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

Hello.
Can someone help me, i have an isue whit this card, i think its not supported for the 1730, but i just have only this model, have someone heare a working driver+sw for this Dell 5530 Card?
Thanks for the help.

 

Well Witcher 2 runs awesome on the XPS M1730 even with Uber Sampling on 1920x1200

 

I was expecting this Mag post your settings/profiles and stuff, im curious.
I suspect around 30-35fps right?
What i dont understand is ubersampling. On my desktop it destroys the performance alot...how the beast can do better than it?

 

This is getting absurd lol
Just installed the game under win7 with latest 275.27.
On Low settings im getting 26-30 fps, sometimes 40.

So the question is:

What drivers?
What settings?
What sli profile? Care to share it?

Thanks man, as always.

 

Hey KingPin, I will post the settings I use and the SLI profile for it. Have you read about the DRM problem with the game? I replaced the exe file with the COG one I think it´s named along with Paul.dll and SLI boosted up significantly. Have you tried this?

I will post a youtube vid of how it runs.

 

Im cant wait, pls let me know what os/drivers/settings/sli profile youre using.

And yes im using gog exe+paul.dll.

It simply chokes on low settings.

Btw im playing it on my desktop rig so im not so concerned, but i truly want to see what the xps can do.

 

Quick update:

Seems that lates betas have a bad sli profile for Witcher 2.

The default value,0x02C04005 (The Witcher 2), is wrong.
The correct bits is 0x02C04205 (a 2 in the place of the first 0)

This brings me to 28-40, average of 26-30 with everything on high/ultra, ubersampling off, Antialiasing on.

Tested in the beginning, where the Dragon attacks. Lots of stuff happens on screen so i guess that having a steady 26-32 fps is bliss.

Game is smooth, playable and enjoyable.

As for Dirt 3, there is a negative SLI scaling in menus/loading. Framerate dips to 7/10 fps in menus, loading a track is a pain.
Alt+tab helps a bit, but nothing much.

As for the performance, running the game at ultra settings with 8xCsaa brings an average of 46.3 in benchmark.

Same happens in solo/rally.

Dropping the MSAA to 2x brings the framerate to a stable 55fps. So it runs better than dirt 2 indeed.



Still waiting for Mag thoughts on Witcher 2 thought. Tested XP as well with 268.03 modded but performance is the same. As for dirt 3, in xp there isnt any profile for it, so im confined in 7.

 

I will take a look at dirt 3 too, just have to install it first. I will try that SLI profile you had there KingPin, sitting at my desktop right now but with post the settings and the SLI profile I use.

 

Hey dont forget your Witcher 2 settings/profile/drivers, i wanna know how we can improve this.

Althought a patch is expected for this evening, as they said it should improve drastically the performance.

As for Dirt 3, finally we know whats causing the slowdown in menus/loading. Its the reflection setting.

You can try it, max out every aspect but leave reflections to low or disabled.
Then as soon as the game loads, go into ingame menu,options,crank up the reflections.

done. Dunno why it happens only in loading screens thought, but ingame is perfectly fine to max out everything.

 

Hello everyone I'm looking for advice, shocker. I recently got an m1730 in a trade for one of my older laptops. Anyways, basically I cannot game on this to save my life. Borderlands and Killing Floor cannot run above 12 fps even at 800x600 resolution with all settings at very low. I also notice that my CPU is reaching 100% usage basically when I do anything from *trying* to play a game to opening up a web browser. Now, I have the t8300 and I'm looking to upgrade. I cannot seem to be able to choose between a t9500 and an x9000, and have been looking across the internet for some time now, with no definite answer, or at least not one from the past three years. I need something that will allow me to be able to at least play the newer of the games nowadays, even if on low settings But, I'm tight on money. So if I can get away with the t9500 OC'ed, then that'd be great, but I'm not sure if I need the x9000 to even dream of playing the "newest" games out there. Please help me out.

 

Hi and welcome aboard.
First we need more details. You're having a cpu bottleneck, so i guess its not entirely a cpu fault, but also a gpu one.

What gpu you have? It is an 8700m SLI or single?
You got 2 gpus in Sli or 1?

Judging by the framerate i guess you're on 8700m, even single. Or sli is simply not working, or maybe one of the cards is busted...

anyway: about your question, the x9000 is the only way to go. Is overclockable thru bios @ 3,4ghz, and theres no such T9500 overclocked.

This because its impossible to use SetFSB with our xps as its not supported.

The best deal will be X9000+8800m GTX/9800m GT in sli, or 9800m GTX, even better. Also to have a good performance the cpu should run at least @ 3,6ghz, in this case a software overclock is possible due to the nature of the x9000.

 

Just got off the phone will Dell about this issue.

The guy I spoke to was adamant that everything was OK. He said the 2 graphics cards are integrated onto 1 single board so that's why it is showing up as 1 card in Device manager etc. I told him that he was wrong, as it previously showed up as 2, and my friend has the same laptop with SLI, and his also shows as 2. He tried to explain again, but I refused to accept his explanation. He then put me on hold for 5 minutes. When he came back he continued to explain that both cards are on 1 single board etc etc. I was getting a bit sick of him saying this so I said, Yes I understand how the cards come, but there is only 1, not 2 in SLI like there was before. He then said, but your system never did have 2 sir, there was only 1.

LOL!

I immediately denied this to which he replied, he was looking at the specs now and it only stated 1 card. I told him I was looking at my invoice (which turned out to be my Internet receipt/order confirmation)
Either way, it said there was 2 cards. He said that is not my invoice and he needs an invoice number. I spent a few minutes sifting through hundreds of invoices for internet stuff I have but couldn't find it. He then said he could gave me a link to the invoice. He told me to go to the support site and enter my service tag (which he provided for me as I don't have the system with me) and then 1 click after that, I was reading the invoice, and it says,

GRAPHICS : DUAL SLI 512MB NVIDIA GEFORCE

Now I'm thinking, why didn't you just do what you have told ME to do and save us both 20 minutes of arguing about this. So I told him what it said and he seemed a bit stumped. He then said, well in that case I will take your word for it! lol

Anyway, he wants to ring me back tomorrow to use remote assistance and update my chipset drivers etc and basically check I'm not lieing.

 

Yes, I am running with two 8700M. I am going to assume sli is working, for I have no reason to believe otherwise. Sooo, basically I will need to get the x9000 and preferably the 9800m GTX? That's not going to be cheap xD and thank you for the extremely quick response

 

Just ran Dirt 3 benchmark on my XPS 1920x1200 Ultra Settings and 8xCSAA.

Here is the results

av_fps="50.537029"

 

Thats great, what os? Xp or seven?
If youre on xp what sli bits you used?
Are you using latest beta?
Anyway where there, on 7 with 8xmsaa i did 46,3, it well optimized.
Have you noticed the slowdown bug in menus?

 

I just bought a M1730. NBD warranty until 12/04/2014!

I was wondering which OS I should use between XP and seven.
XP seems to have better performances, so I think I will use XP pro 32 bits as my gaming OS, and perhaps seven for web browsing.

Which drivers sould I use for my 8800m GTX sli with XP ?
Can I oc my cards with nvidia inspector ? Which frequences will be best ?

My processor is a X9000. As far as I know, I can only oc it to 3.4 Ghz, but you seem to have 3.6 ! How do you manage that ?

And I could use a SSD M4, or two momentus XT in raid 0 (I have both). Which choice will be best ?

Sorry for my bad english, but it's not my native tongue.

Thanks in advance,
Nakor.

 

Hello and welcome aboard, fellow beast owner.

First, let me say that your english sounds perfectly fine - at least fine like those natively speaking it, so i will not bother that much. Well, tbh you just said "tongue" when it should be "language".
LOL JUST KIDDING! Feel yourself at home, seriously!

As for your questions:

- The main "definitive" configuration for any serious The Beast gamer should be Windows XP SP3 x86 and Windows 7 x64 SP1 in dual boot. I notice you already did this, so you're on the right track!
Some things to note thought, some games runs better in XP, but some others require at least DX10 to run, like Halo 2 or Just Cause 2. So having both for gaming is a good thing. Not to mention that most games can be installed on the XP partition but they can run on 7 as well without reinstalling them. I use this method for benchmark a few games and it saves alot of time.

- Yes, you can overclock your cards just fine. I would - however - leave Inspector as a Sli profile manager and as a general information program instead using it for overclocking.
If you're serious about overclocking like all we do, i advice getting MSI Afterburner instead, or EVGA precision.
Both are quite similar and they can Overclock both cards together instead of one at the time (inspector needs separate clocks for each card which obviously its more than an hassle).
Also both programs support OSD/LCD functions to monitor your cards clocks, speed and temperature either in the G15 lcd or onscreen directly. I dont have to tell you how much useful are these options, right?

- The X9000 can be overclocked to 3,4 thru bios allowing fulltime fan bore, which i advice to keep. Our XPS is subject to severe "breakings" due to bad gpu manufacturing, and heat is one of the reasons. The full fans helps keeping it cooled, as well as the other components.
To furtherly overclock your XPS, however, you need a software called ThrottleStop made by our beloved Uncle Webb.
The program is located here: Downloads | Tech|Inferno
You will need to test the cpu stability at those speeds, as any x9000 acts in different way.
Lately mine cant reach anymore 3,8ghz due to electromigration i suspect, but 3,6ghz is bliss.
A little guide:
- Download the program
- Go into bios, set the CPU to 3,4 then DISABLE EIST!
- Back in Windows, launch the program
- Get some stability program ready to be used like Prime95
- First set the voltage to v1,4650 and check it
- Set the multiplier to 19x and check it (it may ask you to turn on throttlestop, do it)
- Check both "chipset clock ..." options

Now your cpu should be at 3,759mhz something, in other words 3,8ghz.
Run Prime95 -> Just stress test -> SmallFFT
Watch the program carefully. If one of the worker stops, it means that YOURE NOT STABLE.
So raise a bit your voltage, from 1,46 to 1,4750, try again.
I think that the "stable" run would be at least one hour without errors.

IF you're stable at 1,4650, you should do the opposite. Step back with the voltage, from 1,4650 to 1,4500. The repeat small sessions with Prime95 about half hour long.
After half hour of stressing without errors (so no worker stopped) drop the voltage a little bit.
Do this until youre not stable anymore in the half hour stress period.

Logically the lesser the voltage, the better, since it generates less heat.

- As for GPU clocks, the stable ones for your 8800m GTX sli is 650/1600/950. Anything above it may turn things unstable.
Be sure to set these options into Nvidia control panel/Manage 3d Settings:

Display mode to "single display performance"
Power management to "prefer maximum performance"

- As for the drivers, under XP i advice to use 268.03 with a modded inf (available at NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com) as they are stable and fast. Older drivers may give you better performance but theres NO SUPPORT FOR NEWER SLI GAMES! Neither 268.03 have them, but at least they have all the latest games. So under XP basically we're screwed, as nvidia doesnt release anymore drivers for it! XP was good for gaming, but with no updates for it, basically we're screwed. You can still manage to make custom sli profiles, but as nvidia stated, newer sli bits are added ONLY in newer drivers. That means in short terms that using an old driver set will not be compatible no matter what profile you create.

- Under Windows 7 the latest usually are the best. Anyway you can try latest betas 275.27 which improves things considerably, or 270.61 whql.

Last but not last, get Game Booster and keep it running in Game mode when you game or benchmark. It helps alot

Hope it helps, have fun!

 

I will post the SLI bits. I made my own SLI profile for it, no slowdowns in menus using that SLI profile.

Test was run in Win XP on my 197.15 drivers

 

Thats cool, waiting for it then

 

@ beast owners, what NVIDIA drivers do you use on XP SP3? On their website the latest driver seems to be the 266.58 (a little old).
One that performs good with Crysis 2, Portal 2 and Dirt 3 would be nice.

 

Those arent the latest mate, latest were official 267.24 beta if im not wrong.
That driver should be great for crysis 2 iirc.
Personally im using 268.03 modded for xp.
Didnt tested dirt 3 yet as it needs a sli profile, waiting for Magnus to post it.

 

They sure are the latest WHQL certifiend ones, I forgot about the betas though.
How do 268.03 work with Crysis 2? Do they need a SLI profile for this game?

 

They work ok, very smooth.
No need of a sli profile, its included.

 

Kingpin here is the SLI bits for Dirt 3 that I use. There is some small flickering in menus though but no big deal, really good framerate though.

2d10005 Dirt 3

For Witcher 2 try these bits: 2d10405

 

Thats great.
So it is with 197.15 right? I wonder if it works with 268.03 too.

 

Not sure, give them a try

By the way I was wrong about Witcher 2, I had ubersampling set to 1 though you enable it by setting it to 2. So when I do enable the ubersampling the game crawls

I thought by setting it to 1 it was applied, though I was wrong.

 

I thought something was wrong Mag.
Dont get me wrong its not that i dont trust you, but i was reading reports of peoples with tri-way sli gtx580 and still crawling with ubersampling on.
So i was a bit skeptic on your post, thats all
Anyway tomorrow il test both and report back

 

Ok here i am reporting back.
About dirt 3, the bits does indeed eliminate the slowdon bug, but they introduce flickering in menus (transitions) and flickering in shadows.
This happens on both xp with 260.03 and 7 with latest betas 275.27.
I guess ill stick with betas standard profile as im getting a bit lower fps with the reflections bug.

As for the witcher 2 ive patched the game to 1.1 and using my bits or yours the same performance can be observed.
Maxing out the game gives me an average of 25fps which is playable.
But i noticed that patch 1.1 brings down the fps quite a bit compared to vanilla + gog.exe and paul.dll.

Same applies here as per dirt 3, tested with betas under 7 and 268.03 under xp.

Bottom line Mag i guess those sli bits works better on 197.15 xp right? Im not sure to downgrade as i will lost any sli support for newer games.

Thanks thought, as always

 

Yes for the 197.15 drivers there is no flickering in the shadows, though in menus as you say.

Hmm as for Witcher 2, I think I will reinstall it when you say that patch 1.1 draws down the performance.

 

As for the Witcher 2 - I finished first part . Settings medium to low . FPS 20-40 , most of the time around 27 . Resolution 1280 / 800 - with AA it don't look bad . But the first location in the second part ( I chose Iorweth ) is a killer - only 13-20 fps just walking by the town . SLI still don't work - more fps I have got in single gpu . I play on clean install , and clean startup Vista 32-bit , Nvidia beta drivers 275.xx .
It seems I will be forced to finish this game on my old good 8800GT and XP ( 27-45 fps on medium setings ) where the performance in games was very similar to "The Beast" until this time .
But the problem is that I'm often out of home , and I would like to play W2 on xps .
I wonder how can You get 25 fps on high ? Is the much better procesor , and little better gpu ( including OC ) makes so much difference ? Thanks for any advice how to increase my fps
Greetings
Pit

 

Hi Consi;

first CPU does matter, alot. Lets say that in 99% of gaming cases on the m1730 the cpu is what matters.

On recent games its vital to have the x9000 as it became a necessary upgrade for all the beast owners specially over 3,4.
And keep in mind that its still bottlenecking the hell of it.

As for The Witcher 2, is a mix and match. First of all with latest betas WE KNOW that the sli bits are broken (check the above posts for the correct value).

Second YOU NEED a 64bit os.
Third YOU NEED Windows 7 NOT Vista as performance is severely humpered in vista.

Last but not least you need to OC your cards a bit. I suppose you have 8800 in SLI? if so the stable oc for them are 650/1650/950. The cards really shine at those speeds however beware for high temps.

 

So for the sake of it i wasnt happy with the performance of latest betas on windows 7 so i proceded to deeply unistall them (as i was updating on top).
Unistalled + driver cleaner and reinstalled.
I think ive got a performance boost about 6-10fps, clearly a sign that something was wrong.
Tested with Witcher 2 on ultra (no ubersampling): on the dragon stage im getting 25 the lowest 38 the highest, pretty much stable/smooth around 30fps.
In the dungeon with the water, in the first city, im getting 36fps stable being 30 the lowest.

This with the corrected sli bits that i posted earlier.
Some nice improvement and smoothness in crysis 2.
I did a match at the lighthouse, no tweaks vanilla 1.04, average of 32-35 fps, lowest 29, this on 1200p / extreme.
Also the smoothness is confirmed because i closed the match at 15-4 althought im using a crappy mouse.

As for the other games, ive ran black ops since the latest patch fixed cpu usage/scaling in multi player. Now the performance is very close to xp; being 59fps the lowest, 93 the higher. Pretty much 60fps of average.
This with maxed out details/1200p/4xAA/16xAF.

Dirt 3 still having reflections/water bug thought,just disable them on menus and reenable them ingame.
Performance is the same as i benched a while ago: 46/50 of average @ ultra/1200p/8xcsaa.

 

Thank you very much for your reply. Replacing the CPU is not an option to me - it cost to much and I don't know for how long my 8800gtx will still alive . OC is possible , with A11 bios temperature are very acceptable so it schould be no problem . As for the Seven - I have a possibility to install 64 bit version . Just tell me one thing - should I do something before install it ( I don't know - in bios maybe ) or just install like another OS ?. I'm asking becouse as far as I know Dell don't support Seven in 1730 . And the drivers - should I use from Vista 64-bit ?
Greetings
Pit

 

Yo Pit,
You dont need anything for windows 7 as it installs basically everything, audio included.

You need only two things: logitech game panel software (old version, as newer ceased the support for our xps - grab it from dell/vista64 or fron logitech. Should be lgs306.exe, something like that).
Intel chipset software utility in zip format here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...hipset+Software+Installation+Utility&lang=eng

Extract it, create a shortcut to setup.exe, right click on it->proprieties, add "-overall" without quotes after setup.exe in the path (should look like setup.exe -overall).
Then launch it using this shortcut just edited. In this way you will force a complete installation of every component.

Then you will need latest nvidia drivers, but i guess you know that right
Thats all.

 

Thank you for your professional answer - like always , really helps . I'm starting soon .

 

Firstly I'll introduce my M1730.

I had the option between either
X9000(Core2Extreme) with SLI 8800GTX, OR
T9300(Core2Duo) with SLI 9800GTX.

I chose the second, good choice?

Next question is what do you mean KM650 and how do I check if my 9800M GTX is that type?

Must say I'm thoroughly impressed with MY M1730 so far, it palsy all the games I want at very high settings full resolution and couldn't be more pleased.

I'm chucking in a 256GB samsung SSD tomorrow with 220mb/s read/write speed.

CAN NOT WAIT

 

Well the 9800m gtx is a rebranded gtx260m, its an higher spec 8800m gtx mainly.
Prolly they use it in conjuction with the t9300 for that reason, but its nonsense.
The higher the gpu specs, the higher will be a bottleneck with that cpu. The best setup will be infact the x9000 @ 3,8/3,6 paired with your cards.
If you ever think of an upgrade get the x9000 and say goodbye to bottlenecks.

 

Question here too. We all know there is a flash cache module bay (or 2) on this Beast. Is there any real benefit of using it? Figured it may help since I do not have an SSD and do not plan to buy one. Looking to get the M18x ASAP. Saving for that. But the FCMs are only $20 or so for 2Gb. Is it worth it????

Or would it make more sense to get on of these???
http://cgi.ebay.com/PQI-16GB-Industrial-Solid-State-Hard-Drive-SSD-/300562326282?pt=PCC_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item45fae9230a

 

A couple of questions.

Is it possible to disable the lighting(not the keyboard)?

And how many RAM slots does the m1730 have? 2 or 4?

 

Another question, when I'm using my laptop on the couch or on this laptop lap rest thing every 30 seconds or so the fans spin up hard for 10 seconds.

It's starting to really annoy me because it's not constant but on and off which makes it twice as annoying.

I assume this is because the fans are not getting proper ventilation but this is really annoying, I'm not doing anything intensive when using the laptop like this so is there anyway I can stop the fans from kicking in so hard so often?

 

Yes. You can do it in the BIOS or with the Dell quickset application. Should be an icon in the toolbar somewhere. CAn't remember exactly how, but there are a pile of options there to change the colors, dim the lights, and turn em all off too.

Heat man. Too much heat. Get a nice cooling pad- http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...s-zalman-zm-nc3000s-notebook-cooler-17-a.html

 

@Kimlo
There are 2 RAM slots. 2x4GB of RAM max capacity.

To increase the air flow you need to prop up the back of the laptop by a few centimetres.
Another solution is to downgrade BIOS to the 10th revision, which I don't recommend. The fan behaviour you refer to has been introduced in the BIOS revision 11 to lower the operational temperature. Previous revisions didn't have this, but as a result, the beast ran hotter.

 

Need to update mine today. Thanks for the reminder. Any other significant changes in 11???

 

No problem
This is the only documented changed in BIOS rev.11

 

@Magnus72 and everyone: gotta love our xps

so ive got 270.73 quadros on XP with a modded inf (on LV2G website) and tested it a bit.

check it out:

XP SP3
3,6 Ghz X9000
620/1550/900 GPU Clocks
GameBooster enabled

Dirt 3
Ultra/1200p/8xqcsaa (!!!)
<average min_fps="36.681843" av_fps="49.833859" min_fps_ms="16.212227" av_fps_ms="13.882360" />

Ultra/1200p/8xCsaa
<average min_fps="38.451843" av_fps="50.033859" min_fps_ms="17.315427" av_fps_ms="14.852360" />

The Witcher 2
Ultra/1200p/UberSampling Off/AA On
Average FPS (fraps): 29.6. The lowest was 26.8

Shift 2 Unleashed
Maxed out details+High Spec mod/1200p/Max AA
Average FPS 15 Cars (alpendale day): 40.2
Average FPS Solo (alpendale day): 55.6

Do i need to say something else? GO GRAB THEM! Great really GREAT drivers.
Also Dirt 3 and Witcher 2 profiles are already there. Just keep in mind that witcher 2 needs the bits corrected as i posted a while ago.

 

GeForce/ION Driver v270.61 anyone got info on this for 8800gtx

 

? Do you want to know if its supported? It is, that card hasnt yet labelled as legacy.
Besides that whql is old anyway, use newest betas 275.27 if youre on windows 7/vista.

 

Wait! Wait. . . Witcher 2 running so well at Ultra settings on the SLi 9800m GTX? Amazing. Seriously, in a way, we're still fortunate to have members with these machines because they continue to help push the limits of hardware and meet the challenges of current releases. Perhaps there is hope for my 280s. Thanks, dude.

 

Np man, i enjoy testing new stuff when i have time, so i hope my tests are helpful

 

I was thinking about getting the Witcher 2 for my Beast. I wonder if future driver releases will further tune its profile and eke out even a few more fps...