The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Strange graphics problems..

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by xgm541, Aug 26, 2008.

  1. xgm541

    xgm541 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    44
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I just got my 1330m today. It came with the nvidia 8400 graphics card. I just installed steam and counter strike and i notice that my FPS is lower than on my OLD laptop. The older one i bought like 3 years ago, and it has a ati radeon 9700 pro. WHen i ran the stress test on both laptops on lowest settings, the dell came out to 19.2 fps while my old laptop which specs are:

    amd 3700+
    1 gig ram
    ati radeon 9700 pro

    this configuration got 45 FPS on lowest settings. Why would a laptop with a graphics card build in 2003 using AGP 8x be faster than a laptop using a more recent card using PCIe x16. Both cards have 128 MB of memory, my ati has 450 gpu clock and 216 memory clock while the nvidia has 400 gpu and 600 memory. I dont understand.

    On a side note, i am using the latest drivers from the dell site.

    Any help please? It would suck that i bought a worse laptop and paid more for it.
     
    xgm541, Aug 26, 2008
    #1
  2. Riverpeth

    Riverpeth Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    56
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    in the power plan setting, make sure you're running in high performance mode. its the icon for the battery in the taskbar
     
    Riverpeth, Aug 26, 2008
    #2
  3. xgm541

    xgm541 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    44
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    same thing. 19 fps every single time i test it. im on high performance.
     
    xgm541, Aug 26, 2008
    #3
  4. xgm541

    xgm541 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    44
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    in a program called GPUz my GPU core clock is 169 mhz, clock is 100 temperature is 69 and fan speed is 100%. I thought the clock setting defaults were higher... how do i change?
     
    xgm541, Aug 26, 2008
    #4
  5. BatBoy

    BatBoy Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    7,395
    Messages:
    7,964
    Likes Received:
    25
    Trophy Points:
    206
    Try a different driver. Sounds like that is the issue. Which driver are you running? The most recent Dell release for the 1330 per the 1330's driver page is 175.97 (released in July). The 1530's 175.97 was released on 8/18. Have you tried that one? Also you may want to try the laptopvideo2go drivers.

    Dell M1530 NVIDIA 8400M DRIVER RELEASE

    Also, make sure in your Steam in-game Video Options Vertical Sync is turned OFF.
     
    BatBoy, Aug 26, 2008
    #5
  6. xgm541

    xgm541 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    44
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    installing the 1530 drivers fixed the problem. Now i get over 100 fps on low and 89 on all high. Thanks.
     
    xgm541, Aug 26, 2008
    #6