How screwed am I?

Just had to rant a bit. It hurts my feelings when the M8900 in my Precision M6600 dies 2 weeks after my 3 year warranty expires. I'm guessing that there's nothing that dell would be willing to do for me at this point without me paying which is not going to happen because broke college student =) .

The only silver lining is that i mainly used the machine to game, so it isn't going to affect my workflow and that
the most that I've seen from the battery with the gpu in is about 1hr 30m. After I removed it, battery life went up to 4+ hours using the integrated card. Now I know what i've been missing out by not going the nvidia quadro route.

 

At least it works without the discrete GPU.
You might be able to play games, too, if you turn the graphics settings way down.
Buying a cheap GPU (on eBay or something) might get you by until you are in a position to buy a whole new machine.

 

It just sucks that "cheap gpu's" on ebay really that arent cheap at all, especially for 3 year old cards. I can't complain too much i suppose, 3 years and still going strong, minus one semi-important bit

 

You should be able to pick up a Firepro M6000 from eBay for under a hundred dollars. If you want a cheap nVidia alternative the K3000m would be a good choice.

 

Didnt think that i could use those gpu's. Thought that i was limited to what originally shipped with the laptops. Those being m8900, m6100, and the quadros 3000m-5000m. Would i need to change the heatsink in any way for any of those gpu's or would everything fit up perfectly like legos?

 

Of the M6600 and M6700, one of them uses the same heatsink for both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, and one of them uses a different heatsink for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. I cannot remember which is which. You should check the owner's threads for other people upgrading their GPUs and hopefully you can figure it out. In any case, if you stick with an AMD GPU, you should be safe.

I have heard that the M6000 can be used as a replacement in the M6600. It should be a straightforward replacement. Make sure that you get one that specifically mentions that it is for Dell to have the lowest chance of any VBIOS issues. It also helps if your new GPU includes the X-bracket so you do not have to transfer it off of your old one.