There is NO new m15 8800 GTX Video Driver Coming!!!

After several communications with Alienware Customer support complaining about the performance of my video card and the inability for me to play WoW and FFXI at decent frame rates as well as get the performance we should in other high end games like crysis, they have come out and told me they are perfectly happy with the current driver and its performance.
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"Thank you again for contacting Alienware’s Feedback Team.

I double checked this information with our Research and Development Team. They explained to me that the current available driver for the NVidia 8800 GTX card should work fine with your system. It has been validated and tested many times. We do not have reported issues being caused by the driver itself.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact us again."
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So if you want a better dirver for our graphics card I suggest you all start turning up the heat a bit and send an email to the support teams or call them personally.

 

Wow that sucks.
Why do they have a different answer for each customer, I was told that they do have a new driver coming soon.

 

Well we just gotta wait on Sogarth's side to fix it.. He did say that the Nvidia release would take care all of us after SP1 but now it seems it may just be everyone..
Would be nice to get it a little sooner and from AW.. Keep the pressure on guys

 

This is a first time for me owning a notebook. Is it aways the case for manufacturers to do something about the videocard drivers? How has this been done previously? Is it possible that some notebooks will never get to upgrade the videocard driver in its lifetime?

 

The base level techs usually aren't aware of developments going on inside the company through no fault of their own. It seems illogical for Alienware not to release a new driver some time in the future . . . they will have to if they want their systems to be the best performers around.

On the other hand, Sager just released an updated driver for their 8800M-GTX notebooks so maybe that is a sign of things to come.

 

ASUS also dont care very much on new drivers, but i can always use the newest catalyst driver with a Driver Mod Tool. The Tool uses Desktop Driver and changes the installer for the notebook, so i can use alway the actual drivers

I think there are also driver mods out there like www.omegadrivers.net or from most popular www.laptopvideo2go.com ?!
Is this not possible to use ???

 

No. The 8800m GTX in the m15x either downclocks or overheats with improper drivers.

 

sagers driver is horrible.

people are reporting BSOD's and a drop in Framerates according to crysis benchmark tool on the order of negative 5fps vs the 174.31.

thumbs down

 

I might have missed a previous discussion but WoW doesn't run well on your system sounds very strange. I never tried WoW but I tried some games like CoD, Lineage 2, Penumbra: the black plague and they were running beautiful so I'd guess WoW should too. Unless you're running it in the dx10 which I didn't test (I don't know if WoW is dx10 though).

 

no problem with wow here ( 60fps everytime @ max)
Did you try 174.74 diver?

 

I can use the 174.74 driver and get good results with FFXI and WOW, but then Crysis sucks as does Bioshock becauce the card then runs at half speed.

 

Really? Wow! That's horrible Keeping drivers up to date is the most important thing to a gamer 2nd only to having good hardware.

 

They now are suggesting that my video problems are part of a defective Motherboard problem. They are going to replace the Motherboard when they have the part available. So far I am without my new Laptop that I paid 3200 bucks for 3 weeks. I am impressed. Do you think my poor video performance can really be due to a bad motherboard. If so what happened to their so called exhaustive quality control check?

Bad speakers
Bad Card reader
Bad Motherboard
Cracked Case
soft keys that don't work

I tried to return this system before th 30 days but was told that all my problems could be fixed via patches. Now I can no longer return my system and my repairs are taking forever.

here is their latest correspondence:

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"Thank you again for contacting Alienware’s Feedback Team.

As per your customer’s account notes, you have reported errors with the Nvidia driver. However, we need to mention that these errors could be caused by a defective component or a software configuration issue. We are unable to assume that the driver does not work for this platform.

Today, we received updates from our Repair Center concerning your system. While being diagnosed, our technicians detected an internal motherboard problem, reason why it will be replaced. A replacement for the motherboard has been requested. Once it is received, our agents will proceed to fix your system.

We understand that this situation is frustrating to you. We will make sure that your system is thoroughly tested before sending it back to you.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact us again."
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Good luck. Man I sure hope that mine doesn't turn out as yours.

 

thanks Dhoang417. Looking forward to being able to play games on the road again sometime...

 

yeah good luck, and no offense but hearing this justifies my decision to return mine before getting stuck in the situation you find yourself in, hope they get yours resolved quickly.