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    Dell XPS 15 l502x artifacting bad in Starcraft 2 (hots)

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by trama09, Mar 23, 2013.

  1. trama09

    trama09 Notebook Enthusiast

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    So I am quite lost with this laptop. That problem has been happening for about 2 or 3 months now. It artifacts really badly and most of the times doesn't recover and crashes out of the game. Once in the while, it'll come back to the game, but it'll then artifact for a few seconds every few minutes or so. And this happens EVERY match.

    I thought it was overheating. So I took it apart, compress aired all the dust and debris out. Still no fix. Then I updated all the driver to current releases (upgrade and downgrade BIOS. And recent and old Nvidia drivers, clean install), no fix. Then I did a fresh install of my OS and install just the drivers and the game, no fix. Then I took off the panels and put it on a laptop cooler, no fix. Then I bought a new hard drive, because my previous one was acting strange, no fix. Then I took apart my laptop again and cleaned off the CPU and GPU and added artic cooling MX-4 (the right amount, I think), no fix.

    Then I started running test with OCCT 3.1.0. All the test on there came up clean and the highest temp the CPU/ GPU got was around mid 80s Celsius. I also did a RAM test, and that came up clean.

    I have no idea what to do now, and what to test. I've had this laptop for about 18 months and the first 15 months or so, this was never a problem. I've played Crysis 2, Assassin Creed, Batman (something), Max Payne, Battlefield 3, and other more current games than (SC2 2010), and they didnt crash. Given, I haven't played those games recently when the problems started happening... So that last statement is probably invalid.

    I called Dell and they said they'd look at it and try to fix it if I upgrade one of my warranty's for over $250. Which is too steep of a price for me right now, as far as this laptop goes.

    What I am running:

    Operating System
    Microsoft Windows 8 Pro 64-bit
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 2720QM @ 2.20GHz 59 °C
    Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
    RAM
    8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)
    Motherboard
    Dell Inc. 0NJT03 (CPU) 54 °C
    Graphics
    IPS226 (1920x1080@60Hz)
    2048MB GeForce GT 540M (Dell) 47 °C
    Hard Drives
    699GB Western Digital WDC WD7500BPKT-22PK4T0 (SATA) 40 °C
    Optical Drives
    HL-DT-ST DVDRWBD CT30N
    Audio
    High Definition Audio Device

    This is what it looks like: View image: 20130321 125617
     
    trama09, Mar 23, 2013
    #1
  2. trama09

    trama09 Notebook Enthusiast

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    trama09, Mar 23, 2013
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  3. trama09

    trama09 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Still looking for help
     
    trama09, Mar 25, 2013
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  4. trama09

    trama09 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well I guess I am going to just pull and Office Space on this laptop.
     
    trama09, Mar 27, 2013
    #4
  5. dave-p

    dave-p Notebook Deity

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    What kind of warranty do you have now ?

    This looks like a GPU failure and it should be covered under the basic warranty.
     
    dave-p, Mar 31, 2013
    #5