XPS M1730 - using ORIGINAL nVidia DRIVERS!!

I decided to create a thread on the Dell forum and someone has come back with this.....

http://img114.imageshack.us/my.php?image=16925wd0.jpg


Would this really work?? I mean, you are fooling Windows into thinking you have a less capable card then you really have - could you still really get good performance out of them???
They seem to be working fo rthe guy above - I'm waiting to hear what he comes back with after trying 3Dmark06 etc.....

What are your thoughts......?

 

It will work, but when you have LV2G, why switch to something else?

 

Because using the LV2G drivers increases performance, but stops the BluRay drive from running Movies. While the Dell drivers enable everything to work, but lack the performance for games.
Seems like the above tweak could be the way to go for now, to get everything working as well as high performance....

 

Also remember you do not have to pick the 8600 series when installing the drivers, you can go for the 8800GTX drivers if you wish. It should still work.

Also, if you are running Vista, this may also help with game performance.....

http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

 

Why don't Nvidia drivers support Nvidia products? That's the simplest most infuriating question of all here. It doesn't matter who you bought the hardware from, Nvidia is Nvidia.

You should not expect to have to hack/trick your graphics card into working properly with the latest firmware.

Read the thread title again and ask yourself, 'Is this 'revelation' not absurd?!'

 

You are very right. It is really stupid. At the end of the day, whether it comes from Dell, Asus, Alienware, or wherever else, its still an nVidia chipset, and they hsoul dtherefore support it directly.

Im just chuffed that at least we have some kind of solution until Dell, or nVidia, decides to pull their finger out!

 

Can someone explain how to install these drivers ? Im aperently not smart enough to figure this out ><. Your useing the offical 169.25 off Nvidas website right? I Basically uninstalled the current drivers atm, went to device manger, clicked on the single 8700gt thats available.. and then what? I can rclick and choose update drivers, browse for the them and install, but it doesent do anything and says my drivers are up to date, I dont see anywhere to choose a 8600 gts or 8800gtx or whatever, can anyone explain?

 

Download the 169.25 drivers from nVidia
Go into device manager
Expand display adaptors - you should have 2 devices in there, 1 for each GPU.
Right click on the first adaptor and go to 'Update Driver'
Go through the wizard, choosing the following options....

Install from a specific location.
Dont search, I will choose the driver to install.

On the next screen click the 'Have Disk' button.
Browse to the .inf file of the driver you downloaded.
Select OK.
The list of adaptors supported should now be listed in the previous window.
Select 8800GTX, and click Next.
Complete the wizard as normal.


Do the same for the second adaptor.

Restart the laptop.
Enable SLI.
Restart laptop again.

Done!

Let me know how you get on.

 

Thanks for the instructions, I'm sure they will come handy. I noticed in your sig your running .51 drivers, is that accurate or are you using different drivers now? Which driver for the 8700's would you recommend for gaming and watching plain jane dvd's?

 

I'm going to give this a try soon, as I've been having some stability issues.

As to the "this is an nvidia chipset, why don't nvidia support..?" argument. This isn't an nvidia chipset. The M1730 chipset is an Intel one. The only reason we can get SLI is because the implementation of SLI is much the same as how nvidia built the 7950 desktop card.

Usually, you need an nvidia chipset on the motherboard to support SLI. On the 7950 (and the M1730 with dual 8700's or 8800's), the SLI part actually occurrs before the connection to the PCI-E bus because the two GPU's interface on the same card.

The drivers obviously have to be clever enough to notice this. It's also for this same reason that (at least a few months ago) people with M1730's were unable to join nvidia's official SLI club. The SLI checker application wasn't clever enough to realise that SLI was happening on one card.

C'est la vie

 

^^^
that actually makes good sense.

 

I have installed the 169.21 drivers for Windows XP 32 bit on my XPS M1730 (with 8700M GT's). When I enable SLI in the control panel, it says that some applications need to be closed to enable SLI. When I click yes to confirm, the screen goes black and I have to power down the laptop. Does anyone else get this?