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

What is limiting it exactly?
I hear if I buy 800MHz RAM, it will still only run at 667MHz? Is this correct?
So does this mean a possible future BIOs update could unlock the RAM to run at 800MHz?

I just dont understand why they limited the RAM to 667MHz. They made this a beast of a machine, but why place such limits on an important component?

 

Hello everybody!

I've been monitoring this thread (and a few other forums as well) for a couple of weeks now, - and I have learned a lot about the M1730 from your posts here. Thanks a lot for sharing your thougths and knowledge!

Yesterday I received my new M1730 in my home in Norway, and my first impression of the machine is very good. The screen is amazing!

Of course I've installed 3DMark06, and my first question to you is: Are you running the Basic Edition? As far as I can see, this edition only allows the test to be executed in the 1280x1024 screen resolution. Therefore I wonder if my results are comparable with yours...

I'm looking forward to share my experience with you over the next weeks!

 

Penryn will be available very soon on the 1730.
There's a new bios release out today.

Dell XPS M1730 System BIOS
BIOS
Release Title: BIOS: Dell XPS M1730 System BIOS, English, XPS Desktop M1730, A06
Release Date: 2/6/2008
Criticality: Recommended
Description: Dell XPS M1730 System BIOS

File Name File Size Download Time (56K) File Format
MXG71A06.EXE 1 MB 2.4 min Windows/DOS
Fixes and Enhancements
Enhancements
------------------
1. Updated Intel microcode to support Penryn CPU.
2. Added support for Blu Ray/DVD+/-RW Combo drive.
3. Support newer version of Intel processor.
4. Added enhancement for thermal control.
5. Added enhancement for MediaDirect control.

 

As I understand it, it is a limitation of the Intel 965 chipset itself that limits the RAM speed. In other words, it is a hardware limitation by design. Not fixable by a BIOS update.

I believe Montevina (sp?) the next chipset will support 800 mhz RAM.

 

Theoretically, you will be able to overclock X9000 more without using any extra cooling. It got 50% more L2 cash, which means that it gives quite big increase in performance in decoding, packing/unpacking archives. Also, intel has some new technology in it, which lets you watch HD video, using just CPU. But what the hell, we got 2x8800GTX
So, if you are looking for decrese in heat, you should wait for new CPUs to be launched, and according to this site today's new that`s gonna happen within a week. I decided to wait for another week and get T9500. Would get X9000, but i`m a bit short on my budget

It`s not Dell, who limited RAM to 667MHz and CPU to 800MHz, it`s intel who did it with their Santa Rosa mobile system. You can`t do anything about it. The next mobile system, which will come out later this year will use 1066MHz for CPU and 800MHz for RAM.

And yes, if you will buy 800MHz RAM it will only run at 667MHz, if it will run at all

 

Just FYI, Dell is currently giving free Penryn upgrades to 1330 purchasers if they spec out a fully loaded 1330. This is in austrailia of course, but those things tend to make it over here as well.
More info:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/06/dells-xps-m1330-goes-penryn-as-a-free-upgrade/


As far as 800 MHz ram goes, yes, it works. It does run at 667 though. Why did I buy it? The price difference was negligible.

 

Hi; I just got a letter from Dell Canada:

So, I call, and am on interminable hold because the CSR has no idea what this is about. Sigh.

I gotta say, Dells internal communication is probably better than most companies, but it still leaves a lot to be desired.

Any else get contacted on this issue? Is this a CRU (customer replaceable) or a FRU (field replaceable i.e. a technician must come?) I'm happy to have the tech come and do it, but it may be more convenient to just have the part shipped... thoughts?

 

they just sent me the part and told me it was an easy install and to do it myself!!!
lol

Here are some pics of how much you need to take apart - basically the whole system!

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

 

Another day passed by and the manager didnt call me... hmmm..... I dont know if no news means good news or what...

 

just checked out the Dell China website. looks like they already have Penryn for the 1730!

 

is to 2.2 ghz good with a 8800GTX card? I am probably going to order this tonight or tomorrow, if i don't order the m15x

this is a tough decision

 

Not bad, then they are about a week in front of US and probably 2-3 weeks in front of Europe here.. might be they take pre-orders tho, availability should be as mentioned. The first ones will most likely ship in March at least in some parts of Europe.

So the question is still is it worth waiting, it is the first Santa Rosa refresh but performance vs. price should definately be somewhat in balance still.

 

Which screen is supposed to be the best for the m1730, and why?

 

The LG screen is supposed to be the best, It has no light leakage like the Samsung, i don't know anything else about it as I don't have one but someone else will probably let you know.

 

I have the Samsung at the mo - by light leakage do you mean the band of light across the bottom that you get on a dark screen?

 

yes correct Ifti, in some cases there is a band of light a couple of cm's from all the screen sides. When you have a totally black screen, the beginning of a movie etc, it is quite visible.

 

Yeh, it doesn't bother me too much, as the rest of the screen's quality is pretty good, brightness, colours etc. and the fact that in australia we only get the samsung lcds means that i can't really do anything about it

 

I have owned the 3, sharp, samsung and LG...

The brightest one is the LG, the Sharp is somewhere intermediate and the Samsung is dimmer one, yet it has the best contrast of all, and the hd movies look amazing, however when I had the chance to make a choice I went for the LG as I liked it better.

 

I have the Samsung screen and have some leakage just along the bottom. The rest of the screen is nice and sharp though.

Thing is, I prefer to do things myself. I dont like having some techy come round and open my system up. All they do is read a quick service manual and thats it. I'd raher read the correct part of the manual and do things myself rather then some techy mess things up.

My account manager knows this, so just sends the part out to me - like they did with the PPU processor recenty, and let me install it myself. When it comes to any warrent claims, they still go through as normal

 

So the Sammy gives the best HD quality image?
I dont find it too dim or anything, I find it pretty easy on the eye and the brightness perfect... I guess I'll stick with the Sammy, the light leakage doesnt really bug me that much anyways.

 

The samy out of the box works awesome with HD, 720p hdtv looks amazing, the lg looks not that great, even when I tried to make it dimmer through the nvidia color panel I could still see bigass pixels...

I think I have some pictures of both at home, I will show you when I get back, or if i can access now through vnc with my pda I will try to do it now... xD

 

show off!!!
Pretty cool gadget though

 

Oh yes baby, Im pleased!

Just got an order for a new XPS M1730 authorised
Its a very basic spec, but with the 8800GTX card. It'll be used by someone at work after Ive swapped the cards over with my own system, so didnt need it to be too higher spec etc.

Trouble is, now my Dell account manager is away until tomorrow! lol

Hopefully he'll put it through tomorrow, and Im looking at a 3 week lead time

 

Everything in my laptop seems to be working OK (except the usuall common SLI issues etc) but all devices are working etc.

Ive not tried writing to a BluRay, and probably wouldnt do that until prices for BluRay Media fell anyways and the drives are more common etc. However, I notice that the BIOs version is up to A06. I think Im on A03 at the moment.

Bearing the above in mind, should I still update my BIOs? What extra benefits would it bring?

 

Here's the list of enhancement for A06:
Enhancements
------------------
1. Updated Intel microcode to support Penryn CPU.
2. Added support for Blu Ray/DVD+/-RW Combo drive.
3. Support newer version of Intel processor.
4. Added enhancement for thermal control.
5. Added enhancement for MediaDirect control.

 

In my current BIOs (A03) it recognises the BluRay drive anyway - so what could be different??!

 

Does anyone use the Zalman ZM-NC2000 Notebook Cooler?

Looking at the underside of the laptop, all the intake vents are at the top of the laptop, where the GPUs and CPU etc are.

On the cooler, the cool air seems to be pused through the holes covering the bottom 2/3 of the cooler - which is good for the HDD/RAM etc, but would the laptop intake still take in cooler air for the GPU and CPU?

 

This is one of the issues I have with Dell. They provide an update but no release notes/documentation to go along with it.
The only thing I noticed when I updated, was that the fans kicked on super high while the update was in progress.

 

Well, you should notice that the vents on the computer shown in the cooler diagram are in the same place as the 1730s.

I am still getting a BSOD when hibernating, and when windows searches online for a solution it says it is a vista error and leads me to an update, but then when i install the update it says it doesn't apply to me.... Should have gone with XP

 

The intake on the M1730 is at the top of the laptop. When it sits on the cooler, the holes on the cooler are not directly over the laptop intake, they are just under it.

 

I am currently using this cooler, I am getting about 3-5 degress C improvement on idle temp over my previous setup which had the back elevated about 1/2". COD4 is maxxing out at 78 degrees C which isn't much different than my previous setup, but after game play to temp drop is very fast 10degrees C in a matter of seconds and back to idle temp in about a minute. This was not the case with the previouse setup. My M1730 fans kick in high at 73degrees C and I believe that is helping pull cooler air from the cooler into the laptop and getting the temp back down and a shorter amount of time.
I had temp issues in the past with other drivers which is why I bought the cooler but haven't had any issues with my current setup. Also I am using RIVA tuner to monitor temp and I am refering strictly to GPU temps for this reply.

 

Guys, there's a lot of fairly flippant reference to "I just got a replacement LG" and "I'm getting my 8700 swapped with 8800" like all it takes is a phone call.

Now, I don't want to appear fussy, but I would like an LG screen. I've got the Samsung and I do get a bit of eyestrain if I look at it for long periods (which I do sometimes, because I'm a code nerd). How do I contact a 'personal' account manager? How do I also then request a replcement part (which I will happily fit myself)?

I know XPS means "treat customer like royalty" but I'm not used to quite the level of service alluded to in some of the posts I've read here!

 

Scan have a wide variety of laptop coolers available. A couple of the Akasa ones have fans mounted quite close to the intakes on the M1730.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Products.ASP?CatID=20&FilterCategories=172&Thumbnails=yes

 

Does it produce a DMP file? Should be %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP. If so you can find out what seems to be causing it. Using Windows Debugger you can analyse the DMP file. There are a couple of things that need to be set in order to pull the symbol files after you install. I will say one thing... it puts you in a "Debuggers Group" and I do not like that (Had problems with XP before). Never the less Mark Russinovich with Microsoft (used to be with Sysinternals) has a good WebCast on how to troubleshoot these problems look at the bottom of the page at Marks WebCast for "TechEd On-Demand Webcast: Windows Hang and Crash Dump Analysis".

 

I got the ZM-NC2000 only yesterday and its very good. I'm only using a 15.4" Dell with it at the moment but it works sweet as a nut.

I don't think the positioning of the fans will make any major difference to cooling performance. What the cooler does is blow air up from the bottom, creating a cushion of air flow out from under the laptop. So with the M1730 the fans won't blow directly into the M1730's own cooling system, but will just travel for an inch and then enter into the fans. The cool air coming in can't really go anywhere else! Its stuck between the laptop and the cooler!

72oo

 

Cool, so you recommend it?
Im just thinking about when I have the 8800's installed. I hear they throw out a lot more heat and run hotter the the 8700's, so I would like to prolong their life if I can....

I have an account manager through work, since I deal with Dell every often with very large orders, sometimes of £20,000 and above. Hence the reason why I got my M1730 for next to nothing through a deal.

If you are a standard home user, you are not assigned an account manager. You will need to ring up XPS support and state you case to them. TBH I quite like the Sammy screen, and aint too botherd with the light leakage at the bottom. However, if it bothers you then I would ring them and state you case, and see what they say.

I dont think they will send you the part alone though. They are more likely to organise a techy to come to you, since installing the screen youself will void your warrenty. Although I install stuff myself, I know I can always get my account manager to get any warrenty claims through easily, which is why Im not fussed about warrenty - it will always be there for me. But for a home user they will be more strict.

I'll check them out. Cheers mate.
The reason why i ws leaning more for the Zalman is that I hear its the quietest one you can get.....

Actually, that does make sense. I think you've sold it on me

 

Mine came with the Sharp screen which was nice but not as bright as I would of liked so I got mine swapped out. The guy came the next day, switched it over and hey presto, nice bright as **** LG screen, bloody lovely (no banding or anything.)

However, there is no way they can know which screen they are sending as you know and I know, tech support are pretty useless at that kinda thing. Its an M1730 replacement screen as far as they care, they dont give a toss who makes it. It doesn't even say on the screen anywhere or when you finally have it installed. You have to go into device manager and device IDs to find it.

When I called up and queried tech the guy obviously didn't even know they were shipping with three different types. So if you do decide this route its going to be luck of the draw I am afraid.....3/1 though, not bad odds

tom

 

Well, I looked there, seems like quite a buit of effort for a new computer, the KB article that windows support automatically directed me to certainly seemed to describe my problem (hanging during hibernate caused by Vista bug) and it linked to a downloadable patch, but once I started to install it the message "does not apply to you" came up. oh well, at least Vista is pretty, you can say that about it, everything else I would like to say about it would get censored. I'm used to BSOD meaning hardware failure so hopefully that isn't actually the cause.

 

i have a question for you guys.......how good are the dual 8700gt graphic cards? do they make most games graphics look much better compared to a 8600gt? or are the graphic differences minimal but the performance such as frame rate is better?

I am about to order

 

The 8700m cards are still very good. I, for example, can play Bioshock as full high settings etc and still get very good frame rates. They aint as bad as people say TBH. There are stability issues with SLI altogether - but this due to driver support, which will get better over time. Im quite sure the 8800 card will still have SLI issues until they refine the drivers.

However, since the 8800 card is also now avaliable, if you can afford the extra Id go with that. Then again, its down to how much you game etc. I would say the 8700m card has pretty much run everything Ive thrown at it. Gears of War had a little stutter now and again, and obviously Crysis wont run at all high settings, but apart from that other games and demos Ive tried have run pretty well, especially since you are running them on a laptop!

 

tenikis - the XPS tech people I spoke to went right thru their parts system with me, and verified the internal part numbers of the different screens (Samsung/Sharp/LG) - the LG part number is YU828, and it was NOT orderable by XPS Support when I called about 3 weeks ago, also they checked their stock of parts and only held Samsung screens in stock at that time, so how you got an LG panel is beyond me.....

I'm going to request a change tomorrow and see what the guy turns up with. Im in South West London, so im hoping I get someone from the same place yours came from - with the same part......

 

Sorry, I cannot find the pics, Im gonna see if they are in the camera and had not been deleted...



BTW I got this mail from Dell, but either i am a retard or that number shows nothing...

I dont know with what he is swaping my system... maybe he is with a new m90 as his manager didnt call me and took action about it without me knowing nothing...

 

Sergio - what exactly is happening with your system?
Did you send it back in for a replacement with the 8800GTX this time?

Anyways, if you are unsure what he is swapping your system with, personally I would ring and find out. If they send you something you're not expecting it means more hassle for you sending it back again! lol

 

I know... He said that he would be doing the exchange, but with the manager I also talked about getting an m90 so in the end I dont know wtf is going to happen, tomorrow I will know... XD

 

Good to hear, hope it works out for you when you get it.

72oo

 

Have a question for some of you guys.. My Replacement Computer( M1730) is in the process of being sent to me. Its been about 7 weeks now an Order was canceled 3 times because it has been messed up each time. So we are on the 4th attempt now. Supposedly the most recent Computer that is being built (#4) has another issue i have heard of today which has delayed it being shipped. My escalations rep is telling me that its delayed because they cannot configure RAID 0 with media direct 3. Does anyone have media direct 3 working with a RAID setup? Please let me know. I told them to skip Media Direct if its causing the delay.. cuz ill wipe it right off the drive anyway when it gets to my house... An yes I got an M1730 For my M1710... X7900 Blu Ray 8700SLI (Sending the 8800 from warranty when avail) But i have no computer to use at the moment! M1710 is not functional.... Also, My rep told me there is a DELAY in the 8800's Which was alarming... He said nothing has gone out with the 8800 an NOTHING is going out with the 8800's Due to a VISTA Issue... So Lets see if anyone gets a 8800 anytime soon... He also told me he went as far as putting in a request to have the 8800 REMOVED from Dell.com because of the Vista ISSUE... He said if its NOT working an they CANT ship it, it should be off of the website.. Which i totally agree... Not to burst anyones bubble.. Trust me iam waiting for it also... So we will see what happens with that!!

 

Just got hte ZM-NC2000 and fits great. I have the M1730 on the cooler and the cooler on a slightly elevated riser. Not sure how much good it is doing, I hope it reduces the freezeups I've been having. maybe I'll try SLI again...

 

I have had the ZM-NC2000 for a few months now an it works great... I haven't got to use it with the M1730 Yet (Will Be here next week) But Ive used it with the M1710 7950GTX... An During COD4 Gameplay brought the top temp down about 10 Degrees!! Surprisingly My M1710 Took a crap about 2 weeks after getting this cooler!! Hence the M1730 On the WAY!! Some of you may want to know, That this cooler is SO quiet when i first got it i was worried that it wasn't working!! A++++ An recommend it to anyone thinking about a cooler... h an by the way ZERG What do you mean "I have the M1730 on the cooler and the cooler on a slightly elevated riser" You Mean you have the cooler propped up buy the built in Keyboard-like legs? Or you actually propped it up with something?

 

I have 2x200GB RAID 0 configuration on my M1730. Media Direct version is 3.3.3404. Both were on the computer when shipped in October last year. This rep may not quite know what he is talking about. Did you ask him where he is located? I always do since this helps me to figure out what to expect. The best response so far I got from people in Kanata near Ottawa, Ontario, or Nashville, Tennessee. It is a shame that Dell just fired hundreds of people from their service centre in Kanata...

 

Well he has a Southern sounding accent... I am almost positive he is in Canada... However everything else I have spoken with him about he has been dead on.... He relayed that message from the build center... Thats what the notes on the computer said.. He just read them to me. He even said himself that didnt make sense.. So well see what happens... This has been hell!!!! But should be here next week... Thanks for answering my question though...