GTX 280M is dying

It looks like one or both of my GTX 280M in my M17X is dying. Some hours into heavy gaming, all the colors were completely distorted and lines were running over my screen. This has remained. When I switch to the 9400M the distortion is gone, so I guess it's not the LCD panel. When I disable the 9400M in bios, the startup/BIOS screens are distorted as well (but not when the 9400M is active). Booting up with only the 280s and disabling SLI didn't help either, which tells me it's not likely the SLI cable or the second card. So the first 280M is likely defective.
I've never overclocked the cards, but I've been suffering from increasingly bad performance in the past couple of days (had to use 2x FSAA to get the same performance as I had with 4x before). The distortion doesn't show up on screenshots, by the way.
I'll call tech support to replace it and we'll see what happens.

Update 1: The distortion actually looks like the image is displayed at lower colors (like 8 bit or whatever), plus a couple fo additional artifacts like strokes on the Aero task bars. In 3D accelerated games, it also looks like it's 8 bit color or whatever, has some additional artifacts plus moving lines more or less horizontally over the screen.

Update 2: When connecting an external monitor (HDTV) with a HDMI cable the distortion/artifacts are gone on the external screen. They remain on the laptop display even when in clone mode.

Update 3: Reseated all connections from display and video cards. No dice.

Update 4: Had the mainboard exchanged and everything is fine now.

 

ah man thats sucks D:

 

Sounds kinda like overheating, although the m17x has great heating and a simple restart would normally fix it for me

 

Have you taken apart the laptop lately? If so, the SLI cable may need to be re-seated. I doubt its the cause, but its something to check if you have been inside recently.

Most likely its what you guessed - failing GPU.

 

I would lean more toward a defective card, especially if there's distortion. A screen shot wouldn't reveal the distortion due to the fact that it's always in motion. I would try reseating the SLI cable as BatBoy suggested and then call.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

I know exactly the problem that you are facing. 100%. I've experienced it!
Let me ask you some questions first:
1) Have you opened up your laptop lately? (Don't lie to yourself) You don't have to answer this question if you don't want to.

2) If you have, did you touch the GPU's? If you did, you most likely created a short and killed off one of the two GPUs.
You cannot tell which GPU's dead though because the second 280M won't work without the primary one! Yeah, sucks I know. If anything it's most likely the primary that is defective.

3) If you touched the SLI cable, then you should try re-seating it. If you are 100% sure that the cable is re-seated correctly and nothing is wrong with the cable, then it's the GPU's that are dead (or one of them).

4) The GPU's are NOT actually dead! They have some weird communication that will not respond correctly with the LCD display,however, the 9400M GS has no problem communicating with the display. Trust me. You can even test this out yourself by enabling SLI and plugging in a VGA to an external monitor and notice that your M17'x display will looks like with flickering lines while your external monitor is 100% perfect. Your card's should work fine with the external monitor. This means, there is some hardware communication with the 280M to the m17'x display.

5) If all else above fails, YOU DO have a defective GPU. I am talking from experience because I experience the same symptoms! If anything you'll have to buy a new GPU from dell/alienware. If it's passed the 30-day mark from the day you received the M17x, then an exchange is out of the question.
You can try to get a Dell rep to come to your home (noobs) but beware.

Please PM me if you have any more questions.!

 

Touching a computer part is not going to create a short...

 

The fact that the boot up screen is distorted pretty much means it is a hardware problem, this is before any drivers and whatnot can even take effect

Touching will not hurt anything....

Sounds like a card going bad although the cause of which is what really scares me (and I am sure many others)

 

that is if you rubbed your feet while taking your computer apart? come'on guys, if he's not properly grounded that can be a cause. that's something a lot of noobie forget to do when opening up a system. (not saying that the OP is a noob) just stating a possibility.

 

Thanks for the help everyone!

It's good to see that I'm not alone, although on the other hand, it's not so good. But at least I can learn from your experience.

Last time I opened it was a day or two I got it to switch out the HDD it came with for larger ones (early August). But that only involved opening the compartment on the bottom without getting near GPUs and whatnot. I've been thinking about opening it up completely and putting some arctic silver or something like that on the various heatsinks, but I was too lazy to do so yet.

Yeah. If I know that I can fix it myself (which means I need no exchange parts) I'll do that. Otherwise I'm not all that comfortable with it. The thing is, however, that I tested it with SLI disabled and still had the same distortion/artifacts. But who knows.

Bingo. I just got home and plugged the thing to my HDTV via HDMI and the distortion is gone on the HDTV while it's still there on the Laptop screen (I can't believe I didn't test that yesterday, but it was late). So I guess you're right. What could be causing the problem (or what was it that caused the problem in your case)? The SLI cable? Can I fix it myself or do I need any new parts for it?

Well, since they won't even allow me to change any parts myself over here, I'll have to let one of those people get over here to install the thing.
I remember with horrors when one of them came to exchange the defective 7900 GTX on my M1710 years ago within warranty and wanted to slap on the old heatsink without cleaning it from the old thermal paste/pad or applying new one...

Will do. And thanks for the help!

 

Actually, that's a good point as even some of the so-called "experts" tend to "forget" about the harm electrostatic discharges can do to their equipment. I myself have been watching out for that ever since I've started tinkering with computers back in the early 1990 when I was a kid. Anyway, I didn't open the thing so it's not that in my case.

 

If its not distorted over HDMI, then you should reseat the LCD connections

Had it with my phones flex cables, exactly the same as you describe, and that sorted it .

 

it was not static....if the chip got a static shock it would just be dead....static shocks are on the order of thousands of volts and would destroy the silicon

 

Yeah, I guess I won't get around opening this thing up.
I wonder how it came loose, however. It's been standing still on my desk for weeks.

 

Reseating the connections did nothing, unfortunately.

 

Starting to sound like it's your laptop's screen that's dying rather than one of the graphics cards.

 

Then get them both replaced with new ones

 

I had the exact same problem with a notebook before (an old one). it turned out to be the gpu...

from my experience that's a very rare thing to happen and it would most likely kill the gpu rather then just make it malfunction.

 

well then how do you explain a dead screen if it works completely fine with the 280M disabled and the 9400M enabled?

 

No you are right that ESD can be a problem. But just the act of touching a computer component isn't going to damage it.

Anyway...

 

Ahh man, maybe something loose on the lcd pannel itself?

 

The Dell technician came today and exchanged my mainboard and everything seems to be okay now.

 

Exchanging the mainboard had a side effect of getting rid of the stuttering in games as well as sound crackling and popping, by the way. And my temperatures on the CPU, 280Ms and especially the 9400M (53° C under full load now instead of 80°-90+°) are down as well.
The tech was so kind to apply my Arctic Silver 5 as thermal paste on the CPU and Northbridge/9400M instead of the thermal pads he got sent with the mainboard/cooler, by the way, so that might also have helped some (with the stuttering, not the distortion/artifacts).

 

^ more then likely the AS helped. nice to know it made that much of a diff though. Might do that myself