-->*OFFICIAL: Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge*<--

I totally love their design!

Apple can go back to their studies...

 

Is Alienware's customer service really that bad?

If they give me back my money like Dell after 7 days "No Questions Asked"... I'd think about giving them a go...

 

I trust Alienware to equal if not beat Dell in terms of performance when both issue their 8800M SLI system, but one area of concern for me is the panel.

I found this test here, which compared the panels of the Area 9750 and the Dell XPS M1710:
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3070

The Area's panel is not bad, though clearly not a top performer in terms of brightness and color accuracy.

I think I would still give it a try if Dell fails to bring their 8800M SLI updated systems. I could still return the laptop if I am not satisfied.

Laurent

 

What is it with dodgy LCD in high end gaming laptops! I've a D800 sitting in front of me now and its screen was WAY WAY better than the M1730 when I had it briefly.

That's a great article... I haven't the time to go thru it now in great detail but it seem pretty detailed.

Personally I want 1024Mb 8800M GTX, that's the main thing.
I'd prefer if it was a Dell (good customer service/good past experience ~ D800).

I'm going to get on the blower to my sales rep when the Alienware 17" is released officially and basically say - "They (Alienware) are doing that what the HELL are ye (Dell) doing for me?".

I really can't see Dell shooting themselves in the foot with the M1730, even given the fact that they own Alienware, by not releasing the 8800M GTX straight away.

But... if dell take forever to release the M1730 with 8800M I'd definitely look at Alienware - want to get some serious gaming in over the hol's!

72oo



EDIT: Did you say that you CAN return within 7 days with Alienware?

 

Doing a bit more searching about and omens not good for getting 8800M in a Dell this side of the Christmas .

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/CLM03019112007-1.htm


Any got any info to disprove this?? Please?

 

So My Beast Arrived.

With all Bits present and a Sharp LCD which is easily the best Laptop LCD I have ever used myself.

With 169.09 Drivers - I am getting 8651 in 3DMark06

Still got to dive into the Nvidia Control Panel and Tweak a bit further.

Also want to try overclocking the CPU and fiddling with the Running Processes.

But Overall and most impressed so far.

Now for some Real Gaming Benchmarks - Will Report back.

Frag. Out.

 

$1000 OMG... Maybe that's why Dell chose to release the 1730 with the 8700m cards, otherwise hardly anyone would have bought it until the price dropped a little bit. Maybe Dell will offer an upgrade but at a pretty high price, good luck to the guys who wanted them for free

 

There goes our beast, anything that is sold with a single 8800m is likely more graphically powerful than our 1730s

 

Yeah that seems to be the case.

But (and its a big but) the 8800M won't be anywhere near a M1730 till something like Feb/Mar/Apr of next year.... which really sux for those of us resigned to waiting till the M1730 does get the 8800M's!

 

finaly able to install 169.09 and enable SLI... will post 3dmark06 scores shortly.

 

3dmark06 score using 169.09 : 8,841

this is up from the 163.75 driver (8,478)

NICE !

http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultanalyzer.jsp?projectType=14&XLID=0&UID=12190531

 

Greetings to you all!

I posted this request on another thread, but this one seems to boast a somewhat greater degree of.....activity!!

I'd be most grateful if anybody with a spec similar to my own could try out this simple test and report back your findings.

Install 3dmark pro 06

Install the patch to version 1.1.0

Enable SLI

Start up 3dmark

Under options, set resolution to 1900x1200 and select "loop all selected tests"

Run 3dmark

If anybody manages 10 hours straight without any lockups in between loading screens, please let me know how you did so.

x7900 CPU
8700gt SLI (tried drivers 158.22 (shipped with), 169.04, 169.09 and 163.69
Vista x32
4gb
200gb x2 RAID 0

I've so far been unable to get past 2 hours without the system crashing. The crashes don't occur during the tests, but in between loading them, when you see the desktop for a second or two. Instead of loading the next test, it simply hangs, no control over the mouse, ctrl alt del does nothing, and I have to force a power down. Please let me know if you've encountered the same or similar. I appear to be more fortunate than some in that SLI is functioning as expected - getting between 8000 and 9000 marks - but I'm concerned over this apparent lack of stability.

 

i haven't tried the lengthy loop tests, but I have noticed instability. I seemed to get pretty good results with 163.75, but I've just moved up to 169.09 that gives me a pretty hefty performance boost. See post #1763.

I have a feeling that the recent drivers aren't prime time yet, but will get better over time. I prefer stability frist and performance second, so I was with the 163.75 for a while until I was finally able to enable SLI on the 169.09 drivers and run 3dmark06.

I too am interested in others' experiences with the latest driver.

 

Hello Z!

Thanks for the reply. I have indeed been reading a number of your posts earlier in this thread - have just set to "single display performance mode" in NV control panel (as per your settings) to see if it makes any difference.

I'm also back on 169.09, so I'll be sure to report any futher results.

One other thing I have noticed with all of the 169s...when I enable SLI in the control panel, I get the usual message of "some apps need to be closed etc etc", so I click ok, the sidebar closes and the display goes blank for a second - all as expected - but upon returning, I get a sound (the same as when you unplug a USB device) - and then the Cpanel just freezes...I then get a message telling me it has stopped responding and have to reboot in order to get SLI properly enabled and the Cpanel back! Is this the same as for you? With earlier drivers (163.69 and 158.22) it always promted me to reboot rather than simply freezing, though the effect is obviously the same!

 

I've been getting inconsistent behavior with the control panel when reinstalling drivers. Sometimes it freezes and I have to hard reboot. Other times, it asks me to restart. Other times, it returns normally (but I reboot anyway).

From others' suggestions, I've been following a routine now that seems to have positive results...

1. download new driver
2. download modded inf
3. uninstall old driver (but don't reboot yet)
4. use driver sweeper to clean out nvidia display stuff left over from uninstall (only "nvidia display")
5. use ccleaner to scan/fix registry stuff left over from uninstall
6. Start Menu / Run / prefetch (delete everything, but you can leave "readyboot" dir)
7. restart
8. install new driver
9. reboot
10. use control panel to enable SLI (system flashed and paused but didn't require reboot last time i tried - success if Aero is restored and "Apply" button disappears)
11. configure 3d settings
12. reboot
13. run 3dmark benchmarks
14. on success, have a beer

 

how do you know this? I wouldnt think that a 512mb 8800 Would be faster than dual 8700's? Is it really that huge of a diffirence? Crysis isnt running anywhere like i thought it would. so dual 256mb 8800m's would be the way to go for me... how much of s a jump is it dual 8700's vs a single 8800 256?

 

@ whoever, SLI supposedly only works with one monitor at a time, turn off SLI for multiple monitors

 

FYI - my custom 3d settings (set for performance) :

Antialiasing - Transparency : Multisampling
Force mipmaps : Bilinear
Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration : Single display performance mode
SLI performance mode : Force split-frame rendering
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization : On
Texture filtering - Quality : High Performance
Texture filtering - Trilinear optinmization : On
Triple buffering : On

 

hmmm.

Froze again during the 3dmark looping tests. Then wouldn't boot into Vista at all after restart, just got the scrolling bar followed by a blank screen.

Did a system repair/restore to just before when 169.09s were installed. Booted ok. Re-installed the same drivers - following instructions (many thanks by the way!) -enabled SLI, rebooted. Oh dear...blank screen again same as before.

Cutting a long story...well, too late! Anyhow, it now would appear that I cannot use drivers 169.09 with SLI at all, vista simply refuses to boot after enabling it. Also, in my case, the Cpanel ALWAYS stops responding with 169.xxs after enabling SLI, regardless of doing a proper clean out of previous drivers. I can still restart ok, it just never prompts me to.

Got 169.04 to work...briefly...but 3dmark froze again, this time before even 1 loop was completed.

Now doing a full factory restore...and experiencing agitation!

 

Ouch !

You might want to stick with 163.75 until more stable drivers come out. One thing I did with both 163.75 as well as 169.09 was to change the power settings for turning off the display from 20 mins to Never.

Control Panel, Power Options, Change plan settings (High Performance).

Before doing this, the system was freezing from time to time, whereas afterwards, I don't experience this problem...

 

hey all its here, and this is my first post from it and all i can say is OMFG seriously,,,,pictures do it no justice.

more later

 

Just got my new 1730 in a few days ago, so far ive had decent results with most games, but my performence in crysis in insanly bad and waswondeing if anyoen else had this issues with their 1730. im getting around 5-20fps with everything on the lowest settins and resolutions.

my specs are:
vista-32
sli 8700m gt
2.4cpu
4gbs ram
169.09 drivers (also tried 169.04 still just as bad)

 

Hi Raijing, is there a difference when you use DX9 over DX10?

 

Oh i should of mentioned that, with dx9 I was getting around 20fps running around, and around 5-10 with enemies. dx10 with even worse with fps topping at 10fps.

I tried cleaning out my drivers and tweaking performce how zergworld mentioned and ran 3dmark06, just go a score of 9074. going to try crysis again.

 

I installed the drivers and in the NVIDIA control panel, there is no where to change the 3d settings, the global settings or the settings for each game, and the counter strike source stress test runs buggy but the game runs better than it did before

 

Dont worry, accidentally set it to standard mode lol

 

well - mine arrived - it didnt come with an LG panel as I had specified all the way thu the order process - so im going to put in a request to change that - and ofc it needs to be reformatted and repartitioned e.t.c, i'll post back when it's all been done - i'll post up some proper pics tonight hopefully.

 

My reoder from last Tuesday has moved into production. I had reordered with the Dell Wireless n card instead of the Intel one in order to speed up the process.

Seems like delivery will be before December so Dell really need to make a move before Mid December regarding the 8800M otherwise I may order an Alienware instead.

 

It seems like useing driver sweep and Ccleaner, alonge ith some chnages in Ntune, finally got crysis to run decently on medium settings, still useing 1024x768 with no AA seems pretty lame for a 4500$ laptop, hopefully 8800m will come out soon and I can re order.

Ive noticed my screen in the LG model, what is the difference between this and the other models? I know some people have mentioned bleeding, what exectly does that mean? I have noticed that in certain games the colors seems over saturated and overly vibrent (team fortress 2, WoW are very noticeble) I had a m1710 before i traded up for the 1730 and those games looked fine (also had the LG model screen) should I get my screen replaced? or ask for the sharp/samsung models? or do all the 1730s looks liek this?

 

According to Alienware Sales the 15 inches model should come out with 8800M next week but the 17 inches one with SLI should be available only in January due limited availability of the components (SLI means twice as many card necessary, and the panels also create difficulties).

They do not grant any kind of discount over the phone but they have the same return policy as Dell.

Their technical support is not on-site. Instead they arrange pick-up service and you have to wait for it to be repaired and returned to you, which can be annoying.

The US prices for a config with extreme processor, 8800M SLI, Bluray, Medium-Sized Raid0 and Wireless n was around 5500 USD, which means 4900 EUR using the current exchange rate of 1,12 used by Alienware.

With Dell I would be able to get the same system for my currently discounted price of 3200 EUR+1000 EUR max for the 8800M SLI, or 4200 EUR.

Undiscounted both will have similar prices, but the Dell discount means I would pay 700 EUR more with Alienware only for the cooler design, adaptor free S/PDIF connectivity and better Audio (192Khz instead of 96Khz).

Tough call really.

 

No. It is usually best to have a good color saturation and high contrast cause you can still reduce it via the display controller. It doesn't work the other way round.

Keep your beautiful screen and reduce color saturation in the display settings to your liking.

 

Can you find out the part number for the wireless N card puremind, I want to order it for my machine, and dell keep telling me it isnt compatible - Thanks.

 

First (?) official test of the 8800MGTX.
http://www.notebookjournal.de/tests/375/3

You can use Google langage tools to translate the page.

Crysis finally fluid at 1600x1200, medium shadows and High/Very High rest. And this is on a single GPU.

The SLI should allow to increase shadows to High. Cybersystems are the first to launch the 8800M GTX in Germany (they are launch partner of Nvidia in that country).

 

Part number:
555-11197

Name:
Dell™ Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini-PCI Card EUR(FOR CORE 2 EXTREME)


I asked my account manager extra if the Dell Wireless n implementation would be compatible and he said this won't be a problem.

 

cool - thanks for that.

 

I have just cancelled my order. I decided that I needed my money until January (I am travelling to Hong Kong) and if I cancel later I will need to wait until the end of January to get my money back (I paid with Amex, so it is always the following month).

I will just reorder when the 8800M comes out in January. Dell or Alienware will depend on the actual price difference between Dell and Alienware. I am prepared to pay more for Alienware, though not inconsiderably more...

Since I have a new company laptop with 2,4Gz and 4GB DDRAM, I think I can survive for the next 6 weeks.

What made my decision is the incredible benchmarks of the 8800M. I didn't think a single 8800M could outclass an 8700 SLI by so much (between 15% and 45% more FPS) depending on the game! The 8800M SLI will be incredible.

 

It has been translated. Look in the Gaming and Hardware thread of this forum.

 

That's crazy for them to give the exchange rate at 1.12!!! It's 1.48 (as of today) and this should be reflected in the prices. What's to stop me from ordering from the US site and getting it delivered to Ireland?

Also where has Dell said that 512+512 8800M will cost €1000? (I know this is the case with Alienware but not necessarily Dell), also the starting price for a Dell M1730 at the moment is €2399 in Ireland so even with, lets say €800 (an overestimate IMHO) to upgrade from 256+256 8700M to 512+512 8800M, that still rings in around the €3200 mark. Which isn't a bad price for what you'd get - alot of GPU

Co-incidentally or not! If a M1730 with 512+512 8800M came out, and I was correct in my guess-ta-ma-tion it would put it back at the original launch price!


72oo

 

Sorry guys, I just received the 1730 today, I like it!
But... is there a way to turn off the lights on the upper part and in the front (and touchpad as well)????

I have 10 days to send everything back, what should I do?
I mean, is there any chance that I'll be able to upgrade the 1730 with 8800m later on?

Every help/suggestion will be more than appreciate;

Thanks in advance,

 

For me the 1000 EUR bring my back to the original price of my config, but then the German prices are 100-200 EUR higher than the Irish ones.

For Germany I think 950 EUR is more like it. 1024 of GDR3 RAM is very expensive...

The exchange rate of Dell is also not 1,4.

This is because many of the parts do not come from the US and trades with Asia are not labelled in USD. So we don't benefit from the current Dollar weakness so much.

 

Blimey 180 pages long...even i cant read that lot!!!

Ok this is a very quick summary from someone who has owned the 1710 and 1730.....

Dell customer service...1st class with me...

Ordered the 1710 month before the 1730 was coming out as i didnt know.....When the 1710 was 2 weeks old the 1730 came out and i was gutted.....Dell agreed to take back my 1710 outside the 7 working days cooling period if i paid in full for the 1730 (1710 on year credit).

I agreed to this and waited 5 weeks for the 1730 to turn up.

How dissapointed am i that this laptop just didnt cut the mustard for me.....I must have spent hours on the phone to dell about all manor of things...

8700 sli just never really impressed me to be honest......on battery the whole system was soooooo slow and crawling with every setting tried.......programmes on battery and mains kept continually crashing or stateing programme not responding and the worse part was blu-ray.

I specifically made sure when i ordered blu-ray that it came with the panasonic uj-220 drive and that my spec T7500 , 2 gb ram , 8700 sli , 250 gb hdd etc would be good enough to run blu-ray which i was informed was ample.....i stated that i wanted it for commuting to watch half hour movies here and there and appreciated that battery life would be bad but was informed that it would be no problem.....I have seen bd and hdd on laptops running on laptop battery nd although they only last between 30 to 60 minutes thats cool with me....
I also asked to make sure that my laptop was tested before being shipped to make sure all working ok....

Blu-ray disc casino royale on laptop in mains




And tested laptop running on fully charged battery including high performance setting and forcing cpu to run at 100%




So basically after 5 disapointing days the laptop has gone back again and i have now received a full refund which will be going on a m17x in january....

 

Quick update...from a couple of pages back.

Factory restore worked...but 169.09 drivers still would not install properly at first (blank screen following reboot after enabling SLI).

Somehow got them working in SLI again - think I install 169.04 first, then uninstalled and switched to 169.09...but 3dmark once again froze...this time on the second loop on the loading screen of the first CPU test.

Upon reboot...blank screen hang after scrolling bar...once again .

Finally found out that If I start the machine up using battery power only, vista will boot ok everytime, then I can switch on at the mains to get full performance.

However, 169.09 drivers remain very unstable with 3dmark.

Have now switched the desktop theme to "windows classic" instead of "vista"
to make sure no fancy graphical routines are running in the background during 3dmark.

Have a feeling the lockups may be something to do with the altering of resolutions in between the tests.

Will report back again later!

 

3dmark06 score of 9144! Did you play around with the benchmark settings or OC the graphics card? I am overclocking my CPU (not graphics card), and I get 8881

 

Hello again Z.

Dare I say it, but my decision to alter the desktop theme from "windows vista" to "windows classic" appears to be paying dividends....now at just over the 2 hour mark in the 3dmark loops with 169.09s - was struggling to complete even 1 complete loop before - hope it lasts.

Didn't you say you'd disabled a number of background tasks?

 

Yes, from msconfig / Startup, lots of unnecessary startup cruft, such as

* Adobe Acrobat
* GrooveMonitor Utility
* Macrovision FLEXnet Connect
* NVHotkey
* NVIDIA Media Center Library
* nwiz
* Cyberlink PowerCinema
* QuickTime
* Creative Updreg
* Windows Defender
* Quickset

From the Services tab,


* DFS Replication
* DSBrokerService
* Google Updater Service
* Microsoft Office Groove Audit Service
* Offline Files
* Parental Controls
* ReadyBoost
* Roxio Hard Drive Watcher 9
* RoxMediaDB9
* Windows Defender
* Windows Firewall
* All the Windows Media Center stuff
* Windows Search

 

Hello everyone... I have been catching up with the posts in this thread for the last few weeks (Finally at page 180). I ordered my M1730 on Nov 18th and immediately it went "In Production" with a delivery date of Dec 14th. Now to sit back and wait for a month (minus a few days). Looking forward to working with you all trying to get these notebooks up to par.

 

Greetings BJT!

I wish you the very best of luck with your system and hope you've found a few useful pointers on these pages in the...unlikely event of any problems!

As stated above, in regard to SLI stability, one thing which has certainly made a difference in my case - for 3dmark, and hence I would assume for other demanding apps and games - was altering the desktop theme to "classic desktop".

At the moment it seems Nvidia's drivers are having issues when running Vista's elaborate graphical routines in the background simultainiously with high priority 3d applications.

 

Are most of the failures talked about in this thread crashing (with DMP files) or BSOD?

 

It seems to vary.

From what I can tell most of the difficulties dicussed have less to do with random crashes/BSODs etc and revolve more around poor or unstable performance in gaming and to a lesser degree, in general use.

I've seen many people complaining that their 3dmark scores are lower than expected, that enabling/disabling SLI makes no difference etc. Quite a few appear to have had supposedly faulty hardware replaced, though their original problems have subsequently remained, leading me to suspect it's nearly all software/driver related.

I emphasise these are assumptions based on much speed reading and hence could be wildly inaccurate!

 

i just dont get it........ why does dell release product before it even works? My original m1710 Had problems 24/7 One that really pissed me off was the Light FX Visualizer

Whenever i use the LightFX visualizer (quickset gaming options enable lightfx visualizer plugin> audio player, Light fx plugin 3) The audio distors with the lights

I was told by dell support that this was because the lights were not made originally to be changed at such a high rate and couldnt handle that much data, I was told the issue was 100% resolved in the m1730 as they obviously knew of the plugins existence. But it was not, Not at all. Still remains crackly and distorted. How can someone test something like this and not notice something so obvious>?

Arent drivers.... idk the MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN SOMETHING ACTUALLY WORKING! How can dell be selling something for 2700$ that doesnt even have proper drivers yet, I bet that one desktop 8700 GT would rape the SLI setup in the m1730, In my experience the only game that runs on all high settings has been CSS and thats an old, not very intensive game.