R3 Sandy Bridge Graphics Issue

So a strange thing happened this afternoon that I am majorly stumped on. I had my computer shut down sitting on the desk overnight, no moving, no use, etc. Turned it on this afternoon after a perfectly normal shut down last night to a rainbow show and no booting, the screen flashed a ridiculous amount of scrambled colors and lines. At first I thought it may be a bad GPU but after a power drain it booted. During that process all of my display drivers somehow completely uninstalled, not corrupted, uninstalled as there was no trace of any ATI or Intel display drivers at all. I proceeded to install the Dell AMD 6970 drivers and rebooted, when it rebooted I tried to switch to the integrated and it did nothing. I checked the device manager and the AMD was there but the Intel was missing, shut it down and checked the BIOS, the Integrated GPU shows as not detected. What the heck could cause my IGP to go completely AWOL and not show up in any way on the system while the CPU still functions? Any ideas would help as this thing sucks down battery when constantly on the AMD card. Thanks!

Edit: The main specs on my system(temp system) are as follows if it matters:
1600x900
6970m
2630qm
8gb ram
SSD

 

Sounds like your rainbow show could have been caused by your IGP exploding and, thanks to your AMD card, you were able to boot with a graphic display. Since the IGP isn't detected anywhere, I'd recommend calling up Alienware because it sounds like a motherboard/processor issue. Perhaps someone else who is more experienced with hardware could pinpoint the issue.

 

Agree with Rickards, call Alienware, you must still have warranty. Though I find it highly unlikely that the IGP exploded, cause its integrated into the CPU, meaning if a part of the CPU got fried you shouldn't be able to boot up at all.

 

I didn't mean "exploding" literally The IGP definitely sounds like the root cause, though.

 

I understand what you guys are saying, I know it's most likely an issue with the SB IGP but I was looking to see if any of the guys that know the architecture of the chip better than I do may have any ideas of what to test to find out if it is actually a bad chip or not.

 

Well, its not the SB IGP, cause the graphics unit is actually IN the CPU. To make sure, put a different CPU in and if that helps then there we go. Otherwise its the mobo. BUT: Why bother with testing. Just call up Alienware. You must still have warranty. Its not like with car insurance where every claim makes the insurance more expensive!

 

From what i understand of the chips, this is correct. while the IGP is a separate portion of the CPU it is still part of it from what i know if the IGP was defective then you would get CPU error codes from the machine such as lights blink etc etc. it could possibly be the motherboard however since the IGP is controlled by a portion of the chipset. should call dell and get a replacement ASAP imo.