SXPS1340 bad performance.

hello all, i have had my studio xps 1340 since march, and i have loved it, it has seriously been the greatest laptop i have ever owned. however, i have been trying to run some games on it recently, and i have had some troubling results. i have the 2.66 ghz processor, 7200 rpm 320gb hdd, and the 9500m graphics card, and 4 gbs of ddr3 ram. i am currently running the 64 bit version of windows 7 (7100). i installed a few games on my laptop yesterday, including cod4, fallout 3, and prototype. i started out trying to play the games with the 179.82 driver from the dell website, i noticed that in all 3 games, i was receiving a higher frame rate when i had my computer on power save than when i was on high performance, i then loaded the 185.85 drivers from the nvidia website, with a hacked .inf file, and i noticed the same thing, but when i ran the windows experience on power save i got a 5.7 for graphics with aero, and a 4.4 for gaming graphics. on high performance i got a 5.9 for aero, and 4.8 for gaming. i then loaded the "dox's 185.85" and it is really weird. my windows experience for high performance stayed the same (5.9 for aero, and 4.8 for gaming) HOWEVER, (this is where it gets weird) my graphics for save power went up to 5.5 for gaming, but went down to 5.2 for aero! also, while i was on these drivers, i ran 3dmark06, and i scored 3634, which as far as i can tell, is pretty good for this notebook. however, please try telling that to my games, they just dont run very well. could someone please help me out a little? hopefully i am just doing something wrong, because i really dont want to have to send this back to dell. any help is MUCH appreciated!!! thank you SOOO much in advance!!!!

 

well, im no expert, but isnt the 9500m actually emulated by the joint performance of a 9200 and a 9400? so, this could be a problem with the sli, since in power save mode it only uses the 9200 and with performance it works in sli.... i cant tell you much, because i don't own a SXPS 13, but i think thats where the problem might be.

Best of luck!

 

also, that 3dmark score was while in high performance. thank you!

 

hmmm.... that sounds very logical, however, im not really the best at even understanding all of this, would that be a hardware or a software problem? it is a combination of a 9200 and a 9400, if that helps any

 

im sorry man, i hit bottom on my end, that because i dont have sli on my system. Could be a problem going from the drivers, to the game, to the BIOS, could be that one of your cards is defective or something, and is conflicting every time your system tries to activate it... ( which i doubt since you CAN activate it and use it )

OR! simply an option in the game to activate sli

 

haha, with my luck im probably not activating it in the game right doh! i have already checked that many times tho, to see if it is activated, and it is definitely showing up as activated in cod4, and fallout 3. but i actually have no idea how to activate it in protoype. however, call me dumb, but i dont think that having it not activated in the games is the problem, because of the strange windows experience index numbers. maybe my machine just doesnt like me, haha. maybe someone with a sxps1340 is/has experienced the same problem, and can chime in and help your input is greatly appreciated tho!

 

That in itself isn't a problem. It's just how it was designed.

I don't know about COD4 or Prototype, but I can confirm that Fallout 3 runs significantly faster under Hybrid-SLI ("performance") mode.

If you're getting sub-par performance, I would immediately suspect the drivers. But since you say you've tried several drivers, I'm not sure. You might want to download the drivers for the Alienware m17x (from Dell's website) and try installing those.

 

I think in power saver mode, SXPS 13 only uses 9400m not 9200m. Maybe you need to check whether that game support SLI or not. If the game does not support it, it will only run the 9200m in the high performance that's why your laptop runs slower. Maybe you need to buy devil may cry 4 to test it. It supports SLI and my laptop runs great with SLI on.

 

ok, i am downloading those now, i will post my results as soon as i get them.

im wondering, could i be doing something wrong when i install the drivers? Sc4Freak: which drivers are you currently using? what version of windows are you running? what are your windows experience index?

when i go about installing a new driver, this is what i do: first i go to add/remove programs, i click nvidia drivers, unisntall, select video drivers only, and let it do its thing, i then reboot computer and install the new drivers, and reboot again and see how they work. is that not the best way to do this?

thanks again guys, i appreciate the help!

 

haha, now i know what to do with thursday's paycheck i'll go to walmart tomorrow and get it. thanks again

 

ok, since my first post i have tried all of the drivers again, and no matter what i do i am getting higher windows experience index when i am on power save... i havent tried games since before my first post, but the wei is showing higher performance on save power. this is weird. or, does it show higher numbers on everyone's computer's?

 

I wouldn't depend so much on WEI, rather i would try running multiple games each time to see if there is a difference.

 

I am using m17x's 186 driver. In my power saver mode, aero is 5.2 and 3D is 5.3. With SLI on, aero is 5.9 and 3D is 5.1.

 

yeah, im trying all the games now

ok, im actually loading that driver now, i'll let you know how it goes. am i loading them correctly?

 

ok, i just installed the alienware driver, my wei rating in boost performance is aero:5.9, 3d:4.8. in power save is aero:5.2, 3d:5.5

i know i probably shouldnt base everything by these numbers, but i just feel like they have to mean something, i mean, shouldnt they match hanming's?

Hanming: are you running windows 7 or vista when you gave me these numbers? thanks you all again,
avalanche1208

 

I wouldn't trust the Windows Experience Index score to mean anything. I have seen it generate different numbers on two computers with the exact same hardware and drivers.

 

ok, i wont go by those numbers anymore, i was just wondering if those had anything to do with it. i just played some fallout 3 and it seems to run better now in boost performance (not enough that you can really tell, but better) however, whenever i start the game, it sets everythign to low if im in boost performance, or medium if im in power save. shouldnt it be the other way around? how do i enable sli in fallout 3? i remember i have already done it, i wanna just double check, thanks again guys, it's greatly appreciated!