What video cards fit in my Precision M6300 ?

Hello all. I own a M6300 machine - which is 4 years old. Still a great piece of machinery. However, in the last year I kept having problems with the video card - the Quadro FX3600M - which is in fact a great card but kept getting the famous artifacts issue - and I kept baking it to solve it. I have done it for about 6-7 times so far and I must say, I am a bit tired of keep opening up the laptop, getting the card out, bake it in the oven for 10-12 minutes @ 200 Celsius. Everything works perfect after each "cook" but the problems keep coming back in 1-2 months. I am just tired of keep doing it again and again.

I want to purchase a video card to replace the 3600M and I don't know what my options are. Are there any ATI options that would fit in this model ? Is a DELL INSPIRON 1720 NVIDIA 8600GT a good match? I really don't care much about performance as I don't use the laptop for highly demanding video work. Just a decent performer to play some HD movies and maybe allow me to play Warcraft III from time to time Is there a specific type I should look for ? What is MXM and what version do I have on the M6300 ?

Thanks

 

You can use anything from the E1705/9400/M1710/M90/M6300. It is NOT a standard MXM connection, but but a proprietary Dell connector. There is basically nothing in this range, though, that doesn't suffer from the Nvidia BGA issue, except for the Radeon X1300/X1400 from the E1705/9400, which is still overpriced for what you are getting.

You cannot use the cards from the 1520/1720.

 

I'm in a similar position. I have an M6300 with the FX3600 and its been sitting in the corner as backup for if my desktop went down, while using a lighter E6400 for travelling.

Had a GPU failure when I tried using it recently and Dell won't honour the Nvidia GPU card warrenty extension which is 1 year on top of the original next business day system warranty, in case you fall into that.

I was literally a few months outside it and given the bloody things been switched off for a couple of years I am completely pissed off with Dell.

I've bought a lot of dell machines over the years: 2 desktops, 6 laptops, most of them high spec ie high price. No more.

A new quadro card will cost 280 sterling and have a 90day dell warranty only. Any on ebay are likely to have been cooked already.

Can I ask, were these GPU problems specific to Nvidia, and if so specific to that generation? as I see a lot of HP+nvidia laptops having had the same problem when I googled it.

I have a nvidia card in my desktop and have run amd there too, so not polarised for one gpu vendor.

 

wait, what? You're mad at Dell because you are outside of warranty? Does not compute...

 

All Nvidia GPUs of the 8x00 series (and equivalent) are affected. Most 7x00 GPUs are also affected, though to a slightly lesser extent. A handful of 9x00 GPUs (mostly those that were re-named 8x00 parts) as well.

Dell was supposed to cover the 8x00 GPUs for at least a year after the warranty ended, as per an agreement with Nvidia. However, I think this agreement might have only lasted for a certain amount of time, so I'm not sure if OP has grounds to be upset or not.

 

For your information, in part due to the class action against nvidia, dell extended the GPU only for one extra year to cover the very high failure rates.

I am mad at them as I was a loyal customer since 1999, and they stuck to the one year rule even although my laptop was basically shelved, out of use.

So if id been following events more closely I would have been able to check before the failure, granted. But they just lost a regular customer.

I'm thinking of going the defect goods route as they be law have to have 5 full years, apparently (see google). I guess they are counting on customer inertia to factor that down.

 

^ wrong entity....you need to be talking to Nvidia if it is graphics failure...

 

NVIDIA GPU Update: NVIDIA Class Action Settlement and Limited Warranty Enhancement - Direct2Dell - Direct2Dell - Dell Community

 

My warranty is long gone as the laptop is over 3 years old. However - I simply refuse to let this one go as it cost a fortune back then and the configurations is pretty solid even by today's standards: Core2Extreme X9000, WUXGA 1920x1200 screen ( which is brilliant ), pretty good GPU ( when it works of course ), 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD ( which I had to upgrade to on my own but no biggie ). Even if the laptop would work perfectly and I were to sell it, I would probably get 500$ for it so I will probably get most out of it as much as possible.

As I mentioned, I have cooked the card 6-7 times so far - and it always just lasts about 2 months until I gotta do it again. I am simply SICK of keep opening up the "beast" and taking the card in the oven. Last time, I went to a specialist in electronics and he used a professional heat gun with some sort of gel - hoping it will last longer - but it only lasted 1 week and now it's at it again. I seriously consider purchasing a FX1600 from ebay as it's relatively cheap ( 60-70$ ) and see how she goes. I don't use the great GPU power of the 3600 anyway so for my own use the 1600 could be enough.

About my card though - is there any other method I could try to "cook" it better ? The oven seems to be fine for the 2 months time. Is there anything else that could make it last longer ?

What other models could I try and find? I know the 1600 and 3600 Quadro cards will work as they come from Precisions like mine. But I am not sure what the E1705 has. Plus, if it's a generic 8600GT card for example how the hell do I know if it will mount on my laptop as most ebay sellers don't say what model they came from.

PS - do you guys have any info on the reliability of a HP ENVY 17 ? The configuration seems very good ( at least on paper ) for the price.

 

E1705 came with 7950M GTX, 7900, 7800, X1400, X1300 options. 8600M GT is out of the Inspiron 1720/1520 Vostro 1700/1500 and AFAIK won't work.

Nothing wrong with Envy, just the cooling is subpar IMO.