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

No not yet, will probably do an extension just in case this thing fails. Warranty expires next month.

Nope. It only works in the M1730. It's a proprietary design and not MXM.

 

Dude, I think you should get on the case of renewing. From what I hear, there's a cut-off period for renewals. Although I hope I am wrong.

 

Heh. How much you lookin' to make, mate?

 

well im hoping for 3k, maybe a little more. just priced its out on the site and was over 4400, and that didnt include the extra months of warrenty and accidental care i have on it.

I was just going to throw it on ebay once i get it. If you are truly interested PM me and I could give you all the details.

 

I'm having some concerns in case my m1730 dies.
I purchased a m1710 a few years ago and i got the m1730 as a replacement after numerous defects on the 1710. I also had some issues with the 1730 ( dead videocards) if they finnally decide not to fix it due to unavailability of spare parts, will they upgrade me to a m17x or are they gonna say, you originally bought an m1710 and give me something mediocore (like a downgrade) from their studio line, or will they live up to my expectations and give me something thats at least as good as the m1730 i own now.
what are your thoughts?

 

my m1730 replacement is in the build stage.woohoo here are the specs. 1 224-5966 Red Metallic
1 310-0173 Airborne Documentation, System Exchanges,Factory Install
1 313-8977 8X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive,QuickSilver
1 317-0856 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz 2 x 2048MB
1 317-0857 Intel Core2 Duo T9800 2.93GHz (6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
1 320-0762 SLI Dual 1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA GeForce (NB10E-GTX1)
1 320-8140 17.0in, WUXGA,LCD,ANW,M17X
1 330-3924 Name Plate Engraving
1 341-0000 320GB 7,200RPM (xMB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection
1 410-0204 McAfee VirusScan Plus - 15-Month Subscription
1 410-1883 ADOBE READER 9.0 MULTI- LANGUAGE
1 421-0360 Avatar1
1 421-0364 Power Plan, BAL
1 421-0389 Window Style, DFT
1 421-0399 Time Zone, CENTRAL
1 421-0405 Automatic Updates ON
1 421-0726 ALIENFX BLUE
1 421-1400 Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
1 421-1724 Soft Contracts,Dell In Home,Alienware
1 430-3558 Internal 300Mbps Dual-Band a/g/n 2x2 MIMO

 

Ok here we go, 6 months ago i recieved a 1730 for replacement of a 1710 .2 higher processor and sli 512 instead of single 512 card, i was happy, at first..... i am now waiting on 5th graphics card to get here. i feel like dell wants to just keep throwing these broke graphics cards and MOBOs at me till my warranty runs out in Nov. they say i am lucky cause i got upgrade from 1710 already LOL HELP what do i do to make dell admit that this is problem with 1730 and 8700 cards. why are they sending me 5 graphics cards in 6 months and sending other people M17x??? thanks for any input very frustrated of amount of downtime

 

update. 2

Been told NO REPLACEMENT SYSTEM. Ive been offered a refund of £2300 plus my gfx card upgrade of £439.54 and my 2 yr warranty extension of £90 i think.

Apparently DELL dont offer Alienware AS REPLACEMENTS for DELL machines lol. Altho i was offered a replacement ALIENWARE machine with a balance difference lol

ok then whatever

 

When i had mine replaced in December i was offered the same system, XPS16 or a alienware M17x if i paid the difference, you should been offered an alienware.

With that refund you can easily get some thing better then the alienware

 

With all these stories of GPU failure in the 1730 I'm almost amazed that mine just keeps on working great.

 

Did you buy this machine directly from Dell, or was it a second-owner's purchase from a reseller?

 

did anyone here modified their 9800m gt bios with nibitor? and if so with what clocks/voltages and results?

 

I have messed around with the BIOS, but I am sticking with stock settings.

I believe you can't push your voltage past 1.05 for 'extra', because you just won't have more juice than that limit.

Clocks improve by a small margin, but I have found that with the voltage, it isn't the peak overclocks that shine so much as the higher overclocks that become a bit more stable and consistent.

E.g.: Normally, 650/950/1625 (Core/Memory/Shader), would be a bit on the unstable side. Also, very few 8800/9800s could perform stable at such clocks. Upping the voltage from 1 to 1.03 actually brought a bit more stability to the table.

However, let me be very clear on the note that this kind of 'change' in clocks and voltage is not worth the tampering. It hardly makes that much of a difference to actual gaming. I say a steady 610-620 for core, and 1500-1550 for shaders is more than enough for a majority of titles; it's probably better to avoid messing with voltage tables.

 

Has anyone tried to install "Mass Effect 2" on XPS 1730? I just bought the game and couldn't wait to play it. First disk installs fine but the second disk does not install at all.

So, the 1st disk is done installing, then is ejected and the message to insert the 2nd disk comes on. Now the 2nd disk is in the tray but nothing happens. Clicking Retry does absolutely nothing, clicking cancel stops installation process entirely.

My XPS 1730, which I bought in October 2007 came with TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-L632H ATA device. From day one it had problems reading a variety of disks.

If there is a solution to this, please let me know.

BTW, the same "Mass Effect 2" disks installed with no problems on my second and smaller laptop.

 

hmm.. share the cd drive from your smaller laptop over LAN? dunno...

 

Install EA Download Manager (should be on the disc, or you can download it from the web alternatively). Then register your copy of ME 2 on it and then you can download a copy of it legally from ea servers. Here inn Europe it comes out on the 29th, but pre-load is available since today. Pre-load was about 10gigs. I believe, that would be the same for you.
Oh, and please leave some feedback on how well the beast performs in this game pls

Edit: Forgot to mention not to install NVidia's WHQL 196.21 driver. Very buggy, had a BSOD when trying to enable SLI, and was unable to OC the cards. New Beta 196.34 should fix this problem, howevre, I haven't tested it yet.
Just so you know, in these drivers they added support for SLI in ME 2

 

Umm why didn't u get a replacement a long time ago???

 

Why do you assume I didn't? Actually I did and this is the third one. But all of them were the same "TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-L632H ATA device".

I also updated the driver, which did not make any difference: the thing just does not read or write to a vast number of disks.

 

did you try to update the firmware from manufactures site?

 

Anyone have problems with a M1730 battery going to under a minute runtime almost overnight? I have had two power supplies replaced, the last one being before I noticed this issue. I know Dell considers batteries as consumables and doesn't warrant them past 12 months. The problem is, if the previous power supply damaged the battery in some way, would that make it defective and just not due to use?

 

A defective psu would probably take out the motherboard too. The battery probably just went. You don't need a battery to run the system tho. You use it unplugged alot?

 

It's not that I use the battery a lot, I use it for things like when I move the laptop while it is on between rooms, etc. I look at batteries in laptops like this as a built in UPS. Right now it doesn't even have enough juice to boot.

 

What about the lights on the battery, show all of them?

 

Hi, i'm playing mass effect 2 on the beast and it looks awesome, got it all maxed out @ 1920 x 1200 and its fluid, exept somtimes when a cutscene starts it stutters a bit due to heavy hdd loads

btw, brilliant game (pls don't ask me where i got it, yes i'm in europe ... )

 

Battery health is fine in windows and bios. Battery appears to be fully charged based on the lights and what windows tells me. It goes to 99% then 97% then it bottoms out.

 

Great news! Thanks a lot for the feedback. Can't wait to play this game. BTW, what drivers are you using?

 

If the battery light on the bottom of it shows its full, than its probably the connection to the motherboard or something along those lines. GL regardless

 

ok well after massive chat to a manager last night dell are honoring a replacement. M17x for a m1730. Specs to follow. £2800 total value

 

woot just got the m17x!

 

ugh this isnt working right either....

very slowing installing and 1 fps during 3dmark stuff.

I think it has messed up ram, as it only posted a 5.9 in the windows test

 

Dude, you probably need to get the proper drivers for the ATi cards.

And Dazzy,
Congratulations, mate.

 

its the 280's

that wouldnt make a program install veeeery slow. I mean horribly slow. even opening IE is bad

 

Hey Guys,

Well I finally got my Replacement Alienware M17X and it is beautiful!

I tried to push for the GTX 280's after they only offered me the 260's but when I got through to the Technical department they flat out refused to give me the 280's because the 260's are "better" than the 8800m GTX's which I originally had. I guess it depends on who who get on the phone because most people seem to get the 280's....

But none the less it is awesome!





So I guess I wont be around here anymore. Good luck to all of you and MAKE SURE YOU RENEW YOUR WARRANTYS!!!

 

you like the palm rest material????

Mines acting dumb with the video drivers..something still isnt right. So dell is processing a refund. I'll know in two business days if im going to take it.

If not im going to request another m17x. uhhh

 

I guess I got lucky they gave me the 280's and a way better cpu than I have in my busted 1730.Congrats on the new system I'll see you at the m17x owners lounge.

 

what cpu did you get?

 

Thanks for the suggestion. It worked quite nicely. I just shared Samsung's dvd drive and installed "Mass Effect 2" on my 1730 that way. I used wi-fi and it took about four hours but it worked Next time I will do it over LAN.

 

Thanks for the advice. "Mass Effect 2" is awesome. Fantastic plot, incredible visuals, lots of fighting to save the galaxy. The game plays really smooth and I still have the original 8700 Sli. I can only imagine how it will play and look on 1730s with higher graphic cards.

 

lol well it was silent mode...stupid me...and stupid thing haha

 

Was just going to say it sounds like a power setting issue (ie low-pwr silent mode). Gratz!

 

Will the 9800 M GT SLI out perform the 8800 GTX SLI?

 

went from t8100 to t9800

 

No they're both based on the same chip.

 

Hi guys.

I would like to ask something to you.
I got my beast end 2007 with originally T7700 and 8700sli.
Then I upgraded new CPU/GPU on the bay.
I have warranty cover untill 2012(!)

I see many of you are getting the M17x replacement once GPU is broken (I understand most GPU's are defective). I kept the original 8700sli.

My 8800sli works still very well (although sometimes on idle get to 72 degree).

Ok I wrote a lot, that's my question:
Shoud I put back the original components and hope the 8700sli get busted in order to get a replacement? I mean if my 8800gtx fails (but they are not covered) can I still call DELLL asking for replacement or they will find out I changed GPU/CPU???

Thanks a lot I hope it's clear..

 

Ethically, if it works fine, then why are you needing a replacement?

 

Right. I'm just guessing it will break up sooner or later...
I just want to be sure to get the replacement/refund once this will happen.

Btw I see my last post is a bit misleading.
(i'm not mothertongue)

Thanks anyway,

 

Well, it's a matter of perspective, and this question does carry some ethical implications. I won't get into that side of things, but I will offer some advice.

If you have an 8800m GTX in the laptop, then enjoy the card. An overclocked X9000 with the 8800m GTX is still a very powerful configuration and with the right tweaks, it can hold its own against the current giants of the benchmark world. That's just my opinion though, and my perception of the machine.

Now you're worried that if you use the 8800m GTX, and the card dies, could you bank on your N.B.D. warranty. There are two answers here. Ethically, you probably shouldn't, but technically, you probably could. M1730 is no longer a model that Dell care about, or even actively support. If you call them and tell them the GPU is not working, they will most likely not even care about sending out a new pair.

Logistically, you will not receive 8800s as replacement, or a laptop with 8800s as replacement. Your invoice only covers 8700s, so if your laptop goes bust, they will offer you something of equal specification to the 8700 SLi rig, and they won't care much about the state of your old system. You could probably send it back with the wasted 8800s, but whatever. They won't really care too much; they've received some battered machines in recent past. The M1730, to Dell, is a dead horse; flog away!

 

Thanks for the feedback. Can't wait till it's out in Europe.

On the other note, I have installed and tested NVidia Beta 196.34. First of all, I want to note that I've had a lot of problems with the new PhysX driver that comes with it. First of all, it eliminates the support for the PhysX. On top of that new PhysX driver kept causing BSOD when I tried to enable SLI.
After I got rid of it I still got BSOD, but after the PC restart SLI was enabled.
Performance-wise I didn't notice any difference from 195.62 in games like NFS Shift and DA:O. And by the looks of it ME 2 should run just fine on a single 8800M GTX, so no point to update the driver.

 

+1 on this. However, I did notice you make note of your idle temps with your 8800M cards. To be honest, you might want to try bumping your clocks up to 3.2-3.4Ghz, as this turns all the system fans on full-blast. I'm using my M1730 almost exclusively now(selling my ThinkPads and going for a T400) and with my overclock to 3.4Ghz and the fans running full-blast, mu idle temps are a nice and cool 38-40C. The notebook is admittedly pretty loud because of this, but I believe the lower temps will greatly increase the life of my 8800Ms.

Keep in mind that you will want to stress-test and undervolt your CPU when you overclock. If you're not sure how to do this there's an excellent guide here on the NBR forums. Unfortunately I don't have the link, but if you do a search you'll be able to find it.

 

ugh I have to say good bye to the best today, cleaning it off and shipping it to dell.

Thanks for all the help guys.