[Help]My M17x R4 is in trouble

I bought this laptop about 1 month ago and everything worked just fine in the first 1~2 weeks. Then some day i found my discrete GPU was working when it shouldn't be, troubles came (of course this is just the begining, I dont think its related to the real problem)
Firstly I found some black/white blocks(maybe triangles, lines or other irregular shaped blocks) flashed when i was running unigine heaven 3.0, especially in the dragon scene but since they were only small, unconspicuous blocks and i knew uheaven was really pushing hard to my GPU, I ignored that. After that I have done a lot of things to my card like switching around my drivers(11.9-->12.7modded-->12.5-->12.7modded), overclocking my card to 900/1250 (overvolted to 1.075v for two days and then turned it back for some concerns), during that UHeaven kept bringing me the same black block problems but nothing else happened, until one day the same phenomenon happened when I was playing World of Tanks, following, Men of War, what's more, a big white block showed up at the lower right coner before login screen every time I started up. And this problem occurred more and more often (say, once at least for a 7~8 min round in WoT), the blocks were sometimes really big. Im hardly not to worry about my card or other hardwares and following is the steps i have already took:

1, downclock the card to stock
The white block during startup disappeared and the problem seemed to be less regular but still existed

2, keep the 900/1250 clock but overvolt it to 1.075v
The white block during startup was still there and the blocks during UHeaven and games occurred less frequently.

All these steps seemed to tell me my card itself in encountering with some hardware failures and what's worse, the problem was still gaining in its strenth and frequency after I set it back to stock clocks.

Then I hoped it could be the unstablity of the new driver so I rolled it back to the factory driver downloaded from dell, but problem still exsisted. So I decided to give up trying and let it be, but when I was playing Men of War this thursday, a black line began to show up once several seconds which was likely to tell me your card is not far from a complete bleak down. So I picked up this stuff again and did some research, some said that could be the memory's problem as well so I reinstalled my memory(I'm with a 4G's dell's memory and an 8G's corsair, I ran UHeaven with each of the two RAM's on but it seemed nothing better). Then I thought I should restore my whole system to the factory image as my last stand, and miraculously, it worked! Those two trouble making games are fine now and UHeaven's problem is minimized.

I thought I'm safe now but just two hours ago, same black block came back to me in Men of War and I had a driver fail down in the last minute, I uninstalled the CCC as someone said it could also be a trouble maker, but don't know if that will work. The problem now is still minor like two weeks ago and Im feeling myself right in a circle. What makes me unconfortable is that I can't assure myself it's not going to happen again by any test and at any time.

Sry for the long discription and hope i made myself clear I'm still wondering what's causing the problem.

1, Temp
The core temp is good and never went beyond 70c but the VRAM's temp could still be a problem as there's no sensor there. But if that's the problem, how could a system restore relieve it?

2, Driver or other software
That's what I hope it was, but still not sure and 11.9 is supposed to be really stable, moreover, I have nothing except for games, office, photoshop and some benchmark/temp softwares on my computer.

Thx for your help

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EDIT: I had no such problems in BF3, BFBC2, Metro2033 and some more demanding games and those games are using MSAA while the WoT and MoW are not, so I thought that might be FXAA/FSAA's problem and I turned the AA setting of those two games down, things were becoming better at first but relapsed soon.

 

Hi, I think that the card (descrete/integrated, one of them) is 'gone' . Give up and call Dell. You're chasing workarounds for what sounds like hardware.
Go through whatever testing they want and the result will be new parts delivered and installed.

Yiu really gave it a good shot though

 

I just called them and after a short diagnose they agreed to give me a replacement...now I only hope that could be the end

 

Best result you could have hoped for. Usually they try replacing the video card or the motherboard before a replacement. Did you ask for one or did they just offer? Did it fail the hardware diagnostics they usually ask people to run? Just interested

Your problems should be over

 

I just told him the problem and all we have done is to run the unigine heaven and then he told me my video card will be replaced. Unfortunatly he just called me minutes ago and said 7970 is out of stock now which means I have to wait for two weeks at least

 

D: 7970m is out of stock nuuuuuuu means have to wait longer than two weeks to get my system if I buy tomorrow /:

Sent From My Rooted EVO 3D

 

Thanks, thought you meant the whole machine - now I understand your trepidation Hopefully that will sort it.
The 7970 should be in a bit quicker now the 680m release has eased the demand a little - fingers crossed. I was told a 3 week wait for my 580 a while ago but it came in 3 days

 

new orders always get priority over spares so you should be good . I can't even buy a 680m off dell yet but they are shipping in new kit.

 

Oh haha I hope so haha I don't think I can handle using the acer I have anymore

Sent From My Rooted EVO 3D

 

Replacement parts and components in new systems come through totally different distribution channels. Alienware laptops are manufactured and assembled in China by Compal and sent directly to the end users. Dell never touches them before delivery. Replacement components don't originate at the factory in China.

I have waited over a month before on replacement GPUs to become available that never did and I eventually got a system exchange after waiting for a very long time. There could also be an engineering hold placed on distribution when parts are having a high failure rate, but that information is sometimes not disclosed.