Dell and nVidia sux (part 2)

Well after trying an nVidia 8600 GTS and EverQuest II not working, the whole system is going back. I don’t need an extra $2,000 of debt right now, so instead of dumping more money and time into trying to get this system to work, I’m just sending it back and going to build one next year instead.

I more than likely will never purchase another system from Dell after getting such poor customer service from them on trying to resolve the issue either. I got the run around, ripped off and pretty much told tough luck so they can have their junk back and and lose a customer. After being told by a customer service rep this morning that Dell doesn’t treat their home users as well as their buisness customers, I decided that Dell is no longer worth the waste of my time. It’s pretty pitiful that they won’t give their consumer level customers the same service as their buisness customers, and little did they know, I’m both.

It’s funny, my current system runs EQ2 decently enough, so I’m just going to stick with it for a while. I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER purchase anything from nVidia again. I had nothing but problems with them 5 or 6 years ago, and I’m still having issues. I WILL ONLY PURCHASE ATI products from now on. I have NEVER had this many or problems this severe with ATI. They make quality equipment and have excellent support for their equipment as well.

So I have a beef with Dell. I would expect the same level of service from their home/home-office products as their business services. About 5 years ago I recommended to my employer that we start ordering workstations and servers from Dell based on my past experiences with their products and customer service. Since then we have probably spent $300k-$400k in equipment and software from them. Their business support is top notch. Until recently I had never had an issue with their “consumer” level service either.

Well now I’m sitting here feeling ripped off. I purchased a machine that I felt would last me at least 5 years with minimal upgrades. I usually purchase from their refurbished site and get pretty good deals on good equipment. I spent around $1,500 on a laptop from there last year and the thing has worked great. It’s a dual core 1.8ghz Inspiron with an ATI x1300 256mb dedicated graphics card and 2 gigs of ram. It was exactly what I needed to do work on as well as play my favorite MMOs with great performance. This laptop is probably a bit overkill for simply doing development on, but hey, why not have a great toy too? Anyways, prior to that I had also purchased a decent Optiplex P4 2.8 ghz machine for cheap and upgraded a few things on it. Put in a SoundBlaster Audigy 2zs and have gone through a few different video cards, upgrading them, as I need. I had an ATI Radeon 9600 for a while, but it wasn’t enough power so I upgraded to an x700. That worked great until the release of Echoes of Faydwer. EQ2 needed more, so I got myself an ATI x1650 512mb card and it’s working pretty decently. I usually run EQ2 balanced with a few tweaks to the graphic options for better quality, but I also run on high quality with a few tweaks when I’m in low populated zones. I only had one problem with it and it was due to manufacturer defect. The capacitors all along the processor went bad all at once and Dell acknowledged that it was a manufacturer defect. Dell came out within one business day and replaced the motherboard and I was off and running again.

Now we’re where we’re caught up to the present. I order a nice new shiny XPS 720. I spec’d it out so that I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t need to spend really any money on it upgrading it for a good long time. I get it and within a day I’m already having issues running EverQuest II. I ordered it with an nVidia 8800 GT, 512mb video card. They recommended that card, and I felt the 8800 GTX would be overkill for what I needed it for. Well, I made the mistake of not checking the cards that their current stable drivers support. Every single card they make is listed BUT the 8800 GT. OK, so I try getting drivers for it so EverQuest II runs correctly. I even spent 6 hours on the phone and in chat with their technical support and customer service. Their tech support tried to help me, but they couldn’t, and of course, as I’ve experienced many many times with tech support, they didn’t really know what they were doing completely. That’s fine…I can’t expect them to know EVERYTHING, hell I admit I don’t know EVERYTHING. I made the determination that I was just not going to be able to use the 8800 GT because the only drivers nVidia currently has that work with Windows XP for that card are in beta. OK, so I try to get Dell to exchange the card with another video card that is not as powerful and costs less than the 8800 GT. They absolutely refuse to do so. Instead, I’m forced to purchase another video card and pay and additional $250. Dell was only willing to credit me $50 for my 8800 GT if I sent it back. I had only had the system for one day. I almost just decided to return the whole thing and build one myself. I refuse to run Vista simply because I have it installed on my wife’s laptop that I bought for her over the summer and frankly, Vista sucks. This machine should be capable of running XP Pro with no issues, and from what it seemed it was doing just fine. Well I stick the 8600 GTS that I purchased in it, install the correct drivers and have the exact same problem. Well needless to say, I’m done. After costing me a grand total of $1,950 this system is going back. I’m not going to spend one more dime on trying to get something to work that should have been working the day I got it and at the price I originally paid. I think the biggest deciding factor was that I got the machine on 0% interest for 12 months, which I could deal with. But Dell is going to make me continue to purchase more and more crap to get the configurations on the machine that they offer for the same price just to get it to work properly.

I’m really better off building it myself. I’m going to make sure I get equipment that isn’t made by nVidia anywhere in the system. I’ve run ATI cards for years and have never experienced this much trouble with stuff that should just work.

~ by g0thicicecream on December 4, 2007.