Please help me to take my darling back to life, DELL XPS M170. I appreciate all you guys!!

Hi Friends,

I have a DELL XPS M170. I'm extremely happy with my beautiful laptop, I actually "was"

I have a serious problem with Graphic Card (256MB NVIDIA® GeForceTM Go 7800 GTX PCI Express x16 video card) . I took it to service, and they wanted more than 400$ to replace with new graphic card I can't give that much money!

is there any alternatives I can use, something more affordable? I'm not after playing games, so I dont need strong graphic card. I just want to make my laptop work again, I use it for web development, I dont need strong graphic card for coding work.

Please, I really need your advices, your help. I appreciate all you!!

 

Hi 17mania, I had the exact same problem and when I researched it, I found its a fairly common problem with the Gen2/M170 to have the video card memory corrupt.

My M170 was out of warranty and when i contacted dell they wanted $700+ for a "new" refurbished 7800gtx.
About your only option is to pay a repair place to fix it (by installing a replacement card), or buy one off of ebay and install it yourself - which is fairly easy.

You can replace your card with the cheaper 6800 geforce go, and I think there is even one other card that fits that laptop. you should be able to find one on ebay for around $200. There was a guy selling M170 cards on ebay that would give you $50 back if you sent him your broke card. I cant remember his name though.

http://listings.ebay.com/aw/plistings/category74957/index.html?from=R11

I ended up buying a new 6800 off of ebay for a good price and it worked fine for 2 months until that one corrupted too. At that point I was done dumping money into a Dell laptop that died after 20 months and was out of warranty.

Now my M170 just sits here while I decide if its worth the time to even try parting it out on ebay.

 

S.Prime brings up two good points. Yes, you can replace your failed GPU with a slower (but sadly still quite expensive; it's about $150 to $200 on eBay) 6800 Ultra, but, no, it is most likely not worthwhile given the high failure rates of these old cards. I would actually suggest selling the machine for parts or replacing the GPU and then selling it complete. If you have the time, parting it out is a good option as well.

Then you can use the proceeds to buy something with a more reliable GPU.

Now, there's also the chance that you may be able to use the X1400 or standard 7800 video cards or even the entire IGP motherboard from an E1705/9400, but since it's kind of a crapshot (unless you can find some sort of confirmation it'll work) I wouldn't really take the risk.

 

Hi Thanks for advices,

S.Prime I feel so sorry that your second card has been failed as well it is the big risk! you pay hundreds dollar for graphic card and it die after few months, and you even have no warranty! especially if you have financial difficulties like me, these few hundreds dollars means a lot!

I really don't want to sell my laptop in parts I really love it, and want to have it back to work. but on the other hand, it is pretty old laptop and very possibly other parts will make problem as well soon. so when I look at this side, I don't feel fine to spend money for graphic card.

I also think to buy a new laptop than, but after XPS M170, no laptop is making feel happy about...

confused