Thursday 8 March 2012

DELL L502x Crashing During Gameplay.

Many people are still experiencing system crashes when playing games and animations using the GT540m on the Dell XPS L502X laptop as described in the Dell forums:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/19374663.aspx?PageIndex=16

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19392683/19916265.aspx

There is allot of talk among these forums that suggests that a Software update/BIOS update will solve or help fix the problem. When I sent my laptop back to Dell for repair, they replaced the motherboard and ram. When i got it back All my games that used to crash were still on the hard drive since they didnt re install the operating system and they played fine straight away.This suggests that it is purely a Hardware problem and has nothing to do with drivers or firmware.

Another plausable solution is to Underclock your GPU which is not favoured by many as this lowers the speed of the graphics card and you are not getting the performance described when purchasing the system. Altering your GPU clock speed May void your warranty. If you have one you should use it to get a new, free motherboard from Dell.

There has even been talk of people who have had a the problem occur After repair. Crashing that becomes ever more frequent and the tell tale Metallic, Tinny noise that comes along with the crash. That leaves me thinking, How long has mine got left? Was it a bad batch of motherboards? Will this problem re occur for me? Only time will tell but there will be no free motherboard for me next time. My warranty is up.