Just became a proud m1730 owner, but...

Hey


I am from Belgium and since yesterday a proud owner of a m1730
After weeks of surfing the net to get the best bang for buck I got myself a brand new m1730 with sli 9800m gt, 6gb ram, a 2,5Ghz duo, blu ray, etc... for just 1839€. Believe me this is very cheap for this laptop in Belgium.

I also game on my Imac (which I bought to do mostly Lightwave and 3d coat) from 2008 with a 8800gs (in reality a 8800m gt) and 3,06 ghz core2duo.

My Imac runs games just fine: crysis on 720p everything on high is very playable with even 4xaa on. Far cry 2 also 720p 4xaa everything high is very playable. I was very surprised by it's gaming capabilities. And figured that my new laptop with a stronger 9800m gt/8800m gtx in sli would blow my Imac (with it's one 8800m gt) away!

But this isn't the case: crysis warhead on standard res (lower than 720p) on high is a slideshow. Assasins creed in Directx 10 is unplayable on every setting (though it flies on max settings and max res in directx 9). So I am figuring I must be doing something wrong here! But what? can you guys help me a little? I can't imagine even one 9800m gt would perform so poorly.


Kind regards

 

i think this is the case mainly because a notebook gpu is always weaker to it's desktop counterpart. Like i think that a 9800 GS vid card in laptops is equivalent to a 9600 GT desktop card. That will be reason to your unexpected drop in performance. Also sometimes sli may make games perform worse cuz of poor optimization.

 

No no, the Imac uses mobile gpu's! It is a weaker 8800m gt. The 8800m gtx/9800m gt are stronger than one 8800m gt? And even if the 8800 gs really was the desktop 8800 gs, it would still be less powerfull than one 8800m gtx/9800m gt!
I ve seen benchmarks on the dual 9800m gt, and my laptop doesn't deliver. Crysis would reach around 40fps on high on a lower than 720p resolution. I reach slideshow fps on that resolution.

 

If you are running the Dell stock driver, update it. You'll probably see better results.

 

Have you enabled SLI? Have you tried to run 3D Mark06?

 

Didn't install dell stock drivers, I installed the newest nvidia drivers for notebooks n° 185 (or something).

I think I have sli enabled (nvidia control panel).

Didn't run 3d mark 06. Shall download it this evening.

 

I'm sorry, it's the USER.

Do some tweaks and it will blow away your apple.

 

What do you mean by USER?

 

You?

M1730 needs you to set up correctly, unlike the apple you have, it doesn't work 100% well out of the box.

 

I noticed, but what else can I do then download the latest nvidia drivers?
I did not install the dell drivers as the cd that came with my laptop was already installed...

 

First thing I sugguest is to do a fresh install, but just to see everything works fine, go from GPU drivers first.


http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista_185.81_beta.html

assuming you have 32 bit vista. After driver installation, reboot, goto nvidia control panel, and ENABLE SLI, reboot.

btw, I NEVER played any games w/ low 720p with my M1730.

Old school games like BF2/2142 runs smooth at 2560x1600 (my monitor is 30 inch dell).

 

I have 64bit. I already had the latest nvidia drivers installed, but I reinstalled them and rebooted... and now crysis warhead flies of the screen at enthousiast setting @720p.

I like playing at that resolution: I can hardly see the visual difference between this and 1900x1080, but I can see a significant performance boost @720p with 4aa.

On the gaming front it blows away my Imac, although the more cpu intensive lightwave is still better on my mac. I don't mind though, I didn't buy my m1730 to do lightwave, and I didn't buy my mac to do games on the go.

Thanks a lot

 

Crysis is the game that needs to be tweaked to run well I think - not the system, but in game options.

W/ the tweaks, I've read people pulling most settings high at native resolutions (19xx by 1200).

As far as GPU goes, I don't think there is much better GPU out there for a lappy, but CPU is somewhat of a bottleneck now days.

 

For now I am happy with 720p and all other settings set to max. Maybe I will later look into mod cofigs of crysis warhead.

Well don't care about the cpu, if I did I would have chosen the strongest possible. But in games I would hardly notice the speed gain of the extra 600€ invested.

Do you know anything about blu ray drive compatability issues with dvd games like GTA 4 and the original crysis? The br-drive of my 1730 doesn't seem to recognize these two scratch-free dvd games.

 

I had a BR reader before and had no problem, but that's like a year ago.

 

I tried far cry 2, gta 4, the original crysis, tomb raider underworld, gears of war to install... but the m1730 blu ray drive doesn't recognize the discs. It's like no disc has been put in the drive. So far my laptop only has been able to recognize and install the discs of crysis warhead and assasins creed. Something is not right.

In the meanwhile I noticed why I had so many performance issues: when the adaptor is disconnected the performance takes a huge hit. I didn't know.

 

LOL yeah. W/O power source, it won't function like it should. It's just power hungry is all.

As for BR drive not reading disks, I would contact Dell and get it replaced.

It's a friggin disk, it should recognize that.

 

Yea, unfortunately if the laptop was at 100% of performance on battery, it would probably only last 15min, so even if you have the High Performance setting on, its going to clock down some things to save battery life.

 

I ve contacted dell about the issue that some dvd's (crysis wh and assasin's creed) run, and some dvd's (farcry 2, tb underworld, gears of war, crysis, gta 4,...) don't run. Hope I have an answer soon, and I really hope I don't have to sent my laptop back and let the br drive replaced!

 

You shouldn't have to send in your laptop-it really depends on your warranty.

If you have @home service, they will send the part out to you.

If you have complete care, tech shouldn't even have to come out for it.

 

Called with a technician. My new br drive will be sent by courrier, and had to remove my old one.

Really hope this is a hardware problem as every other dvd/cd works except 80% of my scratch free game dvds (legal copies).