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

^^^
have you enabled SLI?? It is usually disabled by default.

I would have expected a much higher 3DMark06 score....... maybe you dont have SLI enabled? I would have expected at least around 10-11,000 3DMarks with the dual 8800's......

 

It's a mistery!! Somebody says february, somebody march, somebody even april. Alienware too is waiting...but for what? ...Montevina new platform is looming...

 

Is definetely too low...
What about SLI...was it enabled?
At which resolution?
Which driver are you using?

 

come on answer!!!! we are so waiting for you to tell us what you think about it!!!! XD!

 

Many grats to you being the first lucky one Chief

The benchmarks are definately too low, you should check if SLI is enabled as ifti recommends and then start testing some drivers.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ is used by some and feared by others, in general you get the best benchmarks with laptopvideo2go drivers but they might cause other instabilities.

 

Smacks forehead!

With Sli enabled 12196

 

Not bad at all.....

Can't wait......

 

Thats like a 1.3 improvement from having 1 card... there is a lot of room for driver improvement....

 

That sound better but there is still room for improvement. Somebody on the internet stated that with mature driver we should reach 14,5/15,5K...

 

Okay then, just overclocked to 3.4Ghz

I managed to get 13787.

 

Interesting. I notice the Sager 5793 got 9358 with a single card and an X7900

Pretty close numbers.....

 

Now, try downloading the latest beta drives 169.xx and overclock the card to 650/900 and you will get 17000 XDDD

 

I can't find any beta drivers for the mobile 8800 only 8700, would these work / be worth trying?

 

Grats on your laptop man.. THEY CAN HURRY UP WITH MINE NOW.. I'm jealous!

 

Is that with the stock Dell 167.55 driver that came with the system???

thats nice man, pretty damn nice!

Thats a good improvement just by overclocking the CPU within BIOs. Much more of an improvement then I would have thought.

I stay away from them drivers as far as I can. They are desktop drivers just tweaked for a notebook GPU, but I feel they run the GPU's hotter since, as I said, they are desktop drivers really. Also I have the BluRay drive which I like to work!
If you dont have BluRay go for it, but with caution.
If games run well with the Dell drivers, Im gonna stick with that, at least until Nvidia release their beta drivers.
I like to play things safe

You and me both man!!
Although, hopefully Im only waiting another week or so, since Ive been told mine should ship by the end of this week, if all goes well..... then its an hours work swapping cards, installing drivers, and then admiring my again max spec system
Dont think I'll upgarde any more once I get this card in TBH. Im not too concerned with the CPu since I have the X7900 anyways, which is more then enough for now IMO.

 

We are getting there...good Now ok for the 17K/18K...but overclocked!!...that means having the fans working all the time... ...and it can get really annoying...

 

Yep thats running with what came preinstalled on it (167.55).

 

Tried any games on it yet ?

Experience ?

 

Stay with this driver. It should handle everything what's on the market without a problem, Crysis including. Unless you want to spend hours and days installing, uninstalling, reinstalling drivers, which are not meant for laptops in the first place. But then you might get lucky and increase performance of your machine a bit... for statistics sake.

 

Yea hopefully there's XP support for quite a while. Thanks! I did some readup on the DX10 (yea i'm late to the show) and wow the benefits are amazing over DX9. Doh!

 

@krwzmann:

Whilst DX10 is more capable than DX9, the differences on today's games are hardly noticable. Still shots of comparisons between Crysis running DX9 compared to DX10 do highlight some quite nice image quality differences but I can't say as I've ever noticed the difference during normal gameplay.

It's good and proper that DX10 will eventually be the norm, with DX9 being relegated to a poor second, but please don't think that you're losing out if you don't have DX10. For the current generation of games, the only difference you'll really notice is the drop in speed that using DX10 shaders will cause

I believe Halo 2 is the only DX10-only (thus Vista-only) game available (I could be wrong on this). There exist patches to enable it to run on XP and DX9.

You *should* have opted for Vista Home Premium and then installed XP at a later date if you really felt the need. Even if only to save the expense of the XP downgrade via Dell!

 

Thats pretty good for the stock driver TBH!

Easy tiger - he only just go tthe machine around midday today! lol
We are all just so excited over this, which is pretty sad, but sod it! I know Im excited and cant wait to get my system up to scratch!!!

Ive still got a wireless controller from when I had my 360, so Im about to buy the wireless receiver for it, along with Gears, and then try all the demos I spent all day at work yesterday downloading

I'll probably end up staying with this driver. Results seem very good so far, and as long as it can run the recent games pretty well I see no need for me to change to any other drivers except for the Nvidia Beta, whenever that comes along!

 

No I wouldnt, just stick with the drivers you have for now. If they run everything you want to run perfectly fine, with settings at high etc, what more do you want?
Upgrade drivers when you need to, thats what I do.
Nvidia will release the 880mGTX Beta drivers soon - they took a while to release at 8700 ones as well.
the main think is, you have the goods now!!!

If you lived next door to me, I would have mugged you by now

lol, jus kiddin!

 

Thanks for the info VinylPusher. Yea I considered getting VISTA and then possibly dual booting to XP since my editing software (that I use on a daily basis for projects as my evening / side job) is XP only with confirmation that there would be no patches or updates available for it to fully work with Vista unfortunately. Busy schedule so I decided to save myself time and go with what's working with XP. Thanks again for the info regarding D9 and D10.

 

For those people currently with the Dual 8700's... can anyone chime in regarding battery life if SLI mode is turned off? I'm not too familiar with it all but if you turn off SLI, are you basically just using a single card (meaning that the other card would be on standy/off)? If that's the case, how many more mins of battery life can you get out of the system.

I'm just thinking ahead on if I use this laptop to bring to a coffee shop for client meetings (which usually last no more than an hour) to show some of my work, will disabling SLI give me an extra 20-30 mins of battery life (on top of the approx 1 hours or so) in case my meetings go over? I think either way i'd have to bring the power brick and find an outlet just in case.

Thanks in advance. =]

 

Dell just cancelled my order again....

I give up, I will buy something else......

I am amazed at how rubbish they are at taking my money

 

Hey all.. Well the 8800gtx #'s are rather exciting considering only the initial release drivers... Anyhow I received my comp the other day from my warranty.. An if there were no 8800's i would be rather bummed with the performance... My 7950gtx was faster!! However.. the 8800gtx is being sent to me now.. Because the 8700's are not a sufficient replacement for the 7950... Even though there are 256mb x2 is NOT 512mb... It is essentially a 256mb card.. Dell misrepresents the card at 512mb... So anyone getting a replacement for a 7950 should stress that to their service rep... Also, the 8700's are a 128bit interface.. Whereas the 7950 is 256bit interface... Strange how they did that.. So the 8800gtx is essentially 512mb... Thus making the 8800's a sufficient replacement to the 7950.. I consider the 8700's a DOWNGRADE an my service rep agreed.. AN is sending the 8800's!! Woot!! But besides that.. This is one of the fastest machines i have ever used.. My first Raid0 exp... I love it... Although i did score 9100 on 3dmark06 with 167.51's without overclocking my X7900.. But that means nothing when my 7950 outperformed the 8700's in every game i threw at it.. Maybe it was the mature drivers.. But i am glad iam getting the 8800's... An to the guy above me.. Dell canceled my order 4 times before they got it right an sent it to me... lol be patient its worht the wait.. once it hit "in production" it was here is 2 days.. DHL is FREAKY fast...

 

Hey Skillhouette - looking at your sig, you and me have the same spec

 

Why do they keep cancelling it?? I dont understand!
You would imagine they would jump at the chance of selling another one of their higher priced systems.
So what was their excuse this time??

 

So are some people figuring out how to get DELL to send them 8800s? I have not had the patience to even try to call them yet and fight with them. Just browsing through the last couple of pages of discussion, i see some people saying that they have 8800s on the way or that the warranty allows them to get the 8800? Any info would be great as I have been out of the loop for a couple of weeks.

 

Just be carefull when installing XP as the second OS. I've read somewhere, that XP changes some Vista's boot file, and after that Vista doesn't load. It is easy to repair tho, if you have Vista installation CD, if you don't look for the solutions in the internet.

 

Most people are getting them either in new system, or a warrenty repair etc.

Im also getting it in a new system, which is low spec, for someone at work, and am gonna swap the cards over

The upgrade program hasnt been announced yet, but since they have started shipping new systems out with the card, I cant see it being too long before it is announced and started.

 

Any one seen that the 9xxxM series has been announced, same spec's as before but now in the 9 thousands.


Wonder when the 9800M GTX will be released... maybe I should wait for that! LOL only joking!

 

when does the upgrade program start??
lol

 

I had the same issue with cancelled orders. It wasn't until my 5th attempt did they get it kinda right. The 5th attempt got cancelled and automatically re-ordered on a new order number.

I had told the salesman that "I'm tired of being dicked around, I want this order expedited". They responded with "We don't do that here". That was on February 8th. It's now February 13th and my laptop is being boxed and will ship tommorow.

Coincidence? Not sure, but they definetly made my laptop in a hurry. It shouldn't take anyone 6 order attempts to purchase a laptop. That's down right ridiculous.

 

^^^
Agreed.
rofl @ 6 order attempts to purchase an item! lol. Thats amazing.

 

I am still at preprodution with the computer ordered on the 7th... and the person that took care of my case is not answering to my emails...... I so envy you who will get it next week XD

 

When I check online my EDD is stil the same as yours - the 29th.
But Im confused since customer care rang me yesterday and told me it wa sin production and would be shipped before the weekend?! This info hasnt been updated when I check online - so I dont know who to believe.
Trying ot get through to my account manager to find out whats going on, but he's gone AWOL!

 

I think I'm going to not bother with the 8800 upgrade. I'm already looking at Sager laptops as my next upgrade.

 

OMG NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
So you gonna sell your M1730?? Whats made this choice for you?

 

Damn soon I am in the club again wtih my reordered XPS M1730 Had it only for a week before sending it back due to the released 8800m GTX SLI Well I miss that laptop, just have to wait 2 more weeks.

 

Hey Ifti more youtube videos when we get these killer SLI cards? I posted at least one with Crysis on my 8700m GT SLI, but will record more when I get these two babies.

 

I'll probably make a video on the card upgrade process, since my card is coming in a second system, ordered for someone at work. Im just gonna swap out the cards and have the 8800
The video will just show the process of opening the laptop up, swapping the cards over, and closing the laptop back up again.
I cant be bothered doing videos for all the gameplay etc. I did one for UT3, but since Youtube is only showing 30FPS, I didnt see much point......

 

Just got a call from my account manager - he says my XPS should be nearing the end of production, and is probably in the testing phase, since it was a pretty standard spec and just needs the 8800 card. Only placed the order a few days ago!

Anyways, he reckons it should be shipping pretty soon!!

Hopefully it will get to me some time mid next week.
Ive taken most of March off of work since I had loads of holiday to use up by the end of the financial year, so plenty of time to play

 

I might do the same thing when mine arrives......I am already going through UT3 withdrawal .....I hate waiting for laptops

 

Okay I have only played one game on the beast.
I tried Hellgate London with everything on max and it ran pretty good.
Will be trying COD4 tonight.

I am gonna buy Crysis, so I will post on the results when it turns up.

I regret not getting the backpack for Dell at the time of ordering as I have found that it does not fit in the Pakuma K1 I originally purchased for the Rock X770 that I was going to buy instead and cancelled when the M1730 8800 sli came out.

 

COD4 runs perfectly fine with all settings on High on my 8700 SLI.
Try something more demanding that the 8700 couldnt handle too well, like Crysis. Also if you have Gears of War, try that. I could run it on Medium/High settings, but it stuttered every now and then - I'd be interested to see if you can run that with all settings maxed......

Im glad I got the backpack now. At one point I was gonna sell it since I'd probably rarely use it TBH, but now Im thinking I should keep it just in case I ever need it. Then again, Im trying to think of a time where I would ever need it, since my laptop rarely leave my desk at home, very rarely!

 

By the way, heres what you're missing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0uIIyCEwIc

 

Sorry only have Gears of War on the 360, gonna buy Crysis on the way home from work as I can't wait. I will post as soon as I have had a play on it.

The reason why I bought the M1730 was that I am a LAN gamer and was fed up of carting around a tower, monitor, etc. The bag is a pretty important bit of kit for me, I am going to try and get one off of ebay. I watched your Vid review and it does look a very nice bag.

 

Woohoo! Finally updated to Phase 3. Guess they got the missing part. Now I hope the "priority" on my order will take effect so they can ship this monster out ASAP!