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

How much improvement did you notice when you overclocked the cards?

@ the x9000 being 150-200 more, Lol what a rip off!

 

ifti,

which 1730 colour do you prefer, blue or grey now you have had them both for a few days?

 

Very nice. Just don't see any point of spending 200 (pounds I believe...?) for 5% increse in performance. And I read here, that X7900 overclocked doesn't get as hot as SLI 8800 anyway.

 

It's a software. Some ppl say that it's uselees. Others say it's brilliant. I don't have my lappy yet, so can't tell you. But i ordered it anyway (it's only 35 euroes)

 

well dell messed my first order up and way over charged my so am getting the x9000 ad a 400gb hard drive and a g5 gaming mouse all for the same price i paid orignally and a 100 off the final price so a good deal i think

 

I read somewhere a while ago about some 500GB hard drive for laptops. I think it was Fujitsu one. It is gonna be bigger, than ordinary hard drive. lol Those loosers couldn't squeeze 500GB into ordinary size hard drive, so they just made it bigger I already see 1TB hard drive for laptops, which is gonna be twice the size of 500GB one

 

Wow! That's cool. Lucky you

 

looks like ive got the 2nd fastest laptop in the world on 3dmark06 at the moment!. Lets see how long i can hold onto spot 2

 

hehe, congratz What's the fastest btw?

 

whats the fastest laptop and how did you get 14525score?

 

That was hitachi... there is so far the samsung and fujitsus 500gb with standar specs and the hitachi one which is a bit thicker...

 

Ifti, why do you want the 2.5Ghz Penryn so bad. I've ordered the T9300, but I would have figured that if you'd want to swap with anything, it would be the X9000?

 

whats the fastest laptop and how did you get 14525score?

 

His M1730 is the 2nd fastest in the world atm, That will change when Sager release SLI 8800 on there laptop though

He got that score by overclocking the CPU to 3.4Ghz and overclocking the GPUs a bit.Most likely tweaked it alot for good measure

 

why is it because it has a quad core rather than a dual?

 

Quad Core desktop processor with ram running at full speed

 

I think youve got a point. I think I'll wait for the Zalman cooler to arrive, and see how things go with that before I get too excited lol

Definately blue
Its brighter, and looks much better IMO. With the lights on it looks awesome

I was only kiddin. Ive said in the past Im happy with the CPU Ive got. I wont be upgrading it for quite a while yet......


My 3DMark06 score was 14,389 with CPU overclocked to 3.4GHz. Didnt overclock my card though.
Im not much of an overclocker to be honest so I stick to the defaults. I cant see any reason to OC for now, its powerful enough for me as it is

 

what do u mean the rams at full speed?
what would you expect in a 3d score from the Sager?

 

I'd expect a Sager with 8800m GTX Sli and a 2.66Ghz Quadcore to score about 14500-15000 I guess.

Ram in the Dell is only running at 667mhz, Sager uses a desktop CPUs in there laptops so the rams running at 800mhz.Far as I'm aware its Dells chipset that limits the ram speed to 667mhz.I'd expect the M17100 to run at 800mhz min(More likely 1066mhz^^)

 

Just had an interesting thought.
Hoping someone would be willing to have ago at this
Underclock the 8800m GTX as low as there go and see what extra battery time you get.

 

By getting this laptop, battery time should really not concern you at all!!
It really needs to be plugged in all the time.

 

ok now im annoyed
the just checked my delivery status and it says coustomer not in note left
i took the whole afternoon off to get this laptop and now this, i havnt even seen a delivery van up our street, grrrr
and as for a note id like to see one,

NOT a happy bunny

grats on your 1000th post ifti btw

 

Oh cheers! I didnt realise I had 1000 posts! lol

I hate it when delivery people do that. Sometimes a parcel may be out of their normal route etc, so they just make somet up and miss the delivery!! Ive had it myself before.

Once a friend of mine ordered a CD Player years ago. After several days his mum went to put the garbage out, and found a parcel in the bin - it was his bloody CD Player!!

Gits!

Hope you receive it tomorrow!

 

Its just software. There are reports that this has good effects and doesn't cost much.

But to answer your question ... I didn't think it was worth it and didn't buy it.

 

DHL (USA) delivered my Dell DVD/CD ROM drive replacement to the same street name and number but in ... another city. They left it at somebody's doorsteps and this was it. After some time I called Dell to find out why the drive hasn't arrived yet and they started investigating. DHL driver went back to ask about the parcel and was told that yes, it was found at the doorsteps but then deposited in a drop off box. Nobody knew if it was a DHL drop off box or perhaps Fedex. So the drive was declared "lost or stolen" and another drive has been dispatched. Stuff happens but I hope this is not what is happening to you.

Btw, that second replacement drive, it turned out, was for M1330 not M1730, and the third drive mailed ... but this is, as they say, another story

 

Agreed, they should market the battery as a UPS!

"m1730 comes with 45 mins UPS to allow you to save all your games and shutdown gracefully"

 

^^^
spot on!
Well thats how Im using mine anyways! lol

 

No it wont work. or atleast i dont think. the way it works is the vents suck in the air and the only way out is the slot. even if you could reverse the blade direction it wouldnt pull the air the other way but it is a nice idea


And as for the X9000 being offered over the phone is it in the US
and yeeeeeesssssss i can finally order my laptop

 

Yeah, I think trying to suck away hot air from the exhaust will not have the same benefit of trying to introduce new cold air into the intakes.

This is precisely what the Zalman is trying to do. Perhaps something to consider Ifti, extending on your ideas from a few pages ago, is to install fans into the desk tray.

Granted its extreme, but could be quite effective. The idea would be to mount CPU fans into the desk so that they are sucking air from under the desk and blowing it into the intakes under the laptop. This would be an alternative to the Zalman NC2000 of course. You could wire them up to run off USB too.

 

Can I make the suggestion of having this no where NEAR your precious m1730 for the first 10 hours of running these fans backwards.

We might have to start a site like the wiihaveaproblem.com for these crazy inventions.

 

Ok guys.. This notebook cooler invention stuff is getting nuts.. I own the Zalman.. It works perfectly... For you guys that own the M1730.. Put your hands behind it when the fans are at about medium.. The notebook fans blow HARD, really hard ten times that of my M1710.. Also note the angle the exhaust emits.. The notebook cooler does not suck air in that hard.. If anything its sucking in little to none of the exhaust.. Every inch of the notebook after gaming for an hour.. Is COLD.. I kid you not.. COLD.. The only part that has any heat coming from it is the back of the computer right on the heatsinks.. The RAM container is not even warm to the touch.. I have not done much testing monitoring temps.. But it does its job.. AN its does it very well... The top of the notebook cooler itself doesnt even get warm its also COLD!!! Its very impressive.. It just works.. I recommend it to every M1730 owner.. Perfect fit.. Very very nice craftsmanship.. An it sits perfect..

 

Skillhouette, if the m1730 is so effective at dissipating heat, then why do you recommend the Zalman? When pushed does the notebook heat too much, or is it purely for system longevity?

 

sucking the air out of the notebook would work especially if its high volume because then it would pull all the air from the notebook therefore it would be filled constantly with new cold air sucked in from wherever on the notebook

what i ment is that the fans wouldnt work running them backwards not those fans. their squirle cage fans the same kind found in central units and their only made to run one way just by their design

 

w00t I finally ordered my xps m1730.
guys is it too heavy for my lap or is it fine?

 

Shoot me ... Dell cancelled my XPS order b/c of a bad phone number even tho I updated it 3 times !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! argh


Even better I call them and find out they completely shut down my account and now I have to wait 24 to 48 hours so an Investigator can call me and then MAYBE i can apply for a new account....

 

Gratz. People have definitely been using it as a laptop. But due to its dimension i would imagine it would be a little difficult. It has large dimensions and is pretty hefty.

 

Your sig is showing you with 8700's, are you still using those in your laptop?

The 8800's run a lot hotter then then 8700's. Room temperature also has a huge impact as well. I never had either of my laptops overheat, but the 8800's after a few hours of gaming make the surface of the laptop almost untouchable (GPU temps steady 84C without cooler). I would say my apartment is significantly hotter then most (25-27C average).

I wonder if my higher temps is because of the OCZ ram I have installed. I'll have to test that out along with many other things this weekend.

Sorry guys but I don't have much time throughout the week to play around with the laptop, I'll take pictures of the notebook cooler this weekend and post them.

If you place the laptop all the way flush with the bottom of the zalman cooler the first 2 rows of holes will feed the CPU/GPU's intake fans. i think it would just be a matter of drilling maybe 5 holes per fan across the top to fully optomize the cooling power of this notebook cooler. I don't believe there's any thing obstructing airflow to the top of the cooler. I'll report back here when I have some answers for everyone.

 

I had to get 2GB of RAM in favour of X7900, and upgrade it later on myself. Just wanted to ask those of you, who have done it, which RAM did you use and how well it works? Have read here, that not all RAM will run well.

And one more question. I never dealt with RAID systems before. I am going to do clean reinstall straight afetr I get the laptop. Will i need to install any kind of drivers or something like it for RAID0 during the installation or after it?

 

I bought some OCZ ram, rated at 800MHZ. They run at 667 or 800 at the same memory timings as the dell supplied ram. Some people claim that using non-dell ram increases your system temps, but I have a very hard time believing that. I'll test that out this weekend to prove that misconception wrong. If you turn the supplied dell ram over you'll see that it's just generic kingston ram that's used. My vista experience memory score did not change with either memory, which makes sense since it's the same speed and timings on each.

As far as performing a clean install with raid0/1 on this laptop, you'll need the intel storage manager drivers that's supplied on the dell installation disk. I'm actually going to do it tonight if I get some free time at work. I'll let you know if I run into any issues.

 

Yea I dont see why ram would run hotter just because its not from Dell except the fact that the ram you buy might be running faster than the generic kingston.
Kermit i would also like to know if you have any problems and If you could let us know how you had to set up the raid 0 because when i get my system i will probably do a clean install.

 

Ifti has this well covered in his YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6g2ZQwKMYI

 

The chipset will only support 667 RAM, so even if you plug in 800's, you'll only get 667 out of them.

 

What games / applications are all of you M1730 owner's running / playing? I've completed Crysis and COD4 and am looking for more 'games' to play. I'm currently using the system for work now to video edit but am on the lookout for some games to really wow / impress me. I'm not really into the online gaming just yet for the PC since I do most online gaming with the Xbox 360 so i'm wondering if that rules out Unreal since that game is mainly about multiplayer?

 

Its for system longevity.. It also keeps the surfaces of the laptop cooler.. Meaning its keeping the whole machine cooler.. Without the Zalman.. The surfaces get quite warm.. Maybe i worded it wrong.. But also iam using 4gb of Corsair memory.. To whoever said they were using the OCZ..

 

JulianOliver, have you received your machine yet? If not when will you be? Im interested to see how long your delivery was.

Mine is being delivered tomorrow, total of only 9 working days, not bad, especially when compared to some people in US who keep getting screwed over on delivery! My last machine was only 8 working days...

 

ARMA (Armed Assault) looks incredible when you crank the graphics up to near max. Its a hardcore realistic military sim, where you can walk,drive,fly,sail heaps of different vehicles. It might be a bit much if you're only keen on Quake sort of thing. But its definetly worth just installing to have a look at the graphics. My jaw hit the ground when I first saw it cranked.

EVE Online: Trinity, the new graphical update they've just released looks pretty darn good with all the settings on max.

Supreme Commander, crank the graphics and watch your system groan But damn it looks good!

Im sure I'll think of more soon.

On another note, who here is using an external monitor with their XPS? Im eyeing up the 22" LG 226WTP-Q. Its a very nice widescreen monitor, has 5000:1 contrast ratio, its all black, very understated look, fits in nice on any desk. And they're getting soooo cheap now, amazing how things change!

My brother has two of these monitors hooked up to his desktop, amazing to use, never had so much real estate! Im used to using the 14" screen off of my little Asus W3J. I remember very well the M1730's screen was massive and hugely impressive when I first opened it up.

But unfortunately from what I've read, you can't run 2 external monitors with SLI enabled. Anyone have anymore info on this? Is their a way to get around this? I'll have to play around with it when I receive my machine tomorrow.

 

I placed the order on the 22nd, and the status was updated last night to say that it was built and ready for the flight to Australia. I'll keep you posted when it actually arrives, but the estimated date is 4th March (I suspect it will come before then).

 

I find this to be a pretty reliable review site http://au.gamespot.com/games.html?type=top_rated&platform=5&sort=score&page_type=games&dlx_type=all&date_filter=6&sortdir=asc

 

Cool, looks like we have the exact same spec also, except for the OS. Will be running 3dmark when I get it tomorrow. Here's to hoping I don't have any problems, the last machine I had worked like a treat.

 

Ya, the OS is not decided yet. I have XP Pro license from an old notebook - so given that Dell charges $30 more for XP to be shipped, getting Vista was a logical choice. That gives me the option of checking out performance on Vista and if its not right, I'll put XP on and get rid of the Dell bloatware at the same time.

I'm also going to run 3DMark06 as soon as I get it. We can post and compare specs in a fairly controlled environment. It'll be interesting to see the difference.