Clevo D900c Nvidia8800 Replacement

I found this site on google, and while it had a lot of helpful info, I am unfamiliar with Sager models and the threads are filled with those.

I bought a Falcon NW DRX(3 years old) which uses a Clevo D900C mobo and runs an Intel E8400 and twin Nvidia 8800ms. What I didnt know is that Sager made this laptop basically.

I've owned the laptop for three plus years and today out of the blue(so to speak) my graphics cards bit the dust, right now my laptop is running with a default driver, since windows no longer acknowledges that the cards exist outside of device manager. My screen in windows is covered in red bars that look like a bar code every inch or so apart in all directions, it's red on black and turquoise on white backgrounds. My bios and startup screens are jumbled and unreadable, I know what it all says, but they are missing parts of letters and such. The cards were working fine until I was running a graphics extensive game, and poof, system locked up and it's been doing this since. I figure it was just age, they never went past 160F in temps regardless of the game.






I've contacted Falcon NW on the matter, Also contacted Nvidia, but ya...

From what I've read, the 9800m is a replacement for the 8800s, obviously... but I don't know if they have the same problems as the 8800s, renaming of the same cards and all. Based on the info here the Nvidia 260m GTX can replace my 8800s?
ie this card nVidia GeForce GTX 260M 1GB Video Card for M860TU
More or less because my laptop came from another manufacturer, I dont know if there are any changes that would prevent it from working, since it supposedly works with the D900c series motherboard... More or less wanting to confirm this information before I do anything else, I use this laptop daily for work and play and I absolutely need it running again.

 

You can go up to 280m, but you have to pick the right MXM format.

It really sucks when people upload so large images. It is very difficult to read the message.

 

MOST forums have a resize script, this one doesnt for whatever reason, changed to hotlinks.

I read the MXM needs to be 2.1? Is the card I linked to the correct one for that? The site doesnt exactly say...

 

I do not know about that one, check this link. Clevo D901c

 

I'm probably going to contact them to get a replacement if Falcon doesnt want to help with it. From what I've read about the 8800s... frankly I'm shocked I got three years out of them, most die within 1-2 years, and I've run my system next to 24/7 for three years straight.

Hopefully the 280 lives a bit longer/better than the 8800s... I still have a system using a Nvidia 6400Go and after 8+ years it works perfectly. I don't know why these newer cards have such huge problems.

 

The 260M you linked to will work well.

 

I have mine for almost 3 years and it is still running, though I did not play too much. Good luck with new one.

 

You may have only one 8800M GTX card dying. You should try running your laptop with each card alone.

 

I am selling my 8800m gtx off my d900c for $325, if you are interested. I've had it listed in the marketplace for some time. They run about $900 from sager /clevo vendors.

 

Falcon NW contacted me today about servicing it, and will check into upgrading the cards as well. What he told me is that there IS a compatible D900 series motherboard and those cards, but there is also a NON compatible D900 and it depends on the revision. So they will check for that when it gets to them. If it's a v6 revision it might just get upgraded.

 

You could try baking them. REALLY easy and simple and might give your cards new life. If you're adamant about replacing them, you could look into a 3700M quadro. You can only use one and no SLI but it's similar to a 270M but only about $190ish on ebay.

 

Just to update this thread, Falcon replaced one faulty 8800 and replaced the SLI bridge, system is running better than it has in a year, odds are that thing was on its way out long ago. Thus far everything is running like the day I got this laptop again, and games are running at wonderful FPS levels again without the stuttering or choppiness. Halo ONE was going from 30fps locked to 19fps randomly... Not anymore.

Also.

So if/when my other 3yo 8800 craps out I'll be going with that 280GTXm to replace both of these 8800s.

I'm still getting this in my log list occasionally.
"The Acpi 2.0 _PCT object returned an invalid value of 2"
iirc this is related to the video card(11 is memory, 7 is cpu), right before my old one died there was literally 2 pages of that error scrolling down.... So I do expect that other 8800 to die within the next year.

 

The 3700m may be possible to run in SLI because the 9800m GTX were configured to run in SLI on this laptop.
You can probably get 2x Lenovo 3700m cards to run in SLI. but I think they are the only ones which will accept the 9800m GTX vbios.