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

You'll be very happy once you have SLI Working properly, after my 3 days of hassle with them I had a smile from ear to ear lol

 

^^^
Just want it all working proper, since Im picking up Gears, UT3, Company of Heroes and NFS Most Wanted after work!!

 

Wicked, I want Gears of War just so I can play system link with my xbox 360.. Haven't touched the thing since I got this laptop lol...

Get the UT3 Benchmarking tool as well, quite useful, then we can benchmark our results so we at least i know if mine is performing as it should...

 

Is there a way we can Copy the DVD game on to the Hardrive
so we dont have to Carry around 4/5 DVD games

Cos i travel alot

 

Sorry dual post

 

You can compensate the heat with having a fan control program like the i8kFanGui to tell at which temps the fans should be on full blast and so on.

 

Thank you for that Magnus,

and LordVader, get 'Alcohol 120' if you want to do that.. It allows you to create an Image file of the Disc, and creates a Virtual drive, then you mount the Image to the Virtual Drive and it acts like it has the CD in... it may take some getting used to to use the program though...

 

With 167.51 Drivers, here is what I have for COH opposing front perfromance


and these are the settings


Probably can tweak the settings for better performance but it is defintely playable at these settings

 

^^
I thought it could have been played with all settings on high?

 

I just got that i8lfangui program and it's great being able to control the fans...

Changing it with nvidia didn't do anything... but one question, Why is this program telling me my GPU temps are 48 and nvidia is telling me it's 62, I set the fans to kick in at 65 (Full) and slow between 50 and 65 and they won't kick in because apparently the GPU temps are below that.. which one is wrong?

 

Terrain detail will make a big difference i think, and surely you could get better than that...

in Nvidia 3d management set to "Performance mode" I don't really see much difference in graphics but it makes a biiiig difference to FPS. and still looks good...

With UT3 at 1900x1200 with details on medium Im maxing out around 130 fps or higher, Vsync makes a massive difference too...

(Looks amazing still in performance mode at 1900x1200 and runs smooth)

 

unless CoH is more hard core resource wise than UT3?

 

Here is some COD4 data with 167.51 drivers
Settings


Multiplayer game play with FRAPS; 50 players

 

You will probably get better performance than me I only have the 2.2 processor and 1 HD at 7200rpm

The perfromce test was a video I am going to play around and see FPS with FRAPS

 

does the game run on SLI?

Plan to get it, and Crysis as soon as my gift cards from Circuitcity gets here.

 

Install ATItool, and check the temp there, then try to match the temp to I8kfans to monitor them all the time.

If I remember right, ATItool's temps should be the same as I8kfan's w/o modifying I8kfan settings(some system do require changing settings).

My cpu tems are in 4-50C in idle, and GPU was about 10C more.

 

Yes COD4 runs in SLi. I confrimed with SLi visual indicator setting in NV control panel.

I have Crysis but have been less than impressed with its performance. They have a patch now so I am going to try it again but it was really bad compared to COD4

 

Crysis demo runs pretty fine with my M90 (has 7900GTX 512MB) @ 1200x800,
settings tweaked ranges most in high some low(like shadow/grass i think), but I know the M1730 will struggle bad if it's still running on a single card.

 

You have to set a 8 offset to i8kfangui, or maybe ten. The temp that nvidia cpl shows is the correct one.

 

It depends on what system you are running.

E1705/M1710/M90 used to offset 8C, but you don't have to offset anymore due to Nvidia's driver update.

All you have to do is cross reference it vs ATITool.

 

Anyone else get the BSOD and an "Internal Power Error" ? Not sure whats causing it, I haven't updated any drivers since receiving the 1730, and have Vista 32.

 

Anyone else here have the dual 320 gig HD configuration?

On my first laptop - both HD's would make a loud clicking noise at random times - using it or idle - POP... thing would continue just fine, no lockups or anything... but everytime I booted it told me it could not find a bootable device, and I'd have to hit F1 to try again and then it would boot up. Dell told me to restore - did restore - no fix.

New laptop - only one hard drive makes a noise - and three times in one week now it has gone from the windows desktop straight to the RAID BIOS screen telling me the array has failed and one of my HD's is missing. If I reboot, it does the F1 - can't find a boot device error over and over, no resolve. Powering it off, then back on fixes the problem.

The hard drives in the new system don't seem to pop like the old one, but I have heard the noise a few times now... just not every hour like the old ones.

Are there problems with the 320 gig drives? Should I submit an RMA on the drives? Has anyone else had this problem and have dual 320 gig drives?

TIA!

 

Are you running off of battery power - if so the M1730 runs crap on battery, switch to the mains asap!

You may have Hitachi drives, they are known to be pretty loud with the clicks etc....it shouldnt fail the RAID array though. Do you have the RAID drivers installed? Were they installed when you installed Vista etc as well?

I had the same issue when I had a non-RAID setup - one of my discs would vanish and I would have to rescan for new devices in device manager to find it every time I boot. I went back to RAID and its been fine since.

Check your RAID drivers since it sounds like the controller is playing up. If its not that, I'd contact Dell. Your controller may be faulty....

 

Hey SecuritySteve - Thanks man!! You know that big smile you was talking about? I have it now!!

I reinstalled my video drivers (stuck with 167.45) by this time using Driver Cleaner in safe mode - it actually found lots of crap in the registry and in the windows folder etc. Once they had gone I reboot and installed the drivers again, and (touch wood) its been stable since - no lock ups etc at all, and UT3 ran fine as well!

Just bought Gears, gonna backup my system then try that later

 

ifti - I'm not using the battery, it's always plugged in. Not sure what could be causing it, or if it is even power source related - of course nothing shows up on the microsoft online support search.

 

I would back up, and format the drive. If you the error again, it's hardware I think.

 

Can anyone help me fix my microphone with my 1730? OS: vista.

I sound like a robot, or an old guy with a very deep voice. Can't seem to figure out why I sound like this.

any suggestions?

 

Ifti, as far I can say from weeks of testing with many problems activating SLI mode, the best drivers are 169.04. Many people have these issues, please try 169.04 drivers.

 

I had a similar problem and called Dell. Was told to reinstall Audio and Chipset drivers. I was also told not to uninstall the drivers first, just reinstall the ones from Dell website over the existing drivers. This helped and since then the microphone is fine.

 

Ar ethey supposed to be better then 167.45? Also do they support Blu-Ray?? My main reason for going with Dell was to not lose the BD Movie playback ability....

 

Sorry I don't know because I haven't B-R. But for SLI Stabilty is the best version, two weeks without crashes.

 

Since Ive cleanly reinstalled my drivers, Ive not had any crashes etc (touch wood!). I need drivers that have BD support as well since I have the Blu-Ray drive.
Im installing Gears of War as I write this, if that runs well, Im happy

 

What do you guys do for system cooling? Do you just use the stick fans within the unit, or do you have a seperate notebook cooler??

I was thinking of getting the Zalman Silent Notebook Cooler - just to use when gaming - do you think its necessary?

 

Notebook coolers rarely really helps.

Just make sure you don't block the air way, and raising back end from furface helps out also.

I use I8kfan to monitor temps, and as far as I know, the system runs pretty cool compared to other systems I have.

 

What's about this? http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_notebook_167.51.html

It says:

I didn't try it yet, but sounds great.

PD. For increase the cooling, I only raise the back of laptop with a pencil or something similar, that increases the air flow.

 

I have been running them since about noon yesterday. So far rock solid and performance has been very close to version 167.45. They have pretty good release notes with the driver.

I did notice my idle temp is up about 10C (63C-65C)over previous version but it never has gone past (78C) during gameplay

 

^^^
Can anyone confirm if they allow BD Movie playback?

 

Sorry ifti, I don't have Blu-ray but page 6 of the release notes indicate an issue with a particular Blu-ray playback software and hibernation which would lead me to believe 167.51 does support Blu-ray.

"• GeForce 8700M GT: Cyberlink Powercinema may stop responding after resuming
from Hibernate mode during Blu‐ray disc playback on the LVDS.[374783]" *From release notes

 

Im still getting crappy game playback with my system. The UT3 demo plays back smooth and fine with all settings on max. Today I installed Gears of War, and when I run it, as soon as the game starts its first video in the campaign, the game just crashes and returns to Windows.

Ive given up, Im gonna use the machine as a high end development machine, and leave gaming to my XBox 360!

If I hadnt of got the machine for free I would have got a refund rather then put up with all this messing about!

 

Yes, it does.

 

For me, the most important thing is stability. I dont care whether games run smooth or not, since I prefer to play games on a console so I dont have to bother check system requirements and changing settings etc before I play! Personally, I think Dell has a great system here - I love it. But the driver support is absolutely rubbish. I may try the Nvidia ones mentioned above tonight, and hopefully they will be stable.....

Has anyone tried these....
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_notebook_167.51.html

I dont tend to install Beta stuff, but Im very tempted! Whats the stability been like?

 

hmm are you sure about the ones in the nvidia cpi being correct because i used that program and set my fans to high and left it for about ten minutes ant the temps in nvidia cpi only went down 2 degrees but they felt alot colder and the temp in i8kfangui change a bit more cant remeber the value.

 

Hi all, here is some info. that will adresse:

* Black screen @ vista logon using all drivers apart from (156.61, 169.04 and 167.51) running on AC power with Sharp and Samsung displays.


DELL is sending a tech guy to replace the 8700M GT card and display, today. This post will be updated later.

 

Any more updates?
I may try this driver tonight and see how it runs.
has it still been stable etc?

 

I have had the same problem, definitely post the results as I have had no luck with Dell support, getting them to concede or admit a hardware problem.
How did you get them to come around? Their default answer to me is always go back to 156.61 drivers and wait.

This driver has been stable since installation. As noted above with other drivers I had lock-ups and crashes(during game play) along with BSOD on cold boot(every time) unless I booted on battery. I have now cold booted about 15 times and not one BSOD.

 

LOL - That's how I'm using this machine... BTW, what kind of dev do you do?

 

What about gameplay? Is the driver any more stable with gameplay?
I hope its just stable in Vista itself - thats the main thing!

I used to use Director, but Im learning Flash at the moment.....well Im gonna start learning it soon.... as soon as the bloody laptop is stable enough not to crash and lose any work!

 

That is a bug with the game, happens on many systems including desktops. Have a look at Gear of War official forums - the game has many problems, including this crash and losing saves every so often.

 

Keep us posted. I have exactly the same issue, calling Dell they said me that use the unofficial 169.04 until they release a new driver.

 

What is this issue then? The screen just goes black at boot?