Comments on Dell XPS M1330

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xpsowner

6:01 PM on 13 August, 2008

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The XPS m1330 and m1530 are great notebooks. Sadly, however, I would caution against buying the xps m1330 or any other laptop (from Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or Apple) that comes with the faulty Nvidia m8400 or m8600 graphics. Nvidia has finally admitted that there a problem involving "a weak die/packaging material set" in their GPUs (see http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html).





These laptops are dying at an alarming rate. Mine died 3 times in the last 10 months. In each case the GPU was the cause and the "fix" was a motherboard replacement. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the replacement will last!





DEll and other manufacturers have offered graphics drivers and bios updates that cause the system fans to run more frequently thereby delaying the failure. However, they are yet to address the real problem which is faulty hardware. HP has offered free warranty extension for affected systems but other manufacturers including Dell are yet to follow.





There are hundreds of articles like this one (http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/26/dell-explains-nvidia-gpu-issues-throws-out-bios-updates-to-help/) that describe the problem. There are even videos on YouTube showing XPS m1330 dying (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkw47rprZU8).





So keep an eye for updates on this saga. In the mean time stay clear of affected laptop models and configurations until the manufacturers own up to the problem and recall or offer upgrades for affected systems.