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

I am using Rivatuner to monitor GPU temp. It gives me the same reading for both GPUs. There have been discussions, I think in this thread about if it was reading both correctly. Since I am using the Sli balance bar and both GPUs stay pretty evenly loaded, I am figuring the temps are about the same.
I am only a basic user of Rivatuner, there are probably some experts in the thread or froum that could better comment.

Yes you can set it up to monitor on the LCD so it will display during game play. I use FRAPS also on the LCD, it shows a line graph with the FPS.

Not sure what the safest is, but I am idling at 55-59 degrees C, and gameplay is usually between 74-78 degrees C. With other drivers 169.xx I have been up to 87 degrees C and with 3dMark 06, OC'd GPU my temp got up to 89degrees C.

 

Can you give and overview of your settings? Are you using Dx9 or Dx10 and Vista or XP?

The other big problem I have with this game is most of the time I execute it the mouse overlay is way off. Ususally I have to move the mouse about 1/2inch to the right of my selection for it to highlight. If I change resolution or sometimes when I execute it's okay.
Right now I am running 1280X1024 Dx10 on vista and all settings are at medium and the best FPS I can get is about 20. This is also with patch 1.1

 

Buy your 4GB ram from a third party. You can get 2x2GB sticks for as low as $50 with some merchants. Some name brand stuff might be $100. Just do some googling. Prices have dropped dramatically in the last year.

For example:

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5456279

 

Goto Start/Games (where you see all the solitare etc, there should be a Crysis shortcut-atleast I do). Right click that, and there should be DX9)

I wish I can take screen shot, but eversince I'm using 17x series beta driver, I can't take desktop screen shots.

 

Okay, That did the trick. I will try it and see if things improve, Thanks

 

Here's my Crysis settings @ 1200x800 on DX9.

 

That's a well known bug with Crysis. To have the mouse lined up properly on the Crysis menu screen your display resolution has to be the same as the game's resolution. I am a bit disappointed that it has not been fixed in patch 1.1.

 

is there any difference of the type of ram modules between the m1730 and other notebooks?
im still wondering why it costs 1.6k though.

 

Used these settings at 1280x1024 and getting 40-45 ave fps. Defintely they way to go Thanks. I will play this more now that it is payable.

I went into the game 4 times so far and no problem running under Dx9. Mouse overlay must be Dx10 issue also.

 

texture quality: high
objects quality: high/medium not sure
shadows quality: medium
physics quality: high
shaders quality: medium
volumetric quality: low
game effects: high
postprocessing: high
particles: high
water: low
sound: high
no patch with res 1280x1024 dx9

shadows should be on medium because theres not really much significant difference between high and medium but a really significant impact on performance.

as for shaders it's the most important graphical property i guess and running it on high would be too much for this notebook to handle. medium is just as good imo. with shaders high the ratio between performance and quality is really imbalanced as you will have to tune down the other settings just to be able to support high without lagging.

as for volumetric and water well, thats for the clouds and rivers. a really really big impact on performance so best to keep on low considering that you do not always look at the sky or rivers =/

well that's just my 2 cents correct me if i'm wrong.
i chose this type of settings because it has the overall balance between performance and quality. if anyone wants me to explain what the other settings do i will be glad to help

 

Thanks I will give those a run also.

 

np
ok just went in to test. if i set shaders to high i get 15 fps wheres as medium i get about 30 and if particles set to medium the fps would not drop so much when you get into a firefight

 

nope, it's just an OEM trying to rip you off. 4GB used to be considered premium, but nowadays, it's more mainstream. You should never pay that much, considering that your system won't even use all 4GB if you're running 32bit XP or Vista (you'll probably see somewhere around 3.25 GB)

 

lucky i didnt go for the upgrade then. phew. thanks for the answer.
well, i paid 1.8k for the extreme processor. is it a rip-off?

anyway if anyone wanna know, the crysis patch actually did improve the frame rate. now i can set particles to high without it lagging. object quality at high seems to have quite an impact though.

 

I think Extreme processor is about 4-500 bucks on Ebay.

 

RAM is definitely a commodity nowadays and is easily accessible/upgradeable... just two screws.

I haven't looked into the CPU situation

 

hehe okay thanks

 

How hard would they be to upgrade, and would you be able to overclock them in the bios? thats alot cheaper than dell

 

Not sure about OCing, but it's pretty easy to change CPU's.

FYI, upgrading CPU won't improve alot in gaming.

 

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with my 2.4 for now but always good to know i can upgrade if i feel the need. What i would like to get would be a physics card which i didnt have the money to add it to my initial purchase, where would be the best place to get one of these?

 

I somehow found that if you uncheck fullscreen apply and then check it again the mouse will track properly.

 

The physx card really is the biggest worthless gimmick crap Ive ever seen. Its been available almost 2 years and its still only supports about 15 pc games.

All games don't just suddenly run better or have new features when you have this physx card, the game has to be specially coded for its api of which there is a handful.

It actually makes me laugh how crap this thing is. The UT3 physx levels have to be specially coded buy the mappers (there is only two of them that NO ONE ever plays online.) The biggest physx feature in these levels is you can shoot certain bricks in certain walls and they break. WHOOP DE FRICKING DOO. Oh you can shoot the stain glass window also and it breaks before your eyes. And it doesn't break randomly into however many pieces it breaks the exact same way into the same amount of pieces on every window you shoot. Its so unimpressive and pointless I just do not know what they were thinking.

Seriously you will live without this addition just fine.

I predict Ageia will be dead in 2008 unless someone buys them out and incorporates their api into a cpu/vdu.

tom

 

Lol, i love reading a good rant.
i did some research on the net and i agree with you i do nt like the idea of paying 300 dollars for something which nothing supports i'd rather save my money for an upgrade to some 8800m gtx's give they ever give us that option.
Cheers

 

I agree that the Physics processor doesnt do very much. I thought it came with the bas eunit though? It certainly did when I was ordering.
Dell forgot to put mine in, so they are going to be sending it out to me I think, along with the DVI/HDMI converter. If I wasnt egtting it for nothing anyway, I would have left it altogether!

 

Dell New Zealand its not on the standard one and its 300 extra, dont know if thats the way its always been but i ordered mine at the start of december and it didnt have it

 

In that case I wouldnt bother paying extra for it, I really dont see the point.

 

I just had a call from Dell, telling me they have sent out my Physics Processor, so I should receive it today or tomorrow.
They told me that they will not be sending out a technician if I agreed, to which I did. Id rather do the installation myself then have some techy mess about with anything else. They gave me this option since they said installing the chip is a very simple procedure.
Hopefully they will send me some kind of picture so I know roughly where the chip goes, and then I'll take it from there

 

i think it goes into the right side of the notebook or is that for the remote control?

 

^^^
Nope thats for the remote.

I know its somet really simple, since otherwise they would have sent a techy out. The guy on the phone also said it was really easy.... Im pretty sure you need to open the laptop up to install it, just wondering how much needs to be opened though....

Guess I'll wait to see whether they send me a guide or somet with the unit. Hopefully I'll get it today

 

Does anyone know anything about the 8800m gt and if dell will be putting them in the 1730 anytime soon, or if they will allow exsisting customers an upgrade option, or are we stuck with our 8700s?

 

Thats the million dollar question at the moment, and what we are all asking!

They've made the M1730 graphics card upgradable, and being a 'beast', I dont see how they can not bring the 8800m GTX card to the M1730. I just dont understand whats taking them so long, since other laptops, including Dell owned Alienware, have them now.

The only explanation I can think of is that Dell wants to keep the SLI aspect of the M1730, and are therefore trying to get the 8800 chipsets working properly in SLI etc. I heard a rumour that they had the 8800's working in SLI in the 1730 quite a while ago now, but still no official announcements.

I guess we just continue waiting....

Im pretty sure current owners will have an upgrade option though - way for Dell to make some more money, and especially since the current card is upgradable. How much this option will be is another question altogether.....

 

they have to bring it to the laptop otherwise the m1730 would not sell lol.
does anyone know whether there is any 800 mhz ram for the notebook?

 

I think someone tried some 800mhz RAM, and it still only ran at 667mhz.
Probably a mainboard limitation (A silly limitation if you ask me).
RAM is the only thing holding my system down to a rating of 5 in the Vista Index Rating. Everything else is 5.6 or 5.9.

 

Hi Everyone,
Anyone tried this driver from Laptoptogo?

nVIDIA ForceWare X 171.16 for Windows Vista 32bit


http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17042

 

Nope. I dont change drivers too often, and my current one is running the games Im after (UT3, COD4, C&C3) at high settings anyway. Also I have the Blu Ray drive and most, if not all, the drivers from LV2G arent WHQL certified, hence I wont be able to play back BD Movies.

 

Yep... it's the best driver i have used so far, not one crash unless I have overclocked the card too much. The card overclocks stably significantly more than any other drivers i have tried. I can get it to run at 770/1600/800 probably even higher.

 

171 running here fine also.

And no, 800 ram does not run at 800 unfortunately.....shame cant find a software fsb overclocker...

tom

 

Cheers Fellas,
Will give it a try later tonight, how did you install? Direct or normal?

 

I did it normal way.

Vista cleans up old driver pretty good itself.

 

You can download the service manual from here: http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xpsm1730/en/sm/HTML.zip
Hope this helps....

 

Cheers, I have that manual, but it doesnt say anything about the Ageia processor.
Never Mind, I'll wait and see what the processor comes with and figure it out I guess

 

Hi to all the XPS 1730's community

I am french ( I don't choose don't blame me ) and I have a question about the capability of dell's laptop to be overclock.

Isn't there a possibility to overclock the CPU in the 1730 ?

I have readen it was impossible to O/c dell's CPU but it's really true ?

Thanks for your answers by advance

 

Yes its very easy to overclock the CPU.

All you do is go into the BIOs and you can overclock the CPU from 2.8, to 3.0, 3.2, or 3.4GHz, - all through a simple BIOs setting.

Bear in mind I think only the Extreme 2.8GHz processor is overclockable.

 

Only X7900 is OC'able.

Not sure if all X7900 are OC'able, or does it have to come from Dell though.

 

Arf, I have a T7700 ....

No software can be use for bypass the cpu speed block ?

 

No only extreme CPU is OC'able. Let me know if you find a way though

 

All you have to do is guess where this


can fit..

It has a little conector in the left.

 

i have to say when the fans turn on its darn noisy.
i'm still new to oc'ing the gpu.. i'm guessing i can't oc the cards with 169.28 drivers from lv2g.com? or can i? sorry i'm newb

 

You have to use Ntune, or ATItool to OC. You really shouldn't have to OC at all with most games out there though.

 

well crysis isn't most games out there
oh well just have to wait for the 8800's. kinda stupid that the frequency of ram is limited to 667mhz though.