any signs of the glitch?

I'm sending to Nintendo under normal repairs... I didn't use the "advanced replacement" thing, where you practically cross-ship.
 
Interesting - I was just thinking the other day about how many 360 owners are on their 2nd or 4th or 6th 360 and yet I haven't heard of a single issue with Wii's except for a few bricking with the update in December. I had thought it was another rock-solid Nintendo hardware product.

Is there more info about this? I can't spend the time to wade through all 14+ pages of that forum. Or at least a link to the page that has the details you allude to about the ATI chip?
 
And do you know when your replacement system (the nondefective one) was made? Mine was purchased one week prior to Christmas. Think I'm in the clear? I don't see any artifacting but to be honest, it doesn't get nearly as much play as my 360.
 
I just waded through 14 pages. While most people panic that it is WiiConnect24 and the fact that the fan is not on to cool the network card/CPU while its humming quietly along, someone mentions that the artifacting was experienced by someone who had never used WiiConnect24.

The most plausible cause for the artificating is a bad batch of GPUs. I do not believe this to be a design flaw. I've logged 50 hours of gametime, and its been on with WiiConnect since Early December and I have experienced no issues.

Of course, after writing this, I could go and turn the damn thing on and have this problem, but the universe usually knows not to screw with my electronics.
 
^^^^ Well, yeah, I've had mine on WiiConnect24 since launch day and have logged WAY more than 50 hours of game time. Hell, my kids have spent nearly that much time just messing around with the Mii Channel :rofl:. We've got 40 in Zelda, 20-30 or so in Rayman, 20-30 in Elebits, 10-15 in WarioWare, about 10 in Wii Play, 20-30 in Cars, 15 in Super Monkey Ball and 20 or so in Excite Truck, plus many more hours in VC games. While, as you say, I could see this problem cropping up tomorrow when I turn it on, there's a much higher chance my system is simply solid, given all that time we've put into it. Any flaws ought to have been exposed by now.
 
I've got it, but it seems to be a chnaging problem. I never noticed a thing wrong with it until I got Wario Ware. The introduction screen to the new holding methods showed the distorting at the bottom (you know, really graphic-intensive stuff. Black text on a white background. *whew* :roll: ). After that it started to show itself in the driving games on Wario Ware (really badly) and a few others. GC games never got it, I've seen literally one square, once, on one level of Super Mario World, and my recent playing of Trauma Center has not revealed anything of the sort.

So, has my problem fixed itself? I doubt it. If it's been on for a bit, I can still see a little bit of a problem in one specific part of the Wii menu. I'm thinking, since there's not much till Super Paper Mario hits that I want to play, I'm going to send it on its way to Nintendo after I beat Sonic, unless Sonic reveals horrific problems. I've got like $55 in VC games on the thing, as well as about 8 pages of "Friend Codes," so I'm not just going to get a new system. ;)
 
I've been assembling and servicing PCs for a long time, so I'm really no stranger to defective video hardware, and how to sniff it out... which made seeing it on the Wii pretty depressing. I was in denial for about two hours.

I too believe it's just a bad batch of GPUs at launch... there are certainly plenty of launch systems that will never exhibit the defect.

It's depressing, but it's almost certain Nintendo knew what kind of percentages of manufacturing defects they could expect... that's just in the nature of manufacturing computers nowadays.

And the defective cores or memory wouldn't present themselves until the system was stressed in most cases, which means light users of the Wii won't develop the symptoms until long after their warranty runs out. It's the reason why "burning in" a PC is such a good idea. It's better to run two days of burn-in than to have a graphics card fail 2 months after warranty expiration. :p

Heat from "Standby Mode" didn't cause the defects, that much is true. But when someone fires the system up after it's gathered a bunch of heat in standby, it's certainly going to speed up the death of a defective chip already frying at room temperature.

I've seen gradual failure of GPUs in both NVIDIA and ATI products... usually in their "medium" and "low" level cards. I once had to RMA the same kind of GeForce card twice in a row--the third card still had bad memory, at which point I snapped it in two (pretty hard to do, actually). TNT cards were notoriously prone to failure. And then, of course, there's my damned x700.

I see people with unglued polygons and garbled textures in their games, and they tend to say "Oh, that just happens sometimes." But now, I know that they are going to be replacing their video card very soon. :p

But I never ONCE had a serious problem with a Voodoo card, though... I miss them a lot.

And even though ATI has now screwed me twice, I love this Radeon 8500LE that I bought off a message board. It's seen easily 4 years of solid use, rigorous stress testing, and still works flawlessly.

Here's to all of you that got a defect-free launch Wii... I'm jealous. :p

Oh, and on a side note... my problems cropped up after around 300 play hours. So... even if you've played a lot... beware.
 
[quote name='schwartzvald']Has your replacement shown any signs of the glitch?

I'm sending to Nintendo under normal repairs... I didn't use the "advanced replacement" thing, where you practically cross-ship.[/quote]

No, it hasn't, but I haven't left WiiConnect on like I did with my first one. Whether that's the culprit or not, who knows.
 
It's nice to read informative threads, and your posts in this thread have been particularly illuminating, schwartzvald. Thanks for bringing this up and explaining things in better detail, and thanks to everyone involved who took the time to share.

:applause:
 
What you say kind of has me worried... So you think the ATI GPU is to blame for this? How widespread of a problem is this exactly? I find myself looking for those black static blocks now everytime I play but it looks fine. Although, in the menu i can see some flickering lines sometimes which don't really bother me. I've turned standby mode off just incase it had anything to do with that. Better safe then sorry.
 
I have this problem, and it really pisses me off.
I've spent a shitload of money on VC games. I'm going to hold off on getting this fixed for a while, in hopes that Nintendo will be able to do something in the future to prevent me from getting fucked over by loss of VC games.
 
Hmmm, hearing this makes me ask this question...
Pretty much everytime I use the Internet Channel the screen looks like theres a magnet somewhere near the upper right hand side of the screen. I know theres no magnets nearby and it only does it when using the Internet. The screen is also like a trapezoid on top not square like the screen. Any ideas? Is this something to do with the video card problem you guys are talking about? It also makes like a crackling kinda noise when its loading the Internet/Shop channel.
It never really bothered me much before but now hearing about some defect, I figure Id ask if anyone has similar problems.
 
[quote name='Tromack']I have this problem, and it really pisses me off.
I've spent a shitload of money on VC games. I'm going to hold off on getting this fixed for a while, in hopes that Nintendo will be able to do something in the future to prevent me from getting fucked over by loss of VC games.[/quote]You don't have to lose the games, you just lose them if you want a new system right away. If you send it in for "repairs," they can transfer everything over to a repaired unit or a brand new unit.

It's still stupid, though. These things should be tied to a user ID ala iTunes, not a system.
 
[quote name='daroga']It's still stupid, though. These things should be tied to a user ID ala iTunes, not a system.[/QUOTE]

I agree 100%

Anyway, does anyone have the model #'s of the Wii's that are showing this GPU meltdown?
 
[quote name='Scrubking']I agree 100%

Anyway, does anyone have the model #'s of the Wii's that are showing this GPU meltdown?[/quote]Mine is RVL-001, but I'm sure if it's just a faulty batch of chips that there's not a whole new model for the system. It's not like to fix it they'd need to redeign the thing on the inside--just get the same chips, but not bad ons.
 
From what I read there are 2 types of repairs, one that Nintendo sends you a new console at the same time you send your console to them. This causes you to loose everything, from Miis to VC games.
The other kind is sending it in, and they transfer everything over to a new Wii (provided the flash memory isn't corrupt), and then ship the new one back to you.
 
schwartzvald, is there something we should do to put the Wii through its paces now and try to make the problem appear so we know if we have a defective unit sooner rather than later?
 
[quote name='billywilliams1975']So, VC games are linked to your system and not your online name?[/QUOTE]

Yes. If you opt for an advanced replacement, or whatever its called, you lose all your games and points. Same happens if you buy a new system.

is there something we should do to put the Wii through its paces now and try to make the problem appear so we know if we have a defective unit sooner rather than later?
Click to expand...

Not really. Just play a lot and leave wiiconnect on for a week to see, but nothing is certain.

The main thing is to have your wii, and all electronics, in a cool, dry well ventilated area.
 
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