2 Questions regarding new XPS M1730

Hi all,

I have 2 questions regarding my new 2.4ghz option dell xps m1730.

Firstly - how do you overclock it? In Bios - i have read that there are sliders for upping the multiplier or what not- but in mine, there totally isnt! There's an area for performance, which has like automatic performance type options, but nothing that actually lets me up the OC settings i would have expected!

Secondly I have got it with win vista ultimate and it feels extremely bloaty. Having never owned a dell laptop before, i really want to tweak this to get the absolute best gaming possible on it(my main reason for buying this to use as my main PC overseas next year).

Game performance is not too bad, but it's not good either. Games i would expect to run considerably better than my desktop pc(or at least as good), really dont. My desktop pc is a dual core machine running at 2.13ghz with 2 gig of ram and a 128mb video card.

My XPS m1730 is 2.4 ghz with 4 gig of ram and sli whatever they are vid cards - i just dont understand why it's even fairly choppy in games like world of warcraft that arent even overly hard going on a regular PC.

I figure i need to tweak it somewhat, and i did notice quite a big performance jump by disabling Aero.

Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Basically new dell owner, unsure how to deal with what seems to be lots of dell bloatware installed.

I contimplated reinstalling vista with the dvd dell provided, but i assume it would come preloaded with all the same stuff anyway.

Cheers
Marcus

 

I don't believe the non Core2 Extreme CPU (2.8ghz) is OC'able so you may not have the option.

I don't believe the SLI in these is working quite right yet. Try disabling the SLI from the nVidia control panel and try WoW again. You may find that even though the FPS drop a bit you'll find movement much smoother.

 

1) You can't overclock without the extreme cpu that has the multi unlocked.

2)Reinstall vista with the latest drives, the pre installed copy is so bogged down it's not funny.

Eclipse, sli does work, they wouldn't sell it if one of it's major selling points was mute.

 

I never said it wasn't working. The SLI implementation is a bit wonky with some games that can't cache all textures/meshes at once. Prime example, MMO's like WoW and LOTRO.

It's likely more of a problem with so little dedicated memory (256mb) than an architecture problem.

 

It all Depends upon what you mean by Choppy.

I run WoW on my 1730 - 2.8/4Gig - I am getting a Pretty Constant 60FPS @ 1920 X 1200 with Everything to the max - Thought this will dip down if there are lots of people on Screen / Lots of Spell Effects going off / Am standing on top of a mountain with a HUGE line of sight.

Lowest I have seen it go to is around the mid 30's - Which is still more than Playable.

Frag. Out.

 

Thanks for the reply guys, it's appreciated.

Actually in regards to game performance(particularly with something like wow) i found by changing the battery's performance setting from 'balanced' to 'performance' made quite a considerable difference.

If i reinstall the vista that came with the laptop, will that be free of the dell bloatware? Or is it a custom version of vista with that bloatware already in it?

Will the actual reinstall require a format? Being pretty much a novice, im worried about having to reset up the drives and so on, as i believe they're configured as raid and so on.

cheers