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

First GPU stays 'first' regardless which one you use for PhySx.

So if you choose the 1st GPU for PhysX it will stress it more, especially in games where SLI is not properly optimised.
If its set for the second GPU, the first one definitely uses all of the power for the actual game.

Since both of them are on the same board and all, it rarely happens for just one of them to fail. And when they do fail, they don`t slow performance, they literally kill it

 

I have a few problems with my XPS M1730. My Processor is only clocked at 599MHz on my Core 2 Duo from what CPU-Z is telling me. I updated to the Latest BIOS and its still at a very low clock speed. My battery refuses to charge and the BIOS doesn't recognize the wattage of the charger. And my computer was just delivered today directly from the Dell outlet. What could be wrong with it?

 

Is Intel Speedstep enabled in your bios settings?

 

yep sure is.

 

What you are describing is a very common problem on the M1730. Call Dell and they'll most likely use the shotgun approach and replace the AC adapter, motherboard, and maybe the battery. This problem may be the reason it was available for sale at the Outlet store, unfortunately. It may only need an AC adapter.

 

This is what i get when i plug in the Original AC Adapter. And in the BIOS Its undetermined. And it is the 230W PA-19 Adapter. My Battery won't charge but however when i run on battery the clock speed is normal. at 2.4GHz But when im on AC It jumps down to 599 to 700mhz

 

Must be an AC brick problem.
Time to give dell a call (assuming you're still under warranty) if not, time for some ebay shopping

 

Yep, your AC adapter is dying. They generally lasted me about 6 months. Had 3 replaced in less than 2 years under warranty.

 

I'm still under warranty. Being that I Purchased the computer on 3/12/11 from the outlet.

 

When you turn off your xps, do you keep your ac adapter plugged in to your electric socket?
Because this has a bad impact on its lifespan.

 

I always disconnect completely the AC, even from the socket. That helps and, besides, theres no point to keep it attached as it consumes power.

BTW on a side note i Confirm that Assassins Creed Brotherhood doesnt have a Sli Profile even in latest WHQL 267.59.
So just use AC2 profile and you're good to go.

 

Downloading it right now (legal copy ). How does it run on the m1730? Also, how do I force AC2 profile for this game?

EDIT:
Just to add my 2 cents to the previous conversation here abou the 9800GTX overclocking. My cards don't overclock that great. At 10% OC games run just fine, but I get a crash in windows about once every two days. So, I'm back to 5% OC. GPUs are stable now. Not all GPUs can be overclocked the same.

 

I dont know hows the performance because i will not play it on my xps, its pointless since i have a beast desktop pc, so ill end up play it there.

about the sli profile, well someone posted that the performance isnt good, so i took a look at the sli profiles available on newer betas 267.24, and guess what, the sli profile isnt there.

So based on other reports and a few assumption, the engine and the game is the same, just a bit refined, therefore the sli bits for AC2 works for it too.

Just load the profile in Nvidia Inspector and then add the exe of brotherhood and you're set

 

Great. Thanks a lot

 

Yes, Kingpin, very helpful - thanks. You're right; FSX isn't really a 'game' in the sense of modern games so a lot of the sophistication of my setup is lost on it as it really prefers very powerful CPUs and 'medium / high' level graphics cards, from what I can see. Maybe MS's new version 'Flight' will be written to take better advantage of the beast's setup. As of now, I have a FPS limiter set to 20 and FSX runs pretty smoothly at that. Not ideal, but as I improve the FPS limit, stutters and other graphics glitches (in the autogen scenery) occur. It's playable!

Cheers, Andy

 

I was preempted by my own laziness, amigo. I see the results -- good stuff. So I guess we were both on the same subject, but it took us two different pathways to come to a similar conclusion. Nicely done, dude.

 

Again, my laziness is phenomenal, what settings are you guys talking about for Crysis 2 ?

 

I had a strange occurence with my XPS, it lost on of the GPU´s and the bios couldn´t either see it. Dang I thought is one of my new 9800m GT already broken I thought. Well then I thought what if I reflash the bios to A10 instead from A11. I did so and now the bios sees the GPU´s as 1024MB instead of 512MB like it suddenly did with the A11 bios

Maybe a small tip if same thing happens for any other M1730 user.

 

. . . or your M1730 is haunted.

 

Yeah probably

 

Remember to give your gpus some water every now and then, or else they get cranky!

 

Though my keyboard illumination is getting bad I see. The light isn´t as strong as it was before.

 

Just get a replacement, i got one from uk for cheap as mine was french (lol) and backlit went dead all of sudden.

 

Well, you could solve that by using your warranty, right? Magnus could always have Dell send a technician to add a new keyboard unit and also contract Ghost Busters to find out if his machine's haunted.

 

Lol actually theres a program called ghostbuster which can scan unused/duplicated peripherals and components.
Its a good program, you know in the os life alot of things doesnt get completely removed..this helps a bit.

 

Nice. But. . . Magnus' machine is actually haunted by the ghost of an old Celtic folk musician. . . rite gaais?!

 

Ghost must be living inside the keyboard, which would explain the light glitch = ghost magnetic field

I use mine only when necessary, I also disabled the front leds cause i dont want them to die early

 

Well I have to extend my warranty, though not sure if I can do that now. My warranty expired 28th of february. Well if I can´t extend I will buy a new keyboard. However the whole illumination thing isn´t needed though so I can live without it. As long as the keyboard works fine at least.

Yeah it worked fine until yesterday when it suddenly died except a few buttons that is lit. Well overall the whole keyboard is lightly lit compared to strongly lit 2 days ago.

I unscrewed the keyboard and checked the cable for the illumination but that didn´t help.

But I agree there is probably come ghosts in there, first one GPU suddenly disappears in bios and windows Then after a reflash of the systembios it works but then the keyboard illumination is "broken". Yeah call Ghostbusters

 

Man, sure glad I extended my warranty for 2 more years. You never know what can happen...

 

Nope there is some odd behaviour for sure

 

Tell me, suppose you buy a laptop from dell (alienware anyone? )
If you keep extending your warranty, the day your laptop has a defective piece and dell cannot replace it, you would receive a new gen laptop right?
Can you keep doing that forever?
keeping your warranty and just getting a new gen pc each time it dies?

 

Hi, I need some help with my m1730 badly! It was working fine on friday, but then yesterday it just froze (no blue screen or anything and just whilst looking at emails), I thought nothing of it and just restarted the laptop. It wasn't til the evening when I noticed that there was no option for SLI anymore in nvidia control panel. I then checked device manager and there was only one 8800GTX under display adapters, the other had completely disappeared. I wondered at first if this was a software problem, so checked the bios and that now states that the display adapter now has 512MB rather than 1024MB also indicating that the second one has 'disappeared'. Am I missing something or has the second 8800 just suddenly died? It's weird because there was no blue screen and it doesnt show up in device manager at all (not even with a warning sign next to it). Thanks for any help.

 

Magnus has had a similar problem just a couple of days ago, it seems updating/downgrading the bios might fix the issue.
If that doesn't and you're still covered by dell warranty, give them a call without hesitation.

 

^what he said
Downgrade to A10 or upgrade to A11...you sure you didnt booted with the media button?
Have you tried to oc the cards? The temps are fine? Did you experienced some overheating/throttling?

On a side note guys, a new nfs:hp patch is out. It contains a car dlc and a few more optimizations to cpu.

 

Hi guys,

am having some problems with my soon 3 year old XPS, after boot sometimes the fans run at maximum (machine is not warm) / and sometimes it seems like the fans doesn't run at all (the "normal" running fansound can't be heard).

In both cases, the machine is extremely slow and say gaming is virtually impossible. This always happens after the machine has been off for a while, say the first startup of the day.

After some time the machine also gets hot behind, on the left side (DVI)
and a noticable on the keyboard itself.

I use a Zalman ZM-NC2000 laptop cooler for extra cooling btw.

Have anybody had similar problems with their 1730's?

Have heard Dell does not use the best cooling paste, maybe it needs to be replaced.

It seems to be no logic in when this occurs alltho more and more often when starting the xps up for the day.

Several reboots solves the problem for some reason, alltho the machine seems slower than before in general when gaming the same games I've been playing for a while (not too heavy games, Aion etc.)
Am playing with settings 1280 x 1024, anti-aliasing X0, mid-high settings etc.. before I could easily run the game in 1920 X 1200.

Just wanted to check with you guys before contacting Dell for service

Spechs - X9000 CPU, 2x 8800M GTX, 4MB RAM, Physx card

 

I bet your problem is with the AC adapter, because if its plugged in and Fans doesnt stay on full time (assuming your cpu is @ 3,4ghz in bios) then probably, under bios, the AC adapter is shown as "uknown device".

Its not the machine itself. Next time you have it plugged in but you dont notice the fans at full bore, go into bios and check if the adapter is correctly shown as "AC 230w".

Its a common issue, the fact that the machine "crawls" is because is auto throttled down when no compatible adapter is found, thus the fans will not stay up.

 

Thanks (& kingpinzero), I'm currently running the A11 BIOS and I can't find the A10 BIOS (its not on dell's website ) but I havent had any temperature issues and also I have no warranty!

EDIT: Ignore me, found it using google haha! Will let you know if it works

EDIT 2: Firstly I downgraded to A10, nothing happened, then I reupgraded to A11 and.. IT'S FIXED!!!!! THANKS SO MUCH GUYS!

EDIT 3: ahaha spoke too soon, ran the windows 7 assessment straight after, laptop just locked up, I rebooted and now I'm back to where I was!

 

As far as I know, you can only extend your warranty for a maximum of 5 years from the purchase date.

 

Have you checked the AC adapter kingpin spoke about?
Is your warranty still valid?

 

Just checked that now and mine does state 230W. Also I'm having this other weird issue when I fist turn on the machine, the screen goes black, you can hear the fans but the screen doesnt come on and neither do any of the LED's. You then have to cut the power and if you press the power button in firmly and then it will boot correctly although the dell post screen stays on for ages each time you do this, its like the machine has been reset or something.

 

Sorry about the ac adapter thing it was meant for another user
This might be a wild guess, but try removing one of your ram sticks or switch position and see if that changes anything

 

ahh right lol! I will give that a try, but I really think the gpu has just died it's weird though cos when one of my mate's m1730's 8800's died, it still showed up in device manager but with a warning sign next to it and he got a load of blue screens

 

If your mate agrees, you could try installing your cards on his laptop and see if they behave the same.
Otherwise it does look like a gpu failure, they do manifest in different ways.
You could also try completely uninstalling your nvidia drivers and doing a clean install, and also try the bios trick once more

 

That would have been a great idea, although sadly he no longer has his m1730! I've already tried a clean install too, I guess like you say try the bios trick one last time, but it seems like new gpu time! I've checked ebay (UK) and typically there arent any for sale right now! Is the 9800M GT sli exactly the same card as the 8800M GTX, or is it likely to be any more reliable? I'd love to upgrade to the 9800M GTX but that seems to be a bit out of budget!

 

9800 gt is slightly better than the 8800, with some overclocking, you can get some awesome results

 

Right, thanks, I will keep an eye out for one of them then.
I just downgraded it to A10 again and the second 8800M GTX appeared again, I ran windows asessment and it made it through (got 7.1 for graphics, that sound about right?). I'll leave it at A10 for a while and see how things go.

 

I get 7.1 with 9800m gtx too so yep it all looks good.
Keep your fingers crossed

I have a 8800m gtx stored for an "in-case" scenario, should I sell it or keep it just in case?

 

ahaha great, well thanks a lot for all your help, hopefully it will continue to work, I'll try some games on it and see

also, is there any fan control software available for the m1730? I run i8kfangui on my m1710, but it wont work properly on the m1730, my 8800's are idling at 72 degrees!! And they arent clogged with dust

 

Well everything works great on my M1730, New AC Adapter, Screen Bezel and back cover. Hinges are super stiff now. I'm lovin it! =D

 

Have you got an X9000? If so enable 3,4ghz overclocking in bios to get full fan on.
If not, then 72c in idle is waaaaaaaay too high. Probably your thermal compound has worn out.
A friendly advice: avoid using it until you repaste the gpu. Im advicing this because probably the temperature will raise in the next weeks or days.
The most important thing is the sli bridge, located in the middle of the gpu. It tends to get hotter alot even on good cards, so it will be mostly the first to die.
Repaste them ASAP.
Keep in mind that 72c is the temperature we get when our xps are under stress (benchmarking or gaming). So having such temperatures at idle (when the gpu is basically doing nothing, and its downclocking) its really a BAD thing. To make an example, mines idle at 40c with full fan on, with normal behaviour they idle around 50.

Or,worst case scenario, you may have the same problem our Eleron faced a bit ago. Cards were topping high temperatures from nowhere, probably the temp sensor on the cards died. In that case a repaste will not help, only a replacement will do.

I seriously hope its the thermal compound, because its normal to expect that it worns out after years of usage, specially Dell one.
Its a known fact that Dell thermal compound sucks, it evaporates in the time and doesnt dissipate at all.