Used XPS M1710 worth buying?

OspreyO

OspreyO

OspreyO

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I've seen a mint M1710 for sale for £550. 2GB and the 7950 etc. I know theres heat issues with these. But if it was perfect it still a decent mid range gaming laptop. I have a Inspiration 9400 with a 7900GS in it, but its limited to 2GB of ram. I noticed in the past the 7950 was a good boost over the 7900GS and the 1710 takes 4GB of Ram. I'd sell the 9400. Worth the upgrade or not. What alternatives with the similar or better gfx performance for around £550.
 
If you don't mind a 15" screen instead of a 17" there's a fair few M1530s on the Dell Outlet for that price.

I'm not sure how the 8600M GT would stack up to that one you posted but I don't think it would be far behind.
 
The 1710s are nice machines but the graphics cards can and do fail. I doubt you will find anything similarly specced at that price point, but it depends if you want to run the risk of having to fork out £250 on a new GPU.
 
I had one of these for about a year, great laptops! Was not aware of heat issues with the graphics (I had the 7900GTX 512MB) and had no problems with it at all. I now have an XPS M1530 with 8600M GT and its definately not as fast although still lets me play Fallout3 and Bioshock at decent graphics levels (not full though).

NS
 
I repair Dells - I've replaced four graphics cards in 1710s in the last week. One guy has had two graphic cards replaced in 4 months, another had four cards replaced in just 2 months. All the cards dell supply as replacements are refurbished and rarely last any length of time. Other than that they're great!
 
The problem is the 7950 have heat issues. The 8600 and 8700, 8800 all have that Nvida problem. So its kinda hard to avoid a problem of some kind. At least you can monitor the heat on the 7950.

Geezer do you get/see many of the 8600 and 8700, 8800 failing?
 
Had mine (1710, 7950GTX) since launch, used daily. Use it as my main machine so game on it regulary with no issues whatsoever. Download I8kfanGUI (google it) and it allows to customise the fan settings.
 
OspreyO said:
The problem is the 7950 have heat issues. The 8600 and 8700, 8800 all have that Nvida problem. So its kinda hard to avoid a problem of some kind. At least you can monitor the heat on the 7950.

Geezer do you get/see many of the 8600 and 8700, 8800 failing?
Click to expand...

The 7800/7900 series fail more because of the poor cooling available to them in the Dell chassis. The problem is different to the 8600+ debacle as that was Nvidia's mistake.
 
I meant as far as I am aware the failures with the 7xxx series are down to the poor cooling by Dell, rather than bad design by Nvidia; having owned an XPS Gen 2, an i9400 and an i1520.
 
The cooling isn't the greatest for the cards, however, as long as you're not relying on compressed air and are actually cleaning the vents out regularly, then temperatures can be kept under control.
ALWAYS check the thermal paste applied on a stock card, it WILL be a disgrace and need reapplied.
 
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