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

Ive never needed to restart after enabling SLI - then again, I dont disable it very often - only if Im using Movie Maker since it seems to crash otherwise!

Strange problem though with Bioshock. I played the Demo for a few minutes, and it was perfectly fine. Not jerky movements etc at all. The only game I got the jerky movements with every few seconds was Gears of War.....

 

No you dont need it, and yes it is a waste.

When I ordered my laptop it came with the system as standard. But Dell forgot to install it I think! I only noticed a few weeks later, so I just rang up to enquire and they have sent it to me for free.

I wouldnt have paid for it or anything if it was extra. Im only installing it since it was free and I now have it in front of me. Just waiting to get home later and see if I can install it all OK

So which games show its potential??

 

Warmonger I have heard shows off the Ageia and is a free game. Also GRAW2 uses Ageia.

 

3DMark comparisons are pointless since they do not reflect real-world performance. I had a M1730 when it was first released in September, and in most games it was actually slower than my old M1710 with a single 7950 card, especially when trying to run at native resolution (1900x1200). SLI was very glitchy, lots of problems trying to find the right drivers and enabling it.

I have since returned the M1730 and bought a Clevo M570RU from Evesham in the UK (equivalent to a Sager NP5792). This machine is much much faster than M1710, for example in The Witcher it is virtually twice as fast. In my experience a single 8800 card is significantly faster than SLI 8700, and no amount of overclocking can make up for the difference in performance.

In my opinion, M1730 is crippled by the 8700 cards to such an extent that there is no point in buying it. For most people, a M1710 will actually perform better while being cheaper. The only advantage of M1730 is RAID drives, however I would caution against running RAID 0 in a notebook - if either of the two drives fails all the data is lost.

We do not know what is happening with the 8800 upgrade for M1730, but it is certainly not going to be cheap, given that a single 8800 sells in the $600 - $700 range. I do not think Del is going to take the old 8700 cards back.

Sorry to be so negative, I wanted to like the M1730 but it simply did not perform up to my expectations. Most people thinking of buying a M1730 would be better off waiting until Dell announces the 8800 version.

 

Ive finally received my DVI to HDMI cable from Dell, since they didnt ship it with my laptop.

Now, how will this work.......

My laptop is set at 1920x1200.
The TV in the same room is 1366x768.

If I connect them together with the cable above, will it automatically scale the image to the correct size for the TV, or do I need to set this manually before I transfer my display to the TV??

I wont be using it very much, just when Im showing slide shows of pictures etc, which is not very often

 

Another question......lol

I have installed Unreal Tourny 3, which I notice has installed Ageia Physics files, even though i havent installed the Ageia processor yet. When I install the processor tonight, will I need to still install the drivers, or will it pick up the drivers from whats already installed with UT3?

 

Guys, try this patch.

I think this improved fps in crysis quite a bit (played only for 30 min though).

 

Thats been out for quite a while.
I installed all of these ones quite a while ago now...

http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

 

Some minor ones, but the biggie is UT engine. So if a games house embraces UT engine, then they'll have the Physx api available.

Secondly Ageia look like they might be bought up by Valve.

 

It should use those drivers that installed with UT3, although I think there are newer ones now.

I observed a quite noticable drop in fps with ut3 when the 'hardware physics' box is ticked. Pretty poor and the physx fx really are pathetic tbh.

ten

 

Im thinking of whether to bother opening my laptop up and installing the Ageia processor, or whether i should just leave it and sell it on!

What do you think? Should I risk the operation and install it since I have it anyway?? Or do you think its pointless and I should sell it?

By the way, I would need to install it myself. I asked Dell if they would be sending a technician, and they emailed me ack with the technical support helpline!! rofl!!!

 

Not going to be easy to sell it to other M1730 owners since most come with one.

I would just install it since it should be shown on your service tag.

Just disable the device you don't like it.

 

Woah, i thought this was just me. I too get these pauses in all games. Armed Assault is the most noticable, does it about once every 10 - 15 secs. Supreme commander too, not so often. About once every 10 minutes but these pauses are longer, about 5 secs sometimes.

I'll try disabling SLI and see if it still does it.

 

I had the back off the other week as I wanted to check how easy it was to change the graphics cards. Its pretty painless and you'll see exactly where it goes once you have it off.

Grab the service manual from the Dell website and follow the instructions and you'll be fine....10 minute job max.

ten

 

which SLI method do you use? Alternate Frame or split screen? I guess it makes a difference depending on which game your in. Your game might have a profile that expects one versus the other... the logic being that some games cannot render future frames out of band due, just like not all applications are currently multithreaded. Anyway, try both before turning SLI off (addressing FPS) and also be aware that the profiles may be different for each game, so it's not universal. You can find pre-defined profiles in the "program settings" tab under Manage 3d settings in the nvidia control panel. I see UT3 in there, etc.

 

Do you think I should get Dell to send out a technician to put the Ageia card in?
They've just sent me the card alone, and expect me to do the job just like that. Wouldnt that affect my warrenty?
Surely they should send a techy out when it comes to stuff like this - especially since it was their fault for not putting it in in the first place.

 

hey ifti. As far as im aware it wont affect the warranty at all. Its a user end upgrade. Should be about as easy as you did your hdd upgrade. You can make another youtube vid on installing the PHYSX ppu card!.

 

^^^
But Ive been told I have to take the whole laptop apart, is this not correct?

By that I mean take the HDD/RAM/Optical Drive off, then take the entire back of the laptop off, take the LCD screen completely off, take the LCD panel off, undo a plate, under the keyboard, and then get to the right spot.

Is there an easier way to do this???

 

After some Net Searching I found this on the 8800M Whatcha guys think?
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/887085.html

 

Ok Ageia card installed and working fine.
Vista picked up the card and installed it itself - maybe because I have installed the Ageia software with UT3...?

Anyways, wasnt as easy as I thought TBH. Had to practically take the entire laptop apart to get to the bloody thing.

Oh well, at least I know how to get to the GPUs card for when I install the 8800's

Small photo guide......

http://www.essential-resources.co.uk/M1730_PPU.htm

 

I also heard Feb/March as a date for its release.
We're almost there

 

Hey guys, what are you using to monitor your GPU temps?
Also does anyone know what the acceptable or expected temperatures should be in a standard Windows Vista environment (just browsing the net for example) and not gaming....?

 

I use ATITool, and I8kfan control to monitor.

You have to tweak I8kfan so that it matches ATITools (ATITool's GPU temp is dependable IMO)

 

I use Riva tuner. Apparently 90 is the temp you want to start worrying for Nvidia gpus.

ten

 

I installed RivaTuner but couldnt see the option for the GPU temps?! Unless I missed somethin really obvious or installed the wrong thing!! lol

 

Has anyone upgraded their RAM to something a bit faster?
I know we an only go up to 667MHz, which is a shame, but is there any other RAM that would give better performance then the Dell standard chips?

 

I've upgraded to the OCZ 800MHZ 2x2GB kit (refused to pay 400 dollars for a 100 dollar upgrade from dell). No memory performance improvement save for the increased RAM available. It takes roughly 15 seconds to perform this upgrade yourself and save 300 bucks.

No, there's no way to improve your memory performance. The reason being that dell locks out these settings. The mobo/cpu can run 800 but since the ram is locked at 667 there's no improvement. Also, buying ultra low latency ram also wouldn't help since again you can't modify these settings.

Be awfully nice if someone found a way to bypass these dell lockouts.

 

Tried both Single GPU (default) and alternate frame. I disabled SLI and it still had the pauses every 10 secs so Maybe I'll try lower the resolution.

 

Does atitool work with vista?

 

Yes it does.

 

Ozzo, i was getting the same problem, try enabling SLI when you have started up, even if it was enabled when you shut down, i find that with SLI enabled it looses some performance when you shut down, re-enabling it again after startup seems to solve it.
See if it improves, worked for me on Bioshock and Crysis.

 

I'm trying to download the current drivers from nvidia for the dual 8700's, and it's saying there is no drivers for my selection...That and when I try different drivers from the site, it says I don't have any hardware it's compatible with. The only drivers I can use are the dell ones, which aren't good enough for Gears of War (it says I need a newer version)

Any ideas?

 

You can try dowloading the Beta drivers for the 8700 from the Nvidia site.

Try using the drivers Im using (see sig) - they run pretty well for me. Im running games like UT3, COD4, Bioshock, etc on high settings with around 50 FPS.

Gears also ran with medium-high settings, but its a pretty buggy game, and it stuttered every now and then. It ran fine at around 60FPS, but every few minutes it stuttered for some reason.

 

You can use the video drivers from laptopvideo2.go. These are generally better than the official laptop drivers, since the laptop drivers isn´t new. Currently I use 169.09 in Vista and SLI works great.

 

^^^^^^^^^^
Magnus
Are you having to restart SLI when you boot up to get the performance right?
Have you had jerky play in certain games?

 

Remember that if you use drivers from laptopvideo2go - many of them are not WHQL certified - so if you have a Blu Ray drive it wont play BD Movies any more. If you dont hav ethe BD drive then go for it.
Thats the main reason why I stuck to 167.51 - since I can still play Blu-Ray movies, as well as get good performance with games.

 

Yes like ifit said these do not support Blue Ray and I don´t have Blue Ray that´s because I use them

aeinstein I don´t have to restart SLI with these drivers when I start up the computer, they work right away. No problem with jerkyness either. I did have some mouse lag though even in Cod 4, what I did was disabling the Speedstep in Bios and Dynamic Acceleration since I run this laptop as a gaming laptop, now the mouse lag is gone.

Actually the 8700m GT in SLI is not bad at all. STALKER for example is a very demanding game, but when SLI works I have framerates up in the 40-60 fps and that´s not bad.

In my opinion these cards is not that crippled like people are saying. If they were so crippled how come I can run STALKER, Call of Duty 4 in 1920x1200?

Crysis in 1440x900, Lost Planet DX10 in 1440x900, I can even run Lost Planet in 1920x1200 though the framerate is around 20+ fps.

Now today I wil install XP as dual boot and I can imagine I will get even more speed, since XP is more stable with SLI than Vista.

I would recommend the 169.09 they are good, at least so far I haven´t tried 169.28 yet, though people say that 171.76 I think is very good for Crysis. However when I installed 171.61 in Vista the framerates dropped considerly in every game I tested. It was like SLI didn´t work, didn´t even work when I restarted and reenabled SLI, so I went back to 169.09.

I must say though installing video drivers for SLI is a bit of a hassle compared to a single card

By the way anyone know what Dynamic Acceleration does? I imagine it has something to do with Speedstep.

 

I was just about to ask the same - what do Speedstep and Dynamic Acceleration do, and what can I expect if I turn them off?

 

Ok just done some research.
Speedstep only acts while on battery power. When you are connected to the mains power (which most of us are constantly due to the demands of this beast), your CPU always runs at maximum anyway - so disabling speedstep will not make a difference, unless using battery.

However, Dymanic Acceleration should actually help by staying on - where abouts is it in the BIOs?

 

Dynamic acceleration allows the cpu to run at a higher frequency than its actual clock speed but keeping within the chip emission limits. It does this by overclocking only one core when the other is operating on reduced power, balancing between the two.

Speed Step is almost the opposite. When not much processing power is required (running notepad or solitare the cpus/cores will under clock themselves generating less heat and consuming less power which will help increase the life of your cpus and save a few £ electric bill.

Ive seen and got speed step on my desktop pc but not heard of DA on desktops...

ten

 

I would leave them alone.

 

If you turn speed step off it will run at full clock speed all the time. Wont cause any problems (is actually desirable by some applications) but with it on you might extend the life of your cpu and save a few quid in electric.

ten

 

Guess its staying on then! lol

 

You can change the Power Profile in Vista to have SpeedStep on even while on mains power. The main advantage is lower temperature of the notebook and less fan activity. It will have no impact on applications as the CPU speeds up automatically if needed.

 

Ok, here is one for you all

When I view images in Firefox, IE or Opera on the xps they appear poor quality with a low amount of colours. Now for small images I can press shift+r or shift+a and it seems to re download them in full quality but for big images that are on their own page this does not happen.

An example is I want to download a new wallpaper from http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/index.php @ 1920x1200. I load up the page with the thumbnails and they appear there in this low quality. I can press shift+r/+a and as I mentioned it will refresh the thumbnail with a full quality image. Now if I click download on the wallpaper I want it brings up the image in full 1920x1200 res. However, it does this in the same low quality the thumbnail originally was and pressing the shift+r/a does nothing whatsoever.

Here is a screen grab of my xps desktop.

http://www.divshare.com/download/3598551-a7d

On the left hand side is firefox with the wallpaper image. You can clearly see the poor quality colours. On the right hand side is my home desktop pc showing the same image in a remote desktop screen via the XPS. As you can see this is displaying the full quality image perfectly.

And so, from that screen grab we can rule out the lcd being a problem I'am guessing its some kind of setting in either Vista, the browsers (Firefox, IE AND Opera exhibit this same behavior on my xps) or the video drivers (I haven't really tested this with any other drivers as I use my machine mainly for audio and games, not web stuff.)

I have never seen this on my desktop machines, and I have never seen this shift+r/a crap before either. So maybe its something Vista or the browsers enables on laptops or low speed connections to increase bandwidth?

Ive had a quick look on the net and some say reduce the dpi to 96. Mine is already at 96 so I am not so sure where to go from here... any ideas appreciated greatly

ten

 

link fixed, sorry

 

Might have found the problem....

"Apparently, you are experiencing "image recompression" through your service provider. When you connect over a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) such as Sprint or Vodafone Mobile Connect, the images are downgraded to reduce the amount of data that is transmitted. The ISP modifies every HTTP request to inject javascript that produces the tooltip you describe.

I connect via Tmobile Walknweb when I am out and about (170k/s downloads over 3G pretty much anywhere in the UK for flat rate monthly fee...nice!) So this may well be what they are doing....will keep you posted...

edit: yes, this is exactly it....slightly bent but I can understand why its there. Now to find a work around

 

And here is the fix... http://www.lewiz.org/archive/2007/01/03/hacking-t-mobile-web-proxy/

Should work on other mobile internet providers who employ this image compression malarky also.

ten

 

I cannot decide wether or not the 8700GT is a good or a bad card? Benchmark indicates that the SLi solution is great, but there is little talk about real performance is this thread? We have a great offer in Norway now (compared to earlierer prices atleast) and this offer ends 30th of january. Should i just buy the thing now or perhaps loose the good offer and pay bloodprice for 8800.. if it comes?

Do you guys think that the 8700 SLi solution vil be capable for atleast the next two years?

 

It sux... my 1 year old m90 matches most of the games at 1920x1200...

If I were you I would wait for the rls of the 8800GTX... ITs supposed to be 2x 8700 so imagine having an SLi of those... xDDD