Well looks like it is the Video Card.

Well after emailing roswell early this morning. I got a response and it seems like my graphics card is defective.

Hello Reeaz,

Greetings from Alienware’s Roswell Division!

I hope you are doing great.

I am terribly sorry to learn about your video problem. Reading the description of the problem you sent me, I would say that it is most likely that the video card is defective, but there are some trouble shooting steps we would need to perform in order to be 100% sure.

•?We would need to flash the system BIOS to version X32 RC1.
•?Reinstall the video card drivers.
•?Test the computer using the integrated video card.

Please let me know what the best time would be to contact you to run these steps or give us a call at (866)ROSWELL / (866)767-9355.

Have a nice day.

I'm kinda sad, but i can honestly say i love how fast roswell responds and their willingness to help.

 

Well... I guess there were no miracles afterall. Same old stories...
Sorry to hear that Syth.

Can you post here exactly what happened to your card?

 

Sure.

Basically just tested it through graming/monitoring temps and what i noticed that after i have been gaming for a long while sometimes it would suddenly blue screen on me. It would blue screen and start a memory dump, after examining the .DMP file i noticed that the nvlddmkm.sys is what was causing the crashes. After do some research on my own i discovered that this sys file is releated to the vid card, so i emailed roswell and here we are.

At first i thought is was the 2x2gb mushkin pc2-5300 dual channel RAM I installed, but after testing the RAM it seems to work fine.

 

Hope things turn out well for you. Roswell Crew is great indeed.

 

I'm still amazed at how common these problems are...
One week and already have to send it back.

 

sounds like a faulty video card

 

Ya i guess, but it could also not be Alienware's fault in this instance. I mean it could have been a faulty video card from Nvidia, which slipped past their QA. But I'd rather figure it out now then have it happen to me later on. This way i can get it over with and get on to gaming

I have the weekend to test more, since i don't think roswell is open on the weekend. Who knows maybe those were just flukes, after all the temps weren't that high. Maybe it won't happen again during this weekend while I am gaming.

 

Who knows whose the fault... but that these cases do happen quite often, they do... I find it profoundly depressive.

 

Check your event viewer to see if you can get any additional information on the crash.

Also, I know you probably tested your memory, but have you tried recreating the crash using the original 1gb stick that was included in the system?

 

Do you have to wait until you receive the laptop to join the Roswell team for support? Or is that something you do the first time you need tech support?

 

I am having a similar problem with the same model gpu, and laptop. There is no blue screen, but after a few minutes of gaming, the game crashes and it states how a how nvdllmk driver has failed and recovered successfully. Any suggestions?

 

i had this problem before. i used to get blue screens from tf2 from time to time. then one day my video card died and my comp would not turn on. new video card back in and its been running perfectly since.

 

@groove75 - Yup tried that and was able to reproduce Roswell actually emailed me after i made my order.
@yankeesbaseball - that's actualy how it started. Then it progressed into my current bluescreens I still get the game crashes as well.


EDIT:

Just got of the phone with Roswell (i thought they only worked during the week but meh) and new video card + heatsink on it's way and should be here by thurs or friday. I opted to do it myslef because after reading the support forums it doesn't look to difficult to install at all. I must say i am very impressed with the service at roswell, very curtious and didn't try to avoid replacing anything or try to do gimmicy tests to prove it was something else.

When it arrives i'll let everyone know how the install went and benchmark it as well.

 

Well i just got a package with my new video card, but i didn't receive one with the heat sink. For anyone that has had to replace the video card, does the card and the heat sink come in separate packages?

 

a few ppl seem to have problems with mobo and gfx, not MANY but a few- my guess= heat due to poor manufacturing, seems ppl get different temps and different builds, some work out of the box, others are just well...

it's the same with some of the Mac's in the past- add as much paste as possible on the cpu and it will cool down...

 

did you send your fan in too? the heat sink will come in a different package as the video card and fan. how many order numbers did they give you? you are suppose to get 3. one for fan, one for heatsink, one for video card.

 

I got 2 RMA numbers one for the video card and one for the heat sink (or thermal module as they call it). I ended up calling roswell and they said it does come separately and they also gave me the tracking number and according to the number should be here on Monday.