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

To my knowledge 9800M GTXs have a much lesser fail rate, than 8800M GTX. It all comes down to what kind of desktop you can build with that money. And if mobility of a laptop is not an issue for you. You can build a pretty decent PC for about €700, which will be on par with M1730, perhaps even faster. Plus you get a room for future upgrades. Besides, you can make some extra cash by selling spare parts from your M1730.

 

yeah am afraid the mobility and more importantly the space is a big issue for me which is why i forked out for a decent lappie rather than a PC desktop unit... the main issue is not having a desk on which to place it
thanks for the advice re the card... gonna take a punt on it and then cry about the spilt milk in 6 months I guess.

 

I just got a 1730 with the 9800GTX cards from the outlet. Im very concerned about the temps and failure rates and trying to decide if I want to keep the notebook.

What is strange is that while I was playing UT2004 the temps remained in the 60s. When I stopped playing the game they would flucuate from the 60s to the mid 70s at idle. I find this strange.

If I do decide to keep it I will definitely buy a notebook cooler I guess.

My Studio 17 temps stay in the 40s at all times.

 

@jet757f I find the same thing with mine.

At idle (or doing some mundane task such as working on a word doc) the temp fluctuates between 69 and 75C.

When I run a 3D app like a game or a movie the fans take the temp down to either 50 or 60C before turning the fans off.

Does anyone know if the 9800M GT's better or worse for dealing with heat than the 8800's?

 

Im guessing something must be ramping the fan speeds up during gaming and then they are at a lower speed at idle.

I guess the problem with these cards is the different temp changes that cause the cards to fail. I dont think they are too hot.

This leads me to lay more of the blame on Nvidia for this problem. Dell still needs to fix it.

 

Hi guys,
Tonight I'm replacing my old CPU with x9000. I'm a little bit confused with this grounding mat. Since I don't have central heating (lol). Can I connect wrist strap to the case of the working PC next to my laptop or should I plug it into a wall power socket (to the ground hole)??

 

Dude, DO NOT ground it to your house wiring (ground hole of the socket).
The purpose of that grounding is dissipating stray voltages from wiring faults in your house. If something goes wrong with the electricity and you would be connected to it i doubt you will have much time to enjoy that new x9000 proc

A radiator or a metallic water pipe are good options.

 

You need to get rid of the static electricity. The only way is to ground yourself. So connect yourself to a metal object you're 100% sure about it's grounded. Like the ground of the power socket.

Where I live it isn't a big issue. As we're in a moisture environment, relatively speaking. When you are in dry air <45% moisture, it's really important to ground yourself.

 

in the hundreds of times i worked insided of computers (maybe its already thousands (psyloid is a iT technician)) I never used my wristband and i only screwed up once, so chances are really low that you burn the cpu with static (but maybe it depends from person to person how static you are?), but if your not willing to take a chance clip the wristband to the groundpin of the wall socket (I did that the few times i did use my wristband), theoretically touching the ground pin with your fingers for a few seconds will already get rid of static out of your body for a while (it needs time to build up again) I measured my body electricity a few times with a multimeter for fun and I never got over 0.35V, but i'm pretty confident that it varies from person to person (I kissed somebody once and i could feel static on my lips ! ), but in general, I don't care about static too much

 

over here it's a pin and not a hole (belgium), but if something goes wrong with the wiring, electricity will always take the shortest path, in other words, it will go from the fault directly to the ground, it won't matter if you are hanging onto the ground pin/hole, you would not even notice, because you would be totally bypassed

 

Theoretically, they should be cooler, but since i have them i can telll you that idle temps are 60-70° and when pushing them (Crysis) they go up to 87°C (i clean my cooling system every two weeks) Mine have already been replaced after failure, so i doubt that they are any better than 8800's

 

You are absolutely right, I guess i should've explained myself better.
In case the grounding of the house is faulty and not connected to ground for some reason, then what i was talking about could occur.
Under normal circumstances it's a non issue, but why take the risk ?

 

In that case you might be fried , yes
it's just that our friend didn't have any grounding options around his house, so if he is sure his grounding is Ok, he can use the grounding pin/hole
and if it's a hole, please make sure to take the right hole, having 20 Amps (thats what most fuses are) blown through your body isn't much fun (experience talking here, unfortunatly)

 

ok, thx guys. Definitely I dont want to fry myself. So just to make it clear. If i connect wristband to the back of the running desktop /which is metal/aluminium// then it should be fine, right? Sorry guys I don,t know anythin about electricity and don't want to have too much in common with it /especially don't want to feel it in my body /

 

it wont be OK if, the grounding in your house is not ok or non-existent, how about the waterpipes, under the sink, aren't they metal?

 

awesome, my T9300 runs at 2.7Ghz now instead of 2.5

 

Awesome indeed, I totally ramped up my mine last night as well. The battery is toast (and removed), the warranty is finished, and I have a new gaming laptop as well as an XPS PC in the living room. This thing is exclusively a table-top rig now so I'm slowly doing everything I can to wring some more performance out of it.
Btw the CPU load is maxed because I'm running prime95 in the background.

 

yeah, but providing grounding is done properly. Ill be doing it at work which is datacentre so I assume they've done it right. Water pipes would work though.

 

Hi guys,

Just wanted to update you with some of my results from using ThrottleStop on my T9300 and Ntune for my Gfx Cards (8800m GTX SLI) Driver 257.15

I've managed to get my CPU running @ 2693Mhz (Same as Reveers )idling @ 27C+32C
and my Gfx Cards running @ 640/950/1600 idling @ 55C+55C
I ran OCCT on my cards for an hour and they maxed out @ 73C & ran BurnIn Test on the CPU's for an hour and they maxed @ 42C+49C

3dMark06 Results were good reaching 12168

ORB - World of Performance

Regards Jim

 

totally safe, go ahead

 

Great results Jim!

Are you running a notebook cooler at all? Nice low temps.

 

Great that Throttlestop works, however I don´t seem to get it to work on my T7700 CPU for some reason, it won´t go up to that 13x multiplier.

Could anyone of you write a step by step how you managed to get it to run at 13+ multiplier?

 

Your T7700 may not have the ability to go that high and run the 13x multiplier. Benson and I have a T9300 processor.
Step by step instructions are found in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/477704-how-enable-intel-dynamic-acceleration-ida-both-cores-core-2-duo.html#post6170629

 

No Notebook cooler m8. I have just rasied the back of my laptop up with the cutting technology of 2 coke bottle tops Also I've undervolted the CPU in ThrottleStop to 1.0625v Its been ok at that for a couple of days now so I might take it 1 notch lower to 1.0500

Regards Jim

 

A little off-topic:
Everything what has to do with powersupply is my living.
In a normal environment every household has a well protected groundsource. It just depends what kind of system you're connected. IT, TT or TN. I don't gonna explain deeply, but when you're in a situation of IT (Isolation/Terra) or TT (Terra/Terra) your ground has a direct connection with earth. That's with private buildings also the weak spot. In a lot of situations it has been build one time and never controlled over the years. In case of TN (Terra/Neutral) your ground is conneced to neutral from the power company. In that case you're more safe.

On-topic:
I build/repair desktop and laptop computers often. I don't have a ground wrist-band, cause it's not a big issue here in western Europe. It's all about the air moisture if you need it or not.

 

Nah it worked for me now, running my T7700 at 2.6GHz and a 3D Mark 06 score of 12029

 

How much of a change in score is that?

 

around 1000 points for me.

 

Hi guys,
I've just done it!!!!. x9000 inside @ 3.4GHz already, testing with prime95 at the moment. What are the standard temperatures for it? idle and under load? Mine is around 77C under 100% load. Isn't it too high?

 

I should do the CPU boost myself tomorrow, if I have the time...
Sounds exciting

 

Yeah eleron you should hit 2.7GHz Works really well and gives boost in games too. I have undervolted too using Throttlestop

 

That's pretty decent, but you can get much more cooler results than that if you undervolt it. I get around 65*C max on 3.4GHz, and 85*C on 3.8GHz respectively.

 

to all who did the IDA CPU boost trick with throttlestop on their t9300, I'm still using the default voltage, what voltages do you guys use? you all undervolted it right?

 

I'm quite happy at 1.1000, as i had a stability issue with anything less.

 

i'll start with 1.15 then

 

I currently have mine set to 1.0500v and no problems yet

 

I use 1.1875 @ 3.0GHz, and now 1.200 @ 3.2GHz (the former didn't break past the low 50s C, so I figure why not).

You guys are getting stable overclocks at some pretty low voltages!

Btw, how well can the rest of you run Crysis?

I run it at 1680x1050 at all High except Objects, Shadows, Physics are set at Medium and Motion Blur is set to Off. I can average around 30-50fps, it's playable. And of course Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering set to Off.

In nVidia control panel, I have Maximum Prerendered Frames set to 3, and SLI Performance Mode set to 'NVIDIA recommended (SLI)'... should I change anything? I used to have it set to 'Force Alternate Frame Rendering 2', but that caused even worse performance in Crysis, not sure why.

 

Dude, Crysis is all about having the right config.
Try Magnus` configs or easy-e`s.

 

Hi All,
I haven't been to this thread in awhile. Not as much gaming time after having kids to really enjoy the machine.

I have some questions that I hope someone could help with, I apologize in advance for the length.

First the history.... My 1730 was shipped to me in Jan 2008. I ordered a second battery w/that original order. Then about a few weeks later, I ordered a second Power Adapter as I was getting tired of lugging both around from room to room. I didn't really use the second battery since my machine is pretty much always plugged in. One day, my first battery died (maybe 6-12 months ago). I just assumed it was normal wear and plugged in the second battery and have been using it since without issues.

Suddenly last week when I moved the machine from one room to the other, it started to give me warnings on needing to plug in or go to stand by. I discovered that if I unplug it, it goes from 100% charged down to 7%. Battery health says it is normal. I noticed a new orange blinking light for battery.

I googled it and read that it could be the AC Adapter. I called Dell who took me through System Setup and both of my adapters are picked up as 230W. I'm just not satisfied with the normal battery life when it is my second battery on this machine when I've never had to replace a battery on any other laptops I've owned or used for work for years.

Dell support asked me to remove the battery and boot the machine and it booted (although now my wireless mouse isn't working??). I plugged the battery back in after that and the orange blink is gone. Occasionally it shows a solid blue light for battery but most of the time it is dark. Battery indicator says 0% available (plugged in, charging), but it has been saying that now for 10 minutes and still at 0%.

From the research online, it seems that others have said it could be a motherboard issue or something about the connectors not pressing properly. Either way, I have a dispatch order and someone should be coming to put in a new (assuming refurbished motherboard) in this week.

My questions:
1) Do I need to watch out for anything while they do this. Will they be just moving over my existing memory/video cards/etc?

2) If it is the motherboard, are my existing batteries going to miraculously start charging or will I need to get a new one anyway?

3) Is Dell the best source or would you recommend a different battery vendor?

Thank you in advance for any assistance,
Amy

 

I guess from what youre telling here, that you are very unlucky with your batteries and that your second battery has died too ... better buy a battery from dell, because batteries from other vendors might give you problems (I once tried a universal adapter in my machine which was capable of powering it, and everytime i booted it said, "This is not a Dell power adapter" and i could not boot with it, and if i booted on battery and plugged it in then it didn't charge the battery, but it did power the PC)
So the concencus here is that you need to use original parts

 

I installed 257.21 NV drivers. After playing BFBC2, max temp was 80° (earlier was ~86°). But the game runs slower - it looks like sometimes GPU little slows down.

 

those are some pretty high temps.

you know what im going to do?
im going to bypass the entire laptop graphics card and replace it with a desktop ATI 5750.
and by this i mean fully implement it to run on battery and the standard power supply. and fit it in the case where the old card was.

maybe the battery life will be better! or do i have to change the screen backlight to LED as well? :O

 

I wonder is getting towards part 4 of the owners lounge yet...

Great to see such activity on the thread!

 

250 pages is still quite decent. No need for a changeover yet

 

I remember it was hard to keep up with part 1. A lot of people where really active here at that time. Sometimes I had to go through 5-6 pages a day. *Sigh* the good old days...

 

Ah things are still pretty lively around here consider the age! / oops sorry experience of our laptops!

 

hehehe, great thread, great people. I'm glad I found this forum . So much help .
BTW. my 3dmark06 score has gone up from 12.5k to 14.5k since I replaced my old CPU with X9000 and overclocked it to 3.4GHz. Was quite suprised score has gone up so much . I'm in heaven with my XPS .

 

Yea, I know what you mean. I remember 2 summers ago when I started gaming on it... I felt like a little kid again, with the most awesome toy. I still play with the lights in dark rooms at time, awes everybody

 

I've recently bought my second m1730 off eBay and I am really happy to see this thread alive and kickin! It's a great place to chat and exchange experience with good ppl!
I'd rep ya'all if I could

 

I still love my XPS, but I can't help myself drooling over M17x's.
I do love the thread though