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

I just found out how much I think about my laptop (pretty scary)
I dreamed that I got 10460 pts. in 3dmark06 And I was so hyped to go and post it here!
Imagine my dismay when I woke
But pretty funny though.

 

Yeah 25 min...

So, the technician has come, has swapped the screen for a Vesa one that looks horrible, specially on dark colors... He also tried to fix the wobbling but said that its not fixable unless the base is exchanged, and because im not in the mood for exchanging parts on a 2 day old computer he has called xps support and has told them to do a replacement... they are looking into it, so i should see what happens next...

Im gonna attach some pictures of the new screen... The square you see in the middle is no reflection of the camera or else, its as if the screen had less light...

 

Hi all,

This is my 1st post on these forums, and tomorrow is a big day, as my M1730 is being delivered in the morning.

Spec's

Dell XPS M1730 (Smoke Gray)
X7900 2.8Ghz
4GB RAM (667Mhz)
2x160GB 7200RPM Raid 0
Dual Nvidia 8700GT 256MB in SLI
AGEIA physics accelerator
Windows Vista Ultimate

In order to get the best performance out of my machine, what do I need to tweak / change / uninstall etc....

What graphic's drivers are proving to be the most reliable / best performers etc, and any important info I need to be aware of ?

I appreciate the answers are in this thread somewhere, but 200+ pages is a little to much for me to browse through

Thanks in advance !

 

I've had mine for about a week now.

Dell XPS M1730 Smoke Gray
X7900 2.8Ghz
4GB RAM (800Mhz) (OCZ DDR2, I didn't want to pay dell $375 for what I could get for $150)
120GB 7200RPM
Pretty much standard from there except I added the onboard bluetooth.

I need to try updating my video drivers again as I think I'm running 164.something

I'll also be adding a Hitachi travelstar 200 gig at some point, maybe 2 of them. The 120 gig is quite small after everything is installed. I think I have like 60 gig free and considering my desktop has over a terabyte free, I feel a little claustrophobic

 

Anyone else Realized that there is literally a 2000$ Diffirence between the WoW edition of our laptop and the Normal edition???

I dont even play wow But that is INSANE!!!!

Whats the diffirence? Other than all the WoW Swag? Matte Finish rather than glossy plastic. The lid is WoW Alliance and horde themed, and it says World of warcraft on the top.....

Hey guys i have some Wet-erase markers that work perfectly on my m1730, Im working on a "mod" that "transforms" Our Portables... Pictures to be posted soon.

 

That's rediculous! It's not even a current game...

Maybe if they release a Crysis version that got 60fps on the native res plus everything on high they might have a leg to stand on but WoW? you gotta be jokin!

 

I just priced the specs of mine, which I bought in October, with wow offering on US web site:

T7700, 2GB RAM, 2x200 7200 rpm RAID 0, no Blu-Ray (just basic CD/DVD burner), AGEIA PhysX card, 512 MB nVidia 8700M GT Sli, wireless a/g/n card, built-in Bluetooth, Vista Home Premium (today only Vista Ultimate is available).

The price: $4969 US + tax. I paid $3069 US + 6% tax. That is REALLY mind boggling. Does anyone know what is happening here?

 

Ok. over a month after order I have finally been moved from the "Production" stage (Boxing-stage) to the "Shipping" stage.

Order Date 11/2/07
Shipping Date 12/5/07
Estimated Delivery Date "DHL" 12/6/07 (least they could do for all the delay)


Dell XPS m1730
17" WUXGA TrueLife Technology panel -LCD = ?
Intel Core 2 Duo X7900 Extreme 2,8Ghz
DUAL nVidia GeForce 8700m GT SLI 512mb
4GB DDR2 667 Mhz
120GB 7200RPM
3 year warranty (Hey.. It was free)
Ageia PhysX 100M Card
Bluetooth built in
3dmark06: ?

for over 4k computer and 4 delays I have cut them so much slack.. But if I get one with defects I will send that thing back faster than you can say Dell-Hell... But I am seriously wanting it to be everything I have hyped it up in my mind to be (Anticipation sucks)

 

Got mine yesterday, well actually I just got home yesterday from Iraq. It has been at my house for a week.

2.8GHZ @ 3.0
4GB RAM
400GB RAID 0 @ 7200RPM

Have 169.13 loaded up and Riva tuner clocking a 9789 on 3DMARK 06 with nothing really turned off in processes. I'm loving it so far

 

Bloody hell, 9789 off the bat!!! Well done, now I'm starting to feel inadequate...

 

What I'm waiting for...
XPS M1730...

Don't hold your breath waiting on Dell to deliver on time. I ordered the M1730
on Nov 7, was supposed to ship Nov 26. No such luck. Called and was
promised delivery no later than Dec 3. No such luck. They wanted to
delay again until Dec 9...and who knows after that. I'm totally dissatisfied
with their support "promises". I cancelled the order and will go with AlienWare.

Best of luck to all.

 

I got it from MS today. Signed up for it about 4 hours ago, just got it.
It makes a huge difference. It's pretty obvious that starvation was occurring. Before, your framerate would drop a little bit and when it was coming back up, games would stutter. Now, the framerate might drop a little, but no more stuttering and then it's back up at the top within a split second.

Here's the hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945149
And the description from MS:
A graphics processing unit (GPU) or part of a GPU link may incur a small scheduling latency on a new Direct Memory Access (DMA) packet. This is true if the DMA packet is submitted to the GPU that has previously run out of work and if another GPU in the linked configuration is very busy. In some scenarios, significant starvation of one or more GPUs in the linked configuration reduces the expected performance of an application.

 

Hi guys this is my first post here!

Hey man where did you get 169.13 in zip format and customized inf file??

Can you attach it here? I will appreciate it a lot...

byz

 

How long does it take for the technical support to make a new replacement order?? They said a max of 24h will be taken to reach a conclusion and it has been allready 18 and no call..

 

heh quote self

I contacted dell about a possible discount for the existing order, thought my chances where slim and they'd give me a 'sorry its too late'. I'm really happy to say they are refunding me about $350 from my order for the defence force discount =0

Thanks a lot for telling me about defence discounts!

 

Hey guys let me give you some insight as to why The WoW Edition of the laptop is so much more........


BECAUSE IT CAN BE!!, It comes with a golden ticket, A BETA CARD to WoW, Meaning you get the expansion that isnt out yet, months before release. That alone some people would pay that premium for. Plus you get a "full size print of your In-Game Character".. << crazy.

And you get a backpack filled with every WoW item ever known to man, the full game, pre-installed all patches etc, stratagey guides, the books, the soundtrack, And u have a little LCD showing useless stat info.

thats pretty much it, Seriously i bet anyone that would buy this is reading the description, thinking wow this is a bad deal, Then Sees BETA CARD free with purchase. And proceed to Crap their pants and order immediately regardless of specs or price. Not saying WoW wont run fast as the devil on the m1730, But Making a WoW Laptop is like making a laptop for Snood When it comes to graphics, You most likely could barely tell the Diffirence between Wow on the 1720 or m1730 and no diffirence at all between the m1730 and m1710, Its just not a graphical game.

I just cannot beleive the premium they are charging for all the WoW Swag.... 4500 Starting Vs 2700 ... Wow WoW.

Anyone else notice the addition of the 2.6ghz option?

 

I got mine 3 days early.

How: Get the sales guy on chat. Tell him you want a "priority" order, put the order through, give him the order ref. Mine was ETA'd 6th, I got it on the 3rd.

 

I know what you mean.. I was one more day away from cancelling the order myself. They did offer me a few promises. But they threw in a 3yr warranty and free next day shipping for their screw up. And I have the tracking numbers now so atleast DHL say's it's in the mail now.

Oh btw.. I have two tracking numbers.. one listed as 23 lbs and one listed as 1lb. The 23 lbs (Laptop) is enroute from a different DHL facility with a delivery date of 12/6/07 and the 1 lb item is enroute from another DHL facility in a different state with a 3-5 day day delivery.. Doesnt make much sense.. What's the 1 lb item? My $200.00 gift card I hope..

 

If you do not want to wait for your M1730, ultrahighendcomputers has them in stock on eBay. I ordered mine and got it the NEXT DAY and it is perfect!

Does anyone know where I can find an additional power supply? I need one for the office so I do not need to lug with me too! What is everyone using as a case for this Beast?

Other than is being so big, this is the best I have owned

 

Aren't they second-hand?

 

Has anyone else upgraded to Vista 64-bit? Where can I find all the original dell software and drivers for 64-bit? On Dell's site when I put in my model and choose 64-bit there are SOME drivers, but not even nvidia drivers for the vid cards, let alone anything else important.

Anyone have any suggestions or links to drivers for 64bit?

 

Why would you think they are second hand. No where does it say anything except that are new and sealed from the factory. My M1730 was new and sealed by Dell. I looked VERY carefully and it was sealed only with the original security tape. Opened it up and all is just as it left the factory. Took me about 2 minutes to do the warranty transfer with Dell reporting it wnt perfectly.

What I like is I purchased one day and got it the next! This guy has excellent feedback. The only thing that is second hand is waiting for weeks for the M1730 when you can have it tomm and pay much less! The 2.8MHz Extreme Processor is FAST!

 

That is good and dandy when you don't have any issues. If something were to happen, I would MUCH rather deal with Dell than some ebay seller, IMO. You are talking about thousands of dollars and I know Dell would bend over backwards if you had any type of problem. Can't say the same from ebay sellers (don't care about how much feedback they have because I have had problems before from powersellers with tons of + feedback).

 

I know there are drawbacks but you DO have the full warranty to fall back on. The seller also said that he would replace the unit instantly upon the return of the defective unit. That is way better than Dell can do.

I am on my 5th day waiting on Dell to pick up a DOA M1330. I can even get them to email or call back. I backed the charge off my credit card so that they WILL call me. Is sits waiting on UPS to pick it up for the 5th day. No telling how long before they put the money back in my account. I just hurried the process!

I have spent days talking to peopl in their India located service department and they simply can not help.

 

Has anyone managed to use the line in??

I remember that with my precision m90 when i plugged my ipod in the line in connector, the music would sound throught the speakers without the need of using itunes or connect throught usb... but whne i try in the xps the music wont sound...

 

I tried, the metre in the sound settings moves while I have music playing but no sound comes out, I think you may need to open an application that uses a microphone so the sound can come through

 

Just to let you know even if you buy from ultrahighend or another reseller, dell can refund his or her original payment and you can work out the refund with the ebay seller. You dont call the ebay seller for tech support, its still a dell computer.

 

Ok.. I got it finally.. I have the SEC5443 LCD.. minor bleed nothing super..

in the process of loading the software and extras . First thing I did was try GRAW2 and see if I could run it on max settings... I could max everything out except for the textures.. it would not let me adjust them over 'low'.. strange.. Anyone else have this?.. Haven't tried anyother games as all the other ones ran great on my old XPS Gen2 so doubt I would have a problem with them.. Gotta say the only thing I'm concerned about is the power adapter, seems like the connector to the back of the laptop is a little loose moving the laptop causes it to blink in and out of battery mode.
Downloading the Nvidia Drivers and 3Dmark06 now.. Havent O'C the processor yet..

 

I tried opening the audio setup for msn messenger, and i see the microphone bar moving from green to yellow, meaning there is sound coming in, but it doesnt come out of the speakers.... Also another thing... isnt it possible to set up the computer in this way that the sound will go out from the front speakers and attach a hifi in teh headphone jack and use them as rear speakers?

 

Have you tried to use the microphone which is fitted with the web camera? See if you can get any sound to somebody over the net. If this mic does not work you might want to reinstall the Sigmatel driver. I ended up calling tech support and this is what they told me to do. They also had me reinstall Intel driver and Mobile Chipset driver over the existing ones. Which one was at fault is hard to tell but this cured the problem.
I only noticed the problem with nearly dead camera microphone (barely audible sound coming through). I have not tried the line-in yet, though.

Also, in Control Panel -> Sound -> Playback: Speakers/Headphones should have a green check sign next to it.
And Sound -> Recording: Microphone/Line In should have check sign when plugged in. If not plugged in than Microphone Array should show check.

You can try to record something and see if it plays back through the speakers.

Also see: Control Panel -> Speech Recognition Options -> Set up microphone -> Set up Microphone Wizard

 

hey does any one know how too get the (SPDIF Out) adaptor to work with music so i can hear my music in surround sound on my spealers. it works when i click test and i can get dinging sounds to come out but how to i get music to play through the SPDIF Output. also when i'm listen to my music through the built in speakers i get random crackling is this the driver and is anyone else having this problem.
thanks in advance, these laptops rule

 

Here is one for the books.. I have a dell 9300 XP with Intel 2.0ghz 256mb Video card, two yr. next day warranty plus all the other toys.. I got it on Nov 6 2005... On Nov 4th 2007 my 9300 just stopped turning on. Dell fumbled the ball on fixing it and after 16 days they surprised me with a replacement... A 1730 2.2ghz Intel..and a 120gb hard drive Vista Ultimate.Then the order was cancelled by them.. they reordered me a 2.2 with 200gb hard drive.... cancelled by them again. Then a 2.4 GHz with 200gb and two batteries and Bluetooth. After 1 month and 2 cancellations later this one will be delivered on Friday Dec, 7th before 3pm. I just have to send them the 9300 back which is in 19 pieces. This is why I deal with dell, they will get it done.. Eventually. The Letters are written...

 

I tried my best to follow that, but since im in XP, and apparently thats just for vista, there is no much for me to do.

Thanks a lot, rep owned!

 

I see from Dells norwegian sites that you can deselect the Aegis PhysX card and save 200 usd. Is there any point to this card at all?

That makes other upgrades affordable and as far as I can read, this card really doesnt make it worth the money?

 

What if the world ends!?!

As far as Dell bending over backwards, that IS a joke!

Ebay CAN be a dangerous place for newbies!

 

Yes, this was for Vista. Well, the only thing left to do is to call technical support people if you haven't done it yet , I guess.

 

Hey - what is a typical 3DMark06 score with SLI turned on for these laptops?
In 3DMark05 - with SLI turned on I get around 13500... in PCMark05 I get around 5500... this seems a bit low to me... but it is a laptop.

EDIT: I reran PCMark05 and now have 7549 (now that I have all drivers installed)

I'm running Vista x64 - 4gig of OCZ memory (just came yesterday) and am using the nvidia 169.13 drivers from laptopvideo2go.com... I ran 3DMark06 last night and when I got up this morning I couldn't believe my eyes when it says I had 10937!!! Is this normal?? I can't even run 06 on my desktop - OpenAL craps out and the program crashes...

I haven't overclocked jack crap - I just finally found all the x64 drivers for everything. Was this a fluke - I didn't have time to run it again before work... I guess the reason I'm asking is, that seems like a really good score in my mind. However, when I play Crysis with either DX9 or DX10 - I can pretty much only play 1920x1200 with LOW specs and even then only get 20fps... Lowering the resolution made almost NO difference down to 1280x800 - still around 20fps... I'm baffled.

On my desktop which is a 8800gtx single setup - I can play Crysis at 1920x1200 with medium settings and get 45fps - high settings I get around 30-35fps... but since I don't see too much of a diff between medium and high - I usually stick with medium. But I do like the water effect of the high setting

Anyone have some feedback about this 06 score? Is there a way to post the score so people can see it? Or is that not needed - is this laptop just that awesome and everyone has that already? Did I wet myself for no reason? I sure was happy with that score - but I'd like my games to show it too

 

Sorry you had a bad experience with Dell, but it is NOT a joke. I have had entire systems a couple years old replaced with new systems.

Have also had problems with my 1330 and have been upgraded BIG TIME.

No joking or kidding there....

 

Yes Dell is desperate as they actually offered me $400 plus a $100 cupon to keep my M1330!

I am lucky as my M1730 has operated without flaw!

 

OK I just re-ran 3dmark06 at lunch and got 11380!? What the heck? Isn't that pretty darn good?

 

Yeah...Dell offered a $200 gift certificate after the first delay,
then another $100 rebate after the second delay. It still rubs me
the wrong way...all these "extras" must be claimed after shippment
of the pc, and they have restrictions about how soon they must
be claimed and used. It's all a ploy on Dell's part I'm sure...hoping they
will never be claimed.

 

Please enlighten us on how you achieved this...

 

Maybe he did that at 1024x768... as it seems toooo much for this laptop at 1280x1024...

 

I'll check setting when I get home - I just installed and ran it - no settings changed...

What should I put the settings at??

 

1280x1024 is the resolution every one else is running it at

 

So I'm guessing everyone's M1730 has the unstable base?

 

Mine had the unstable base. I took the battery out and found that the base is stable on the three corners and it is the battery leg that is too tall. They replaced the batter and that did the trick.

If this is a trend item, they need to look at the height of the battery rubber leg and adjust it.

 

Crysis doesn't support SLI right now. It is said that it will when the patch is out. I don't know when that will be. I had to turn the rez down quite a bit, but at medium setting in DX10 the shoreline still looked good.

 

There are only a few games that support it, but the list is growing. If you don't play those games and/or don't want the extra eye candy it is a hard sell.

Here is the current list of titles: http://www.ageia.com/physx/titles.html

 

Well that's just unacceptable...people cannot game properly on an unstable base...