Intell's integrated graphics appears to have gone out last year on my
personal 10 yr-old Dell desktop last year. Our building has around
500 dells (a mix of docking laptops and desktops) that are updated
(round-robin style) every 5 years. I've not heard anyone complain
about it, and a lot of the folks do graphics-intensive stuff on
them... but few use Linux
However, this was mentioned on a CNET article three years ago, And I
think they are generally reliable
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10000353-64.html
"The company said Friday it has posted BIOS updates for an Nvidia
graphics chip glitch affecting laptop computers."
So probably just left over rumors from an old problem?