No upgrades for Canada!

Well, I am at a wits end here. I investigated the options of getting a graphics card upgrade for my M17xR3 and it appears that Alienware tech support and Customer Service want to have a battle over who is supposed to do the upgrade. In short, it's not an option for Canadian customers.

The only other option that I have is to go through Eurocom, but I really do not want to spend a lump sum of $799 CAD for an upgrade due to me being locked to a 120 Hz LCD. I didn't want the problems of Optimus/PowerXPress either, but here I am. I'm trying to go through DFS or my preferred account to get this upgrade done.

Has anyone in Canada or outside the US been successful in getting graphics card upgrades from Dell? Any insight from a Dell rep would be great.

 

Welcome to the circle of issues... I've tried for months to upgrade the GPU from dell, even with known contacts... they refused to even sell the card separately to me... In the end after a long 5 months of trying, I bought the card from ebay, from a very nice person. Unfortunately, it's not cheap. Keep watching the market on the notebookreview, someone will pop up with a sell for your kind of requirement and probably you will be able to upgrade at a reasonable price...

 

I might end up selling it then and go back to desktop hardware.

 

Have you searched ebay? or nbr marketplace? Eurocom? Mythlogic? From a pricing standpoint, it doesn't make sense to buy from Dell. There are many vendors ready to sell you a card for you machine.

Why don't you email the guys from ReflexNotebook (they are a canadian sager/dell reseller) and see if they can help you. I bought my alienware through them

 

eBay didn't turn up much, only a few options that were not worth going for. Eurocom already quoted me a 580M, but I have not tried the other companies that you mentioned.

 

order from hidevolution maybe?

 

No, I am quoting up a Eurocom Racer notebook (Clevo P150HM) from Eurocom. The total came out to $2015 for the following configuration:

2760QM @ 2.4
8GB PC3-10600 (2 x 4GB)
Radeon 6990M
500GB Momentus XT
1080p 15.6" Matte LCD (AUO V.7)
Centrino 6230 with Bluetooth

I don't know why I didn't do that in the first place seeing that it's 50% of what I am paying for the Alienware.

 

check out malibal...they have $100 off right now.

Also with regards to Alienware, you never order through the website. you always order through a reseller because you will get a discount. Resellers have a 20% margin on Alienware. They will give you a break. In my case, i used Reflexnotebook...and i picked up the following alienware back in the day for $1875 canadian shipped which was essentially a core i7 2630, amd 6990m, and 1080p screen.

I almost went sager, but once i factored in the Alienware discount, then added the Sager dead pixel warranty ($75), Shipping costs, cdn warranty costs etc...the alienware was on par

 

I had to go through Dell for the payment plan. I can't throw down $1900 for a notebook right then and there.

I tried calling AET, and they don't want to answer their phones. MythLogic is going to be emailing me quotes for nVidia graphics cards. I found a GTX 470M on eBay, but no one has posted whether it will work or not in an R3 with the 120 Hz LCD.

 

Success: Found a GTX 485M on eBay for $550 US. I should have it within a week! Yay!

Effn yes! There is also an upgrade tutorial for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BQaloY3M6s

 

Congratz bro...all you need is to overclock it a little and you have a gtx 580

 

Yeah, glad that I found this thing when I did. I killed the credit card though, but it's worth it.