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

Yea thanks, I think it'll have to be the WD's - shame to give up the extra space. (1Tb versus 640Gb). Where would I look if I wanted to price some SSD's for Ireland? Would they work ok as RAID0 in a M1730?

Could well be... how would I know if I was ordering Gen1 or >Gen1 when ordering though - serial numbers?

EDIT: Just priced the Intel X25 @ €420 for 160Gb. That outside my space requirement and budget concerns!

 

Educate me some more on this notion of SSDs. How does it impact gaming?

 

I downloaded and tried those drivers and I am still getting the bluescreen of death when the drivers attempt to install.

Also, I check in the bios if it sees the Flash Cache Module and it doesn't?

On another subject, can the m1730 mobo support 8GB RAM (2 x 4GB modules)?

 

I have no clue on where to buy them internationally, just that you should get the X25-M G2 (not G1), in either 80 Gb or 160 Gb depending on your needs. They're in high demand in the U.S. and frequently out of stock and priced over MSRP, so I imagine you're going to have some difficulty.

Yes, they work nicely in RAID 0, which is how I'm using them, with an average 310 MB/s transfer rate (see image). This speed is actually limited by the M1730s ICH8M south bridge; on my desktop I get over 500 MB/s with the same units.

There is only one drawback to RAID 0, in that you won't have access to the TRIM cleanup command in Windows 7, unless and until Intel comes up with a driver that supports it. Intel just recently came out with TRIM support for non-RAID, so it may be a while, or never.

So if you want TRIM and don't need RAID 0's high transfer rate, you might want to consider just a single SSD, like one 160 Gb instead of two 80 Gb, or maybe even an SSD for boot/OS/regular stuff + a large capacity hard drive for non-critical stuff.

Even a non-RAID SSD will blow away a regular RAID setup in terms of overall performance, when you consider the near-instant access time and still quite good read transfer rate.

 

Loading just about anything is much faster. You have virtually instant access time and very high transfer rate.

On the desktop too, when you click an application it loads instantly.

It's almost like the speed of loading stuff that's cached, even when it isn't. It's a big improvement in overall performance.

Also, zero noise, and low power drain. Once you use these, you'll realize that hard drives are basically dead for anything but mass storage or low budget systems.

 

It can if you flash the latest BIOS.

I use these, a good cheap option.

 

Check out this thread if you don't know the benefits of SSD's yet.

 

I'm still holding back on diving in on the SSD bandwagon. Nobody knows exactly how long these things will last, and they had to come out with the TRIM command after release, since it turns out SSDs have a few problems. And now we have to install wear-leveling firmware/drivers? All this happened after these things were already on the market...

At first people were playing wait-and-see with SSDs because the cost:GB ratio was hard to swallow. Now I recommend waiting a little longer until this wear thing gets smoothed over. Give it another 3-6 months IMO... Then you'll get one that's cheaper than it would be today, and it will most likely last much longer.

 

Thanks for the information, Nm88.

Also, thanks for the link, Hankaaron.

I've had interest in SSDs during past months, but this interest died out. Let's just say that I wasn't too impressed by the benchmarks. It's always more assuring to follow-up the experiences of other M1730 users. Also, for a guy who is usually very straight-edge about facts and observations only (and always correct in these observations), Nm88 had strong praise for the SSDs, so that naturally evoked more interest on my part.

They certainly sound promising, but they are out of my price-range at the moment.

 

Well, for a late Xmas gift , i`ll get an SSD

 

So Kade I cant seem to get any of the drivers off laptop2go to work. So I tried getting some off dells site(basically looking for other older working nvidia ones) But cant find any.

Any help?

 

Steve,

I see that laptopvideo is partially offline at the moment.

You can forget about the Dell drivers, because they are utter crap. You have a better chance downloading the official Nvidia 185.85 drivers from Nvidia.com. Search under beta drivers and look up all the archived drivers, and you'll find WHQL 185.85.

In the meantime, what I'll do is upload the Dox 182 drivers and pass on the link to you. Just give me a day. Sorry.

 

While you wait for LV2Go or Kade, you can also give the 190.40 a try. Worked fine for me when I had my M1730 back in August.

XP 32-bit:
http://pic.xfastest.com/z/NVIDIA%20%C5X%B0%CA/190.40/190.40%20WinXP32.rar

XP 64-bit:
http://pic.xfastest.com/z/NVIDIA%20%C5X%B0%CA/190.40/190.40%20WinXP64.rar

Vista 32-bit:
http://pic.xfastest.com/z/NVIDIA%20%C5X%B0%CA/190.40/190.40%20Vista32.rar

Vista 64-bit:
http://pic.xfastest.com/z/NVIDIA%20%C5X%B0%CA/190.40/190.40%20Vista64.rar

 

yeah Im starting to get worried again now...laptop just starting to shut off during heavy load...Man i would have rather just kept the old motherboard cause usb problems are much better than freaking motherboard/video/cpu issues

 

The Nvidia WHQL drivers work great for me, with the 8800 GTX w/SLI rig.

Before I installed the 195.62 Nvidia driver, I was using a 185.xx driver from laptopvideo2go. It performed great but gave me a BSOD during boot maybe 10% of the time.

 

Will that 64bit vista version work on 7 64bit?

 

Maybe. But why not just go to the Nvidia website and get the WHQL drivers that are certain to work great?

 

Ran into an issue with my M1730 guys, curious to see if anyone has any ideas cause I'm out.

I thought my overall and gaming performance had been lacking, so I picked up 3DMark06 which gave me a meek score of about 4400. This seemed low in comparison to the numbers my google-fu pulled up (ranging from 8000-12000 for similar systems).

My M1730 has the Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 2.80ghz, 4gigs of ram, and the 9800m GTX SLi cards in it. I'm pretty sure my 3dmarks should be a bit above 4400.

My processor scores a 3.8 on the Windows 7 Windows Experience rating, which I'm pretty sure is slow. Anyone have any ideas whats going on with my machine or my processor?

 

yeah thats horrible score for 3dmark06. You should def be getting better processor score too. You have it bios overclocked correct?

 

The newest ones are failing on GTA 4 for me. But i think i still have a mobo or cpu issue...i dunno...damnit dell.

 

Steve, I am still trying to locate Dox's drivers. But once again, I recommend using the Nvidia 185.85 drivers or try the newer and crappier 195.xx; your game should work at the very least with these drivers. 64-bit Vista should also work in Windows 7.

Also, can't you just ask Dell to also replace your heat-sink?

To Weenus,
Your scores are really low. Even at 2.8 GHz, the score is far too low. T7250s get higher rating in W.E.I.

Perhaps the CPU performance is being capped. Check your power-plan settings and also your power supply unit in the BIOS, if you can confirm whether the system is detecting a proper 230W supply.

 

Speedstep was disabled, and for some reason, it had down throttled my processors to about a 1.2ghz. Enabling Speedstep through Bios seems to have brought it back up to speed, but coretemp reports it as bouncing from minimum to maximum (though performance wise it seems perfect now). The scores in Windows Experience are much higher, bumping the Processor up to a 6.3 and most of the other scores jumped up as well.

My laptop went from playing GTA4 on the lowest settings at about 10-20fps to playing it on max settings at 35-65fps. Major increase.

 

Hi All

First of Merry X-Mas to all - hope you all got smashed! - I know I did haha and Second =- Hope you all get smashed on NYE! - I will be HAHAH!

Thrid - FINALLY got a new 8800 gtx down and istalled after about 1 month and half of waiting for it to be deleived and installed - so far touch wood no problems!

Sorry for the NOOB question and i feel dreadful just asking haha - what programs you all use to monitor FPS in games and testing - sorry sorry sorry

Altho must admit the enginner did clean out the entire laptop for me so im kinda glad it died on me - now however just need to do some proper testing on drives and see which workds best for my system!

Thats all for know but i am always watching and will pop a line if i know the answer

 

Fraps is usually the program to use while in a game too see how your FPS is.

 

Haha! There you go!

Speed step is important. Your CPU will always throttle. That is a good thing. You don't want it running full-blast performance when it is doing little work. Disabled speedstep, as you've already known, defaults your CPU to lowest performance. That in turn, destroys GPU performance, and almost kills SLi. You'll always need this enabled.

Anyway, now your machine's doing well, so congrats. You're absolutely owning GTA 4 there; I am impressed. When I got to test out the 9800m GTX, I really wished that I could've formatted my system properly to give GTA 4 a fresh go on a fresh clean harddrive and OS.

 

Many thank rep added

Any1 having problems with ntune and windows 7 i keep getting bsod - is it worth RivaTuner? and if so any1 use that with w7?

 

Fatch,
I'll give you the same advice I gave Steve. Uninstall ntune, and download 'Nvidia System Tools'.

Install Nvidia System Tools and your problems should be resolved. No more B.S.O.D., and you'll get more precise control over your core, shader and memory clocks.

 

Has anyone got a step by step guide of how to use nvidia system tools? I can't get even a 10mhz core overclock applied at all, I've tried loads of different tabs and settings - when I click OK it just resets to default clocks

 

Okay, open Nvidia Control Panel.

Go to performance section.

Select 'Device Settings'.

Chose 'Custom'.

Modify settings, and hit apply.

It should work. . .

 

Kade,

I'm going to pick up another harddrive or two for the laptop and do a fresh install, I think. The harddrive that came with this out of the box seems to be... finicky. Sometimes if I'm downloading something or directly accessing a recently downloaded file such as an MP3 or something, the computer gets choppy and then it slowly crashes.

The odd thing about that is that its like the harddrive disappeared. Any files or folders I open will be blank or will not open, and the first reboot says the harddrive is missing. After a moment everything is back to normal but its very strange. It doesn't do it often enough to really throw myself back into Dell-Hell quite yet, so I might just try seeing if its something I can actually fix rather than the mobo.

 

thanks, but I get "the changes made were invalid and will not be applied"

 

That is weird. What drivers are you using?

Weenus,
That does sound like a hard drive problem. I don't know. Don't you think you should have a word with Dell about replacing them for you? You know, after you get some back up drives.

 

Quickset release for the Studio. Should work on the M1730. Anyone care to test?

http://support.us.dell.com/support/...typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&fileid=369100

Release Date: 12/30/2009
Version: 9.6.13, A04

Compatible with Vista/Win 7 32&64bit

Fixes and Enhancements
1. Supported volume OSD after switching the audio playback device to HDMI audio.
2. Supported upgrading from elder version such as 9.0/9.2/9.4.

Should be able to run the installer without uninstalling the previous version. Make note of which version you are currently running in the event you need to revert back.

 

I've tried dox's 182.46 and 185.something, and it happens. I've also tried 186.81 official, same thing happens again

 

Just a thought: have you tried checking the connectors of the harddrives and the ribbon to the motherboard? When I first got the 1730, the harddrive craddle was flopping inside the case.

 

Thanks for heads up.
Gave it a try, and it refused to install, same as Quickset v 9.6.6. I'm currently using Quickset v 9.2.13.

Almost forgot....I'm on Win 7 64-bit. Hope this helps.

P.S. Happy New Year everyone!


Edit:
@ weenus
This doesn't necessarily means that your hard drives are failing. Sounds to me more like a software problem. Could be caused by virus/antivirus/messed up windows. Try to reinstall the OS before spending money on a new hard drives

 

ntune does the same for me. riva tuner works great thought. i was never able to get ntune to work even in vista?

 

nTune is an obsolete product. Make sure you download Nvidia System Tools version 6.05 and install the performance application. It will add the overclocking options to your Nvidia control panel. I have had no trouble at all with it in Windows 7 x64.

 

Well, I at least need a second HDD either way, but it seems pretty set in its ways. Today I was installing CODMW2 and it did the same thing after a while of writing to the drive. Nothing else was really running and just about all of the software on my XPS is identical to my PC, which doesn't have a problem like that at all. The only difference between the two software-wise is the Dell drivers and software.

 

Happy New Year everyone,

What is the latest GOOD video driver WITH FUNCTIONAL downclocking ? I seem to have forgot the name of that function :>

 

PowerMizer?

Eleron, go for WHQL 185.85, or 186.81, if you want the most consistent results across the board.

Otherwise, downloaded the latest, WHQL 195 piece of crap. Armed with the latest profiles, but some very dodgy performance issues.

 

Yea, Powermizer thx.

Uhm, nvidia ones I supose ... from nvidia site. I`ll give`m a go.

 

Happy New Year Everyone!!!!

 

Well wife just gave me the go ahead to build a desktop than let dell keep trying to fix mine on the side...once they do i will be selling it :-/

life changed, no need for a laptop anymore.

 

Happy New Year M1730 Owners...

@Eleron, in the event the 190 series or 185.85 doesnt do it for you, instead of the 186.81, go with the Windows Update released 186.82. It was released a few days after the .81 driver release by NV. More info can be found here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=412578

 

The 195 piece of crap works great for my beastie with 8800GTX's. I haven't noticed any drop in performance whatsoever across the three games I'm playing.

 

Hey Guys,

Its good to still see there are people with this epic laptop.

I have a question. I bought the laptop with 2 x 200GB 7200 Drives in it. Im looking to get more storage and would really love to get 2 x 1TB drives in it. I know that a couple companies are making them now but I also know that they are a little thicker by about 3 mm than normal.

Has anyone used any of these drives or do you know if we can fit them inside the M1730??

 

I have been having some performance issues on my M1730 and Win7 x64 too, my games will pause for a few seconds every couple of minutes or so, and I have tried all of these drivers already. I am contemplating going back to crappy Vista which never gave me any of these performance issues at all.
I also have a desktop PC with a 8800GTX while I wait for Evga to sends me back my GTX 280 RMA replacement and with the 195.62 the same games work super smooth on the 8800GTX and no performance issues at all weird.

 

I haven't noticed any drop in performance across 15 games, using strong, up-to-date engines. I use 182.46 with Nhancer.

Mind naming the games, by the way?

My current setup might not be the best--I might not get the highest maximum FPS--but my overall average FPS is consistent and solid throughout these games. Until someone can show me contrary results, I will not budge on my stance.

Jesse,
For Windows 7, I was testing the 9800m GTX. While I did, I found the 186.81 to be ideal. Get a hold of this driver, or the 186.82 through windows update. Share your feedback.

 

I just installed these drivers and so far it seems to be better ( the games I play most are COD2, CODWAW, COD4 Modern Warfare, and COD Modern Warfare 2, I am a bit Call of Duty fan LOL!!!).
But has anyone found a way to set the max performance as the default power profile setting in Win7. I change it and when it the laptop starts it defaults to balanced power setting. I have checked online and even have gone into the registry and I cannot find the way to make max perfrmance the default power profile.