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

Yeah i second that, glad to have you back with us GL Mate with your beast, you need it !

HONDA soz i cant identify the bios from here.

 

I need mine too :'( little teary Cry :'(

 

okay, so I'm just off the phone... took ages, they made me do a lot of trivial stuff, they even made me disassemble the keyboard and take out the wifi card.... conclusion, it's the video card, a tech is comming to my house tomorrow to change it, so i guess they have stock of 9800M GT's, hope its a new one and not a refurbished one. (crosses fingers). I wont be home when he comes, my wife will deal with him which makes me kinda nervous since she is not very technical, not being there when he takes it apart, aiaiai ...

NB: if they try to stick a 8700 or 8800 in it I will explode of anger ...

@eleron : how's your repaired Beast holding out?

 

if your desktop is in your signature
Coolermaster CM690, E8400 @ 3.6ghz, 8GB DDR 1066, 2x1TB raid mirror, Ati 4850, 12494 3D06Marks your 3D06Mark score is 3000 points lower than my xps1730 X9000 OC to 4.0 ghz rock solid stable so I would not trade my xps against your desktop!

 

Eleron, dude, I just caught up on what happened, mate. Sorry to hear. It's rotten to find that this is even happening with the newer 9800m GTX cards. You know, the second revisions of these cards that're supposed to 'last longer'. A real shame. You want me to bully dell again?

Well, anyway, take it easy, and all the best. I am presently dealing with Alienware escalations. Can't say things are any better, but I'm keeping hope.

--

As for 3dMark06 comparisons. It's old and outdated software that is highly CPU-driven, even when it comes to pushing out numbers with dual GPUs. I'd say that an SLi capable system with a strong overclock would gain high numbers by default. Now introduce proper, current-gen games in terms of real-world performance and that's when we're talking business.

 

Every time I come here I feel like the luckiest Beast owner ever. I've had mine for 3.5 years with no problems whatsoever. Hope I'm not jinxing myself...

 

It is, but it's the FSB overclock that makes it so smooth, performance wise i get around the same score on my XPS, but still the desktop is way smoother .... Wish i had a x9000 cpu to play with. Theyre expensive tho....

 

so the tech came out today, swapped the videocards and all seemed fine. I decided to give it a good burn-in run with furmark and it crashed, now it boots but no display, apparantly i do have display on an external screen ..... calling at this moment... sigh ...

Edit : they say it's the screen, but they want to change the motherboard as well, byebye LG screen ... I hope i well get an equally good screen .... on the external monitor it says now, "displaydriver has crashed and recovered" ... I have a bad feeling about this .... I can almost cry ... the tech will come again tomorrow ...

 

OK - crysis 33 FPS all on High and native resolution - not bad for the ancient machine?

 

thats pretty cool !!!

I played crysis also on my M1730 , with textures on very high an then some high and medium settings, got around 30fps @ 1440*900

great game !!

 

Thanks, guys

Well, now all seems ok, no issues whatsoever. I insisted upon a motherboard replacement, I`m guessing the mobo was damaged, not the GPUs, but they replaced those also.

Now, as I recall, there are several 98M GTX versions. How do I find out which one I have, and which is the best?

 

Btw, what Ntune version are you guys using for OCing nowadays?

 

The one that is included into the latest NVidia system tools v6.06 works fine for me.

 

hi folks,
updating my case:

Today came the tech, and replaced my 8800m GTX by a (perhaps) new 9800m GTX, I will now some stress tests, and keep my fingers crossed.
Cheers

 

I have a bootable USB memory stick with Puppy Linux on it. I can boot other PCs with it, but when I stick it in my M1730 and press F12 at bootup, I don't get any USB device in the list of boot devices. I *do* have USB device enabled in my boot sequence in the BIOS (it's the first item in the list).

Does anybody know why I don't even get the USB option in my list of boot devices when I press F12?

 

in my case, the tech came, he replaced my mobo and screen and the laptop is still broken, even worse, he left the house and i noticed screws are missing from the laptop. i filed a claim at unresolved cases demanding a replacement, the computer is not even two years old and it already has a new mobo, new screen and 3 video cards, i've had it now

here's pics of the missing screws

 

That's terrible! You should send them the missing screw pictures.

Also, if you support ticket hasn't been closed yet, post your complaint there too to block them from closing the ticket.

 

I will send them the pictures, what worries me is that the guy also replaced the screen and the motherboard and i can't see what screws are missing on the inside of the notebook ...

edit: just went on my knees where he worked on it, found two screws on the floor, one fits the holes of the missing screws, the other is very tiny and must be from somwhere on the inside of the computer ..... I hate this ....

 

Yeah, I didn't know there were screws missing from my screen from a prior depot repair until a field tech told my wife. My last repair was another screen replacement by a repair depot, so it's probably missing screws again (which is probably why I'm seeing backlight bleed at the bottom).

 

Here is my Crysis benchmark DX10 High, 1920x1200. Average 38 fps.

!TimeDemo Run 3 Finished.
Play Time: 52.31s, Average FPS: 38.23
Min FPS: 21.98 at frame 1945, Max FPS: 48.08 at frame 101
Average Tri/Sec: -24498592, Tri/Frame: -640739
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -1.43
TimeDemo Play Ended, (4 Runs Performed)

 

awesome score!!

 

Yeah I tried different chipset drivers and benchmarked each one

 

So which one is the best at the moment?

Chipset + video driver, that is.

 

So the tech came again today. Swapped videocards and guess what......its not booting. He said he would not come back anymore and that dell will call me for another solution. Whatever that might be .......

 

CMON... Dell ... for three years I had a heater in my house now I have a jet plane? A11...

 

pfff, just off the phone with Dell, no decision today... maybe monday .... this will be an unpleasant weekend

 

@eleron.

Not sure I use 197.25 for Vista 64 where I ran the benchmark for Crysis that I posted. Chipset drivers where the 9.1.1.1027. For Win XP I run with the 197.15.

I tried the Quadro drivers in Vista, however the performance went down compared to 197.25 in Vista 64.

By the way I benched Resident Evil 5 again, now I landed on 65 fps average 1920x1200 all options maxed and HDR set to High in ini file.

 

Magnus, I can't find it.

I'm either stupid or retarded, but I can't find any chipset 9.1.1.1027 for the chipset PM965 shown in the Device manager

 

Have you downloaded the chipset driver? You can find it on laptopvideo2go.com

 

Yep, found it, finally.

 

Hey Everyone!

I'm a new member to this forum but have been checking it out recently. Have had my 1730 for over 3 years now and starting to find that it won't run some newer games. I'm still on 8700's and finding that they are pretty inferior to other GPU's and don't think that a $3,500 investment should only last me 3 years... Any tips on what to do to get my gear up to par? What I have is posted below...

- T7700, 2.4 GHz, Core 2 Duo
- Hard Drive, 120GB, 7.2K rpm
- 4GB RAM
- nVidia GeForce Dual 8700m GT SLI 1GB Total, PhysX processor
- 8X DVD±RW Drive
- Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit OS

Any tips would be appreciated. Nothing is OC'ed as I'm not sure how to do it and the BIOS setup doesn't have any OC options. I'd also like Dell to give me some sort of upgrade to my GPU since it runs pretty hot and the new BIOS makes my computer sounds like a tsunami is in my house.

 

@bigmac m1730 wellcome to the forum,
First I would say that even OCing your rig you wont be able to play some newer games with high settings, but you perhaps could find the OC + setting balance to play smooth.
There is a quality jump between 8700 and 8800 graphics card, wich is the same as 9800m GT and very closer to the 9800m GTX. you should think abaut upgrade anytime soon.
BTW you can use nVidia system tools for OC your graphics, or EVGA wich is based on rivatuner (i think remember, not sure). And you could try Throttlestop, to OC your CPU(note: I'm not pretty sure if throttlestop will be compatible with your CPU, it is supossed to unlock multipliers on intel xtreme processors, but take a look). You could find in this forum. These are the tools, you would find that using them is very easy so take a look.
Cheers.

 

I also have 8700M GT SLI in my XPS M1730 and have thought about upgrading. Unfortunately the going rate for 8800M SLI seems to be almost $500, and 9800M GTX SLI are going for almost double that.

Currently you can buy entire XPS M1730 laptops on eBay and sell their GPUs for almost the same price you'd pay for the whole laptop. Ridiculous!

I'm probably just going to use my M1730 for older games until it dies and then either get something newer for a similar price, or something cheaper but comparable to the M1730 itself. These days I only use it while sitting on the couch to watch TV with my wife anyways, as I have a gaming desktop that is only a year old (Core i7 860 @ 4.2GHz, HD5870, etc.) for newer games.

 

Thanks for the tips. I've actually been looking around at getting an Asus G73 or Sager 8170 possibly for a new laptop or considered upgrading to the 8800M SLI and trying to sell off my 8700M SLI. Would i even be able to find someone to buy the 8700M for $250 or better and would it be worth the upgrade or just hold off for a new laptop? I've not considered a desktop much. I used to have one prior to my m1730 for gaming but that may be an idea I suppose. I'm not as much of a hardcore gamer as I used to be, pretty casual now so not sure that I would like the immobility.

 

Getting an X9000 and 8800m GTX SLI will last your for quite a while. Even 9800m GTX would be better of course.

@Kingpinzero

I finally ordered a Gigabyte GTX 460 OC arriving next week Now the desktop is definitely fast

 

Yeah Mag, thats great!
BTW i went a bit afk from the forum because for 150€ my local dealer had a good gpu card for my desktop, he called me last week.

Turns out that the card was an Sapphire HD5870 Vapor-X Toxic OC 2GB GDDR5 and i took the opportunity to let my GTX260 rest

What to say...the card is GREAT. Im using my GTX260 as physx only for now. Scores in benchmark are insane:

With my oldie E8500 @ 4,27 i tried to benchmark Dirt 2.

Settings 1080p, DX11, Ultra, 8xMsaa, no Vsync.
Min FPS 60, AVG fps 74 <--- AWESOME.

Then i found a great deal, its a QX9660 for my 775 socket for 250. I wasnt happy to upgrade the whole pc (more than 500 euros), so for around 400 i got a new cpu and gpu (well the cpu needs to ship yet, its in Germany right now).

Im expecting to reset my mobo voltages to stock and let it rest while with throttlestop i oc the qx9660 thru windows. And i expect my fps to double naturally!

Got some scores for ya:

3dmark06: 21959pts
3dmark Vantage: P21056
3dmark11: P4108
Heaven Benchmark: 77,6 pts
Fluidmark: 901pts

 

The 9800m GTX really helps here.

I get 36.3 fps with Very High, 1200p, AA 2x but with shadows on medium.
If i crank shadows to high then i hit 26.

 

Nice scores Kingpin. I´ll see where I land when my GTX 460 arrives next week

 

Oh yeah looking forward to it Also ill bench again with the newer cpu to see what improvement i get ^^

 

Yeah I got 25.11 average Very High DX10 1920x1200 all options very high with my XPS

 

awesome! is that with very high with no AA?

 

Oh just for fun! Windows 7 x64 with latest 266.58 WHQL.

All very high (so no shadows tweaks) game is vanilla (no tweaks) updated to 1.2.1.

!TimeDemo Run 2 Finished.
Play Time: 80.73s, Average FPS: 26.77
Min FPS: 5.69 at frame 1118, Max FPS: 28.96 at frame 994
Average Tri/Sec: -8323100, Tri/Frame: -335950
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -2.73
TimeDemo Play Ended, (3 Runs Performed)

You know the hardware ;D Ill test 265.90q as soon since they were awesome!
But i guess that nvidia is quite killing the gap between older and newer drivers

 

Yes Very high and no AA

 

!TimeDemo Run 2 Finished.
Play Time: 80.82s, Average FPS: 27.65
Min FPS: 6.38 at frame 1118, Max FPS: 29.16 at frame 984
Average Tri/Sec: -8334385, Tri/Frame: -336791
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -2.72
TimeDemo Play Ended, (3 Runs Performed)

265.90q, windows 7 x64 These drivers rocks! Now the gtx shows his advantage! (just reinstalled these because i had to, the crysis bench was a plus )

 

Yeah I will see later on if I install Windows 7 on my XPS, for now I am running with Vista 64, though I use mostly XP since performance is best in XP

 

Are these XPS benches ?

Wouldn't mind trying it myself at some point...

 

Yep they are eleron, usually me and mag enjoy some discussions firing benchmarks toward each others hehehehe

Mag did you know that you can use very high in crysis even under xp? Theres no dx10 limitation just some edited cvars and youre set.
Ive hit 35 fps under xp with very high and 29,75 under 7 using 265,90q.

Eleron try those quadros 265,90 again,be sure to run the benches a few times because sli needs to warm up a bit.

Then its all glory! And join us with your benches

 

Yes I know, I made different configs for Crysis and my last one works best where I average over 40 fps average in XP

Here is gameplay using my latest config, though it was recorded with my older CPU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otVPq9RjYRc

 

Sure thing, I`m up for that tomorrow.

But my CPU doesn't stand a chance...

Can we have that config, pls?

 

Magnus, that's a very impressive run for KingPinZero! 27 average on very high!

Quick quesiton: was this with DX10 or DX9? Because I always found that the 8800s/512MB cards dragged Crysis under DX10. I could do the same run with DX9 but settings hacked to run 'Very High' via Benchmark Tool, and the difference would be quite obvious in favour of DX9. It was more evident in the first run where everything would be real slow, then the following runs would be a bit more stable, but still quite slow.

I realise KingPinZero's running 9800m GTXs so my theory should stand since my review from ages ago covered the same results. I scored much better under DX10 very high with the 9800m GTX, and it was by and large due to the larger cache of VRAM. Something allowed the extra texture-memory to handle streaming under DX10 better than the more limited by almost equally fast 8800s.