So, uh, my GPUs failed. Again.

Heh. I don't need to, I can get BO2 at 180 constant without a hitch without so much as an overclock. 16xQ CSAA + FXAA even. Then I limit it to 124 and keep it rockin =D.

Yeah don't buy MW3. At all. Ever. Even if it's free. And don't buy ghosts even if by "buying" it you actually get paid money for it.

 

Anything is possbile, that's for sure!
You would need to do it one section at a time. Starting with a driver that is known to work without limitations.
Then install a bunch more drivers so you have a list to choose from.
Then play the same section for each driver. Something like 5 minutes or so. And see what happens each time.
Start with 327.something, I forget which one right now. Then work your way up.
That may give you the answer your looking for. Also. No settings change. Run it all on NV default, then make your in game changes.

The moral of his story? Quit diening and learn to play better.

 

327.23 should be the driver you all used, if I remember correctly?

 

Yep. that's the one.

 

Man, I love MW3 and Ghosts. They both play flawless for me, but I generally only play single player campaign. I cannot say what the online multiplayer experience is like because I never use it. I almost always wait until I can buy games for around $20, then I don't have to get all chapped about paying $50-$60 for something with glitches. Paying a huge wad of cash even when they work great partially spoils my enjoyment.

 

I won't argue with you there, the co-op and SP campaigns for CoD games are usually quite good. My friend and I actually got all the stars in spec ops for MW2 and we even beat the Infinity Ward best time on a couple runs. Aha! Here we go, I found some of the pictures.
One, two, three and four. Wish I could have beat their time for more.

Ghosts though... I refused to even play the campaign XD. It was such an awful PC game in general that I just didn't even feel like going through it all. Hopefully <s>advanced warfare might actually have a good PC port and then I'll have a nice non-CS:GO FPS to play</s> Battlefield 4's CTE patches next month will give me a good enough FPS to play for a while.

 

I bought ghost and still haven't played it. it came out after gtaV and since that was my all time favorite game.... It got put on the back burner.

 

What a joke.

Was initially happy when the manager confirmed that they would replace it. I was happy until we talked specifications...

Not too happy about a 4710MQ as it is slower than what I've currently got. Not by much, but it IS slower. Didn't push that issue too much because he then quickly moved on to say that he wants to give me 860Ms. Because apparently Dell considers that to be 'equivalent' to what I have now, as they have 2GB of memory.

After a long argument, he's gone off to see if an 'exception' can be created to get me 880Ms.

This is absolutely taking the **** now. Dell had better turn this around quickly or I'm going to look into filing a claim with the small claims court, and will never purchase from Dell again. And I won't consider any other gaming laptops either, as I need the NBD warranty if it's my only computer. Looks like I'll be moving on to desktops sooner than planned.

Really not sure where else to go other than the courts if they keep going like this, this is already supposedly the highest tier I can contact within the EMEA region.

EDIT: Nope, apparently the 880Ms are 'not an option'. Wonderful. I've declined the replacement and the computer is going to be sent in for a depot service. And I won't be purchasing a Dell computer again in the future.

 

That's exceedingly balls. I would suggest you try to take it to someone higher and threaten the small claims. You cannot be warranty-replaced with something WORSE than what you are getting. You had the flagships under warranty you should get flagships. And you have gotten them in the past with the 680Ms, but now they want to give 860Ms? If they aren't prepared to do something like that, you don't offer that kind of warranty. It's simple. Are you outside of the USA? Because outside of the USA is where I hear all of this stuff coming from.

 

Bet you're gonna be happy for GTA V on PC. With allll dat sexy sexy graphics. Grab a controller and big picture it on your 47"er and you're good to go, yeah? =D

 

Unfortunately I can't take it any higher. This manager claims to be the highest possible escalation without involving Michael Dell himself.

And I don't think I can actually take it to the courts. They are offering the AMD R9 M290X's as an option, as that's equivalent to what I purchased in the original configuration (7970M's). The 680M's were a free upgrade after previous problems I had. (And there's no way that I'd ever go back to an AMD GPU in a notebook after my previous issues; I'd honestly rather step down to the 860M's if there was no other option.)

Sadly, I can't find the original warranty information online to see if the "equal or better" applies to original configuration or to any free upgrades provided along the way. If anyone could help out here, I would really appreciate it, as I would very much like to be able to make a valid legal threat and be absolutely sure that the courts would side with me if it goes to the courts.

 

Now, honestly you didn't mention the R9 M290X being an option before. That IS an equivalent flagship option, and if you had went with nVidia before I think you should have gotten solid 880Ms for sure. But at the least 870Ms from the nVidia side would have been the better deal.

As for the CPU, yes you should be able to fight for a 4800MQ or 4810MQ at least, since it is in line with your previous CPU choice. If you really rather get your 680Ms fixed (and I totally understand) then good luck. If not, try to get 870Ms and see if they'll OK that; they'll outperform your 680Ms at stock for sure, and should be price-equivalent to the M290X cards.

 

I wasn't actually told that the 290X was an option until the second callback, at the same time I was told that the 880M was definitely not an option. They might be AMD's flagship, but they're significantly slower than 880M's.

The 870M, sadly, doesn't seem to be available or I would have definitely considered it.

I've already tried pushing for a 4810MQ and that was refused as the 4710 is a 'newer' processor and is therefore 'faster' (there is some truth to that with architectural improvements), and as they're all so close, it's not something I'd consider threatening legal action over.

Unless I can somehow appeal for 880Ms by suggesting that I'd actually buy from Dell again if I was offered them (which is true), I'll be sticking to this computer and its 680Ms. After 20+ hours on the phone and ~15 hours watching technicians repairing my computer, plus the days I had to stay in for repairs and the weeks for which my computer was unusable, I'd hoped that they might have actually offered a nice replacement to try and keep me buying Dell and stop me spreading my horror story...

 

Hmm. The M290X must have been offered in counter to the 880Ms. I understand your frustration though; the OC limits on the 4710MQ prevent it from being nearly as good as your 3720QM could ever be; therefore you do deserve a 48x0MQ chip. Otherwise, you could ask for 870Ms again, I don't know. Even if you ask for 780Ms/880Ms and try to pay the difference over the M290X cards, that should still work. I don't think it's that much of a problem for them. Though I will admit you were lucky to get 680Ms before, I can see that luck not holding up here. 860Ms were a low-ball move to give you, but CPU-aside they're making a within-their-limits warranty offering right now. So good luck with your talks!

 

As far as I know, I don't think they'll offer the 880Ms, 290x's are the flag ship AMD as you know and you bought the original system as an AMD.

At Dell they grade the parts at 3 Levels - Entry, Middle. and High-End.

Your GPUs were considered Mid-High range, so they're not in the same catagory as the 880Ms. The GPU I can understand, but don't know what to tell you about upgrading the GPUs. You can try sueing Dell but their contract has a million legal procedures that will probably rule in their favor.

I don't know what to tell you, either get the Alienware 18 or stick with your R2.

 

870M was never offered on the AW18, so don't think that's an option. I wouldn't threaten any legal action if I were you, reason being that the R9 M290X exists and is almost a direct replacement of your 7970M. If you really pushed them past their limits they could simply throw the R9 M290X your way and you'd be absolutely SOL because that's about as close to a direct replacement as it gets.

 

I'm not going to attempt legal action, as they aren't breaching the warranty agreement.

Instead, I've sent off a very long email pointing out how exceptional this many hardware faults is, and truthfully saying that I'd be happy to purchase Dell again in the future and recommend them to others if they just give me 880Ms or 780Ms plus a 4810MQ. I'm hoping he'll see sense and realise how much customer loyalty and good stories can benefit them, but we'll see.

If they can't offer 880M/780M SLi then I'm sticking with this R2 as long as I possibly can. I refuse to accept a performance downgrade.

 

Consumer loyalties and good stories are well and good, but I don't know if they're $500 USD good, which is the difference that two flagship AMDs have over two nVidia flagships. Like I said, you were really lucky to get two 680Ms before, and I think expecting that kind of luck again is just... not really feasible. I do agree you've had a serious bad streak of luck, but they are offering you a sidegrade to the 680Ms in terms of performance unless you are doing SERIOUS overclocking on the 680Ms, and they're, as we agree, well within their warranty obligations, excepting the 4710MQ CPU. If you would pay a difference for 780Ms or something, I think that'd work out just fine, but I can't see them just deciding on that out of the blue.

I wish you luck, and I understand how you feel about AMD on mobile cards, but I just can't side with your wanting a 780M scot free, especially after the 680Ms (though they are failing too).

 

Well, consider that swaying a single purchase will make them that $500 back. I can see what you mean, it is a rather poor argument, but I was hoping they might do it out of goodwill alone after the ridiculous number of issues I have had. Yes, they would be spending extra money above and beyond the warranty to do so, but how often do cases like this come up?

I just can't go back to AMD. The raw performance is comparable but the software sure as hell isn't. Nor is the reliability. In a single GPU desktop configuration I'd consider them, but not on laptops, and not in Crossfire until they sort out their drivers.

 

Yeah totally agreed here. OP is being unreasonable. If you want upgraded GPUs, offer to pay for them. The CPU is going to be a fight as well because in their mind it's still an upgrade.

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Unreasonable to want GPUs with the same feature set and equal or better performance to what I currently have? I disagree, but you're welcome to your opinion.

I'd be happy if they'd ship me an 18 with 680M's, and that's the honest truth. I want a replacement because I have no faith in the reliability of my current system after this many failures, it's that simple. But I won't accept a performance regression or switching back to AMD. I've been asking for 880M's because that's all they have that's comparable.

As for the CPU, again, I think a 4810MQ is a reasonable ask considering the 4710 doesn't turbo as high as my current CPU AND it will run hotter and therefore won't turbo as well as mine currently does. But I'd still accept a 4710MQ provided I get 680M/780M/880M GPUs.

 

The warranty only takes into account the parts that were in your system when it was purchased. The 680M was a free upgrade and you aren't entitled to a 780M or 880M. Not only that but they don't take into account things like overclocking either. At stock, an M290X is still faster than a 680M as well. In their mind you aren't losing any performance at all on the GPUs.

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If I was you I would take the m290s and call it a day

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People tend to forget that they aren't even obligated to give you a part in the same brand. As long as the performance is in their minds similar between two parts they have fulfilled their obligation under the warranty. If OP had purchased the 680M cards, they could give the OP the cheaper M290X and still satisfy the warranty terms.

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In that case though, the OP would have been able to fight that down for 780M/880M chips, but in this case he got 7970Ms at the start, and the 680Ms were more of a goodwill-type deal I'm going to assume. I still say his best bet is to ask for 780M/880M cards and offer to pay the difference inbetween, or simply grab the M290X cards, sell off the computer and buy a new AW 18. As far as I could see, Dell even offering a new system now (when the rest of your system supposedly works, constant card failures aside) is already going above and beyond, and they could put M290X cards in your current machine as-is too.

No, it's not unreasonable to WANT the same feature set and equal/better performance to what you currently have. But it is so when what you currently have wasn't what you bought and was ALREADY a $500 upgrade handed to you without being a part of your warranty, and now you want another because you regret your first buyers' choice of the AMD crossfire set.

I again agree with 4810MQ being the CPU of choice, and wholeheartedly agree that this should be what is offered, but the 780M/880M I do not agree that you should be "entitled" to this.

 

Exactly my point. Lol.

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Personally, I'd have taken the replacement with the 290's and 4810mq.

Warranty is only there to give you BACK the level of performance you originally ordered. I kinda had the same thing happen to me....originally had 6990m's, loads of issues with them.....Dell upeped them to 580m's, which was great at the time....the machine then had other issues and my replacement offer was based off my original spec. Dell got that massively wrong, as my original config was 2960xm and dual 6990m's - they offered me an R2 with 3630qm and a SINGLE 675m !!!! - my case was a long story, which I won't go into.....I ended up with a full refund after many months of hell...maybe that is something you could explore?? - of course, that is Dell's discretion and they might just shoot it down in flames. I look back now and think how fortunate I was to be offered that 'out'......

I feel that what they offered, in terms of a replacement specification based against your original spec, was a good offer. Like for like or better being played out pretty accurately. Hats off to Dell for that one. If the replacement machine was not to your liking, I'd just sell it and buy what IS to your liking.

I feel for you, Bro - truly, I do.....but warranty does not exist to provide free upgrades in the event of failure - it exists to to give you back a 'like for like' machine - not 880m's for 7970m's.....I feel Dell offered you 'like for like', but you declined in favour of more flogging of your proverbial 'dead horse'.....

Cut your losses, accept a replacement if it is not too late to do so and put this puppy to bed....

Just my two pennies....

 

My apologies if I ever sounded like I believed I was entitled to 880M's. I've tried to justify why I want them and I absolutely stand by those reasons, which is why I'm pushing for 880M's. Like I said, I would be happy with 680M performance in nVidia cards in the replacement but sadly the 880M's are the sole option that meets that. I'm not demanding 880M's, nor am I threatening legal action if I am not offered them, but I am still asking for them as a gesture of goodwill.

The M290X was never even mentioned to me until a callback after I wrote the sarcastic wall of disappointment a couple of pages back. And yes, it's an offer I should go for - and one that I have been strongly considering. I wrote that post under the impression that 860M's were the only offer on the table which - as you will all hopefully agree - was not acceptable, and as a result I was very annoyed and may have sounded (and I admit, felt at the time) as if I was entitled to 880M's.

But I feel that I'll be hugely disappointed by them after how badly I feel burned by the 7970M's. It wasn't just hardware problems, I had very frequent driver problems (which is, IMHO, not acceptable on modern GPUs) which make me very hesitant to go back. The M290X uses the same exact GPU core after all, just with a marginally higher boost clock and more VRAM.

Yes, the 680M's were a goodwill offer after Dell couldn't fix a graphical artifacting issue that was consistently appearing in Crossfire. Completely replacing the GPUs, Crossfire cable and motherboard did not fix it, nor did nuking Windows several times. (I'd post a video of the issue if I wasn't on my phone.)

This was the computer's trip to the depot, where they were supposed to 'diagnose' the issue and find what was actually causing it. Well, the only thing they did was swap the AMD cards for 680M's, swap the multi-GPU bridge, and install the drivers (without even removing the AMD drivers). And that fixed the issue. It was a bizarre problem - one that I as an enthusiast could not figure out, nor could anyone else here or at Dell - and it was entirely fixed with the GPU swap. It occurred on two pairs of 7970Ms and across any Windows wipe, and only in Crossfire. So perhaps because the GPU swap alone was what fixed it, I maybe feel a little more entitled to sticking with nVidia than I should.

So yes, in summary, I'm finding it really hard to consider going back to AMD after all that. For that reason, if they can't offer 780Ms or 880Ms, I will likely try to stick with this computer if they can fix it. (At the bare minimum it currently requires replacement of the motherboard and GPUs, an expensive repair, which is partly why I've pushed so much for replacement.)

 

@D2
Who has time to sit around and look at the scenery. Im to busy killing other people doing that! LOL

As for the op. Take the 290X's and pay for an upgrade to your extreme or better than what you want cpu. All they can say is no on that.
Since 7970M's we're not the top of the line, they will not even consider it. Had you had 680M's. You could have argued for 780M's. And since the 880M's seem to be running on the toasty side at times. They will not make that the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th or even fifth offer. They would assume you would be back with more problems. And the price difference between what a 7970M is worth today.

Besides...notebookcheck has it at better than an 880M. So you're winning. lol
Wait. that's the desktop gpu. haha. damn eyes playing tricks on me.

 

I seriously doubt they would agree to it, but ask if they will send you a new 18 with only NVIDIA heat sinks and SLI bridge and let you keep the 680M cards you have now and drop them into the 18. Can't hurt to ask, and doing so emphasizes that you are being level-headed and not expecting an upgrade.

I agree with Splintah, Stevie and John. As much as I don't have warm fuzzies about AMD mobile GPUs, R9 M290X is essentially what you had originally purchased with a different model name and offering to give you that is certainly on the level in every respect. The 880M is such an erratic misbehaving mess from everything I am seeing posted that I almost feel like it would be a safer bet to take the weaker AMD GPU and live with their crappy drivers. If they don't make you happy you can always buy your own 780M SLI upgrade and store the red cards in a box for warranty purposes. Persuading them to give you GTX 880M SLI when that runs better for a few minutes, but tends to overheat and throttle is not a win in my mind. As Stevie mentioned, the warranty has your back and once you have a machine with R9 M290X if those GPUs fail you can always use the same logic and rationale that led to them giving you 680M. It's better for them to give you a more expensive GPU once than replace a less expensive GPU several times.

At the end of the day, getting your M18xR2 fixed under warranty (assuming it stays fixed) is the best option and I think going that route is smart on your part. If I were in your shoes, that is what I would be striving for instead of an exchange. Aesthetic differences aside, you current machine is a better product in almost every measurement.

 

Again, I agree that the M290X is a fair offer - one that was only made after I complained about the 860M's. But it's not one I can really take after all the problems I had with AMD. I don't want to deal with those horrible divers again.

I got a response from Dell again. I have the option to pay £300 for an upgrade to 880M's in a replacement 18. It's an option I'm considering...but I end up with a slower, hotter CPU and graphics cards that misbehave or run hot with a modded vBIOS.

I responded to see if 780M's are an option, in either the replacement or as an upgrade to my existing computer. If I can get a replacement with 780M's, even if I pay extra, I'm very tempted to do so.

 

I'm glad that Dell's proposing so many options this time. I used to think Uncle Dell didn't negotiate with terro.. I mean customers

 

...from some first hand experience and second hand reports.. both the gddr5 and the ddr3 variants of the gtx cards are fairly sensitive when it comes to memory overclocks. In my case, what happened was that I tested a gddr5 variant after being used to a rock solid ddr3 variant. And like you, I managed to get rid of some artefacts and curios stutter when running at "boost" clocks, by upping the ram frequency 50Mhz (100Mhz is a lot, by the way..). But what that actually did was circumvent issues that came from insufficient cooling in the first place. And it turned out that this caused locks on the gpu, fewer operations overall, but often quicker puts and fetches when they went through. But it essentially made the ram-chips glow.

This.. isn't necessarily from bad construction of the card either. It just wasn't intended to run like that.. It also won't trigger any alarms when this happens, since the ram-chips aren't placed next to any sensors, or are connected to any cooling assembly. So yes, you can actually fry ram-chips in a packed laptop (Alienware sli designs being good candidates in the first place..) by using only a seemingly mild overclock. The bus can be yanked up to 11 on either Kepler and Maxwell cards, of course. But the gddr5 packs of ram specially are fairly sensitive, probably owing to the fact that they are running on high internal frequencies in the first place, and higher volt and effect..?

When I actually saw the way they were placed on the assembly as well, with thin, flat and bare chips like that on the card... painfully hot to the touch.. you know.. it basically reminded me of the first Voodoo cards. Remember those? The ram on those could actually burn up if you were a bit too hard on the injection lever..

 

Hummm, there can't be all these bad hot gpus running around that don't work. Mine can't be the only one that worked.

 

Maybe you have the hands of the overclocking jesus and everything you touch works?

 

I just flashed svl7's 880m bios, I like the fact that my cards are running at 993mhz constant now, makes me feel good

 

Do the temps look good? Mine don't...

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temps are at around 82 degrees on both cards at 90 percent utilization

 

Vsync or no?

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Vsync enabled

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I will try without

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See I'm fine when I use adaptive vsync (half refresh) to lock 60 but when I don't use it or I push a game to where it isn't maintaining 60, I have 90s in no time.

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Had some weird stuff with the alienfx flashing purple really quickly periodically, not sure if it's related but I flashed back to default for now.

 

I've had some weird glitches with it on my Clevo. Do you have an XTU overclock? Removing XTU from my machine fixed most of my issues.

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What? Really? I wonder what the issue is with 880M and XTU? That is a really strange conflict. NVIDIA was really asleep at the wheel... someone needs to be fired over this.

 

So my options are quite simply have my current computer serviced, or pay extra for a replacement 18 with 880M SLi. It's £300 extra, with (I assume) a 4710MQ. I've emailed back to ask what it will cost with basically everything stock bar the GPUs.

What do you guys suggest at this point? Do you guys think it's worth it?

 

...how does it come as a surprise that an overclock is sensitive to changes in bus-timing..?

 

I would have told them to throw on an extra £250 and give me an extreme cpu (or 780M's instead of 880M's and drop the £300 to £100) instead.

 

I would ask if 780M was an option at this point. They must still be holding stock to deal with warranty replacements.

 

I had the same issue. My PC would fail to POST after seeing the GPU splash screen from johnksss/svl7, then restart itself instantly, only to fail POST again. I would need to unplug the power supply and boot on battery, then once it passes the BIOS logo I could plug in the PSU. When I stopped using Intel XTU it stopped. I'm more assuming it's a P37xSMx problem than a 780M/880M problem. Since I had a partially unlocked BIOS I just did my undervolting in there and forgot about XTU is all. Ethrem was getting the same issues which he attributed to the custom vBIOS for the 880Ms, but I told him XTU was the issue on my own experiences, and thus it was.