Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge, Take 2

Just thought I'd let y'all know how things went. Dell replaced my GPUs, Heatsink, fan and motherboard. Check out these temperatures after playing the same browser game as yesterday - in which I hit 94 on my graphics card.

 

95?! Geah haw haw.... *Pulls collar* Is your X9000 OC'ed? I generally put my X9000 to 3.4GHz so that all 3 fans will be on full blast. What game were you playing? And for how long did you played? Thought maybe I'd like to give a shot and play that browser game like you did.

 

My X9000 isn't OCed at the minute. It's at 2.8GHz for now - however since I've got the temperatures down a good bit (38C atm ^_^) I might overclock at some point. I was playing RuneScape, a simple browser game. It'd been on for about 10 minutes when I took those screenshots.

 

Nice temps drop. Good to hear that you got a good replacement unit. After all the people saying on this forum how bad replacement parts are, I was beginning to think, that all of them are crap.

Thanks. I was using this, ifti's youtube video and two disassembly guides on this forum. Anyways, I need at least half a year break after the experience

 

My M1730 crashed about an hour after I got the replacement parts. Couldn't boot up properly. Called XPS support, they said it wasn't hardware, and tried to transfer me to Software Support, telling me I would be charged for it. They're a joke. Just wiped my computer...gotta set everything up again =-(

 

Sh!t that's bad. Dell would want to pull the finger out in relation to problems like this.

 

Well I didn't want to pay Dell to talk crap down the phone to someone who knows how to troubleshoot. I couldn't even boot into Safe Mode - I couldn't do anything unfortunately. I decided on a clean install. It worked fine, but RAID wasn't enabled. Reinstalling again =-P

 

Sorry to hear that That was a software problem though, right?

 

It seems to have been. However it was working fine last night before the replacements so I'm not sure how it went wrong. I'll keep you posted when I get it reinstalled.

 

Thanks NickQ, I guess Im off to NewEgg to buy a cooler. Id like to get this, ugly step child of a 1730, up to 10500 or so. Thanks so much for the input!

 

After a clean install I'm still having issues =-( Gonna post a new thread see if anyone can help me out =-)

 

Hi,

I have a dell m1730 with XP professional installed.

however,

it has some drivers missing and is not functioning properly.

ive installed all the drivers from the dell website and the dell drivers disc. no luck.

everyone i start my system up... windows finds a new 'unknown device' and trys to install but theres no drivers available on the system.

the usb ports, webcam and lcd are not currently working. I think it may have something to with a root hub or hub controller/bus controller/interface controller?

please advise me.

thanks

 

Post a screenshot of your Device Manager....

 

Well, now that I've been forced down to Vista *shudder* I managed to see the issue with the registry editing to fix the right click context menu. Find below the FIXED context menu.
For anyone who was affected by my previous fix, apologies. The 'undo' seemed to fix the issue though, so at least one of them worked!


Batboy Sorry for making a muck up of your fix in the first place =-D

If anyone could confirm this works for them on Vista, it would be appreciated.

 

To the person who was having problem with SLI - did you restart your comp immediately after enabling SLI and hitting 'apply' in the nvidia control panel?

 

@ Eambo
Sorry to hear about your problems. I'm starting to feel now, that all Dell relacement parts are messed up

As for Vista fix, I'll check it out first thing tommorow and get back to you.

 

Thanks for offering to test the fix, AND for your sympathy =-(

If you read my other post, I was worried about Vista being the fix. However, if you read it, Vista crashed on me too. This is definitely not an OS issue. I've got it down to either drivers or hardware - and drivers are a long shot. =-/

 

Hi guys. I've had my m1730 with 8800gtx cards for a while now.

Since yesterday whenever I started a game the screen would start flickering green. The game would run and display the graphics, but with this flickering green overlay. At first I thought it was the Spider3elite software that controls the monitor profile playing up, but after removing this it stayed.

My second thought was a corrupt driver. I uninstalled and reinstalled. I at first thought this had solved it as the game ran fine, but then I realised sli was turned off by default. Upon turning this back on I get the flickering again.

I don't OC excessively 600/900/1500 at the most. I run Everest LCD monitor and constantly monitor temps. It has never been over 87degC. It normally sits on mid to high 70's when runnign games.

There have been no system changes for quite sometime so I think a software conflict would be unlikely.

I'm thinking now it's a hardware issue. what are your thoughts? Do you think Dell would honour warranty?

 

Dawg - if you system is still under warranty call support without delay. Have them replace the GPU.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. It's in warranty till September. I'm contacting them via email now.

Just making sure it wasn't some software issue that has happened before that I have yet to stumble across.

 

Just a suggestion for anyone needing to contact Support - I find that calling them tends to produce the best results as well as the quickest response time. If any troubleshooting needs to be done (almost always) it can be handled right then @ time of call and a dispatch can be created.

Also, I'm not sure if this has changed - but XPS Support has always been a 24x7 operation (at least it was when I needed assistance last).

I use:

800.456.3355 or 800.822.8965

 

Thanks for the advice. I live in Australia and I think the support here is 9:00am till 5:00pm Mon - Fri. I will certainly call though.

 

Aus - Dell XPS Hardware Support:
1300-790-877

( http://support.ap.dell.com/support/...d/support/dellcare/en/byphone?c=au&l=en&s=gen)

 

Hi i got a problem if someone could help. I reformated my hard drive a few months ago and installed windows xp. I want to go back to windows vista but i dont have the vista cd. instead i see a partition called restore in My Computer. how do i go about restoring vista to its factory settings? Ive tried holding down f-11 while booting up the system and nothing. also ive tried holding cntrl+f8 and that just loads the dell media center and says that it cant load because bit defender is preventing it or something...i dunno. i just want to get vista back on here.

 

Yup, I hit apply after changing the SLI setting and it prompts for a restart and I always restart immediately.

On a new puzzling note I installed 3dMark 06 and ran it on the default settings both with and without SLI enabled. With SLI on I get 10311 3d Marks. With SLI disabled I get 9151 3d Marks. That seems like an awfully small gap for SLI enabled and disabled - approx 1200 point difference - seems like the gap between SLI and single GPU should be bigger. Can anyone confirm this is unusual? (I have the 9800m GT in SLI).

 

Give this a go
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4899720&postcount=6
F8 only no ctrl

 

What drivers are you using? And what is your full system specs? Are you on a T9300 processor? What kind of temps on both CPU and GPU do you get while you game and trying on 3dMark? High temperatures may cause 3DMark scores to drop drastically and also affects performance in games due to the fact that either component has been downclocked to reduce heat.

I get around 14,000 stock with my X9000 OC'ed.

 

That's average score for SLI enabled assuming you have non extreme CPU.

 

Make sure to extend your warranty. It's well worth it IMO.

What system replacement will we get in the future? AW? No clue on that one.

 

100% agree!!! the 1730 is a good performing machine but breaks often.

 

Just throwing it out there from previous pages, I currently own a Gskill 128gb falcon, and it DEFINITELY loads faster than the stock raid 0 2x320gb (5400rpm) drives in all areas, boot up, WoW load times (<- this one especially), etc. You get what you pay for (for now at least).

 

I've yet to hear any M1730 owners raiding SSDs in theirs.

 

Sorry for late reply. Was able to get to my pally just this evening. New fix works like a charm. Bot of the files work. I even double checked
Great job. Thanks a lot.

 

I'm on the 186.03 drivers from nVidia's website. I've got the T8300 2.4 GHz CPU and 2 GB RAM on Vista 32 bit with 9800m GT's in SLI. I'll check my CPU when gaming tonight but typically in Windows it runs around 35-40 degrees. It's my GPU's that have me concerned with the difference in temperatures between them in Riva and EVEREST. One GPU idles around 50 and gets into the low 70s when gaming. The other GPU idles around 68 and gets up to 94 when gaming. HWMonitor shows both GPUs as having the exact same temp - usually a couple degrees cooler than the hottest GPU's temp in Riva and EVEREST. I'm trying to figure out which readings to believe...

Also, is it normal to only notice an increase of 1200 3d Marks when going from single GPU to SLI? That seems kind of low to me. BTW - everything is stock right now, I haven't overclocked anything.

 

Yaay! Finally it works lol. Thanks for testing it :-D I tested it on my neighbours windows 7 yesterday - worked like a charm. So hopefully that should be it resolved

 

Whoa! The new ForceWare's are here! In the 190.xx series! Then new beta 190.15 is available right now. Check this out: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showforum=160

 

@hikkoo

I was thinking of going raid0 with two ssd's but I currently use the other 320gb as my "misc files" drive. If I limit myself to a total of 128gb I'd go nuts. =p The performance gain isn't even twice as fast just like SLI right?

 

@zergslayer69, RAID0 it's NOT like SLi, if you have two idendical drives in RAID0, you will have twice more performance than one drive.

 

Does the Intel Storage Matrix hardware and software not have an performance upper limit?

 

i seem to have done a bad mistake while uninstalling my Nvidia Display driver. while the screen was blacked out during the process, i accidentally hit power button in my M1730... it turned of as a result. after that , i reboot and found the display has been set to basic vista... i tried to install the new LV2GO 185.66 with new INF but unsuccessful as the installation stopped with a warning "...the Nvidia Setup Program Could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware..." what should i do now...?

Using Win Vista Ultimate 32 bit.

 

Try an official driver first. If that works you can THEN try the LV2G with the modded inf =-)

 

Hello guys!

Just a little question please: What's the dell's part number for 9800M GTX SLi please?
I know that XM888 is the part number for 8800MGTX but I don't know the part number for 9800MGTX SLi cards.

Do you have any idea please?
Thanks very much.

 

This is the item number I had on my quote from Dell:
320-8036 -1GB Nvidia Dual GeForce 9800M GT
I hope that helps!

 

Let us know your findings Time... I saw these 20 mins after mobile posted them (prior to his modded inf). I haven't installed them yet - I'll let you be the canary in the coal mine

 

Thanks RoastingInTexas.
I keep this ref in my .txt

Anyone knows part number for 9800m GTX SLi Cards for XPS-M1730?

 

1GNV98X - nVidia 9800M GTX, SLI

 

Perfect! Thanks very much BatBoy!

 

People seem to continue confusing these and don't reread this thread, so I'll update it:

8800m GTX = 9800m GT
9800m GTX = whole different animal

 

Its got 16 more stream processors and a slightly higher clock! That's hardly significant.

 

Yeah from what I've heard the 9800 isn't even worth caring about if you have an 8800 =-/