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

No, its not on a flat surface - still using the same old stand I used with my M1730 - Logitech Alto Cordless. Had to rig it with a 1" foam pad for the front end of the M17x (its curved and would wobble a bit on the stand) but it works fine. No cooling pad here and PowerMizer is functioning perfectly - I wouldn't have it any other way (powermizer).

So what's the issue with PowerMizer you are seeing on the M1730? I might be able to assist. If you are interested, post back with the driver INF zipped and attached along with the 8800M GTX SLI DeviceID and I'll take a look.

 

So the back is raised, but you don't even need fans and the GPU is 30 degrees. . . that is COOL!

As for powermizer, it works with the newer drivers, 185.85 and onwards. You've discussed this on the forum back when you had the M1730. But, with the older drivers, like 182.46, I can't get the powermizer to work.

I'll send you the file a bit later. Although, I have done the tweaks myself to the INF and the registry. It doesn't seem to work properly with these drivers.

Appreciate the help.

 

LOL - they say the first thing that goes is memory...

I remember now. Thanks for the reminder. Yeah - don't bother with the file, its a lost cause. Its a core driver issue at least prior to 185. If you want to try it although I am almost positive it wont work, take a newer INF - the 19x series - whichever is your 2nd choice driver - take the INF and modify this line to match the same line as the 182.46 - once done, re-install the driver with the newer INF. It will probably fail, but its worth a shot.

DriverVer = [REPLACE WITH 182.46 DATA], [REPLACE WITH 182.46 DATA]

try the 186.82 or the 186.24 INF as a template and mod the DriverVer line to match the 182.46.

 

Worth a try. Thanks.

 

Batboy - don't want to go offtopic, but 3.8 GPU-z has known errors with W7 and I believe 18x.xx nVidia mobile drivers. In fact, it caused powermizer to turn off completely for me. Had to reboot and use 3.6 which works beautifully. If you're using W7 with the 1730, canNOT recommend 3.8 GPU-z, although it does come with th sweet new metrics

 

I am not really using my M1730 much as of late, since one of my 8800GTX's died on my desktop gaming rig and Evga sent me a GTX 280 as an RMA replacement and I put the secong 8800GTX in my son's desktop PC. So I am playing with my new toy and trying to find the best driver for this new card, but unless I get a second GTX 280 no more sli on my desktop rig But I think, the card is fast enough alone and money is tight, so I am gonna see how it works alone . I will use the M1730 but maybe not as much as before.

 

So dell just replaced my motherboard. Everything was working fine yesterday...

Now windows is acting all up. Some programs like macfee say i need to reinstall and what not. I did notice this mobo is a10 version and my other one was .9 or something. So should i just go and reinstall all of windows7?

 

. . .you could try reverting to the A09 bios? If that is possible. The BIOS itself can be downloaded from Dell's website. Just put in a search for the file.

 

Sorry for the double-post but I forgot to make this earlier. It is useful information and very much part of the M1730 thematic.

I have had the chance to test one of the newer 9800m GTX SLi cards, under the new part number of k650m.

I put the card through a series of tests, comparing the performance against the 8800m GTX SLi. For the sake of reducing potential arguments and room for difference, I ran all tests using the CPU at maximum 3.4 GHz so as to attain full benefit of the SLi configuration.

Now, I stand by my original hypothesis. The two cards aren't that different. Majority of the real world performance is about the same, and the 9800m GTX is only -slightly- better when we're speaking strictly of shader count. In the general list of games, you won't really see that theoretical 10% difference of any sort. In fact, you won't really see a difference, period. The theoretical difference is nothing more than a math calculation that doesn't show effect in real performance. So in certain areas, you will see nothing, but in other areas, you will see much more than 10% improvement and that'll be due to the higher VRAM count.

The following tests that I conducted, demonstrate and support the aforementioned hypothesis.


[General benchmarks]

I ran the Devil May Cry 4 benchmark, along with the Resident Evil 5 and Lost Planet benches. All under DX10. Performance was literally neck and neck with the same drivers across the board. Of course, there were mild differences where either one of the cards would beat the other one out by a fraction of a single frame-per-second, but the general picture remained the same.



[Crucial Benchmarks]

Next, I put the cards through a series of tests using texture-intensitve applications. I wanted to see for myself just how well the 9800m GTX's VRAM could handle the challenge. Now bear in mind, folks, this is the -real- vantage point for the 9800m GTX because the doubled VRAM can make a world of a difference in applications that can make use of this feature. This is where you won't just have a theoretical 10% improvement of average frame rates, but possibly a 50% difference and general smoothness and stability.

For the testing phase, I used Crysis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Clear Sky, and Far Cry 2. Each of these games comes with a demanding engine and DX10 support. I also did some testing with GTA 4.

It was these series of tests where I truly saw the difference, and man, was it day and night!



Crysis DX10 using my configuration:
I made a custom configuration, which was basically a mix of high and very high settings, with all the post-process and shader effects set to very high and the resolution maxed out at 1920x1200. I also removed texture streaming, which meant that the entire level-load would have to be handled.

8800m GTX SLi -
Needless to say, the 8800s started with the first loop of the benchmark, very slowly - almost a 15, and slowly made their way up from that point. The following loops were more steady as the texture data was already in buffer. The average FPS was around 21, with minimums of 11, and the benchmark felt very sluggish.

9800m GTX SLi -
The 9800m GTX, actually started the benchmark at a blistering rate, without struggling to capture all the textures. The difference was truly obvious, and the following loops, the performance only got faster. Average frame rate was roughly 28, and minimum was 23. What's more important - the benchmark looked 'smooth'.

Crysis DX10 - Magnus Config:
We all know about Magnus' reputation as the config-creator/conceiver. He's always tried to come up with settings and tweaks to make games look good, and operate fast under the limits of the given system. His configs are obviously tuned perfectly to perform under DX9 with slightly overclocked 8800m GTX SLi cards. But how does it fare when run in DX10?

8800m GTX SLi -
Once again, the removal of texture streaming puts too much texture-data burden on the 8800s. They get off to a slow start, and gradually build up over the following loops. Average frame rate was 24 and minimum was 13; benchmark felt very sluggish.

9800m GTX SLi -
This is where I saw the real benefits of DX10. Because Magnus' config doesn't use per-object motionblur, which is a very taxing feature in motion, the configuration was hardly demanding. The cards tore through the benchmark at stock clocks with ease! Average frame rate was 37, and minimum was 28 and on another run, 30. Excellent! These cards actually ran Magnus' config faster in DX10 than they did in DX9, where the average was 35 and minimum was 26.

Note: When running all these tests in DX9, the general difference in performance comes down. In fact, the average FPS was about exactly the same with both configs. For Crysis, there must be something pertaining to texture size and fetching in DX10 that can only be truly exploited using 1GB of VRAM without any kind of performance hit. Normally, we go by the rule that DX9 will perform better with Crysis, but when it comes to more VRAM, DX10 actually does better.


S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Clear Sky:
The tests done for this game were done with only DX10 mode since these are exclusive, and the game is consdered by many to be more 'true DX10' than Crysis. Of course, my particular copy has been modified with the depth of field mod, and the FLOAT 32 mod. These enhance performance. However, I was also running the 'constant sunshafts' mod, which means 'god rays' are active throughout the time cycle and every globally illuminated light source will cast light rays, which is very taxing. The game was run with a maxed out resolution and setting, and sun shaft quality was set to 'ultra' while sunshafts themselves and SSAO were set to LOW.

8800m GTX SLi -
With everything set to maximum, and 1920x1200 resolution and no AA, I got very bad frame rates. The game was borderline unplayable, with a general average of 15+ FPS. The moment I dropped the textures by one level, from very high to high, the game's sluggishness changed and average rate climbed up to 30+. Apparently, the maximum setting for the textures is too much for a 512mb VRAM card. This hardly made that much of a difference to image quality, but did establish the threshold.

9800m GTX SLi -
All the settings were the same, maxed out the same, but the frame rate was actually over 34+. This is where the larger VRAM showed its power again, much like it did with Crysis under DX10. The cards easily handled the entire cache of Clear Sky's maximum textures. Performance was great.


Far Cry 2 DX10:
This was a simple test, and one that many M1730 users are familiar with in terms of popularity and application.

8800m GTX SLi -
Most M1730 owners can run this game at maximum resolution, with all settings set to 'very high' and no AA. Most tests show that average frame rate is around the 35-38 mark, with minimums of 23-30. I managed to run this with very high settings, but upping to ultra high geometry, and 2 x AA. The average FPS remained the same but the minimums were signficantly lower due to the AA.

However, the moment I turned up the game--or even one of it settings such as shaders, or shadow, or textures--to Ultra High, the average rate collapsed and the benchmark stuttered all over the chart. Average frame rate was hard to calculate across a series of tests, but I would say around 25, but with horrible minimums of 8s and 10s, which made the game unplayable.

9800m GTX SLi -
Everything on Ultra High, with DX10, and 2xAA. My average frame rate was 41, and minimum was 30 across a large series of tests. It was very clear now that with games utilising large high-res textures and lighting, the 1GB of VRAM was able to turn an unplayable experience into a smooth process. The additional VRAM also helped implement the 2xAA without any major performance hits.


GTA 4:
This was too easy. . . very demanding game. I needed my overclocked CPU. I used Magnus' custom configuration.

8800m GTX SLi -
This card handled the game well with Magnus' config. General frame rates were over 30 and acceptable. Dips weren't too bad thanks to the CPU.

9800m GTX SLi -
Same results, but I was actually able to turn up the draw distance and use higher textures with ease. Average frame rates with the higher config were still matching the 30+ mark, and the minimum dips were better than the 8800m GTX SLi. A generally smoother experience on the 9800m GTX.



[Conclusion]

I think the fact that people and media talk about 10% theoretical performance gain, is very misleading. The facts are clear. Yes, the 9800m GTX has a few more shaders, but with the CPU bottlenecks and what not else, this is a very insignficiant factor. The obvious power-improvement of these cards comes in the VRAM, which is twice as high compared to the 8800m GTX. For a majority of games that do not utilise resources beyond the 256 or 512MB VRAM mark, both the 8800m GTX and 9800m GTX will show a similar performance. The differences will be too mild and insignificant to feel like 10%.

On the other hand, the moment you introduce a game that does in fact, have very large textures, and maximum resolution, the 9800m GTX will actually end up leaving the 8800m GTX far behind, as seen in games like Crysis DX10, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, Far Cry 2, and even GTA 4. The higher shader count will hardly show a proper improvement. However, some games will truly benefit from this card's VRAM config and allow users smoother performance and higher settings that just won't be practical on the 8800m GTX.

So it's a matter of choice and the kind of games one is looking to play. The 9800m GTX will handle a wider variety of texture and resolution intensive games without needing to compromise, but the 8800m GTX will also handle its own share, and the more demanding games can always have the textures turned down. Personally, I think the custom configs and slightly lower textures in a lot of the texture-intensive applications, is hardly that much of a difference-factor, and makes the 8800m GTX SLi a worthwhile option as opposed to paying a significantly higher price for the 9800m GTX SLi. One would only notice these minor differences if one was wasting time paying too much attention to the detail rather than 'playing the game'.

 

BIOS version shouldn't make a difference, unless the settings are now different too (like, you disabled something that you previously had enabled).

 

So I take it Dell has no intention in releasing a BIOS that would make the fans start faster..or a fan control program ?

 

Wouldn't hold your breath!

 

I'm kinda hoping mine breaks soon so I can get a M17x. I know it won't happen though...I don't game on it at all...just use it for daily use. It would be awesome though.

 

I think you're the only one who wants that, lol.
Soon I may get an HP with 13-14 inch screen with a high capacity battery, then I'll have a computer for working, then I could send the M1730 to warranty to fix the dead speaker.

 

Well my m1730 seems to have developed a serious problem. Whenever I plug it in, the screen goes grey or light blue, and the whole machine freezes. Do you guys reckon the mobo is borked?

 

So it powers up normally with a battery?

 

. . .I commend you on being so upfront.

 

yes, and when plugged in. When it is on battery, and then plugged in, it freezes and the screen goes grey/light blue

 

Wait a second. Something similar happened to me quite a few times on my older M1730, and it turned out to be exclusive to vista. I plug in the PSU, and the system would just freeze, but no funny colours or artifacts; I would have to shut it down manually. Sometimes it would happen, other times it would not.

 

Well dell came out and installed the new mobo and new speakers. Well everything was good until i tired to overclock the cpu, it runs for about 2 mins and shuts off. So dell if bringing out a new mobo again.

Few things that kinda erk'd me. First the guy didnt redo the cpu stuff, so when i opened it up I put AS5 on it, AND the thrid screw for the heatsink just had nothing to screw into and the tech didnt care to bring that to my attention.

I did notice it that was the a10 revision mobo or w/e, were my old one was the 9. Does that have anything to do with it? or that just a motherboard they gave me?

 

hmm, I'm running w7 x64. I'm sure I could fix it myself, but seeing as I have a warranty, and I can't go to work today due to the snow, I think I'll give dell a call and get them to send an engineer out tomorrow.
edit: just called dell, they're going to replace the mobo and graphics card - what's the chance they'll give me 8700 sli?

 

I am assuming you were not able to get a log of the temperatures when the CPU was overclocked because it shut down so early. It will be quite normal for the machine to shutdown if the CPU is overheating, and I know that if the heatsink is not screwed down tightly and properly, with thermal grease, the system temperature will start to peak at dangerous levels.

Good thing that you applied the AS5, but you need to get another heat sink from Dell, because until you don't get it screwed down in a tight and secure fashion, it will not be doing its job.

Nm88 has some experience with this, and when I followed suit, I could not agree more with his observations about the rather shoddy connection between the heat-sink and CPU. The CPU and heatsink contact-factor is a very important part of the equation, and you need to make sure that each screw is tightened properly otherwise the contact is compromised badly; get working on this as soon as possible.

Woodpigeon,
I don't know whether you'll get SLi. Dell UK do officially sell M1730s at the moment with both single and dual 8700s. If you're interested, I can get you some contact details on acquiring a 9800m GTX SLi, and for a decent price tag.

 

well hes coming today to put the new motherboard in, the missing screw was on the board side i believe. But we will see after he installs it.

*fingers crossed so i can get another fresh install of 7 on it and be done with it*

 

Thanks, for the info. YGPM, but I doubt they'll be in my price range after I splashed out on a G25 racing wheel, cooler and q9650.

 

Yeah, but you could avail contact details for later or when you're interested, since you were asking earlier about upgrade options. These guys seem to get a regular assortment of M1730 parts, and usually in very good, if not new condition. Anyway, PM sent.

Steveracinrr,
Sorry I didn't get the whoel deal about the screw missing from the motherboard. That doesn't quite make sense, since these are captive screws that are inside the heatsink. Are you saying that the motherboard doesn't have that particular screw cavity? Because that's weird.

Anyway, make sure they do a proper installation, and apply the thermal paste. Ideally, the tech/engineer should be doing this, but if he doesn't, do it yourself before closing up the machine. Keep the tech around until you h ave managed to test your machine out. Make sure the machine is running nicely in all modes - OC and non OC. Once satisfied, then sign the paper work and let the guy leave.

Works best that way.

 

Well he just left, damn good turn around...i told dell about the problem at about 2pm yesterday..and they got the part and the tech here that fast.

So yes that missing nut thing for the heatsink is infact on the heatsink side. So that means this whole time its been working fine without it...and honestly it seems pretty snug on the cpu. So its passing the windows experience test overclocked and seems to be working fully again. Going to do another fresh install of 7 just cause im a weirdo about it...than get the games installed and hope the job held.

Do i bother getting the new heatsink you think? or if its working fine just leave it be?

 

Hold on.

So it was the heatsink that was missing a screw? Now it's fixed, right? Or did they just change your motherboard again?

Because if your temps are good, then why bother?

 

Yhea only mobo was replaced. Heatsink seems fine. Only issue i have ran into was after installed ntune i got BSOD and after restart seemed fine...but ntune was gone.

anyone have a link for ntune thats not 2 years old?

 

Nice comparison between 8800m GTX and 9800m GTX. I would definitely want to have 9800m GTX in SLI.

 

Is there any other program we can use to overclock the cards other than ntune??

When i go to click on the legal disclaimer to overclock it shutsdown/ memory dump.

 

Thanks, dude.

But, you have something much better than any GPU. You have the know-how and patience to make configs that look good and perform under the limits of the hardware. *Nothing* beats that approach. Not to mention, you have more head room for overclocking, and still, the 8800m GTX is plenty strong for anything, all you require are a few tweaks. Although I know you would have a great time with the 1GB of of VRAM, and then us 8800m GTX owners would have one less 'tweaker' to help us achieve smooth gaming.

Steve,
Then you're problem is solved. Just download the latest nvidia system tools and your 'ntune problem' will be solved.

 

Strangest thing happening currently. I'm converting a load of VOB's to .mp4's and the cpu's are both at 100% and have been for about 8 hours. But the fans aren't kicking in for some strange reason. Well they are, spinning, at 2500RPM, but the temps on the cpu are 65C and 68C, previously this would have been easily high enough to kick in the full force fans - around 4000rpm. But today its happy to let the CPU's get very warm. These bloody BIOS's or whatever controls the fans are like voodoo (no pun re the pc manufacturer intended!).

 

Well the engineer came, but unfortunately the mobo he brought was DOA, so I'm having another one put in on christmas eve of all times I did get a new revision A01 8700M GT though, although the engineer took my old card away, which is a pity because I wanted to sli the new one with the old one, which I suspect is actually fine.

 

Wow Dell support extends to vehicles now... well that really is above and beyond the call of duty!

 

Lawl!

Woodpegion, the M1730 uses a propriety GPU slot. Our cards cannot be put in SLi, as both GPU chips come installed on a single board for the dual cards. In reality, you don't have two cards, but both GPUs merged together on a single board. Now I hear that this is the reason why XPS M1730 owners stand a better chance of properly synchronised overclocking, but that's hypothetical conjecture.

 

kade that looks like it did the trick, you da man!

 

Very well said and I fully agree!

 

The irony is that someone had dumped an old car in my drive that day due to the snow, and it was only taken away last night, although not by the dell engineer.

Oh, I never knew that - thanks for the info. Once the engineer has finished today, I'm going to install EVGA precision and try a bit of overclocking - I just need a few extra FPS in dirt 2.

 

So when im playing GTA4, i crash at this certain point every time. Check our support and it says installed the 180.84 drivers..

I downloaded them(vista64 version) and when i went to install it said these are meant for vista only(im on 7 64bit) and help?

 

Steve,
Unfortunately, I have been trying for weeks to track the 180.84 Win7 drivers, but then I settled for something that I consider 'equal or better'. HAH!

Download and try the Win7/Vista 64-bit version of the 182.46 DOX drivers from http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com.

These will work in Win7, like a charm, and are almost as good as 180.84. Also, your GTA problems should be solved. Remember to use nhancer if you have profile issues.

Oh, and if this works for you, try to do a 3dMark06 and vantage run with your GPU and CPU overclocks. I'd like to see if you'll be breaking 15k.

Woodpigeon,
If you are going to overclock, try to have the back of your laptop raised by about half an inch without covering the vents.

 

Thanks for that - I only game for about half an hour at the most anyway, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. What program do you think I should use - EVGA Precision, Rivatuner or ntune? Fan control would be great

 

Fan control. . . hmm. You are using a single card, so there might be a solution for you but I would not recommend.

As for overclocking, I think the best option for the M1730 is Nvidia System Tools.

 

Merry Christmas all!

I need to buy some new hard drives for the m1730 and I was thinking some 500 gb's in RAID0 would do nicely.

What I'm looking for are quite hard drives with fairly good performance. I've had a hitachi before at 7200rpm and it ticked an awful lot. Also are 5400 slower than 7200rpm for access times and transfer rates? I think I remember Reading that 5400rpm ones were just as fast.

 

Merry Xmas!

 

As mentioned, download the Nvidia system tools and you'll get an overclocking tab in the Nvidia control panel. It's the simplest method.

For fan control, if you only have a single 8700m, i8kfangui will work if you're patient and willing to deal with its quirks.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148374

This is the fastest 500gb laptop drive you can get and it wont dissapoint. Got it in the m17x and originally had it in my M1730.. get about 100-109 mb/sec copying from that to my SSD. Games run noticably faster than on my older drives as well.

 

Thanks. Once I've got my laptop fixed on the 29th, I'll start trying some overclocking

 

Thanks for the suggestion but reason thru the reviews there it seems there an huge amont of drive fails with that model. Random locking up, clicking noise and eventual fails seem to be the most common complaints. Albeit with great performance. I think I'll have to keep looking, cheers though.

 

If you don't want the Seagate 7200.4, go for the WD Scorpio Black (320Gb, link).

But if you really want performance, get a pair of Intel X25-M SSDs in RAID 0.

Be warned though, once you start using SSDs there is no going back to hard drives!

 

I thought that was a gen1 problem?