3dmark score of 1232 on my m1530?!

It seems like every other person with an m1530 gets better performance than I do. Here's my specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo, T8300 2.4ghz
geforce 8600m GT, 512 mb RAM, DDR3
4 GB RAM
250 gig 7200 rpm hard drive
Windows XP sp3

I'm using the latest mobile Xtreme G drivers for overclockablility. They seem to perform better than standard nvidia drivers anyway.

My first 3dmark06 test gave me a score of 1232. This is absolutely horrible... especially compared to other m1530 systems. I overclocked to 600/825 and got a score of 3084. A lot better, but still not good. I got a dangerously high temperature at one point of 90 degrees C, though it was only for a second. It was an average of 80. I'm not going to keep my system OCed, I just wanted to see what it could do.

So why does my system have such terrible performance compared to other m1530s? Most 3dmark scores for the 8600m GT have are an average of around 4500.

 

Did you try the newest Dox drivers, there preformance is much better..

 

Try Xfastest 177.85.. best for benchmarking..
also don't forget to clean install a new driver using driver sweeper.. do not overwrite drivers..

 

Guess I'm really just going to have to try comparing different drivers then. Is there anything else that could be causing such horrible performance?

 

I think driver is not a reason . I think that is rather high temps who is downclocking GPU to a safety area . Try to clean your vents . Maybe the dust is a reason .

 

The 8600m's that are achieving 4-5000 are the (GDDR3) versions which have much higher speed memory which is why they perform better.

 

All XPS M1330/1530 comes with 8400M or 8600M with GDDR3 memory.
@VinceIP: In what rezolution/settings did you run the benchmark? What there any applications running? You must run 3D Mark at the default settings and all apps need to be closed to obtain a good score.

 

With Dell xps 1530, 8600m GT
If it's 256MB --GDDR3
If it's 512MB --DDR2 (considerably slower)

Since he said it's 512MB, it's ddr2 - which explains for the lower score.

 

Actually, I'm not completely sure if it's 512 mb or 256 mb.

As you can see, RivaTuner tells me I have the 256 MB GDDR3 card.



But canyourunit.com tells me I have the 512 MB card...



So which one is it? How can I know?

I'll try out different drivers in a bit and let you guys know if I get better results. Other than that I don't know what to do. My vents are all clean and I've only had this laptop since Christmas. And even if I do have a DDR2 card, I should DEFINITELY be getting a higher score than 1232 on stock clocks, shouldn't I?

 

Use GPU-Z to see what card you have. I didn't knew that M1530 comes with DDR2 512MB 8600M GT. I think that 512MB are shared memory (256MB more from system's RAM).
And yes, even with DDR2 memory it should score more than 3000 3D Marks.

 

Every M1530 has the 8600M GT 256MB DDR3. The Inspiron 1520's came with a DDR2 8600, but the 1530 never came with anything else. There was no 512MB variation either, so canyourunit.com is incorrect. Trust Rivatuner.

That being said, I'm not sure why you'd get low scores like that. I'd make sure your power setting is on High Performance also (just in case).

If everything you've tried doesn't seem to help, I'd just clean install Windows and go from there. It doesn't take that long and my computer is always noticeably faster and has less quirky problems than before. This would probably go into my category of quircky problems that is fixed with a format & reinstall.

 

Yep, you're right! It's a 256 MB GDDR3. So I should definitely have better performance.

 

I thought about reformatting. I think that's going to be my last resort, though. I'm using Windows XP (I won't use Vista anymore, it's just awful) and it's really kind of a pain to get all the drivers set up just right, since m1530 doesn't support XP natively.

 

XP could, but shouldn't, be another contributing factor to the low score. Try Windows 7. I'm using version 7077 x64 and it runs GREAT! Super fast, gaming is fine, everything is working 100% for me and I've honestly had no problems. I think you would be pleasantly surprised with the performance.

 

Hm... Maybe. I'll do some more research on Windows 7. Did you have any problems getting drivers to work properly with it? And why choose 64-bit over 32-bit?

 

No problems, most Vista drivers work fine. I've been using 64bit since I could. Its faster for certain applications, I can utilize all 4GB of my Ram (biggest thing), and I have no incompatibilities with any software I need to run, so really there's no reason for me not to.

My M1530 is similar in specs to yours and mine flies with Windows 7. I can't imagine using XP over Win7 unless I absolutely had to.

 

I've got an update!

I just tried out the dox drivers. I did another 3dmark and this time got a fantastic score of 4812. But the major downside is RivaTuner logged a peak temperature of 91 C. What the hell? And that was on stock clocks!

That's really bad. Either I try different drivers again or go as far as to underclock the thing just to turn down the heat. I want to have a MAX temp of 80. 91 is just crazy. Suggestions?

 

yep that score means your computer ran at full throttle, witch will come with unpleasant surprises like high temps, 91C is high, maybe try and clean that fan with compressed air? my computer usually maxes at about 82C while heavy gaming is going on, so your temp is way off ... what probably happened was that your drivers werent using the performance 3D mode, and were stuck at low 3D, witch gives * low * performance to save battery life. and the dox drivers did kick into performance and gave good results but high temp.