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Videocard Problems M170

post #1 of 4
2/21/07 at 12:33pm
Thread Starter 
Just a few quick questions. Should I be concerned my video card temps get up to 90 celsius and above within 5 min. of starting up Oblivion, Half Life, or Supreme Commander. I purchased the laptop last march and got the geforce 7800 GTX video card. I had never really played any games on it until this past december when I finally picked up oblivion. It would heat up and become unplayable after an hour. Unplayable being the screen goes black, or the game just completely crashes. Now it's to the point that any game even on the low settings in any game even the first half life (lol) keep the temps at 90 or above and I get glitches or crashing. I've tried propping up the laptop, reinstalling device drivers, compressed air to remove dust, and I used I8kfangui to control the fan speeds to come on fast earlier on. All to no avail. Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening? Is the video card bad? The cpu temps stay pretty stable only reaching 67 celsius. Any time a game gets started up the GPU temps shoot right up and I could cook eggs on my keyboard after only 10 min.

I've contacted dell support and they're sending a tech (this service runs out for me in 20 days.) with a new motherboard and new fans. Does this sound like the right solution to you or is a new video card seem like the right choice? Also has anyone had this overnight service? They're just going to come to my house after I get off work to fix it?

Thanks for your replies.
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post #2 of 4
2/21/07 at 12:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by radav
Just a few quick questions. Should I be concerned my video card temps get up to 90 celsius and above within 5 min. of starting up Oblivion, Half Life, or Supreme Commander. I purchased the laptop last march and got the geforce 7800 GTX video card. I had never really played any games on it until this past december when I finally picked up oblivion. It would heat up and become unplayable after an hour. Unplayable being the screen goes black, or the game just completely crashes. Now it's to the point that any game even on the low settings in any game even the first half life (lol) keep the temps at 90 or above and I get glitches or crashing. I've tried propping up the laptop, reinstalling device drivers, compressed air to remove dust, and I used I8kfangui to control the fan speeds to come on fast earlier on. All to no avail. Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening? Is the video card bad? The cpu temps stay pretty stable only reaching 67 celsius. Any time a game gets started up the GPU temps shoot right up and I could cook eggs on my keyboard after only 10 min.

I've contacted dell support and they're sending a tech (this service runs out for me in 20 days.) with a new motherboard and new fans. Does this sound like the right solution to you or is a new video card seem like the right choice? Also has anyone had this overnight service? They're just going to come to my house after I get off work to fix it?

Thanks for your replies.


sounds like my old m170 before it was replaced.... if i can remember correctly from when mine died it is an issue related to the motherboard or the video card (dell never was able to track it down). you have done all that you could to handle the issue and in the end this one has to be hardware related. the overnight service is okay but depending on things it will take a couple of days (if they dont have the parts) but they will get it fixed for you. i ended up with dell just deciding to replace it in the end but there is the chance of fixing it by replacing the effected areas.
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post #3 of 4
2/21/07 at 1:08pm
Thread Starter 
When you say replace it... What did they replace it with? A brand new laptop?
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post #4 of 4
2/21/07 at 1:09pm
The 7800GTX gets really hot in these laptops. What you could do is to undervolt your CPU, thereby lowering the overall ambient temp within the laptop's chassi. To me it sounds like you have dust blocking the heat transfer, If you would open it up you would see this is the case.

I went a little more "hardcore" and put Arctic Silver 5 on both my GPU and CPU, it made a difference to me, now I run my M170 overclocked.

Of course this would void your warranty, I did after my warranty went out. I see three things you can put AS5 on. CPU, GPU and Northbridge. Overall this should reduce overall temps. But surely Dell has heat problems, especially if you run games in native res 1920x1200.
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