Flickering textures + random blue pixels during gameplay

Hello, I'm new (in actually posting, that is) to these forums and I just want to say that alot of your advice here on Notebook Review really helped me with my previous systems .

I've recently been having a problem with flickering textures and random blue pixels (moving about) while playing games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Fallout 3/New Vegas, Duke Nukem Forever, and Bad Company 2. It's not as bad in Half-Life 2 or in other games that have older engines.
It's been two months since I received my M17x-R2, and this problem started just a few days ago. I know it that it couldn't have been a program I installed because I never changed anything related to the adapter at all. I searched many sites to resolve this issue, and some solutions I attempted include flashing the vBIOS for the Radeon HD 5870 and installing the 8.763.0.0 driver (the right way of course), and flashing the BIOS version to A09. None of those solutions worked. I hope that my video card isn't going bad; the notebook was refurbished before I received it. Is there another method to get rid of this problem? Thanks.

The current specs for my M17x-R2:
-CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 740 @ 1.73 GHz (2.83GHz with turboboost)
-Installed Physical Memory: 6GB DDR3 at 1333 MHz
-Video: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (Single), 1024MB GDDR5

 

Does it do it in absolutely every application that requires the GPU? Normal gaming, FurMark, Vantage, etc.? Sounds like a card going bad. Your driver is older than dirt too. I would suggest updating that and seeing what happens. Good luck.

 

Yeah, I've seen the release date for the driver I downloaded and I couldn't find one that is supposedly compatible for the notebook. Do you have any suggestions of some?

As for the GPU problem, yes, it occurs in the benchmarking programs I downloaded.

 

Wait scratch that. The flickering and dots don't appear during the Furmark tests.

 

Did you visit Dell's support site? If not go there and grabb the latest drivers for your system.

 

Apparently, the 8.763 is the "latest" driver for the M17x-R2.

 

8.763 is the latest Dell release. The latest ATI/AMD release is 8.861 and can be found here

ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver

 

I just got done installing the driver and I tested a few games with it, and there was no luck. I'm still wondering why it doesn't happen in FurMark.

 

Becouse Furmark will stress the GPU not the V-RAM. The way you describe your problem, sounds like artifacts. They came from V-RAM either overclocked or going bad.

 

Hmm. I guess the guy who previously owned this went overclocking-crazy and the refurbishment didn't do a sinch. Is it possible to switch just the GPU without having to change anything else? I was looking at The_Moo's video and it doesn't seem that difficult (compared to my previous laptop).

 

Of course it is possible to switch only the GPU. Also, could be worth trying, a bad paste job on the memory module can lead to overheating them. I would try to repaste gpu and memory to see if it fix the issue.

 

I'm thinking about getting dual HD 5870s with crossfire. Will that work, given that I'm switching from a single card?

 

Yes, you can run CF in that machine. You'll need a second card with a heatsink, as well as a CF cable. And make sure you get the right heatsink. The GPUs are the same, but the heatsinks are not. (I might be wrong?)

 

Second card comes with a heatsink and XF cable anyway, but they are the same from what I can tell. You will just need the secondary GPU + a fan for the right side. Heatsink and XF cable are included.

 

The question is, do you know a site where I could get these items? I looked in sites like Ebay and NewEgg and they don't have any GPUs.