vostro 1700

Define "dead".  If it won't power up at all, it's not (just) the video card - much more likely, the mainboard is toast.  If it will power up, boot to the Dell diagnostics (F12) and run a video card test.

The system is not booting - and when pressing Fn+ONbutton the 3 POST LEDS just flash up once. The power LED is on, the harddisk LED flashes - and you hear the optical drive initiate. That's about it - there's no video and the cooling fan isn't even running. So I've disassembled the unit, and after I removed the videocard the 3 POST LEDS do indicate there's a video problem - which is obvious in this situation. Anyway, I concluded the systemboard is OK because the POST LEDS still function. I've also found out on the third party spare parts market that these video cards burn out regularly due to overheat problems, and therefore are hard to get. This doesn't surprise me because Nvidea has admitted long ago already there's a heat problem with the 8400/8600 series. In reaction, Dell even decided to prolong the warranty on several systems (including Vostro 1510 and 1710) but not the 1500 and 1700 because the cooling is said to be sufficient for these models. But it seems not for mine! Of course I can't tell what the breakdown rate is for the 1500/1700 - only Dell knows this, and I trust they would have taken proper action if it was really that bad. So maybe it's just bad luck for me, my system has a 7200 rpm drive and a T9300 cpu - two other heat sources. Fact remains these chips are commonly known to have been not good at the time of manufacturing.

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2008/09/12/nvidia-gpu-update-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx

OK - it's a while back, but i finally got time to look bit deeper into this. lucky for me it turned out not to be the videocard after all :) but one of the memory modules went sour. good for me, as these are way cheaper than a spare video card. just wanted to share this. cheers.