The unfortunate saga of Nvidia's mobile GPU and chipset failures just keeps on going. Today, several blogs are pointing to a new article in Apple's support knowledge base article that doesn't paint Nvidia in a very favorable light. Here's what the Mac maker says under the "symptoms" header:

In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within two years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.Apple says potentially affected systems include 15" and 17" MacBook Pros with GeForce 8600M GT GPUs made between "May 2007 and September 2008." MacBook Pro users with failing GPUs should witness either video distortion or a complete lack of video on the screen, Apple adds.

As an interesting side note, this knowledge base article has popped up just four days before the launch of Apple's next-gen notebooks. Several reports and analysts have suggested that the systems will feature Nvidia MCPs instead of Intel's Centrino 2-flavored chipsets.