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

Guys!!

Help. I foolishly bought an m1730 on eBay. I have had issue after issue with it and it looks like a didgy motherboard at the moment

What I'd like to know is, after removing the battery, there is a loose connector under a small plastic flap. What the devil is this for?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Stu

 

Well said Kade Storm

 

Yo stu,
Mine came from ebay as well,althought he was an authorized refurb reseller by dell.
It came with new mobo revision as well as newer 8800m gtx ( converted to 9800m gt).
Anyway that small plastic carving is the bluetooth module socket. If you dont have the module underneath it (you can access it and see it without even removing the cover) then theres none.
I dont remember if the beasts came with bt installed on all configurations: if not then prolly the owner never had one.

Any standard bt edr 2.0 module will do anyway.

 

Alright so I swapped out my 8800M cards for my old 8700M and this time the system started up.

. I think this means my 8800M cards got fried. I'm going to try reinstalling them.

But I must have messed something up while reinstalling them because my power button doesn't work. Did I miss a connector somewhere for it?

 

Power button is physically on the keyboard,be sure that the bezel is in place correctly,you need to push it down firmly.

 

Btw if youre powering up the system with the media button be aware that it uses only one gpu. To make sure that both cards are dead, reinstall the old 8800m gtx and try to power it up with the mediahome button.
If does work the prolly the second card is dead.
Althought even if it is the system should boot correctly with one card only.

 

I get no picture when I try booting up with the Media button.

I fixed the power button switch.

I reinstalled the 8800M just to be sure. It hangs at the Dell screen again.

I guess this is another dead GPU symptom... sometimes the system won't even POST.

I'm gonna reinstall the 8700M one more time just to double check.

 

Whoa, after doing that Media button thing, now I get no picture no matter what. After about 10 reboots, I finally got a picture but it didn't even get a third of the way through the Dell screen. Then I rebooted again, and again no picture.

I guess this confirms that the 8800M video card is the dead unit?

 

First hi everyone thanks to all for the input have been reading now for a few weeks.
I purchased my xps 1730 second hand a few weeks ago it came with vista 32-bit so i dumped vista and installed win 7 64-bit everything seems to be ok with a slight problem with device manager other devices have two yellow flags that popup with multimedia controller and a PCI device
when i try to update the drivers cannot do.
been here also ,
Dell XPS M1730 - 'The Beast': XPS M1730 Vista Drivers (64-bit)

 

ok seriously . i can't get the power button to work again.

the system boots fine off the 8700M but the power button's out. i made sure to seat the keyboard all the way as well as the tiny cable. ?

it goes into diagnostic mode, beeps like crazy, my keyboard still works, just the power buttons don't.

EDIT: NM! Finally got that SOB

 

Alright, so I'm back on my system after getting the 8700M GT in.

Except now I suddenly have visual artifacts in StarCraft II. There are flickering horizontal lines on the screen.

They aren't there in Quake Live.

Guess I won't be calling off those Dell replacement parts after all.

Is there some sort of bug with StarCraft II and this card? I'm using 190.40 drivers.

 

God, what an awful old driver! Must be a driver related problem. Im using Quadro 265.90 whql and they work beatifully.
If you want to test them, get them at laptopvideo2go.com. Get the driver, then the modded inf.
And they come with a SLI profile for StarCraft as well

 

Alright, here's my full write up on my experience with the beast.

I got my laptop in summer of 2008 from eBay. It was a 2.2GHz, 8700M GT. The owner had upgraded the RAM to 4GB.

In the summer of 2009, I purchased an X9000 off eBay (new/oem... around $400 or more) and an 8800M GTX SLI. The first 8800 was faulty, I was getting artifacting pretty badly. So I returned it (thankfully I purchased from a reputable eBay seller). The second (from a different seller) seemed to work.

However, I was faced with the scenario typical to 8800/9800 users. The card would slowly heat up to 70-75 C, the fans would kick in, and repeat. So I took it apart and put some Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste on it (as well as on the CPU).

I also put 3 high powered fans into that shiny metal NZXT laptop cooler and put the M1730 on it, raised about an inch.

I overclocked the X9000 to 3.2 in BIOS and used RMClock to undervolt it and limit it to 3.0. To keep the fans on all the time.

My idle temps thereafter were in the low to mid 40s for the GPU. My temps at full load in games for the GPU was low 60s in demanding games (like Crysis) at high resolutions. Sometimes mid-60s if I was gaming at 1920x1200 or 1080p. Typically, for playability, I'd use a resolution like 1280x960 or 1680x1050, and with more playable detail settings. Load temps were often in the high 50s for the games I usually played, so I'd bump up the details as much as I could and still get playable FPS because temperatures were not an issue.

The only time I ever saw temperatures over 70 C was when the laptop was full of dust, which I cleaned out.

So for about a year and a half, I did everything you could possibly do to keep this laptop running and cool. My temps were lower than anyone else's I had read about on this forum. I would worry if my temps exceeded 63 C, that's how cool this thing ran.

And then the inevitable happened. It suddenly kicked out on me the other day as you guys all read. It seems both graphics cards were screwed, because the machine wouldn't even POST.

At the moment my GPU(s) died, my load temps in-game were 58 C. No artifacts. No symptoms. No warning.

My final verdict... while the 8800M GTX SLI was an amazing GPU, especially for its time, it was also extremely unstable. High temps, low temps, doesn't matter. These things will fail, no matter what, eventually. I got about a year and a half out of mine, and this upgrade cost upwards of $700, and there's no warranty on it for me.

Was it worth it? I certainly used it for the time I had it. Can't say I'll miss having to be so neurotic and having CPUID Hardware Monitor open 24-7 in the background, constantly checking temps.

I should also mention, I keep my laptop (and all other machines I've owned) running 24-7. So even though I wasn't gaming all that time, the system was on for quite a while.

Now that I'm back on my stock (and warrantied) 8700M, I'm going to shop around for another laptop or build a cheap desktop. I can still play Quake Live, though it looks worse and can't handle any effects. StarCraft gets good framerates at Medium texture and Low shader settings. I'll investigate the horizontal artifacting lines in SC2 (which makes no sense, because this card was stable when I put it away in an antistatic bag for the last year and a half). Dell's warranty parts are on the way, I'll see if the other 8700 has lines too and send everything else back.

I'm going to give this laptop to my sister. She's about to graduate, so it'll make a good present. She doesn't game at all, I can turn off SLI, and she doesn't run it 24-7. I'll probably overclock the X9000 to 3.4, it'll be faster than any other laptop she'd want to get.

Yeah, I still have the X9000 with the 8700M, lol. The fans are still on full. Load temps with the 8700M so far have not gone over 60 C. It idles mid-40s (higher than my 8800... because there's no AS5 thermal paste on this, it's bone stock from Dell in original condition). I also noticed the 8700M GT's fans spin at a max of 3500rpm (while the X9000 and 8800M spun at 3800rpm).

The X9000 is amazing btw. Has to be one of the best mobile CPUs ever made. Overclock and undervolt, while using the Throttle stepping whatever feature in RMClock to keep it at insanely low temps at idle... It's no wonder the i5/i7 series basically mimic this (at least Intel advertises the lower average speed, not the highest speed under low... my X9000 is at 1.2Ghz most of the time on the Desktop). A few months ago I realized just how cool this thing was running so I bumped it up to 3.2. I didn't go higher because I didn't want to raise the voltage anymore, I wanted to keep it cool. CPU rarely exceeded low 50s C during gaming. Doing some number crunching (Prime95 or some custom software that does genetic algorithms), it would hit 68-69 C, sloowwwly start creeping into the 70s. The ACPI temperature was a few degrees hotter so I didn't let that get over mid-70s when doing something like that (very rarely).

Oh yeah, I'm back to the white colors replaced by yellows with the 8700M. I'll see if the one Dell sends fixes that problem.

Also, I'm now pretty comfortable with taking apart and working on laptops. I've been building my own desktops since high school, but I was always a little put off by laptops. Not anymore

Manufacture date of the (former) Beast: November 2007. Hopefully it'll last for another good few years in retirement with my sister.

Another good thing to come out of this... discovering this forum and the amazingly helpful community. Every future computer-related purchase of mine will be an educated decision thanks to you guys.

 

It was the last stable one before the release which started frying video cards, so I never updated again after that.

I'm not sure about using the Quadro drivers... I have a measly 8700M. Will it really help?

Is there another release that was specifically meant for these 8700/8800 mobile GPUs and had improvements for StarCraft?

 

So I went to Nvidia's site and it said I should use 260.99.

I downloaded it, tried to install it. Said there is no compatible hardware. I got the modded INF from laptopvideo2go and then it said it's missing required packages.

I'm now downloading the version of 260.99 from laptopvideo2go's site, and seeing if that will install.

This is why I hate updating drivers.

 

Alright, just found this thread:

Driver failure, black screens, 8700M - NVIDIA Forums

So, it. I'm not updating drivers. I'll live with the ty performance in SC2 until I can get a new system. nvidia, seriously. That company deserves to have lost a lot of money for its practices. It is horrible.

It's funny, I've been asking periodically on this forum and others, "what is the latest stable release of drivers that you're using with the 8700/8800/9800 mobile cards?" and I have not gotten a single answer since 190.40. You can search my posting history here to see that.

 

I've been happy with the recent ones directly from Nvidia. It was somewhere between 258.00 and 260.99. I don't remember exactly which, and I'm currently unable to check as my XPS M1730 is in a box somewhere.

 

Just had my machine die on me as well, similar to raad's story. Had it clocked up so that the fans were constantly running, I was playing WoW, which didn't run hot at all, it was actually very mellow for the system, and all of the sudden the graphics went haywire, hard crash, the machine boots to a black screen and won't post. I'm guessing the 8800gtx just died on me. It was a new part when I had the previous part, an 8700gt, replaced a little over a year ago.

Fortunately for me, I am under warranty. Unfortunately for me, it sounds like I got a long road ahead of me. This will only be the third videocard the machine has gone through. I'm wondering if I still have a chance of getting a system replacement if I'm firm with the representative on the phone, or if I still have to go through two or three more and motherboard replacements like some of the people on this forum. Does anyone know what my chances are?

Is it likely that I'll be getting a replacement M17x or will Dell valuate my machine and give it to me as credit for a replacement?

Based on the specs in my sig, what could I expect in a replacement machine and what seems to be the average wait time for the replacement?

 

You got Dell to replace the 8700 with an 8800? Wow, that's pretty impressive. So they'll send you another 8800? They usually use refurbished cards so...

I'm actually going to try the oven fix method on my dead 8800. First, I need to get an oven...

 

258.96? I've heard some 8700M GT users say they rolled back to that one when 260.99 caused crashes. But they complained that performance in StarCraft 2 was better in 260.99.

There were a lot of releases between 258 and 260.99, pages of them at laptopvideo2go.

Wondering if I should just stick with 190.40 then.

 

I had come into this machine through my job about a year ago. They were pretty sure the video card was dead on it, but I was able to use the desktop and the web and what not with it, I just couldn't do anything that required video processing basically. After doing some searching (and finding this site) I found out the machine was still under warranty and went through about a month and a half of dell hell to get it fixed up. I had a cooked 8800gtx SLi set in there initially. It was temporarily replaced with a single 8700gt while they searched for an SLi set for the replacement. After weeks of stalling, I finally was able to escalate it far enough along and they found a 9800gtx SLi set for me and replaced that. It was fine, I had some issues here and there, a lot of crashing (which I'm 99% sure was actually something related to the harddrive or things related to the harddrive, seemed like whenever I was downloading the system would lock up, the harddrive would disappear and a few minutes later it would be fine). I had a couple of heat issues with certain games but I stayed on top of it and always kept an eye on my temps.

Cut to about a year later and I'm playing WoW with about a 65c temp on the videocard. The graphics go wonky on me, the systems slowly starts crash (screen went black but I was still able to use ventrilo for about 30 seconds before the system crashed) and then when I rebooted, the screen was black and it's not posting. Gave it an hour to make chill out (I've had some issues in the past with the fans dying on me and kicking back on after about 20-30 minutes) but it's still dead as Dillinger.

Going to go to bat again in the morning to see if I can just move up to a replacement machine. I really don't feel like playing the hot potato game with parts for this thing anymore. There is clearly a problem with the models and their nvidia cards and while I do play on the machine, it's also my work machine and I don't have time to trade the thing back and forth with them for weeks at a time. I just don't know if they'll actually replace the machine for me considering how I've only gone through a couple of video cards while some people on this forum have basically gone through entire rebuilds three times over before they got a replacement.

 

Guys i advice you to try the quadro 259.60 with a modded inf,available at laptopvideo2go.
This set is amazing and works like a charm with latest games,mostly i got a performance gain in latest games like nfs:hp and mafia 2.
Maybe they will work good with 8700 as well, just be sure that you do a clean install by removing any drivers installed.
Theres no point to revert to old drivers, if you are forced to cause gpu failing with newer ones, try official dell or 197.45 under vista/xp.
For 7 users is the above what matters.

 

Do you mean 265.90?

 

One question guys.

I am still under warranty with my M1730, and I do not know if my screen works properly.
If i see something completely white on my screen, like a pdf, it is not completely regular. I mean, that watching it in front of the screen, it has less bright and the white is "less" white in some parts of the screen. You have to concentrate, but you can clearly see it. In my case, I do not see it completeley while under the middle of the screen on the 2 sides across 3 or 4 centrimetres.

With this program If I choose the "solid white test" I can see it:

PassMark MonitorTest - Test monitors and LCD flat panel screens

Is this normal? is this a problem? or this old LCDs can have this little white or bright problems?

 

yes man...

 

Eh....just after reading latest updates on GPU failures, my GPUs have failed as well. Got a BSOD, turned it off. System wouldn't POST at all. Being on the phone with Dell tech support for nearly 2 hours. Tech is coming on Wednesday to replace GPUs and an LCD screen (even though there is nothing wrong with an LCD screen imo). This is my second GPU fail in the past 3 months.

Tried pushing for a GPU upgrade, but was offered to buy 9800M GTs for 100 euro, or 9800M GTXs for 400 euro. My answer was "no" of couse. If this new GPU will fail as well, I will definitely be pushing for a GPU upgrade or a system replacement.

 

I had an heart attack this evening as well.

I was running my ES x9000 @ 3,6ghz with 1,3650v, never had any issues.
I fired up BC2 a bit to test newer drivers and after a while i got bsods all over the place, then i said to myself "this is it".

Anyhow after a few bsods i cranked up the voltage a bit, like v1,3850 or something, an bam, problem solved. I guess it wasnt really stable in that way, the game is alot demanding than it seems...

 

Hi all,

I am in the process of upgrading my beast's OS from XP to Win 7, and I was wondering if there was anything I should know before trying to install, as from what I can tell there are no official Win 7 drivers available for the M1730 on the Dell website but Vista drivers will work instead.

Are there any complications from doing this that would make me regret upgrading? I don't mind if I lose functionality for something I don't really use but if it would cause frequent system instability/GPUs to spontaneously melt that would be a problem, especially since I've been really happy with my temps since the new BIOS update.

I only have 3Gb of RAM so I would be upgrading to the 32-bit version of Win 7 if that matters.

Thanks

 

The only thing your should know is games run faster on XP.... I have duel boot Windows 7 and XP and BC2 , Kane and Lynch 2, Crysis all run faster on XP. Probably more to do with enforces DX9 but still...

Just use the 32bit drivers off the Dell site, windows 7 does a good job of filling in the gaps, in terms of finding drivers.

Windows 8 is almost here lol.....silly.....

 

Besides some drivers like hotkey and ricoh card reader you dont need anything else for windows 7.
For audio, 7 will install it by default, as for video drivers stick to official nvidia ones (260.99 as we speak, whql...if you like experimenting try the quadros ones on lapopvideo2go website).
Then youre done.

 

Does it really? Huh, one of the bigger reasons I was considering upgrading was performance and DX10 support.

And I didn't know 7 dealt with the drivers by itself. For some reason I thought I needed to download them myself.

 

Thanks KiwiUK!!!!! Thanks a ton!!!! If it weren't for your post, I would of sold my XPS for parts, but your posts helped me and my computer!!! Thanks!!!!

 

Guys anyone playing call of duty black ops on the beast?
It still the only game that doesnt run decently here,it struggles to get 60fps,microstuttering and gpu hitching.
If youre running it correctly please let me know the drivers youre using and settings,thanks.

 

Note about the 265.90 drivers... they cause strange flickering when playing movies fullscreen with overlay mode (like in Media Player Classic) at 120Hz refresh rate (on external monitor).

Problem goes away when switching to 60Hz. Problem didn't exist with old drivers. Just an FYI, hopefully this gets resolved.

 

It should, newest drivers should come around the 10th.

Anyway, anyone playing Black Ops?

 

Yes I play Black Ops, no hitching here in Win XP and smooth as butter. I did have to make my own SLI profile for it though, however the game didn´t like SLI at all so I am running it on a single 8800m GTX SLI forced in Nhancer.

Here how it runs:

YouTube - Black Ops 1920x1200 High Quality, XPS M1730, X9000 3.8GHz, 8800m GTX SLI@640/1600/950

Else you can try the Modern Warfare 2 profile in Nhancer.

 

So you're using single gpu as rendered method?
What driver are you using Mag?
Care to share the profile?
Also, what fps are you getting?
Dunno whats wrong with my 9800m GTX, it doesnt seem to be smooth, and its unbearable to have 35fps in sli.

 

One thing you can turn off is soft smoke edges that will greatly increase framerate and the smoke looks the same anyway.

Also be sure to set in the profile to use multigpu.

 

Here is the Nhancer profile.

I also included my config for Black Ops. Just copy this file into your Black Ops install folder and main/players folder replacing the one you have now.

I get anywhere from 45-60 fps.

 

What drivers are u running under xp? 197.45?

And thanks as always lol.

 

I use 197.15 under XP. These have been my favourite driver so far along with 197.25 for Vista 64.

By the way maybe we should start a new XPS M1730 thread where we can post benchmarks and SLI profiles and tweaks? I have a lot of SLI profiles for Nhancer that I think works really good.

 

...must....resist....to not.....switch....to....windows....xp....

i mean i cant downgrade, we're in 2010! Argh!

 

I did some experiments magnus!
Installed 197.25 x64 on windows 7 and ran blackops with your profile,but edited to use modern warfare 2 sli bits.
I get avg of 45 maxed out:

1200p
16xAA
16xAF
All enabled
Corpses on insane

No vsyched.Sometimes i reach 90fps,generally is stable around 45fps,in close spaces it can arrive to 70fps.

So thats my 9800m gtx sli properly working?
What are your thoughts?

 

Btw thumbs up for a separate thread with sli profiles and benchmarks.
I dont get why im scoring 15k in 3dmark when everyone goes above 16k.

Anyone with 3dmark06 benchmarks under win 7 x64?

 

Yes that sounds like SLI is working for you.

I get that 16k+ score in Win XP.

 

Just a heads up, the issues with the 260.99 driver and the 8700M GT, as described in this thread:

Driver failure, black screens, 8700M - NVIDIA Forums - Page 2

Remains with 265.90 drivers. This problem has, as of yet, not been fixed. The only workaround is to play Flash videos that are embedded.

 

Btw, at what voltage are you guys with the X9000 able to run at 3.4GHz?

 

1.2625v is the sweet spot for the X9000 @ 3.4GHz

 

Yikes, doesn't that get hot? I'm at 3.2 @ 1.2v right now, runs cool and stable. Around 60-62 C load.

 

Thanks for this - my machine with 8700GTs is suffering this 'flash player' dropout. I updated to 260.99 as soon as it was announced but since have had some other graphics issues (dark area on screen, only one half of the 8700 card showing in Nvidia and win7 control panels), so I thought my flash player problem was associated with the failing card. I guess I should drop back to a previous graphics driver: presumably the one shown on Dell's driver page....?

Anyway, thanks for the info!
Cheers, Andy