Replacing parts, how does it work?

After about 6 months of having a Dell XPS 1330m, i deem the performance of the graphics card unbearable. I am a student, and I occasionally like to play world of warcraft. I travel a lot so a laptop would be the best solution for me. But the fact that my old laptop from 2004 with a ATI radeon 9700 PRO, and plus it cost way less than this XPS gets better performance makes me a bit pissed off. The reason the XPS gets such crappy performance is because the graphics card gets too hot, so it throttles to a lower performance profile, and the cycle is endless.

My question is, if i get a technician to come and exchange my graphics card, what are my chances the new one will be any better? What do they exchange? Do they give me a new motherboard? Does that include the processor?

 

In my experience, they replace the motherboard because the GPU is on the board. The tech who replaced my motherboard did not replace the processor.

 

if they come down and get you a replacement, it would be the whole motherboard. The reason why is that your video card is soldered into the board, so they can't replace only the card but the whole thing (sounds lame). your chances of it being better after the fix is high but I do not know how long that "good" would last. Also, they dont give you a processor

 

all the discrete graphics on the 1330 are susceptible to failure, there is no actual fix for this and i doubt there ever will be as they have moved on to the next model already. luck of the draw unfortunately, but i am convinced it is always just a matter of time. i got an integrated graphics mobo as a replacement after my nvidea one died 3 times, i demanded it and haven't had any issues seance.

my advice is extend your warranty as long as you can

 

Do the copper mod to drastically reduce temps and avoid the throttling...

 

Getting a integrated intel card would be lame since i paid for the nvidia.. of course they would have no problem giving you a worse one.

Also, the copper mod would be silly for me to do since my laptop is on 3 years warranty still. Doing it would void it.

 

yeah, the downgrade is painful, but for me the gameing performance with the nvidia gpu was awful anyways, so i just decided longevity was more important than the small amount of graphics power. good choice for me because i have other computers i can game on
and i got a good deal of money back from dell, more than the difference when i ordered.
your only option is to suck it up until all the 1330's are out of the outlet and the have enough failures dell will replace it with a 1340 or something

 

Keep the thermal pad, so if you send it in for warranty work, you just swap it back in and keep the copper shim.