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

IMO Its a moderately capable card for today. It will run all current games at a reasonable performance. It is far from blistering or cutting edge and it really depends how pissy you are about res, details and fps how well a game will run in the end. 256 vram is also pretty low for a lot of the newer games, something the 512 on the 8800m will help a great deal with.

It will be capable for a while but again it depends how fussy you are....It certainly wont last me another 6 months, let alone 2 years. I will have the 8800 one way or another ! :O)

 

If I had to put a price on it, I wouldn't pay more than 2.5k for basic 8700 SLI configuration. Aside from that, the card is better than what people are saying about it. Initial reviews were done with poor drivers, and I think there's still room for improvements.

Bottom line is it still runs games better than the old XPS systems IMO.

 

Well it depends on the games you are going to play, but it can barely handle today's games at non-native resolution and medium details. I cannot imagine it will be able to play new games over the next two years at a satisfactory level.

 

just adding my two cents...
after reading through this forum before getting my m1730 i thought the 8700m gt were guna be pretty bad but so far i'm very impressed with mine, they have played all the games i have thrown at it and in nz at the moment they arn't offering any better laptops really lol. but my standards may be way less than other peoples seems i upgrade from an old as desktop to this

 

Question for you guys who have done some testing on the different SLI video drivers & GPU tweaking for games lately - is the 169.09 IYO the best choice as pr. now for gaming? What other tweak settings would you recommend for the GPUs within safe limits?

This question is in regards for us who do not have a blu ray drive and can focus on game performance only.
(2.4 ghx cpu btw)

Cheers

 

Nope I just installed 171.16 and I must say these are so far the best drivers I have tried for my SLI setup. Running Gears of War at 1920x1200 with the only option on Medium and that is Shadows, rest High, Highest, fps ranging from 29-40+

Though noticed that the GPU´s get around 10 degrees hotter with these drivers, no problem though since I max out at around 70 degrees.

 

I also liked 171.16, but had to move back to nvidia beta driver because I couldn't take screen shots outside of games w/ 171.16

FYI, my temp hits 76C after playing Crysis according to I8kfan & ATItool.

 

Strange. Print screen working fine here with that driver, Achilles. So odd that some things work on one persons 1730 and not another when they are supposed to be identical (obviously except for hds etc.)

ten

 

screen capture (print screen and snipping tool) didn't work for me with 171.16 either. I'm on Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2.

 

meh, I'm running the latest beta drivers on my XPS and it runs fine.

I would agree that 2 years from now they won't cut it, but for the time being you can't complain about a laptop hitting 8-10k 3dmark06.

Dunno about you guys but I got a pretty good deal on my XPS, all top end hardware for $3200 with tax and shipping (well shipping was free, but whatever).

For the price you really can't complain, I went to all the other laptop gaming sites and identical configs went for $1500-2500 more. Plus I guarantee Dell service is better (I've yet to hear anything good about alienware customer service).

 

BTW Zerg,

I'm going to beat your 3dmark score once I get my notebook cooler (shooting for 10500 when it comes in).

Got the new zalman ZM-NC2000B shipping to my place this wednesday. :>

 

I got a really good deal on my too lots of rebate. Can´t complain about the performance of this machine. Those who said the 8700m GT was crippled at high resolutions couldn´t be more wrong. I think the performance is amazing and I would like to see a single 7950GTX pull 30-50 fps in Lost Planet in 1440x900.

Yes I said a 7950GTX since I have heard lots of people who says the single 7950GTX outperforms the SLI 8700m GT. Now do anyone know if a 7950GTX can pull 40-50 fps in STALKER @ 1920x1200 and with dynamic lighting

 

Did you get the overclockable CPU and 4gb RAM?
What frequencies are you planning on overclocking the GPUs to?

 

Does anyone know of any way to make the Blu-Ray player in the M1730 multiregion? Or is this not possible?

Also, lookin gat my device properties for my Blu-Ray drive, it says I have a "Mat****a BD-RE UJ-220 ATA Device". Rofl - what a name - Mat****a!! lol

Anyways, is a BD-RE a Bluray writer or just a reader?


EDIT - Its starred out the name!! - it was M A T S H I T A
I think it may be by Panasonic? Im not sure.

 

I'm assuming it's reader. writer is very expensive.

 

i think anydvd hd would do that for you, hope that helps

 

My system in total came to about £2800 (I got it free through work )
Anyway, I think the BluRay drive cost a few hundred pounds extra, but Im not sure if its a reader only, or a writer. Is there any way to tell, other then buying a BD-R drisc and trying it?

 

Yeah your one is a bluray writer heres its specs http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/P142616/en/spec.htm

 

Excellent cheers for that mate!
wow what a bonus! I wasnt even expecting that! I thought I just had the reader! lol

 

Speaking about BD/DVD/CD drives: the DVD/CD drive, which came with my M1730 does not read DVD disks (DVD-R format) recorded on my Pioneer DVD recorder. My wife's Apple computer reads and plays them, my 3 year old Toshiba with Windows XP also, so does LG DVD player. M1730 does not even read them - right click on DVD/CD drive icon is simply ignored by the system, so it does not even show what's on the disk!!

Does anyone have a similar experience? Any ideas?

 

i've had a similar problem with mine not reading some discs or taking ten minutes to read them, when i click on the disc in my computer it just freezes that window or the green bar at the top moves very very slowly, still waiting for dell to get a replacement drive out to me and check out the problem

 

Does the drive read other DVDs okay?

Sounds like defect to me.

 

What´s your 3D Mark 06 Scores guys? Mine is currently 9173 with Overclocking in my signature. I ran Crysis with a custom config with Medium Settings, Custom HDR @ 1680x1050 and averaged 30 FPS.

This laptop is not bad at all managing to run Crysis at that res

 

What was the peak temp OC'ed?

I personally don't see the need to OC yet.

 

This IS the replacement drive from Dell. Also, since I got the computer in October there was a "Windows/DOS firmware flash utility update for TSST TS-L632H slim 8x DVD+/-RW" on Dell's web site "to improve the reliability".
Obviously it did not improve this aspect of the drive.

Well, 99% of DVDs. Some time ago I wanted to watch a two DVDs movie and it read only one. The drive was spinning and whining but could not read the other one. And the only way to interrupt the process is to eject the disk.

I never saw anyone else mentioning it on this forum yet. Perhaps people have not tried to play disks from recorders yet.

 

Anyone know if the 8800 gtx card will be available soon?

I am looking at this laptop for a desktop replacement on dell's page but I am leaning towards the m15x! Anyhow, how good is this system with Unreal Tournament 3 with the 8700 dual cards? Btw, is this system worth getting with the single 8700 gt card?

 

I can play Unreal tourny 3 with all max settings etc at 40-60FPS.
No probs at all.

I made a short video of it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNV2TX9Jtrc

 

hey ifti. get my 1730 soon. It just slipped back to PHASE 2 about 20 mins ago after it was in PHASE 3 at 08:30am this morning. Strange. Lets just hope these dual 8700`s work for me and the machine works out of the start. Nice videos btw. You should of done one for the PHYSX PPU.

 

cool, what is your laptop's native resolution?

 

I peaked at 77 degrees celsius on Lost Planet Demo. By the way Dazzy you can run Crysis in Medium Settings, Custom Config and with HDR with frames around 30-40fps @ 1680x1050.

Gears of War runs smoothly in 1920x1200 most options maxed average framerates of 35, mostly topping out at 50fps

Though in ATI tool checking for artifacts the temp maxes out at 68 degrees and it´s artifact free

 

hi magnus. Yea the 8700m gt`s are a deacent ish card at lower resolutions. I mean serioulsy how needs 1900x1200 res anyway, 1280x1024 is fine for me. Should beable to run Crysis @ 1280x1024 with med/high settings and get good fps.

 

I leave my resolution at 1920x1200 within Windows. In UT3 I can also use 1920x1200, but I dont think you really need a res that high for games, so I dropped it down to 1440x900 - I get a few more FPS, but even at max res it was still smooth etc.

With most other games I use a res of 1440x900 - well TBh I only have COD4 alongside UT3 - and I use 1440x900 for that as well.

 

hi mtv. ifti`s native res is 1900x1200 i think.

 

Yes I prefer to play in Native if possible, the image looks so sharp in native. Dazzy update the drivers to 171.16 instead and your decentish 8700m GT turns into very good peforming at high resolution 8700m GT´s By the way I have my GPU´s overclocked too which adds more boost.

 

171.16 - I guess that doesnt support BluRay does it?

 

Well my 3rd replacement is giving me Black screens... maybe graphics card problem? I dont know...

The 2 videos I have sent the dude from Dell Uk...


http://youtube.com/watch?v=jTC69x47ge4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=u8yY1AHSAPc

...

 

Ive seen some people display the Day as well as the Date and Time on their LCD Display clock. How? All mine displays is the date and time, not the Day.

 

Dont ask me... Maybe it has to do with vista vs xp?? im on XP btw...

Lets see how they will react on a 2 week old computer to have such problems allready...

 

I had the same problem with a particular video driver version and SLi enabled. If I booted on battery no problem. Only happened on cold boot with AC adapter connected. I updated drivers a few weeks back and no problem. There are some other references to the same thing in this thread.

 

Yeah, but some times the computer stops responding again.. like mouse not moving etc and i need to restart by unplugging the battery, weird stuff...

lets see what they answer to that, im also getting bsod with the nv4_disp... the thing is that, i had this same hd in the 2nd replacement and it was working fine, i just swapped hd and everything got phucked up... so thats y im thinking is hw related...

 

First, make sure that you completely uninstalled previous drivers (e.g. with driversweeper and ccleaner) and delete the contents of the prefetch dir before installing a new driver.

Go ahead and enable SLI.

Then open msconfig and disable all the nvidia startup services and anything else that isn't essential, and then restart.

I was having severe freezing problems for a long time, and after disabling the startup stuff, no more freezeups.

 

You really shouldn't need driversweeper etc for Vista IMO.

Just make sure you have installed all the hot fixes from microsoft, and try different drivers.

You can find hot fixes here.

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

 

The thing is that I was suffering of incredible freezeups on the second replacement, so i deleted everything with a guide and installed 169.17. IT was pretty stable on games etc, I got the replacement computer I swapped hds bc I didnt like vista, and suddenly hw problems? wtf?? I had the 2nd replacement for 4 days on without problems, and this one every now and then collapses? In my opinion it is not driver related, otherwise, why was the 2nd replacement working fine?

 

I have had best results so far with 169.04 and 169.25.

No need to uninstall previous driver if using the direct update method.

 

You are on XP? I can't comment, as I am on vista.

 

Do you guys use any extra notebook cooler for your m1730's, besides just propping the back up a little?


Also, on another note, is there any better performing RAM available for this beast, or will it not make much of a difference to bother upgrading?

 

Never needed or used a cooler for mine in any situation and its clocked pretty much as far as it will go.

No need to upgrade the ram as you cant change any of the settings. If a bios update comes out that allows 800 speed ddr2 or some timing settings then you might want to look at it.

ten

 

Does the top of the laptop get warm for you?

The hinge - next to the LCD display and above the power button - gets quite warm to the touch. Is this normal?? The GPUs are right under that area, so its understandable, but just wanted to check....

 

It really isn't meant to be on a persons lap if you ask me, especially in the summer time.

 

I dont use it on my lap, I mean the hinge part above the keyboard.