Unfortunately, if you did not choose a 3-year warranty at purchase, repair is your cost.

The BIOS fixes and nVidia problems apply to the 8400 and 8600 series, not the older 7900 series.

Given that a video card costs over $400 - and that there's a good chance of it failing in ANY notebook, the added cost of a 3-year warranty is well worth it.  In fact, it's so much so that notebook computers are some of the few devices for which Consumer Reports DOES recommend a 3-year service plan.

If I wanted to overpay for a Windows machine, i'd buy a Sony.

For gods sake, my car has a 5 year STANDARD warranty. It's went 4 years me have to spend anything except normal preventative maintenaince. 

And yes, I know the BIOS updates are for the 8 series video cards. Us with the 7900GS are apparently not worth helping.

No, it doesn't work like that. It is a defective design, or else they wouldn't be releasing a BIOS update to kick fans on earlier! When you make a defective product, you fix it. $249 for 3 years of warranty? That's a flat out ripoff. 

I understand most of the blame here lands on Nvidia. However, unfortunately for Dell, they are left holding the bag on this one. Wherever the Nvidia cards were sourced from produced garbage parts. 

Dell used to care about their customers. They fixed a W3201 LCD tv that was out of warranty because the sound card went bad after only 18 months. That was about a year and a half ago...I would like to think they still stand behind their products. 

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@ejn63 wrote:

Unfortunately, if you did not choose a 3-year warranty at purchase, repair is your cost.

 

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a factory defect and design flaw is not what a warranty is for genius...

I can't believe how blind you are. anything to make excuses for dell right? well you can spit your cookie cutter rediculous responses and stick your fingers in your ears all you want the rest of dells customers can see how you've taken massive advantage of those of us who've bought this shoddy hardware.

omg i've been trying to point out this problem for over a year! Mine burnt out exactly 2 weeks after my 1 yr warranty expired and they wanted $400 JUST for the part.

look at this post in this thread by a dell person. unbelievable!!! They lie through their teeth!

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_video&thread.id=177856

I have the extended warranty on all my laptops.  Figure if there is a failure that right there is the cost of the warranty.  My 1705 would cost me $500 or $600 to replace the video card, well the warranty was $300.  So I just made money.  If I never use it, then that's ok. 

I have had my 1705 since early 2007.  Use it everyday.  Turn it on, turn it off, use it for games and videos.  So it goes through the heat/cool cycle, it goes through the heat of being used for graphically intense games.  It is still working after 18 months.  I was told the card would die after 1 year, that came and went and so I posted so and was told give it 13 months, so that came and went and I was told wait for 15 months.  Well 15 months came and went, they said give it 1 1/2, well that is upon us, it's still working.  So now it's wait until 2 years.  Well I guess if we keep going eventually it will fail and the naysayers will be proven right.

I wonder how many people that have cards fail either overclock something, or take apart the PC to check it out, use some other fan control program instead of just letting the Dell settings be used, or use the laptop on their lap and with out making sure the vents are clear, or let it get all full of dirt.  I know that not all fit these categories, but I wonder how many do.  KNow what I mean.

But I am covered just in case.  I can't say that it's a design flaw because I don't know how many people have purcahsed the 1705 with the 7900GS.  Yes, there are numerous posts on these forums, but if I have read 400 posts on these forums, but Dell sold 1 million of these systems, that is a SMALL SMALL number.

I have not overclocked either the main CPU, nor the RAM, nor the graphics card. If you look on other forums of other manufacturers, there is a widespread problem. You don't see a whole lot of them on here as the 7900GS was the top upgrade on the e1705 at the time. Most were outfitted with the slow Intel integrated chips.