Just got new M1730 replacement for m1710!

Hi my m1710 recently got screwed up where the graphics card was shot so dell decided to send me a new comp but they only had m1730's in stock (poor me eh). In my m1710 I had 100 gb harddrive, 2 gb of ram, a 7900 gtx with 512 mb. Now I have 250 gb hard drive, 4 gb of ram, and 8700M GT graphic cards.

Anyways I was just wondering how do I check how much memory my new graphic cards have? Also is there anything I should first do with my computer before installing a whole bunch of games. Like should I check for driver updates for the graphics card and stuff? If so, how do I check if I even need to update it? Thanks a lot.

 

256 meg video ram per card. only 256 total is still used.

 

big SOB huh?

 

dude u got riped on the g card 7950 is a 256 bit card the 8700 gt is a 156. call em' up and beg for 8800s / rant

 

Honestly I think he got a more than fair deal. Yes, the 7950GTX will trounce those cards at 1920x1200 but his PC is more upgradeable now. Heck, if he misses his old PC I will swap him for my XPS M1710.

 

well I think I had 7900 gtx not 7950 gtx if that makes a difference. So wait the first guy said that the 8700 gt is 256? so is it 256 or 156? also why doesnt it use both?

 

Each of your videocards has 256 megs of memory. In SLI operation only 256 megs is used for frame buffer, not the whole 512 as some people think. This is what will kill your high resolution gaming experience fun compared to the 7900/7950gtx 512 meg cards. The only difference between the 7900 and 7950 is the latter has a slightly higher clock speed making it ever so slightly faster at default (non overclocked) speeds. For lower resolution gaming your SLI setup will be faster than the 7900/7950 cards. For 1920x1200 gaming it is the opposite as the 7 series cards are able to utilize 512 megs of local video ram and are still quite powerful mobile solutions even in todays market. Games will of course vary some but as a rule this holds true. -Goodspeed

 

128 bit.
You were entitled to an equal or better system. And the 8700M GT is a weaker card even than the 7900 GTX.

THe 8800M GTX is the right card to have, but you`ll have to escalate the matter up in the ranks. Dont` get angry, and demand an equally powerful card at least
256 bit =256 bit , not 128 as the 8700M GT has.
Not to mention the memory size, 512MB vs the 256 MB the 8700M GT has.

 

wait I think i'm getting 256 bit and 256 mb mixed up...sorry whats 256 bit?

 

It is the "bandwith" of the video card to put it simply. 128 bit will of course NOT transfer as much data as a 256 bit pathway. Think of it as lanes on a freeway. The 128 bit cards have 4 lanes for cars to travel on and the 256 bit cards have 8 lanes for cars to travel on. Now which freeway will more cars be able to drive on at any given time? 256 bit has twice as much available road so therefore 2x as many cars can travel on it. Simple math.

WAIT!!! Do you have SLI?!?!?! If not I would raise holy HECK with dell. I was undert he impression you had SLI. Let us know.

 

Thanks for that explanation, it totally makes sense. I'm pretty sure I have SLI but theres no where that literally says graphics cards in SLI is there? if i got to device manager 2 of them pop up...

 

Then you should have SLI. Check the Nvidia control panel and see if there is an option to turn ON and or OFF sli. If so, you are good. If NOT then you do not have SLI. But I think once you check from what you say is in device manager you will be ok.

 

yeah I can turn SLI on and off

 

Hey so now that I have you guyses attention, what should be my first steps for this computer? update that graphics driver or something or is it good right out of the box and ready to play?

 

Ok nvm thats fair dual 8700s is better then 7950 gtx. if you got 1 I would be kikin dells right bout' NAW!!!!!!!!!!11

 

Load up some games and play bro. You should be good to go. Have fun and enjoy your new rig.

 

Little sister can't you find another way? no more lving life behind a shadow.

 

Oh okay. So should I still call and complain to dell? to get 8800's?

 

I don't think it will go anywhere and you might even shoot yourself in the foot as they may just send you a M1710 instead. So I would say NO. Be happy with what you have bro.

 

oh ok last question I think then. How do I actually check to see how much memory each video card has? This has been bugging me for a bit because isnt there a 8700 with 128 mb and one with 256 mb. I just want to see if dell screwed me over or something.

 

Dell uses the 256 megs of memory in their cards. That is what you have in SLI. The 8800s have 512. There are NO 128 meg cards in M1730s in SLI.

 

dude man thanks a lot. I wish it would let me rep you a lot more lol. thanks

 

Hey Guys,

I've previously had some rather annoying run-ins with Dell regarding my XPS M1710 - in the end it finally got fixed but not before i'd gone through a massive exercise of patience with them.

First off, here's a few issues that popped up with me:

Next Business Day support - doesn't exist - took 4 days for my parts to arrive and a technician to come and install it.

Replacement parts - most parts are refurbished parts - eg. not new parts, especially not expensive parts like the 7950GTX card (cost me $1800 when i bought it).

I also had two technicians come out - first one replaced the heatsinks, fans and motherboard and told me that i should definitely get the graphics card replaced as there was problems with it.

second technician change the graphics card and told me it was a refurbished part, not a new part (that's when i got on to that).

Still, the laptop didn't work - kept crashing, poor performance was common. So, it had to be sent in for a 3-4 day workshop to be thoroughly tested. 9 days later i got it back with a replaced motherboard.

And that's the short story here...

I decided to blog my overheating problem and have ended up with 5100+ views and 100+ comments...

http://msmvps.com/blogs/brianmadsen/archive/2008/09/16/dell-xps-m1710-gaming-laptop-overheating.aspx

to say the least i'm not impressed with Dell at all.

Now, that's the background story here (can read some of the full details on that blog post and others i've posted since - but that's the gist of things).

I was wondering, since i'm starting to get stability issues again, and after my rather disastrous encounter with Dell previously, should i bother to contact them now? that is, as it's starting to fail slowly (or rather, more and more frequent crashes though still no overheating problems) or should i wait till it's crashed and burned totally?

My left fan doesn't seem to spin up - and when it actually finally do spin up it doesn't stay running for long. I understand this is the cpu fan and not the graphics card fan though.

I've done the debugging/tests that comes inbuilt with the M1710 and it all says things are fine. But then again, that's what it said last time too, yet it still crashed hard.

Any ideas on what i can do in my situation. I'm still under warranty - Dell extended my warranty last time due to the issues i'd had with technical support and my laptop going awol on them. Actually, i got another 1+ year of warranty left. So should i just sit back and let it fry itself or should i contact them before it gets that bad to get it replaced?

 

keep bugging and setup a bbb complaint

just dont get laurel she can shaft you

 

Leafs and CSharpZealot,

Could you contact me via my profile please? I'd like to discuss the increasingly common M1710 heating problems!

Cheers