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

See, smoke effects.

Always a culprit in my books, and a resource hog. There's a way to amend this problem, but I can't say how as of yet.

Chief, it's running with the Nvidia prescribed profile for the game, which is usually Alternate Frame Rendering, with detailed tweaks that one can access via Nhancer.

 

Turn off soft smoke, that hogs system like crazy and doesn´t make the game look prettier. Although you will definitely get better performance with the right SLI profile.

Also download Nhancer and use either the Modern Warfare SLI profile or the Call of Duty World at War SLI profile and you are good to go. Just add the exe file in Nhancer to either of these profiles.

By the way I just tested Left 4 Dead 2 the full game and it runs like a charm 4xAA, 16xAF, fully maxed out 1920x1200, Vsync On constant 60 fps.

 

I say run it with smoke, and make it work right. It's an enhancement of an old engine, and I've seen better looking games with proper volumetric smoke not kill my system's performance the way this one is killing at the moment.

They need the right profile.

Anyway, it's good to hear that Left 4 Dead 2 is looking good and running great. I was actually worried about another botch-job, but Valve have a reputation for taking care of their PC gamers.

 

Anyone else upset Left 4 Dead came out so soon after the first? They didn't really add much to the first one. I hope we don't run into a vicious "new game every six months" like the Call of Duty conglomerate. Time was when Valve released a game, patched it, patched it, added new maps and content, and patched it every other day. They still patch some of the older games, like DoD (thank GOD), but, I fear they're going down a capitalistic path..

 

Yeah, good point. . . you Commie! Heh. Well, even I worry about these almost back-to-back sequels.

Killzone 2 for the win!

 

I haven't played Modern Warfare 2 yet. Looks like I get to play with some technical mischief once I install and play it as I read all this.
But to be honest... I am running out of time to play all these new games coming out every second of the day lately.
Plus I have seen enough of these type of shooters now.
I'll play it for the great single player story and action though. Some day.

Left 4 Dead 2 is truly amazing and indeed runs smooth as butter despite all it's enhancements and extra gore systems etc.
At first, I was indeed a bit sad that it got followed up so quick after Left 4 Dead 1.
But I am at the same time quite amazed how fast they were to create a new game like that with so many new changes and content.
Played 2 campaigns last night and must say I am impressed with the results.
As long as they don't pull the same stunt again I am cool with it.
Left 4 Dead 1 indeed was a bit boring after a while even though the AI director changed a few gameplay elements each time you played.

Hear hear! Talking about some true PlayStation 3 technical prowess in action!
And the game has been made about 15 minutes away from me lol!
(I work in Amsterdam.)

 

Nice!

To me, Killzone 2 is technically nothing -that- amazing. Deferred rendering, with partial use of HDR, static lighting here and there, and clearly, compared to PC-standards, the textures and shadows are very low, along with the anti-aliasing, which is a post-process.

However, you put all of that into Guerilla's hands, along with a full knowledge of the limits and strengths of the Playstation 3 design, and they produce a visually stunning masterpiece! I don't like to get into debates about graphics, because it stands to absolute reason that this game isn't actually using any magical power. But the fact that with those constraints, you get a game that makes you 'wow' instantly compared to even the best graphical goliaths on the PC, shows that it is all the developers hard work and optimisation, along with the art-direction and production that seeks to make the best out of a certain amount of techniques and resources.

Now the above right there, is the recipe for a quality product!

And it is a real shame that we'll never see Killzone 2 on the PC. Can you imagine that thing running on the power of The Beast? An amazing potential right there, but we know it won't be happening.

To hell with pinnacle hardware. I think we need more software that showcases the hardware at its pinnacle.

Ref. attachement. Now this game looked good, and damn I like that benchmark score!

 

hello to all xps m1730 owners.
A quick question:
is it possible to replace the m1730 screen with another from precision m6400 ?

A friend of mine bought this precision m6400 laptop and I was very excited about its screen. It has the same 1920x1200 resolution as mine in my m1730 but the contrast the brightness and the near perfect white reproduction cant compare to the yellowish white my m1730 has. So, is it possible to buy a screen for precision m6400 and install it in my m1730? anyone know if they have the same cable those screens?

thanks

 

I don't know. I was wondering if I could do this with my new m17x actually, because it has this 59 ghz refresh problem (rather than 60). I don't know if this is influenced by the graphics card or the screen itself

Sazistas - do some searches through the old 1730 lounge (part 2) because I recall someone putting a different screen in there than was intended for the 1730. I just can't remember who or when.

 

I've tried looking for that thread, but no luck.

The guy swapped his XPS M1730 screen with an Inspiron 9400/XPS M1710 WUXGA+ lcd.

So, you got your new M17x?

 

Hey, if I were to use a HDTV as my display, is it possible to set the laptop to only display on the HDTV vs displaying on both at the same time? I assume if it displays on both the gaming performance will take a hit, although I could be wrong. How do you guys manage your external displays?

 

Yes, you can. It's one of the options in the multiple display options. SLI must be turned off for this in the nVidia control panel.

Kade - yes, I've had it for a couple weeks now. Only opened it once. It's nice Currently typing from the 1730 still and using it for everything. I'm daunting downloading the drivers for the new computer, which is why I still use this guy.

 

Well done, dude. Congratulations. PM the specs to me.

Anyway, I am currently looking at customising the beast a little.

 

Now I am just a few days away to buy an X9000 Q174 CPU from Ebay. I hope it´s stable overclocked to 3.4Ghz, the dollar is so low now so it´s really cheap for us Swedes to buy from US.

Talking about Killzone 2, look at Uncharted 2 instead talk about awesome graphics. I actually bought a PS3 not so long time ago, 2 months ago since my Xbox 360 died RROD, will fix it later on.

However I got Killzone 2 first and the game looks pretty good considering what kind of hardware it runs on. However the game runs a little to laggy for me framrate wise but the game is good and looks awesome

Now I have borrowed Uncharted 2, that is a game that looks awesome. Imagine running both Killzone 2 and Uncharted at 1920x1200 on the XPS M1730

 

Good on you, Magnus! Congratulations.

Uncharted 2 is nice, but effects-wise, Killzone 2 is still the superior product. Uncharted 2 is more of a fancy production and scripted piece.

To be honest, I like Uncharted 2 better, but I am amazed at some of the visual umph of Killzone 2. That deferred lighting is just amazing. The only PC game that come close are maybe Dead Space (which is multi-platform), followed by STALKER Clear Sky.

And yes, Magnus, you are right - imagine these games on The Beast. Higher textures, shadows, and amazing resolution! Wow.

 

if it is the RGBLED LCD screen, you cant as far as i know, it needs to be supported by the motherboard. if it is a normal lcd, it will work.

 

So from what I understand, if I use *any* external monitor (computer monitor or HDTV since I can't imagine why they'd be different) I have to turn off SLI? That really sucks =\

 

Hey guys, I had a quick question for you. I've been thinking about buying a used M1730 lately but the Complete Care warranty is a big factor in my purchase decision. I wanted to know what Dell has been doing lately for Complete Care replacements. Have they been giving out refurbished M1730s or the M17x? I wanted to know this before I buy it just in case anything happened to the M1730 down the line. Thanks!

 

Ran into an interesting issue on my 1730 on Win7. The line-in port on the soundcard isn't registering my microphone on my headset, and the microphone on the actual XPS sounds a bit too metallic and hollow.

The computer seems to acknowledge when I plug the microphone into the line-in port but it isn't registering input/sound. I know the microphone is not muted and it works fine through a USB soundcard, but the USB soundcard has a tendency of crashing on this laptop while gaming, using ventrilo, or using multimedia, forcing me to unplug and replug in the USB soundcard and restart whatever programs I was using with audio.

Basically, I'm trying to eliminate the USB soundcard but the line-in port on my soundcard isn't processing inputs. Any ideas?

 

I think there's a misunderstanding here.

You can use the external HDTV with SLi. What Hankaaron is talking about is using multiple displays. As in, dual-simultaneous display, as each GPU will render on each of the two screens - one for the LCD and one for the HDTV. For *that* type of setup you would have to disable SLi.

But if you just want a normal hook-up, which will result in one display only, you can easily use SLi. Many people here game on their HDTVs.

 

Woo thanks kade. That makes more sense. How do I set it to run on single display on an external monitor/hdtv? Do I just hit the FN+F8?

 

Yes, good catch Kade.

FN + F8 should work, but I think you should set the options right in the nVidia control panel for 'manage custom resolutions'. This will display the new TV connected to the PC when it's plugged in.

 

Alright, I'll give it a go sometime.

 

Hey zerg I use a dvi to hdmi to hook my 1730 up to my 52 inch. the trick is to hook the adapter and hdmi to the pc then the tv.then change your input on the tv to the right hdmi and your pc should auto detect the tv and then just set your tv as primary sli focus display in nvidia control panel.

 

Just got my M1730 today - I paid £460 from eBay and it arrived in mint condition. The screen is superb, much better than my M1710, and suprisingly even with a single 8700M GT it outperforms my 7900GTX M1710 in games, mainly due to the faster CPU and RAM I think.
The guy I bought it from said he has transferred the warranty, but I have had no email confirmation from Dell, so if I don't get it by monday I'm going to ring dell and ask them about it. Has anyone transferred a warranty before? How long does it usually take?
Thanks

 

Hahaha, Kade you wanna' take this?

And no offense intended, but don't ever compare the 8700 gt to the 7900/7950 GTX's. Those were the glory days of laptop gaming. The new computer undoubtedly outperforms it based on CPU latency alone.

Anyways, glad you're happy and welcome to the lounge. What games are you playing and looking to play on it?

 

Man, give the guy a chance.

Nothing beats the raw hardware power of good old vertex and pixel pipelines with 256-bit bandwidth. However, the 8700--while weak--is more shader intensive, so he's probably getting an edge in that department along with the CPU, of course. He did get a good deal for £460, though; considering the warranty.

Welcome aboard, man. For your safety and peace of mind, do not poke the trolls, which includes me, of course.

As for warranty, I believe it should take you roughly a week. If you get nothing, start e-mailing them and trying to get in touch via phone.

Edit:

Dude! I just played the first few minutes of Resident Evil 5, the full game. AMAZING! I take back the complain about lacking visuals. 1920x1200 - everything max - DX10 - 2xAA; the game is running smooth as butter at 60 FPS, vsync on. They've clearly made some improvements over the benchmark test. And oh yeah, aside from the clear-cut superior resolution and thus, detail and textures, the lighting--either because of resolution, or due to a serious engine tweak--seems to be miles better compared to the consoles. Now this is what I call a proper port to the PC!

 

Thanks for the warm welcome and advice about the warranty, really appreciate it
I'm playing Grid, Burnout Paradise, L4D2, CoDMW, CoDMW2, HL2 and TF2 on it, and they all run better or about the same as on my M1710 - it's quite wierd actually as I was expecting slightly worse performance, and grid is the only game that seems to have taken a slight hit - everything else is the same or runs at higher settings. Also, the CoD4 on my M1710 was borked and would only run at 1280x720 low settings even after several reformats, whilst I can run it 1920x1200 medium setttings on my M1730, and for some reason I can run MW2 at the same res on high settings , not that I'm complaining
Maybe it's due to the transition from 2.16Ghz CD - 2.5Ghz C2D

 

It is the transition, but like I said, 8700m has unified shaders with a higher shader number and clock compared to the 7-series cards.

Call of Duty 4 engine is shader-intensive. Back when I had the 8600m GT and the M1710 with a 7900 GTX, I found similar differences. While the general games ran better and at higher resolution on the M1710, COD 4 had to be run at a lower resolution, and often lagged on the 7900 GTX.

 

That would be why then I plan on upgrading to an X9000, dual 8800M GTXs and blu-ray drive at some point, but I'm worried that as the original spec of my laptop is much lower, if anything goes wrong dell will just replace the part (eg 8800m GTX) with the original spec part (eg 8700m GT). I'm fine as I am at the moment, and I want to buy watercooling for my desktop, and new hard drives for basically everything, so I think upgrades for my laptop can wait for a bit, although I definetly plan to do them. The main bonus is that I sold my old M1710 for £520, so I've got a better laptop and made a £60 profit. Can't get better than that eh?

 

hmm i have a little problem,

When i connect mine upto the TV the laptop freezes up after about 8 minutes, if i overclock beyond 3ghz it does the same, screen goes blank and i have to hold the power button down. I didnt have the oveclocking problem using vista, anyone else encountered this with win7?

 

it should be good with it, I'm thinking to do the same process as you, but I need to buy a new screen from ebay (I will do it if I can sell what came with m1730)

 

Well, after repeat failures and no 8800M GTXs to be had it looks I will be joining the M17X ranks, hopefully CS doesn't throw a wrench into it.

 

Join Ussss!!!!!!!!!

 

What the heck is this high 8800GTX failure rate?

My M1730 (with 8700GT sli) is about 1 year old, do I have to worry about it?

 

Oh, the X9000 with the 8800m/9800m cards is an absolute contender! However, I don't wish to be the bearer of bad news. It will cost you quite a bit to get the cards, and what's worse, they're not even readily available at the moment. Furthermore, you are correct on the warranty - Dell will not replace your upgraded parts until and unless you purchase them from Dell.

However, I will totally agree with you on the business-factor. Fact is that you made money off your M1710 and for less than its cost, you got yourself a newer, fresher machine with a running warranty.

Well, it's a product of corporate ambition and stupidity.

The 8700m cards also had issues, but their matter was directly a case of too much heat, which Dell resolved with the A06 BIOS. I think you'll be fine.

 

Kade to make Resident Evil 2´s lighting to look even better look for a config.ini file and change the value HDR=Low to High

Also if´s not done, change JobThread=1 to 2 so it utilizes two cores under category [CPU]

 

Cheers for the tip, but this one I had some idea of, because I've messed with the MT Framework engine in the past. Resident Evil 5 uses a weaker form of HDR as a means to accommodate all those other effects and textures. It's ARGB8, moving it to high turns the game into 64-bit ARGB16; the resolution of those amazing rays becomes much higher. Correct me if I am wrong, but the lighting on the consoles isn't as vivid, is it?

 

Yes, I know it costs a lot, but my hope is to find the parts cheaper than retail by searching forums like this and ebay - one of my fairly useless talents is being able to find stuff on the internet cheap. I reckon I coud get the X9000 for £150 and the 8800M GTXs for £300 or so.
Thanks for telling me about the warranty, I kind of suspected that anyway. I guess it's doubtful that the X9000 will die, and if the 8800M GTXs die then I can always bake them in the oven or go back to my 8700m GT.
Thanks once again for the info

 

Hi all

Sorry to digress from the current topic of discussion...
My 8800m gtxs failed last month (24th October)... Dell finally replaced them 3 days ago with 9800m gtxs! I'm awesomely chuffed - I had no idea they would give me an upgrade....! But I do have a couple of questions....

I don't know why my 8800s failed... they generally stayed at around 65-70 idle, upto 84 at times under load while gaming... So I don't know if it was the heat... As far as I can tell, thats still below the safety threshold... I never had BSODs or any other crashes or shutdowns... So what do you guys think of that?

Now that I have the 9800s (and I soo don't want them to fail), what temps are you guys (with 9800s) looking at generally? Also, slightly offtrack, what 3DMark scores is the ballpark figure for you guys? (I have the T9300 CPU)...

 

The G92 core has an internal problem. It's not overheating, but rather, heat-cycling. Card going high and then going low, and then going high. This exposes a bad soldering joint in the core and the cards or one of the cores normally dies out.

From what certain Dell reps have been saying the newer batch of cards should come fixed/free of such problems. Of course, many of us believe such cards aren't even being made anymore. Yet, here you are with 9800m GTX replacements, so good for you!

You should score around 12k with the right drivers.

Also, congratulations on the new cards. I guess they do have newer 9800m GTX SLi cards coming out, which might be of better build-quality. I don't know. He's got a replacement card that ISN'T an 8700m GT, so that is news.

I hope your VGA cards work out this time.

Edit:
Woodpigeon4,
I hope you do find a deal, because most of the few 8800m GTX cards are complete rip offs; expensive. I too have searched ebay. Hell, there's a better chance of just getting a full laptop with the cards and warranty for around £850.00. Check it out: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200406016589&ssPageName=ADME:B:WNA:GB:1123

 

Once again I believe a large part of the gpu's failing is the failure job of ceramic paste. I've mentioned it before but I took my gpu apart and the die smack in the center (chipset?) had paste but it was DRIED. I had to use a flat screwdriver and SCRAPE off the gunk. I've owned the 1730 since May and had no problems whatsoever.

Oh and btw I saw someone link a super cheap internal laptop bluray drive back in the days. I think it was panasonic? Anyways, if I want to upgrade to a bluray drive do any of you have recommended links? Thanks.

 

Is the CPU located on the bottom side of the motherboard?

 

See the 8800 gtx circuit board in the top left corner? The CPU is just below the heatsink fixture to the right of it, and the fan in the top right corner cools the copper coming off that sink. The CPU comes off the motherboard at this angle, so no, it's not on the bottom.

 

@Hank: I thought that was the AGEIA PhysX card. I never removed the CPU but I remember seeing this when I had it ripped apart. I was also under the impression the CPU was on the bottom.

FWIW, Dell released another update to Quickset. Not sure if it will work with the M1730. If you want to try, here is the link.

 

Dude, the CPU is at the bottom. I've removed and pasted five of 'em over the last year. The area above is the socket and heat-sink for the Ageia PhysX card; there's another heat-sink on the bottom for the CPU and the vents for both of the two heat-sinks are alinged right next to each other in a parallel manner. There is no practical way to access the CPU without going to the bottom.

BatBoy's got the perfect idea. One must remove all these parts and then pull the motherboard/system board out to find the real CPU heat sink, which must be removed to find the CPU underneath.

Source: Dell M1730 Service Manual; Section: 'Field Service Information' - 'Disassemply & Reassembly' - Processor.

 

Yes when I ripped it apart I am quite certain that was the PhysX GPU.

 

That was quite a good deal - I'm hoping to find some nice deals, if not I'm happy with the core spec anyway.
Thanks

 

Yes. You have to take the entire laptop apart to get to it, and then the heatsink is a huge and annoying one connecting the CPU to two other areas through a heat pipe. Figure 45 minutes plus a lot of free desk space to store a million little screws to replace a CPU or the thermal material.

If you turn the laptop over and peek through the bottom vents, towards the left fan, you'll see part of the heat sink with the copper heat pipe running across it.

 

Yeah, it is quite annoying getting to the CPU, because you're essentially taken the entire machine apart.

Hell, it could be worse. We could be trying to clean out a Toshiba laptop.