Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge, *Part 3*

I've just installed Crysis 2 and I have to say it's awesome. Runs very smooth at 1440 on advanced.
I'm running 260.99 WHQL drivers, soon I'll do a full format and use the latest NVIDIA drivers, also I'll overclock the beast a little and see how it runs maxed out.
So far, Crysis 2 runs a lot better than the first one.

 

Cool, but why:

1) run it at 1440*900? Dont worry about the framerate, console versions are made with 30fps limit. Pc can go above 60 obviously (as it does on my desktop btw) but our xps is already pushing its limits

2) notice that my framerate is dictated by my x9000 @ 3,8ghz so maybe youre not able to reach same stability with a T9300. And im running Hardcore btw.

3) 260.99 are good, but they underperform compared to 265.90q and compared to latest WHQL that i just posted above. Try them!

 

Awesome game, but there is heavy flickering on water even with latest drivers.
A known issue in the demo but still not corrected.
older driver such a 197.xx did not have that problem
Hardcore settings give me like a 25 fps average, it's not that great, sticking with advanced

 

Hey guys,
What are the best settings/drivers for STARCRAFT 2 for our beasts? I've got 9800M GT( x9000 @ 3.4GHz) cards but starcraft seems to be too heavy for them . Definitely unplayable on High settings (not too mention ultra). Am I doing something wrong? I've got the newest drivers from nvidia site.

 

Dunno mate, Magnus maybe can help.
Afaik SC2 should run perfectly fine, specially under SLI. Are you sure SLI is working?
do you have only 1 9800m GT but not two?
Latest drivers available are 267.78 for Windows Vista/7 x64 only.
If you're under XP you may try 267.24 beta or 267.59 with a modded inf.

 

I ran Starcraft 2 in single mode ultra settings without any much trouble, even with heavy action on screen. Of course I run with older drivers.

Now Crysis 2 runs 40-50 fps at High settings, just installed the retail version today.

 

Thats good. I guess you tweaked the game a bit right? The Crysis 2 configurator really helps

 

Just thought I'd give an update on the situation with my 8800's. Today I decided as a kind of final hope for my cards that id try flashing the 9800M GT bios onto them to see if that'd get the second card going again (unlikely I know, but it was worth a try as its wrecked anyway), well the flash was successful onto the first card, but then after flashing the bios onto the second, it seems to have completely bricked the gpu, no picture at all now lol! So I just need to force myself to spend £320 on a new 8800 now

 

Ehm....settings naming convention in Crysis 2 is a bit weird. High preset is actually the lowest picture quality. Very high = medium; Extreme = high. I personally get playable framerate of around 30-35 fps on very high.

TBH at this point I think it would be better to invest into a new PC.

 

Yes Very High is playable for sure. Though High looks really good and boost performance around 10-15 fps

Well I am trying to tweak the game to use autoexec.cfg. I will see what results I get

 

w000t? How do you do it? What version of drivers are you using? What kind of tweaks have you made? Single mode meaning not SLI mode? I going to try this out.

 

Yeah that's what I've been trying to decide or not, just I don't really have the money for an alienware right now and wouldn't want anything less as a replacement, so I'll probably just sell my old m1710 to pay for the fix.

 

I use 197.15 in Win XP. Other tweaks is to install the right chipset driver to boost performance. Also do you have an X9000 CPU, since Starcraft 2 is quite CPU dependant.

 

Give this tweak for Crysis 2 a try. Just place the autoexec.cfg directly in the Crysis 2 folder

 

Yeah I've got x9000 @ 3.4 and in SC is already reaching ~90C so I don't think I can overclock it more. What chipset drivers are you using?

edit: I've downloaded drivers from here http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=163444 but it's saying it couldn't find any drivers compatible with my hardware? :/. I've got SLI 9800m GT. From the description: Notebook

* Quadro FX 360M, 370M, 570M, 770M, 1600M, 1700M, 2700M, 2800M, 3600M, 3700M, 3800M
* GeForce 8000 series or higher

Any clues??

 

90*C for an X9000 @ 3.4? You sure do have alot of dust in your machine. Do a cleanup + a fresh new paste and undervolting and you'll achieve a max temperature under 65 in SC2.

 

Thnaks a lot for the autoexec magnus, game runs fine, but after 5 minutes bsod, after 2 attempts im gonna roll back to default config.
i get a bsod 0x000001E followed by several 0x00000

 

Thx for the config Magnus. Will give it a try as soon as I can. Although I don't think I'll get much free time this week.
Btw, any word on when DX11 support will be added to the game?

 

I'll give it a go later when I get back home also

 

Well just a tip guys.
As by default, hardcore runs great on our xps, in both 7 and XP with the same performance (267.59 drivers).
Using the Config Tool (now in version 1.5) set everything to very high, and if you need a performance boost disable:

AA+Trasparent AA (Laptace Edge AA) set both to 0.

Fov and Sprint Fov needs to stay at 65 (since its vertical fov, 90°).

There you go, a nice boost with maxed out default settings. Also dont forget that starting from 267.59 nvidia included Crysis 2 profile. If you're on 267.24 or lower you need the SLI update patch.

 

So I need to move on from 265.90quadros then. Another update...

 

Does not run great for me by default lol

 

Why not? Im able to nail 50fps max, with an average of 35fps. And thats without any modification.

 

@Kingpinzero, are you running demo, or leaked version of Crysis 2? Could be some differences between those and the final version.

@totstar, are you using the latest NVidia 267.76 drivers?

 

Are you kiddin right? Im running full retail version, pre ordered on Feb. and delivered the 25 of this month.
Just had a blast in multi too. Add me: KingpinZero.

Unlike other peoples on the interwebs i felt BAD to abuse the beta, since it would have spoiled my money for good. So i kept myself busy until the retail came out with the demo.
So yes, the benchmarks i made are with full retail version.
BTW 29.90 over EA Store, it was a deal!
And yes too, on Windows 7 im running latest WHQL Verde, 267.76. On Xp since there's none, 267.59.

 

Ok, sorry. Didn't mean to offend you. It's just that you were refering to the names of the settings presets as they were in the multiplayer demo.
Unfortunately, I didn't catch that deal. Still, the game is €10 cheaper in EA store than most games out there. Also noticed that Shift 2 is €10 cheaper as well. Looks like EA are doing some aggressive pricing here.

 

Are you running overclocked, cause that must make a nice difference
As usual my gpus dont like it lol
Advanced settings run pretty good, 32 fps average
And yea latest drivers

 

Retail game have the same settings mate so no advanced options like crysis 1 did.
Luckily theres the config tool out that semplifies things.
And dont worry man, im not offended.
Just i dont like to rip off devs unless the game is a real crap and im not decided if buy it or not, which are very rare cases.
Lets put this under this view: if i get a game without owning it ill use it as a demo. If its ok then im game, and ill end buy it. If not, delete

 

600 / 900 / 1500 is a decent OC and should be ok for any xps ... granted, the 9800M gtxs are a bit less OCable than the 88/98M GTs, but they should be stable with the default voltage. Heck, i`ve even gone upto 620/1550/900 and I had no issues.

 

Yep, all correct.

 

No they changed the presets for the retail version to High, Very High and Extreme in graphics options. The Advanced was in the beta and in the demo.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant.

 

Are you talking about the settinga in the ini or in the game?
Because retail 1.0 comes with gamer/advanced/hardcore.

So if i assume it right (v1.0 vs v1.1):

Gamer= high
Advanced= very high
Hardcore= extreme

Using the configuration tool 1.5 you can select 3 presets, medium/high/very high.
Very high enables 4msaa+4 edgeAA laptace/all the blur settings/16xAF.
Turns out its the hardcore "extreme" mode.

 

Nah in game it is High, Very High and Extreme. No Gamer/Advance for me in the retail version I got yesterday.

 

By the way here is both the Xbox 360 config and the PS3 config for Crysis 2. Just place the autoexec.cfg in your Crysis 2 folder. Try either one of them, both runs very smooth at 1920x1200.

 

Yup, thats true.
You know since last patch i didnt checked the options menu, i just realized they changed the video options lolz.
So yes im on extreme right now.
Lol,didnt even noticed the change. Version vanilla however (v1.0) does still have gamer/advanced/hardcore. Patch 1.1 changes video options description as well.

 

Yeah strange they changed the video options, true Kingpin I installed 1.1 right away so didn´t even try 1.0 in retail

 

Has anyone been able to enable wake on lan in the M1730?

 

I extended the warranty for another 2 years for my XPS M1730. Guess I have to make a call again and tell them this time that my backlight on the keyboard doesn´t´work as it should.

However for that amount of money I could have bought another GTX 460 for my desktop and SLI them, oh well I will do that anyway later on

 

I paid 270$ for my extended warranty ...

 

316$ here which is 2099 SEK.

 

Not critical but a bit annoying. My LED display the small one that is right above the keyboard on the right side is not changing its data. It use to show system performance, time, stop clock etc. It just says, "Windows Media Player [Stopped] No selected music" and when I press the button it says, "Windows Slideshow [Monochrome]". Is there a method to reset to work properly?

 

Yeah that's an issue i had from time to time, to fix it, just uninstall logitech lcd manager and download the newest version from logitech website

 

The thing that used to work for me was to basically restart all the other missing apps by simply double clicking them, i think they are located in C:\Program Files\Logitech\GamePanel Software\Applets but I'm not sure as I'm awaiting upon my new gpu's so can't check lol!

 

Yo guys, just a quick update.
First, theres a new verde notebook driver out:

GeForce.com - Get the Most Out of Your GPU Windows 7 x64

And since i had time to waste heres my new tests with these new drivers:

Crysis 2 Extreme (Disabled AA and Edge AA):
Single Player goes way to 35fps, but in very crowded areas with intense fights (eg 3rd chapter) it stays stable around 28fps. Also flickering is gone. That means that the game is running vanilla without AA, no tweaks/modded cvars (Use Crysis Config Tool 1.7 to enable MultiGpu support and to disable AA/Mouse Smoothing). I guess that on very high, which is mainly identical to extreme beside a deep anisotropy over shadows and longer drawing distance, it can rock, but hadnt the time to test it. Also multiplayer is very playable at 28/30/35fps in Extreme. So thats how our xps does So great driver so far. Very stable, smooth and flickering is gone. No xp as you guess, i made the tests under Windows 7 x64.

Assassin Creed Brotherhood:
Very nice performance increase. Compared to last driver, all you need to do is to max out every possible setting excluding shadows (set them to 3, which is medium, which means its a bit blurry but other than that, its fine) and Multisampling (2x/4x have the same performance hit).
Rarely it drops to 29fps, most of the time stays well above 30-35, even 40. Sli is scaling really good if you use AC2 profile and add the exe's (ACBSP/ACBMP.exe/Assassinscreedbrotherhood.exe). No flickering/unstable framerate reported even with vsync on, which means that you can have the same framerate as console while boosting true 1200p, crazy texture and models quality.

Need for Speed SHIFT 2 Unleashed:
The game doesnt support SLI, so even adding the exe to the SHIFT profile doesnt help, in fact it makes things worse. Worry not, however: this driver does great things. Just max out every setting excluding AntiAliasing (but i think that 2xAA is fine) and there you go: 35-40fps all the time, more or less. For sure never below 30, just did a test run in brands hatch with Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione. So this game runs great even on single card. I hope they enable SLI/Crossfire soon because if thats the performance on a single card, imagine on two.
NOTE: Shift 2 doesnt like OSD's and GameBooster. If you want to benchmark the framerate, launch the game THEN alt-tab and run fraps. Otherwise it will crawl to death.

Also this driver adds the nvidia tray icons with auto updates and such, very nice feature.

 

Does it make a difference if I do not uninstall the Logitech driver first? I did that and my LCD did not work. Then I uninstalled it and installed the older Logitech drivers and now it is only showing the countdown stopwatch and the clock. Should I just uninstall it it again and try once more with the current version?

 

Latest version doesnt support our xps anymore guys.
You need this one:

Software GamePanel

the other one,Logitech Gaming Software, doesnt support our xps lcd anymore.

 

Confused on the version. Can please confirm the XPS m1730 version?
Logitech GamePanel Software 3.01.361

 

After many support services Dell is about to replace my system. The support person mentioned XPS17 but it does not quite sound right no me. My XPS M1730 contains X9000 2.8GHz, 8gb RAM, NVIDIA dual 9800M GTX 1gb (total), DVD RW, Bluetooth, WiFi. Windows Experience index 5.9. He is going to remote in tomorrow and see my system. What can I expect and what should a tell him? Thanks.

 

You have the maxxed out XPS, in terms of performance (except SSD). Whatever you get, make sure it`s at least ON PAR with what you have : top of the line GPUs, best CPU and max RAM.