$100 credit for 8600m GT mislead

[Liquidx]

Well for the first time Mallika was unable to help, here was her response:

I am sorry that you are facing issues with the order. Kindly get in touch with the Dell Technical support department at the phone number 800-624-9896 as they would be the best to help you with this issue. As I belong to Customer Care department and I am not technicaly trained.

And inreference to the coupon that you are asking for, I am sorry I will not be able to issue a coupon as we cant offer multiple concessions as we have already given you two items for free.


I guess I will have to try other means...

[Liquidx]

well i just chatted with dell and they linked me the latest bios and driver. funny thing was latest bios is A00 which is the first bios. But for the hell of it i flashed it and installed latest driver, hoping that maybe in some weird dimension, dell had severely underclocked the DDR3 memory. obviously no go. nothing changed and I am now supposed to wait a call from tech support to tell me what i already know, but if it helps get the credit...

[Liquidx]

ok final update, taked with tech support for about 5 mins, he confirmed everything I told him, he told me to contact customer service. Did so, and with very little hassle overall was given the $100 credit. So to tally it all up, I have received a $60 Bluetooth remote, a $50 Targus Messenger (it's on the way as I type this), and a $100 credit. So $210 value for a little of my time, not bad, not bad at all.

Edit:

Oh yeah, plus next day shipping on everything, the remote, bag, and system.

[Paznos]

Interesting I've tried but haven't been able to get them to give me the credit and also pissed that people who have ordered after me are receiving their laptops when mine is still being "build"

[Liquidx]

Interesting I've tried but haven't been able to get them to give me the credit and also pissed that people who have ordered after me are receiving their laptops when mine is still being "build"

That very well could be why you are having trouble. I intentionally waited until I received my laptop so that I could argue, yes I have it, yes I can prove it's not to spec, and with the help of the screenshot another poster had, I was also able to prove that it had, in fact, originally existed that they had posted speed. Coupled with that and the nvidia website showing that the 8600M GT was supposed to be running at 700 MHz. It was impossible for them to argue I had not gotten what I paid for. As well as an order date of June 28th, proved that I had ordered it before the removal. Use this information to help you, but only after you get the laptop, and use the dell online chat and have everything ready to show them. Tell them to use the program that lets them see your screen as your doing stuff. That was how I was able to prove my point. The first guy tried telling me I could just overclock it, and I had Ntune running and showed him that the clocks don't stick. So he ended up sending me to tech support, the rest is all above in other posts.

[larson]

Well for anyone who cares this was my email to my case manager at Dell:

Dear (case manager's name here),

I have found an issue with my laptop. In reading the forums, I found that there was a mislead on the Dell site. In hopes that after getting my laptop maybe Dell had given me the product promised, not what everyone was getting. I understand this to be a small chance, but it was worth trying. Now that I have received my laptop I have in fact confirmed that when I decided on the graphics card for my system, I was mislead about the performance. Please be sure to read the whole thing to understand what I am talking about. This is best described in this info I copied from the forum:

On the Inspiron 1520 Notebook, you are able to choose 3 video cards...
1) Intel x3100 Onboard
2) GeForce 8400m GS 128 MB
3) GeForce 8600m GT 256 MB

I went with #3, the GeForce 8600m GT 256 MB. Why, do you ask? I went with this video card simply because if you look at this (your dell website), you can see that the one I chose has the highest "Graphics Memory Bandwidth" which shows at 22.4 GB/s. This then means that the graphic memory type has to be "GDDR3". Now, this is where the false advertisement comes into place. It really only runs at 12.8 GB/s, which is only "GDDR2". This is because this video card has 2 ways of clocking, meaning two different speeds. If you look here (its Wikipedia) and you look at the 8600m GT 256 (the one that I got) it shows that you are able to run this card in two different speeds. If you look at that chart, under the column "Bus Type", you will see that the card has two options, "GDDR2/GDDR3". Also if you look at the "Bandwidth Max" column, you will see that it will take 12.8 / 22.4. And then one last thing, if you look at the "Clock" column, you will see "400/700 mhz". Now I'm going to list which specifications go with what video card, although it might seem obvious.

***REMEMBER THIS IS STILL ALL BASED JUST ON THE GRAPHICS CARD, NOTHING TO DO WITH SYSTEM RAM***
For the one with a GDDR2 memory type:

* 400 mhz Clock speed
* 12.8 GB/s Memory Bandwidth Max


Now for the GDDR3 memory type:

* 700 mhz Clock speed
* 22.4 GB/ms Memory Bandwidth Max


Now, this is where I hope everything will fall into place. In your new Dell Inspiron Systems, you guys have put in the GDDR2 version of the GeForce 8600m GT, aka "the underclocked version". Now at that first link I have given (here it is again), this link provides the details on your website. In order to get to this website with this information, one has to be customizing their new notebook, and have to click on the "Help Me Choose" link provided by the Dell site, then you have to click on the "Compare Side-By-Side" tab in order to get to this site. Now as I have said before, you guys state that if you choose the 8600m GT 256 MB, you will be receiving a 22.4 GB/s Memory Bandwidth, which then means that we will be receiving the 700 mhz clock speed, AKA the GDDR3 memory type for the video card. Now, since I play games, having this extra Clock speed, and memory bandwidth max can make a big difference. If I were to just surf the web, use e-mail, etc. this would not make a difference.

I hope I have explained everything throughly enough. If you have any more questions, just e-mail me back.



Now comes another problem, since this was written Dell has removed the memory bandwidth part of the graphics card comparison. This further shows that they admit that they were wrong.

To get at what I am asking everyone that has worked enough to get to the right reps that will do it, have received a $100 credit towards their account, or a $100 coupon. Since I really don't need the cash back, I would rather have a $100 coupon in the interest of ordering a digital camera from Dell.

To further support my issue, here are a couple threads in the forums about this topic, the first one is where I got the above information from:
Differences Between Gddr2/gddr3

$100 credit for 8600m GT mislead


Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
(my name here)

Ahem, my email.

[thevjm]

Is it still possible to get the credit?

[chuck232]

Ahem, my email.

Okay? You posted your email to help others right?

[larson]

Okay? You posted your email to help others right?

Yeah. That was me.

[majortom1981]

It all depends on when you ordered it because i think dell took the wrong info down.