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

Did you get more for the bag than Dell charge?

Seems only fair since that bag is YouTube famous!!! I hope you put that in your ebay ad "This bag won an Oscar for lead backpack in the critically acclaimed YouTube video 'Dell XPS M1730 Backpack Carry Case Review' with over 1,000 views".

 

Just out of curiosity, do you guys think that Dells stock thermal solution is inferior or something, doesn´t the fans do their job to move that heat out? For me reading through these posts it sounds like you have overheating problems with the cards, unless you are aiming for some overclocking.

In that case you would be better to go with AS5 compound on the GPU´s. But I mean if it is just heat issues then something is wrong Just my two cents. These laptops should work out of the box and not overheat, unless you are into overclocking of course. But maybe you guys are, I know I am

 

Magnus its not a case of peoples machines overheating, more a case of system life preservation. The 8700's were fairly cool in my experience. But from what people have been saying on this forum, the 8800's are causing alot more heat. Nothing thats going to cause the laptop to melt through the desk, melt anything near the exhaust ports, or burn the house down!

My Asus W3J with the ATI X1600 runs very hot when playing games! You can feel some serious heat coming out the exhaust ports. Would be interesting to actually find out exactly how hot its running... It feels heaps, and I mean HEAPS more hot than my XPS M1730 ever did. The Asus is still fine though, I expected this from a high spec in a small 14" notebook!

In getting a Zalman cooler, it'll keep the temperature lower, and reduce the stress on the parts. Plus it'll make it a little safer to overclock the GPU I'd imagine.

Still not happy about the finding out about the Zalman cooler only cooling the lower half of the laptop...

 

lol!!!
I got £45 for the bag, plus the postage on top. And yes, I did put a link to the Youtube video in the auction listing!!!
Thing is, some other git sold his bag before I listed mine, and he used my video as well!! lol

I dont really understand why the videos seem to be so popular! Maybe its just cos the system is still pretty new etc!

As Pommie said above, its just making sure the components last a ling while. After paying so much for a beast, Im sure you would want it to last as long as possible. I have no cooler etc right now, and it runs fine. No problems with overheating. I want to get a cooler because the laptop feels warm, especially near the GPU area, it feels pretty hot, and the air exhausted out the back reminds me of my XBox 360!!! It doesnt emit as much heat as the 360 did, but close to it!

The fans do a very good job of reducing the heat of both the GPUs and CPU, and many people will be perfectly OK with running the laptop as it is with no additional cooling. It shouldnt cause any issues, unless you OC of course.

I would personaly rather it ran a bit cooler, just for my own piece of mind, to to preserve its lifespan.

Neither am I, but I dont think theres anything else better then the Zalman at the mo. I'll probably just put the laptop on it so that the laptop vents are at the top holes on the cooler. Hopefully that will still be enough to cool the main parts of the laptop, along with the HDDs as well....

 

Just pulled out an old cooler I bought a while ago. Quite cheap in its construction! Its for a 14" notebook as well, so it'll be no use with the new Dell. Actually, I get the impression if I did try placing the XPS on it, it would just crush the cooler I'll try, if it does, I'll take some photo's and post them up here!

The Zalman does definetly look the way to go, I like the Aluminium construction.

Oh and Dell Deliveries called today, they said they'll be delivering the machine Thursday arvo

That'll be some light in whats been a really bad month for me. Broke my ankle, my car broke down, and now I have caught a cold... :S

 

Yay!. Finally got the new card installed. Its well fast. 14525 new 3dmark score!. Me goes to bed got work later tonight!. Bye all

 

14525?!!?!? Thats impressive Dazzy! What drivers are you running? Did you do a fresh install and all that good stuff?

 

lol @ Crushing the cooler!!!
If you can put your M1730 on top of it - at least its something to pass some cooler air to the laptop even though it dont fit, just until you get your Zalman I guess.

Congrats on the system! Not long to go now!!

With the month you have been having, lets just hope the delivery driver doesnt put the box down, then forget he had put it down and back into it............or even drop the box as he walks up to your door, for you to open the door and find your laptop upside down on concrete all scratched up, and your accessories scattered all over the place.......... lol

Im jus kiddin

congrats!
Thats a good score. I get around that when overclocked, but I just leave my CPU at 2.8GHz. Only overclocked it to run a quick test. Then I put it back down. I got scared! lol
Funny. I can open the beast up and tinker around with it all I want, no worries at all. But when it comes to overclocking, it worries me about what Im doing to the life of my components!

 

The typical score when overclocking the CPU to 3.4GHz is over 14,000.

What drivers are they though Dazzy? Im guessing they're from LV2G?? They are still very, very close to the stock Dell 167.55 Im running since I get around the same scores also when OC'd...

 

Oh, I was always under the impression that the 3dmark score came mainly off your GPU, not CPU... I thought the CPU would have only a small affect to the score. My original CPU was a T7700 2.4ghz, this gave me a 3Dmark score of 8300 off the top of my head with standard Dell drivers. People with better processors seemed to only be gettign around the 8500 - 9000 mark. Please correct me if im wrong! Hmmm, starting to think I should have gotten the X7900.

What sort of scores do you reckon I should be looking for with the T9300 2.5 ghz?

 

Its just 3DMark06 thats seems to use the CPU a lot as well - especially in the 2 CPU tests.

With my old cards (8700m) I was getting a 3DMark06 score of around 8800, using the Nvidia Beta drivers.

 

That´s why one gets the 3 year life support for the XPS, since I will probably buy a new one in 3 years No seriously of course it´s great to have a heat pad like that. I agree the 8700m GT´s were cool, even when highly overclocked. Now what temps do your 8800m GTX´s reach when gaming?

 

I think the 8800s reach around 85c, as someone reported 2 pages back. I havent tried in-game temps, since I use nTune and when logging it seems to stop after a while for some reason! If I check the temps as soon as I quit the game its usually around 70c.

 

Didn't get called back by Dell but my account managers boss emailed me.
Said his sorry for the delay ect and give me a new order number...

Further Information
Order Date: 18/02/2008
Estimated Delivery Date (on or before this date): 13/03/2008

Pre-Production as of 19/02/2008

heres the email

Dear Customer,

Apologies for the inconvenience caused.

We are happy to inform you that your order is in production. You will be
getting a call from the carriers with in next 5 to 7 working days and
they will arrange delivery date and time according to your convenience.

 

Ouch hang in there Veggie, im sure the wait will be worth it in the end. Maybe you should try for a backpack as a consolation off them?

Ifti, I'll run a 3dmark test as soon as I get my machine Thursday. Im interested to see what sort of score I get bearing in mind I have a Penryn processor now with 6md cache instead of 4. I know the difference will be almost unnoticable, but hopefully I'll get a score around 13000...

 

Already got a good deal on the phone, 3yrs warranty/Backpack free Gonna be a long wait!

Got 2 laptops here
Dell M170 XPS with a 6800go(Doesn't detect the adapter half the time and runs on batterys)
Dell inspiration 9300 with a 6800go(Broken N key)

Can't wait to finally get an upto date laptop!

 

Cool!

I'll give you my Extreme processor, and an extra £850 for your Penryn.

Let me know if you're interested.

 

We saw that a x9000 and a x7900 @ 3.4Ghz was <100 between these CPU in 3Dmark 06 CPU bit.
I would guess the difference at the lower clockspeed would make it perform at around T7800ish level in normal apps and a good 20%+ in encoding apps.

Speculation of course ^^

 

I personally wouldn't swap parts that are under dell warranty.

X7900 is around 500 bucks shipped from Ebay if you want it that bad.

 

Sorry for the late answer...

www.vouchercodes.com (for UK only)

The 10% coupon should still be there

 

TBH Im not too interested in the Penryn processor just yet. Im pretty happy with what I have. Its exceeded my expections, for a laptop anyways, so Im well chuffed!
My next project is..............cooling!!!!
I want it running ice cold!!

 

Maybe some liquid nitrogen bubbling away at the corner of the desk would do the trick!

And when temp's get over 80C just splash some on the keyboard!!!

 

rofl
Splash some on the keyboard, and listen to the PPPPSSSHHHHHHHH.......

 

I remember seeing this video ages ago...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IVSgtskg5sE

this whole little chat reminder me of it!



72oo

 

That would be a nice computer to have but i thinnk it might get a bit expensive running. But ifti if your into cooling that bad you should rig somethign like that into your desk. You definatly wont overheat anything.

And as for the cooler if someone does take it appart to drill more holes could you take a lot of pictures and say what you did and if it worked. Id like to know how its made in the inside to see what else can be done to it

 

Can someone comment on the AGEIA PhysX card? I've heard its a waste to maybe when it'e supported better. UT3 has only 1 level or is the whole game support? What can you tell me...didn't come yesterday so today should arrive..

 

Are you a UT3 player? lol, what is AGEIA PhysX suppose to do exactly?

I'm a UT3 player and the notebook runs the game superb and this is with everything on max (I have the dual 8700gt cards)

 

The Ageia PhysX card is a standalone PPU (Physics Processing Unit), Basically it takes the load of the cpu or was it the gpu, and does physics processing by itself to give more realistic effects, like in games which suport it, If you shoot a blank of wood, it will break and fall as it would in real life, depending on the angle, force etc of the impact on it. Its mean to be one of the highlights of the M1730 but most people who buy it don't even realise its their, lol

And by the way, the m1730 is the only laptop which features this card, and it is exclusive for now I think..

 

What do you guys think aobut something like this for a cooler.
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ges?q=laptop+cooler&gbv=2&hl=en&safe=off&sa=G

I know it wouldnt be as good as a cooling pad but does anyone think it would make a noticable difference at all since the m1730 has several large heat sources troughout the back of the notebook and this cicrulates air at a point?
Any comments or has anyone tried something like this already?

 

rofl!! A bit over and above what I was thinking! lol

The card is a waste - well for now anyways. Nvidia has just taken over Ageia, so maybe it will be better supported in the future, but for now its mostly ignored.
I only got it since I managed to get it for free after my laptop arrived, and also cos I just wanted to fill the bit of empty space inside my system lol

 

Any suggestions for any other Temperature Monitor programs besides nTune? I installed nTune last night and for some reason alot of the items are not accessible and temperature readings are nowhere to be found. The only chart i've been able to view/access is load (for gpu / cpu / hard drive / ram).

One thing I noticed last night while on the computer was that the system is much hotter to the touch when i'm running the cpu at 2.8 (sli off). When I put the system overclocked to 3.4 (and the fans blasting), the system is actually cool to the touch. I'm wondering if I should just keep the system overclocked for the sake of keeping the system cooler. I guess after I get a proper temperature monitor I can better assess the situation.

 

Is crysis the worst optimized game?

So I started playing crysis at 1920x1200 at high and I was getting around 30 fps with Sli disabled... So I turned on the Sli profile expecting at least an increas in 15fps.. and when I reloaded the game, I replayed the same map and I was getting no more than 20fps... I went on and dl the 1.1 update which is supposed to be a patch for a better Sli support. I started gaming again and the performance went from 20 to 25 fps... Still well below 1x8800GTX.... Is this normal? Is anyone else suffering from this? can you guys try play crysis with and without SLi and see what happens??? thanks!

 

GAH my order is supposed to come today
but it STILL hasnt turned up
GRRRRR

 

i thought the 8800GTX card was all that and a bag chips lol j/k ......How does the game run? does it feel smooth or is it choppy most of the time sergiop? Btw, what is the normal temp you get while playing?

I would upgrade my memory to atleast 4GB even though it reads 3.19 or something

 

When the above chart is displayed, on the bottom right corner is a little botton with an arrow on it. Press that and it will display another chart with your GPU temperature etc.

 

Right now at 1920x1200 all to medium it looks amazingly fluid... but before I could play with most of the things in high and It will run the same as now... Maybe I will go back to the 169.xx drivers... now im on 171.xx...

If I look at the temperatures right now it says:

atitools 50º
Everest 58º
I8kfangui 54º
Nvidia monitor view 56º

On the upgrade part I was gonna get 4gb and 2x320 but I have read that people that get ram outside of dell suffer from high temps... and I read today in engadget that in may fujistsu will release the 500Gb disc... so I will wait and get 1TB XD

 

Ok guys, bear with me [try not to laugh] !!

So I picked up 2 of these from work - they are CPU fans from Dell desktop machines. Im not sure if they work or not yet, but bear with me....

Now, what I was thinking - the plugs at the end - remove them and replace them with USB plugs. Since its only for power, I should just be able to get away with using the black and white power cables from the cooler below, soldered onto pins 1 and 4 of the USB cable/plug. Correct me if Im wrong.....

I should then be able to plug the cooler below into the Zalman's USB ports, just to get power.

Now, the plan is/was to put 2 of these fans together at the rear of the laptop - where the GPU exhaust is. The aim being to suck the hot air out of and away from the system quicker.

At the moment, the fan will spin the wrong way. So it will suck from the fan, and exhaust through the right hand side. Is there any way I can reverse this? Basically I want to change the direction that the fan inside spins, thus making it suck from the vent, and exhaust the air from the area above the fan.

This is what it looks like - so the fan sucks, and exhausts through the vent on the right...




If I can get the fans to spin the other way, so that they suck through the vent, I could maybe set something like this up....




Oh and before you smart ass' mention "thats a gray laptop, and you say blue in your sig!!" - Yes, I have 2 M1730's. I just use the grey one to take the pic since I couldnt be bothered to unplug my blue one

Yes, Im greedy



Anyways, would this work??
I just need the fans to spin the other way!!

 

^^^^^^

Anyway of reversing the polarity of the electrical connections to get the fans to run in reverse.

Try it.

EDIT: If they're easily replaced and cheap!

 

Im just wondering whether the blades of the fan were designed to operate in one way.
ie. whether it will be as effective when going in reverse....

I may get a USB cable from work tomorrow and try it - I dont have any cables I can cut up at home...

Basically Im trying to make something like this.....

http://www.evercool.com.tw/products/nb_ma1.htm#

 

We have found out here, that Crysis is very CPU dependent. There is a huge difference in performance between X7900 running at 2.8 and 3.4. As wired as it sounds, but your CPU might be bottleneck here.

Also i would suggest you to run it on smaller resolution. If you are using laptop's display, there will be no visual differences between 1920x1200 and 1440x900 or probably even 1280x800. You'll be able to squeeze some more FPS this way

 

the xps m1730 is now avaiable with the x9000 cpu over the phone

 

Hi All. Well i was doing some game testing with my 8700m SLi.. Using the 174.16 Drivers from LV2G, CPU @ 3.00Ghz... In COD4 with most setting medium @ 1920x1200 Iam getting anywhere from 80 to 125 FPS... Using the cg_drawmaxfps 125.. So iam hitting the cap easy.. Indoors it stays from 115-125.. Outdoors its Anywhere form 80-110 even with a busy server.. Which is pretty nice.. An if i set it above 125 iam sure it would cap at 150 No problem indoors.. But there is really no need lol... However i was very very impressed in how these cards ran crysis... @ 1680x1050 With all settings to medium iam getting from 45-80 FPS.. I thought this was worthy of posting because that seems very impressive for Crysis an this card.. I have not yet tried Crysis @ 1920x1200.. But i will.. an ill post it.. But i thought these numbers were insane.. Everyone was talking about how this card was no good? I myself am getting the 8800's because iam a speedfreak.. But if there were no 8800's i'd still be rather impressed... Everyone was saying how crappy the card was.. I think its actually a very fast card... Also, I am hitting over a 9k 3Dmark06 WITHOUT overclocking the card.. Call me crazy.. But its over double my G0 7950gtx in every way game shape or form.. I remember people trying to say how the 7950 was outperfoming the 8700's.. I think NOT.. lol

Also... If anyone would like me to prove this somehow.. Ill be more then happy... Just tell me how or what you would like me to do.. What programs etc..

 

What country is that in?

 

@ ifti

Seriously, don't bother with any cooling. I mean the cooler you are getting is more than enough.
My current lappy (can't wait to get rid of it) is 4 years old now.
I bought it back in the dark days, when centrino didn't exist. So, it uses desktop CPU Celeron 2400 and Radeon 9600M. And it is running prietty hot. I mean like after an hour playing Flat Out 2, which squeezes everything out of my system, you won't be able to put your hand on left half of the lappy, because it is so hot. I run Everest and it reads 80 degrees for GPU and 75 for CPU. I run everest only after the game....lappy would die, if i'd run both of those applications at the same time
What i'm trying to say is that i have used my lap top for 4 years, running it at these temps and it is perfectly fine now. Well, cardreader stopped working and CD-RW f*cks up every blank CD i try to burn (reads everything perfectly tho) But i recon it is not because of heat.

I really don't see any reason to bother with any extra cooling. From what i've read here, fans don't even run on max speeds most of the time.

 

is the Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy ADVANCED HD Audio option actualy hardware or is it just software?
and if anyone has it is it any good and worth my cash?

 

its in the uk m8 ordering my on tuesday and will take 2 weeks at the most to get to me

 

What was the price on the x9000

 

around 150-200 on top of the x7900 price

 

well this 8800m gtx SLI card really is simply fast. Playing COD4 @ 1920x1200 full settings and 4x AA and getting 70fps constant dropping to 55fps.

Jericho is @ 1920x1200 with all high settings and no AA and getting same results. This game crashes when enabling 4x AA.

Ive had 2 freezeups today.Overheating i think. There producing a massive amount of heat compared to the 8700M card. But i have overclocked the cpu to 3.4ghz and the cards to 600/900.

 

Well my replacement machine with a 8800 in it arrives tomorrow. Thank god my sales rep kept all our email traffic saved or I would have gotten screwed with having to keep the 8700. Lesson learned, don't make promises to customers without all facts. Worked out well for me.

Can't wait.