I’ve been thinking that can I save my video card if I, for example, play less games and turn my Windows Vista’s Aero off? I really don’t know how video cards work so can anyone tell me?
My laptop is hp pavilion dv6000 with nvidia videocard and this geForce has already crapped two times! There is 2 years of warranty for it and these two first repairs were free but I know it will fail some day again and repairing may not be free anymore. It seems to be typical problem with this model and I decided that I am not going to buy HP again.
Sounds to me like you’ve simply been unlucky, I wouldn’t hold it against HP - they’re failure rates are not significantly different to any of the other main-stream laptop manufacturers.
Regarding extension of component life spans, just make sure you’re always operating in an environment within the temperature & humidity limits.
btw, why do you think it is the graphics card that has failed with your 2 previous laptops? which chipset is it? 7300/7400?
I can’t say that I’ve ever had a graphics card fail on me ever before - must just be really unlucky. Or perhaps have an overheating problem in the case design.
Make sure you keep your laptops gfx module cool. So don’t operate your laptop - well - on your lap
The air slits in the bottom have to be free to suck air, so if you have the PC on your lap you will likely hinder the air flow. Also make sure you dont have paper sheets or other stuff beneath your laptop that could block the airflow. Additionally try to prevent your system from heating up, by downclocking your GPU and turning on the S.M.A.R.T. hard disk control (in the bios). You will affect your systems performance with this, but you might increase it’s lifetime and stability.
Oh - and when your warrenty is up, find yourself a service manual and find out how to clean the cooling fan. Most laptops have the cooling fan below the keyboard, which is relatively simple to remove, so this might be an easy way to make sure your laptop doesn’t overheat.
I meant that this type of graphics card failed twice in my current laptop (within 10 months). So the whole motherboard has been changed twice to this computer. It’s geForce go7200. I was googling about this problem and I found out that this was very common problem in this model. In this discussion (which is under the review):
I counted numerous people complaining about this same problem. Graphics card failed within one year.
While I was writing this I read more comments from there and came up with one comment by Technical Guru:
“As the manager of a repair center, I’ve seen a few dozen of the dv6000 and dv90000 series (the motherboard is basically the same). Of all of the machines I have seen, only one has not needed a new motherboard. The wireless problem is related to a bad control chip that will fail. If your wireless card isn’t being detected, the card is usually fine. We have successfully fixed the issue with a new motherboard and the original wireless card. Switching / re-seating the card does not work, the motherboard loses its ability to detect the device, or any device connected.
The nVidia models also have a problem with the VRAM coming loose from the board and causing a POST beep (one long, two short). since the both the intel and nVidia video is integrated into the board, the motherboard again has to be replaced.”
This actually explains what happened. I had excactly that latter problem. It looks like it probably wasn’t geForces fault. :-[ I hope they gave me better motherboard or something or this will probably happen again soon.
Maybe all of HP computers won’t suck but I had some smaller problems with my previous HP zv6000 too. Maybe I should consider something more expensive computer in future. Would you like to recommen me something? ???
My laptop is very hot all the time actually. My previous HP laptop was much cooler but it was 1,5 years older and had very different processor and other components. This computer has AMD turion 64 x 2 (1,6 Ghz) and geForce. Previous had AMD Athlon 64 x 1 (2.0 Ghz) and Ati mobility Radeon or something. I put some blocks under this yesterday so that cooling would work better.
Yes I think it would be good idea. I blowed in to one cooler and I couldn’t breathe for a while because it rejected (I don’t know correct word for that situation) so much of dust.
I have this funny situation now: My graphics cards warranty goes up about in 8 to 10 months from now and I kind of hope that it would fail again few months before that because it won’t probably survive long after that.
