RIP 8700M GT

Everything I buy, I buy on purpose and for a good reason. ... at least I try to.

I suppose I don't do nearly as much research for a toaster as I would for a laptop, but I digress.

The other day, my Alienware Area-51, m15x's graphics card melted. The corner of the board overheated and the board melted, nearly destroying the components on the surface. (in that corner, mainly resistors)

The tragic part is, if I had purchased the 8800M GTX which was available when I bought my system, I would've been stuck in the middle of a bad-batch of video cards... namely, the ones that nVidia recalled. So I'm thankful it lasted this long.

Tragically, this means the card is dead, and has since been removed from my system.

On a more positive note, for those who don't know, the Area-51 M15X was one of the first laptops to offer hybrid graphics. It was the first generation of hybrid graphics. It's a really interesting topic if you look it up on Wikipedia or something... Anyways, here's a run-down. The system had two graphics cards; the 'discreet' 8700M GT (in my case, there were others available), and an integrated x3100 from Intel (GMA945 Chipset). When gaming, crank it up to high with Stealth mode (down-clocking for power saving) off, and the nVidia card races along at full speed... For even better power-savings, switch to "binary GFX" (requires reboot), and enable stealth mode for optimum power savings.

The difference was astounding. Wifi + nVidia + no stealth on batteries was an hour or two, switch to the Intel card, and pop on stealth, even with wifi, it easily doubled play-time with the system. Add in the second battery, you'd be set for a full work-day of activity.

Anyways, I removed my nVidia card from the system (MXM-HE slot) and the system now powers on and runs without an issue. The most notable changes are A) decreased graphics performance (obviously) and B) no HDMI. That's right, the video-out on my system only works with discrete graphics.

Now I'm on a mission to get a price on a new (hopefully 9800M GT) graphics card for my system, that will work with the HDMI output... Last time I got a quote for it, it was a cool $650-ish (with cooler), but since Dell has now fully absorbed Alienware, I'm not certain I can even get a quote anymore. I'll try again on Monday.