In February, I sent my Pavilion Dv7 (Product # A5F93AV, running Windows 7 with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics in addition to onboard Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000) in for under warranty repair because it had lost the ability to charge batteries. While there, according to the paperwork, HP replaced the system board, the wireless antenna (twice), and the bottom case. I received it back by FedEx last Thursday, and superficially, everything runs okay.
However, over the weekend, I loaded up one of my more graphics intensive games (Guild Wars 2) and noticed immediately that video performance had degraded. FPS had dropped below 10, when prior to repair, the game ran quite smoothly. After digging a little and running Open Hardware Monitor, it looks like perhaps power wasn't restored to the GPU when the system board was replaced and the game (and everything else) is using the computer's integrated graphics. The monitor indicates that GPU core temperature is constantly 0 degrees, with 0.0% GPU load, 0.0% GPU memory controller, and 0.0% GPU video engine. The GPU Memory runs at a constant 2.8%
Because this is my primary machine, I would really prefer not to send it back to Texas for another 2-3 weeks. Is this something I would be able to check visually myself, and potentially hook up myself without soldering? if so, where would I look internally to do it? or is this something I would need to take to my local repair shop to fix?
