M11x R1 gaming crashes

My M11x R1, less than a month old, has been crashing when playing a number of games. The crashes occur randomly, and reinstalling drivers hasn't worked. I've updated the video card drivers from both the Dell site and the Nvidia site, updated Direct X, disabled the Switchable video card option (made it Discrete), tried to whitelist (which apparently doesn't work the same way on an R1 as it does on an R2), tried both overlocking and not overclocking, and varied the settings in the game.

The lockups are totally random, and result in the entire system completely locking. The mouse freezes, the picture freezes, I'm unable to alt/tab or ctrl/alt/del, and must hold the power button to shut off the laptop. The sound starts to make a grating buzzing sound, which will continue until I shut down the laptop. Random pixels turn blue, so theres blue dots all over the screen when it occurs.

The games that have locked up on me so far are:

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
World of Warcraft
Starcraft 2
Dawn of War 2
Crysis

After speaking with a Dell support agent and running a number of tests including a temperature monitor and benchmark, he determined it sounded like my video card was failing and is sending a replacement. My goal with this post is hopefully to see if anyone else has had a similar issue, and if so how it was resolved. I want to rule out software and be confident that it's hardware before I accept the replacement. Thanks!

 

You'd want to take a look at your Graphics cards temperature, in all likelyhood it is the graphics card.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ing-lockups-crashes-discussion-thread-10.html

my post, third from the bottom, try it out lots of people say it has been helping out

 

Bobtheflea,

Are your crashes similar to the ones I'm describing? If so, what do those numbers, the EVGA values represent? Is it a program I need to download? Also, that thread is for R2, and I'm on an R1. That makes a difference, doesn't it? Sorry for being a noob

 

Crashing in 3D is usually the result of an overheating video card. EVGA Precision is a utility that allows you to adjust the speeds at which the graphics chip runs. If you lower the frequencies to the settings described in the post above, the crashing will most likely either become less frequent or stop all together. If it does, contact Dell and get the machine repaired or replaced.