Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge, Take 2

Zergslayer69 or Eambo can you tell me what temperature your x9000 CPU gets to before the cpu fan comes on at slow speed and also what temp to get to full fan speed? Im without a temp diode on my x9000 so im having to try and guess at my temperatures. Thanks guys

 

@Mick
I'm not sure what is causing what to kick the fans on, but all I know is that for gpu it's roughly around 70-73C when the fans come on. I'll have to pay attention to the cpu to give you an answer supposing the gpu isn't getting the fans going already.

 

Yeah Mick, as I said before usually my CPU is drown out by my GPUs fans. However I might be able to give you a better description tomorrow when Dell replace my GPUs, and hopefully sort out my temps.

 

Very Exciting!

 

re: 186.03

Well, I ended up reverting back to 185.81 today. Noticed a slight temp increase using the 186.03. This wasn't so much a big deal in itself. The deal-breaker for me was the intermittent resolution changes when waking from sleep or restarting. A few times my resolution would change to 1280x1024. This in addition to the right-click delay and having to manually create a registry entry was it. So, back to 185.81 I go.

Also, for any who used my registry fix to resolve the delayed context menu - keep in mind that when you change your driver you will need to delete this entry prior to installing another forceware driver.

 

As others said, not sure about cpu, but the GPUs run hotter than the CPU on idle, and my fans always come on @ 75c for GPUs.

 

I would like to get a pen for this laptop, does anyone have any recommendations?
First, I'm pretty sure it has tablet capabilities (or whatever you call it)
Second, has anyone used a pen on this before, which models work, which ones work well.
Any recommendations?

 

Weird, I pressed the power and I see side LED lights come on, then off. I even tried removing the AC and battery and held down the power for 1 minute to release all static but it didn't work as expected.

And even when it starts up, when I hovered over an icon, it freezes there.

I ran Memtest86, it was clean.

Harddrive was clean and alright.

CPU was fine and was running cool in the 50s @ 3.4GHz and showed no problems. I even tried swapping with a T9300 but it did not help.

I ran diagnostics, and it claims all my hardware components are alright, but I do not believe this is true.

Therefore I am suspecting two things: GPU or mobo? I doubt it's the battery or AC.

My dual 8800s are really fine though, max temps while gaming Crysis for 2 hours are 67*C and 45*C on idle, running at stock speeds with powermizers disabled.

Argh, the problem is that it just refuses to start sometimes even when I restart, I see a blank black screen.

Can anyone give me a hand on this? What gives?!

 

The M1730 is not a tablet laptop. I advise against taking a light pen to the LCD - you will cause damage to it.

 

Hello boys and girls.
Long time long time.
I was planning to post here again because I was wondering or any of you have been playing Prototype on their beast.
What I noticed is that it runs very poor with SLI enabled using Alternate Frame Rendering 2.
But it flies with the nVidia Recommended SLI setting.
There are dips in the framerate here and there, but overal it runs very nicely at 1920x1200 and everything on maximum with VSynch and no FSAA.
How is Prototype performing on your configurations?
I hope to get some insight and perhaps some tips.
My nVidia driver is a little over a month old.
Is it worth the trouble to install the (near) latest released beta from nVidia?
I can only read in the changelog they supplied that a few minor issues have been resolved and that it installs a new PhysX driver update.

 

BatBoy - I had the slow context menu on 185.85 =-/ Although it could be because I'm Windows 7.

Dell called, won't get the replacements today. Rescheduled to Monday =-(

 

it looks like they really are phasing out the m1730's soon, or at least stripping down the options. now the only card options on any new order are the 8700's. they just removed the 8800gtx cards from the small business section. it won't matter to me much after i get my sli 9800 beast on saturday

 

Yea I wonder if driver maturing has improved the 8700m performance. In March of 2008 Dell upgraded mine to 8800m gtx due to weak performance of the 8700s.
It would be good to see some up to date performance numbers from the 8700s. At least a similar system is about 1500-1800 dollars cheaper than is was in 07.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I got my startup issues fix. I reopened the entire laptop, accessed the GPU cores and removed AS5 and apply MX 2 instead. Apparently some parts of AS5 somehow weirdly be smudged on the circuity, perhaps preventing current flow due to its silver content. I had to disable the GPU overclock on startup too and I got it fixed.

 

Anyone have problems with their 8800gtx cards going into SLI mode? I received this replacement in May, my other 8800 card went to sleep forever, installed and even put nvidia's drivers (186.03). SLI has worked great until today. When I enable SLI my system will crash everytime on boot. I have tried to roll back to previous nvidia drivers (185.85) with no luck solving the problem.

Code:

STACK_TEXT:  
82102f38 823cf9dd 00000124 00000000 93b893f0 nt!KeBugCheckEx+0x1e
82102f8c 820d1520 93b893f0 85cd2008 85cd2008 hal!HalBugCheckSystem+0xe1
82102fb8 823cf8f1 85cd2008 823e2fb4 82102ff4 nt!WheaReportHwError+0x1d0
82102fc8 823cffed 00000003 85cd2008 00000000 hal!HalpReportMachineCheck+0x31
82102ff4 823cb99f 80153000 00000000 00000000 hal!HalpMcaExceptionHandler+0x115
82102ff4 82055560 80153000 00000000 00000000 hal!HalpMcaExceptionHandlerWrapper+0x77
9319d2c0 8e4fcd4c 9fe70000 9319d2f0 8e7d0367 nt!READ_REGISTER_ULONG+0x4
WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be wrong.
9319d2cc 8e7d0367 8779f1c8 8a130750 00070000 nvlddmkm+0xfbd4c
9319d2f0 8e6e0a4e 8a130750 00070000 8a130750 nvlddmkm+0x3cf367
9319d334 8e6e0c85 8a130750 89fa6468 00000001 nvlddmkm+0x2dfa4e
9319d358 8e73a669 8a130750 89fa6468 876f14f8 nvlddmkm+0x2dfc85
9319d3fc 8e5c929f 8a130750 a104a000 c1d00011 nvlddmkm+0x339669
9319d42c 8e5c931b 8a130750 00000028 c1d00011 nvlddmkm+0x1c829f
9319d458 8e676d13 8a130750 89f9f000 c1d00011 nvlddmkm+0x1c831b
9319d47c 8e751915 8a130750 89fa7c40 8977d8e0 nvlddmkm+0x275d13
9319d4a8 8e530c61 8977d8e0 00000001 00000000 nvlddmkm+0x350915
9319d4e8 8e4f350a 00000000 ff1fe102 ff1fe210 nvlddmkm+0x12fc61
9319d538 8e48e0fd 9319d558 9319d7e4 8e48e0cd nvlddmkm+0xf250a
9319d54c 8e48f334 9319d558 c1d00011 ff1fe102 nvlddmkm+0x8d0fd
9319d568 8e41e9f3 ff1fe210 ff1fe102 a5068e70 nvlddmkm+0x8e334
9319d6ec 8e41f5be 87876000 9319d7e4 00000001 nvlddmkm+0x1d9f3
9319d728 8e8d8bbd 9319d778 9319d778 00000001 nvlddmkm+0x1e5be
9319d740 8e1482e6 87876000 8e8d8b83 00000000 nvlddmkm+0x4d7bbd
9319d75c 8e148583 9319d778 1d0a94e1 9319da6c dxgkrnl!DXGADAPTER::DdiCreateAllocation+0x38
9319d7b0 8e14795a 9319da6c 9319d910 9319d7e4 dxgkrnl!DXGDEVICE::CreateDriverAllocations+0x204
9319da4c 8e16c1c4 9319da6c 00000000 00000000 dxgkrnl!DXGDEVICE::CreateAllocation+0x5ee
9319daec 8e1598b0 00000000 8ed69100 ffa84af0 dxgkrnl!DXGDEVICE::CreateStandardAllocation+0x1f9
9319dc8c 9daa2409 4000ffc0 00000000 9319dd58 dxgkrnl!DxgkCddEnable+0x4e2
9319dccc 9daa3503 ffa84af0 9319dd18 9319dd58 cdd!CreateAndEnableDevice+0x16b
9319dd7c 821e5c42 ffa84af0 1765ab6d 00000000 cdd!PresentWorkerThread+0x45d
9319ddc0 8204eefe 9daa30a6 ffa84af0 00000000 nt!PspSystemThreadStartup+0x9d
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 nt!KiThreadStartup+0x16

 

Cool, can I has one?

Obviousely , you guys did not have a Clevo M57xRu before :> That`s a loud one,not this...

Looking forward to maxing out fan speed when gaming intensely.

 

See sig.

 

Does anybody know if the BSOD "uncorrectable hardware error" is related to undervolting? My system has been having this BSOD at various random times for a couple of days mainly when idle, My CPU will run orthos stabley for hours undervolted but seems like maybe another multiplier is not stable when idle or something.

 

I don't know the answer to your question, however I wanted to mention the fact that, although your X9000 is an earlier model than ours, Me and Zerg are running at much lower voltages than you are, quite solidly so far. I doubt there would be that much of a voltage difference between our model and yours.

 

Yes it does seem strange, Mine is set at 1.313v at 2.8ghz (default) by the bios and then 1.475v at 3.0ghz

 

Anyone ever have an issue where you used a driver cleaner to clean a system before updating to a new version and it not install afterwards.

 

NickQ, I'm new to this forum but have read for yrs.. I have same config as yours(8700's) and would like to know how you did your (drivers,and oc'ing of cpu&gpu's) if you dont mind. Thanks

 

Mine seemed to be defaulted at 1.2500 for everything, apart from 3.0GHz which was 1.3450 I believe. So even my defaults seem to have been lower than yours

 

Any of you picked up Prototype yet? I`d like to know what to expect...

 

Hmm interesting, my highest multiplier (15x) defaulted at about 1.4ish. If we all have the same chip, I can't imagine that one of us can have super low voltages while another needs to remain near stock values. Could it be possible that AS5 was done incorrectly? Or is it strictly the cpu's issue?

 

Thinking about it, reviews are sketchy. Looks like good fun though.

A quote from a steam user:

Everyone seems to say the 360pad is way to go with this game, that the keyboard options are poor.

 

I played it on my friend's computer for a few minutes. Game looks like a lot of fun. But I can't really judge after 5 minutes of playing.
Anyways, I'm downloading it from steam at the moment @200kb/sec. Should be downloaded in about 7 hours. Will post back then on impression and performance.
Meanwhile check out steam forums. There is a lot of info on it there.

@ zergslayer69
All chips are different. If someone can undervolt their chip by alot, doesn't mean that you will be able to do the same, even if you both have same CPUs. That is why Dell have such high default clocks. I know, that my CPU is a bit different from yours, but I was able to undervolt mine only as low as 1.4 volts @ 3.4. Not far from defaults, but enough to stop my CPU from throttling and drop temps by 4 degrees C. And AS5 or cooling in general can't have anything to do with how much you can undervolt.

Quote from undervolting guide:

 

No, Which cleaner? I use only CCleaner and never had an issue. Noticed last time I un-installed the driver is about 3GB now and I was given some selection boxes on un-install which never happened before.

 

Yea, what's the setup? that's a good score. How is game performance?

My original config was 8315 out of the box. "The Beast" has certainly evolved

 

Guys maybe you put this in another post, how is you rightmark setup compare to this?
If you are set to "performance on demand" like the pic then your processor is changing to demand and if one of the voltages are too high/low that would give you BSOD.
I am running at 3.2GHz 16x and my best voltage is 1.2626. I selected the auto adjust for intermediate states and so at idle I am at 1.2GHz 6X and 1.0v. When I move my mouse or open a browser then the state changes to demand and will go to any of those intermediate states up to 3.2GHz

On a side note: Prior to my upgrade to Vista 64 my default voltage for 3.4GHz was around 1.51-1.54 volts after upgrading from 32bit to 64bit it is now 1.4125 volts, any theories on that?

 

Expensive at €50. I'm going to wait for Armed Assault 2, which TBH is just a stop-gap till the proper OFP sequel - Dragon Rising (which hopefully should be AWESOME).

EDIT; Actually one of the initial reasons for getting the M1730 was so that I could play OPF's sequel with good detail!

 

Question : I`m going nuts here, any 1080p movie I`ve tried to play SKIPS and starts to get jerky, video falls behind audio.
Before I start smashing things, I`ll let you know I`ve used KmPlayer, MPlayer,mpclassic, Gom player and Vlc, paired with ffdshod and codec lite packs.
HELP! I`ve got a couple of movies in the .mkv format and I CAN'T SEE THEM....
GRrrrrr

 

The only thing that's worked for me in the past for 1080p files was Quicktime. No idea why this is but I do know it did work.

 

Quicktime "does not understand" the file lol.
Already smashed a glass, it`s simply UNACCEPTABLE for a high end computer as this to not be able to play a 1080p! What am I missing here?!

 

I can't be of much assistance, I'd just like to chip in that I've played 1080P .mkv with Video Lan (VLC) before. I believe I was using the K-Lite codec pack.

I recently tried the Stereoscopic 3D video available on Nvidia's site that was 1080P - it recommended a quad core processor. I decided I wanted to try it anyway - Surely 'the beast' could handle it! Nope. Stuttered and lagged throughout =-(

 

Ok, I`ve absolutely uninstalled every codec, reinstalled K lite and now running perfectly with Media Player Classic. No subs though...

 

For subs in mpc, go to view > options > (on side) playback > output > check these radio buttons: VMR9 (renderless), direct x9 for both real media video and quicktime. Subs should show after that.

Btw, how do you know if your cpu is throttling because your voltage is too low?

 

RMClock should show you the speed, and you can check with Task Manager ...

As for the subs, tried it...they don't show...

 

Try this: http://www.guru3d.com/article/accelerate-x264-1080p-movies-over-the-gpu-guide/

Works fine for me - using 185.81 currently and no issues with it. On the subject of CODEC PACKS - I personally stay away from them. Have not installed any of that K-lite or any other codec mega pack. Maybe this is causing the problem.


--------------

Oh and here's a laugh for everyone... I was just poking around the M17x drivers over @ Dell and noticed that they are shipping the thing with 179.85 - What the 'DELL' is wrong with Dell? Seriously - Why are they shipping this bad boy with such an OLD driver? So pathetic. I know, I know - just update it with the current driver line yourself. It just makes me laugh when I see Dell pulling this kind of garbage. Oh well.

 

Yeah, I saw that, too. I LOL'd

 

So, I've finally got to play Prototype for about 40 minutes. Game is great so far. I can't even put in words how good it is You just have to believe me on this one. As for performance, on all max, no AA Vsync off it runs very smooth with no hickups. Can't say fps-wise, cause fraps still doesn't run on my system. But the gameplay is very smooth, so I guess it is around 40 at least.
If someone is interested, I can post some screenshots.
P.S. NVidia System Tools v6.05 is out. Checked it out already, works flawlessly on M1730. Fan control still doesn't work tho.

Edit: Oh! Nearly forgot. Even tho game is quie playable with keyboard + mouse (not like Devil May Cry 3 ), gamepad brings experiences to the next level. My xbox 360 gamepad works perfectly with the game.

 

So definitely worth the €50?... Hhmm maybe I'll be convinced and give it ago.

But something that I wasn't too impressed by on the TV ad's was the graphics level. Are the graphics actually better in the game?

 

Graphics is a bit outdated tbh. But game looks better in person, than on a static screenshots. But when the action starts, you stop paying attention to the visuals 50 euros might be a bit too much. I paid $50 for it, which is a bit less.
You can pick it up from HMV or Play for less Even tho Play seems to be out of stock atm.

 

You are making me want download it now, must resist

Edit: Downloading now

 

Haha, guess you couldn't resist. But in any case from what I know, prototype splits into 2 groups 1) "this game doesn't run" and 2) this game kicks so much !

 

I sure hope it's Group 2 lol

 

I'll be definitive in group 3) Kick them back! ROFL:laugh:
I'm curious what the game will be like. It's just a mouse-click away to get it. It's hard to decide, will it be for my beast or the * cough!!* Xbox360 * cough!!* version...

 

Argh!
You people really should read back the forum a little better lol.
I was the first one to start about Prototype.
Not to mention I hardly post here anymore and then I finally write a big post about Prototype only to have it not read by people and someone else starting about Prototype and suddenly a whole discussion comes to existance about it.
No matter, it kinda happens.
But please read mine about it too: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=386258&page=37#367
One of the reasons is because it contains information on how it runs on mine and also asking some feedback from you guys concerning what nVidia driver for it?

 

hello:


I am wondering if anyone else is having the same problem I am dealing with.

I have a 2.4ghz, 8gb ram, 256 gb ssd, 9800sli ...with vista 64 bit.

When I play a mkv, avi, mpeg file with vlc 0.9.9, the playback is not smooth at all. It pauses throughout the video.
I am using all the latest drivers from dell, and have even tried nvidia's driver.

Plus, I am unable to get the temperatures of my hard drive. I have used both everest and HWMonitor....it lists everything but the hard drive.
Any ideas?
thanks

 

Sorry about that I have read your post...in fact I have read every single post in this and previous threat from about starting from 400th page or so
I first run it with 182.50....performance wasn't quite what I expected. Then I moved to 186.03 with which performance increased. Can't quite say by how much, cause, again, fraps doesn't work, but I could see it.

If your drives run in RAID, you won't be able to moitor their temps. I don't know why it is so, bit it is a fact.
As for your video problems, someone had that exact problem a few pages back in this threat. try to install k-lite codec pack. If you already have it, reinstall it.

@ Ripfire
Hope it'll work for you...I don't see why it won't and hope you'll enjoy it too.

@ ernstig01
From what I read on steam forums, Xbox 360 version of the game has A LOT of issues. Xbox 360 version was reviewed at IGN. Take a look.

P.S. While I'm on the subject, thanks a lot to BatBoy for the fix about the delay on the desktop. Can't rep you anymore, cause it seems that's all I do lately
I'm not too good with working with registery, but would be very cool if someone could post a .reg file that would fix the problem (uninstall one entery and create others) and another .reg file for undoing the changes