Earlier this month Nvidia announced that it plans to take a charge of $150 - $200 million to cover the expected cost of "significant quantities" of failing notebook chipsets and graphics processors. The bad news coupled with the uncertainty regarding which particular products were affected led to an abrupt drop in the company's shares.
The Inquirer then added some fuel to the fire with a report that claimed all of Nvidia's G84 and G86 graphics processors were in fact defective - even the ones in desktop graphics cards. While Nvidia has been mostly tightlipped about the whole thing, today the company reiterated to Ars Technica that the failures don't affect desktop parts and that "only a very small percentage of the notebook chips that have shipped" could be affected.
The company claims the problem depends on a combination of environmental conditions, configuration, and usage model. As a result - they say - it is very unlikely that a customer's Nvidia-based notebook is affected. While there's no immediate way to tell if Nvidia is telling the truth, lying about the extent of the problem certainly isn't in the firm's best interest as it could represent a financial fraud.