It's interesting that the Vostro 1700/Inspiron 1720 and Vostro 1500/Inspiron 1520 are all missing from that list.

I had to buy a cooling pad to combat the idle heat on my XPS M1330.  I guess now the BIOS will initiate the fans sooner, but I can't help but wonder if Dell is just trying to postpone the serious problems past the laptop's warranty period.  I bought a 3 year parts+labor warranty because I got a serious discount through my college, but there are probably alot of customers affected by this problem who only have a basic 1 year warranty...  I hope whatever happens, Dell chooses to do the right thing.

It is an ugly fix that will make your laptop noisy and the GPU might still break, as it is flawed by design.

Ask Dell to replace your laptops with one using a GPU chipset that is not flawed.

Also, drop a line to Nvidia, telling them you will not be buing their products anymore unless they own up and compensate their OEM's and through them, their customers.

The problem is, with the massive amount of 8-series chipsets sold by Nvidia, they would take a huge economical hit if doing that and thus, they make their customers suffer to save their hides.

Long before they'll ever replace systems or boards, nVidia will find another way out.  They simply couldn't replace every single part that fails and stay in business.

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@ejn63 wrote:

It's interesting that the Vostro 1700/Inspiron 1720 and Vostro 1500/Inspiron 1520 are all missing from that list.

 

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I read somewhere that Dell released BIOS updates for all the affected systems. Since those listed above are not on the list, I wonder if that means they are not affected by this video chip failure. I hope so as I have two 1720s that have the video chips that are in question.

EDIT:  Well I just went back and checked.  A07 revision showed the ADDED SUPPPORT FOR THERMAL CONTROL.  That's why they aren't on the list.  They have already updated the thermal control back in February.