Quick question. How reliable are the FX 3600M's in the M6300's at this point?

At this point in time so long after release, would an FX 3600M used under normal circumstances be on deaths door or likely still have a year or more of life left?

 

It could go at any time. Don't do it.

 

Well, so much for a cheap mobile gamer I guess Figured as much though seeing as I remember reading a lot about the 8800M GTX's and 8800m GTS's failing a lot and the FX 3600M is just another 8800M GTX :-/

I started thinking that since I see less people complaining about G92 mobile chips failing the ones that made it this far were good but it just occurred to me, I haven't seen as many people complaining about them cause there probably aren't that many still left alive.

 

Are you sure you were reading about the 8800 series dying and not 8400/8600 which were faulty? My FX3700M is still alive and well in the Dell M6400 after four years of everyday use (basically, like 3600M, but with twice the processing units). Also, the FX3600M in my friends 8710W is also working (even older, but not used for the last year), although he has some driver issues with that one (apparently, some of the FX3600Ms and FX3800Ms are having some driver/Powermizer or maybe even hardware design issues resulting in black screens, etc. - e.g my friend has occasional blackout issues with newer drivers, but no issues with the last available driver on the HP page, but that's like 17X or 18X release, so very old).

So, maybe you can get the M6400 with the FX3700M or the M6500 with the AMD M7740 or better yet the M7820 if it doesn't have to be the M6300 series (IMHO, I've seen it in person and it's butt ugly and the later Precisions are much better designed and built materials wise).

 

The problem with those vintage GPU's is there are no new ones left, just refurbs, which in many cases were baked cards that will simply fail again and again.

Better stick to the newer generation of cards that do not have the issues of these older cards.

 

Well, I abandoned that ship and went with an 8530W that had a higher res LCD anyways, plus it uses the dirt cheap FX 770M's which I can get from $35 - $50 all day every day. Not as beefy as the FX 3600M by a long shot but should be more reliable and if it does die, a replacement is 1/3 the price of replacing an FX 3600M.

 

Good choice

Basically customers are still paying for Nvidia's shenanigans so many years down the road...

 

But I thought that the G92-based series (FX3600M and onwards) cards were not affected by that Nvidia manufacturing defect (maybe you're confusing it with the FX360M series which were)?

Getting a weaker card with a higher res screen seems like a step backwards in terms of performance, but I guess you know best what your performance requirements are.