XPS M1730 and SLI problems

Hi All,

I received my M1730 a few days ago, it came with Ghost Recon AW2.

Since day one i've been trying to play GRAW2 with SLI enabled but for some reason it seems to run really slow....

I've tried to change it from Force Split-Frame rendering to Alt 1/2 Frame Rendering.. Alt 1/2 seems to be a bit faster but still very LOW FPS.

I've tried new drivers from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ but i still have the same problem..

I've called DELL XPS Support... They didn't even know Ghost Recon came with the laptop.. Heres the latest responce i received.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the senior guys.. I'll keep you posted.

Anyone else having theses problems?? Can someone with a m1730 please try ghost recon??

I really don't understand how DELL can release this laptop boasting DUAL SLI card's, but not have it work with Ghost Recon which actually comes with the laptop??

PS: I've also tried half life 2, same problem.

Thanks
Steve

 

I think there's a hardware issue with SLI.

See my post here for some simple tests that will hang your M1730.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2575412#post2575412

 

Appears so! :|

GRR

 

Another reply from dell

Issue is now confimed by DELL

 

I forgot my mate is a Senior Sales guy at DELL..

Hes contacting the Product Manager to find out whats going on.

I'll keep you posted.

 

Still not reply from DELL..

Just sent them another email asking for a return if they issue cannot be resolved (even if it goes over 14days).

Another issue: I dont even have an asset tag on my laptop, all i've got in my windows vista key.. It seems they forgot to put the sticker on the laptop..

What a joke.

 

I keep reading about these SLI problems. So far I have run the following.

Company of Heroes
Hellgate London
Two Worlds Demo
Timeshift Demo
Call of Duty 4 Demo

And this laptop is blistering fast. No issues. Running stuff on high at 1600 x whatever number that is. the only thing I have to turn of is the AA. This will really slow games down. As long as this is turned off, it really runs nicely.

However, I am using stock Dell drivers, and I am sure these drivers can be improved upon.

 

Thanks Stevez, keep us updated.!

 

Yeah i'm really intrested on how your laptop is setup.. I've been thinking about formatting to make sure everything is reset to defaults..

Your turning off AA within the games right??

Have you tried 3dmark06, when i run 3dmark it gets like 2-3FPS in the first test

What hardware specs did you get?? PhysX processor?? etc??

In graw2, were you able to select high quality textures?? it won't allow me to select high quality textures for some reason, i've read that you need to edit the configuration file, did you do this?

---
A bit later on today i'm gonna reinstall Vista 32bit..

I want to do exactly what you done.. So i'll install Vista and install the drivers cd..

Then i'll go online and install the driver from the web..

Then enable SLI in the nvidia control panel then install graw2..

Did you change any other settings??
--


PS: Sorry for the 99999 questions , thanks for your help Waterbourn!

 

I have not run 3Dmark yet, but I will try to do that and let you know the results.

As for hardware. I just have the 2999 base model. 2 GB RAM, 2.4 processor, Physics card, SLI 8700.

Besides reinstalling the DELL XPS 1730 video drivers found on their support site, I have not changed anything. All my Nvidia control panel options are the defualt except that I enabled SLI.

And yes.. the only thing that seems to really hurt performance for me is when AA is on.

 

ok, so in GRAW2 you were able to select High Texture quality without it complaining about preformance problems?

 

You are right. I just fired up Graw2 to make sure what i was telling you is true... Everything is high except Texture quality and AA is off. I had been playing at 1680x1050 and Texture quality is low. I tried to change it to high and it will not let me. I can't change it to medium either. The game is running great for me though. But I am now wondering why i can't change that setting. Sorry about saying I was running on high texture. I really thought I was.

 

No high textures means no xps m1730 i'm going to cancell my order in the morning

 

Hehehe, i thought so!!

You can edit the config file to force high texture, but it will start to run VERY slow.. Did you not notice the textures were very poor quality?

anyway..


Latest update from DELL

I'll let you know as soon as i get the file

 

I'm hosting the latest pre release driver, from DELL, at http://www.drifthost.com/SIBERIAR169103.EXE

My games FPS improved a tiny bit but it's still not as good as i thought it was going to be..

In GRAW2 using FRAPS with High quality textures and no AA with 1280x768
res i get about 20-30FPS MAX..

In half life2 esp1 i get about 60FPS MAX.. High quality settings 1280x768

Half life 2 esp2 i get about 30-40FPS max..High quality settings 1280x768


Seems a bit lame to me.. or is this what i should expect?

 

It's way too low for my tastes!

 

Stevez, the link to your much appreciated driver does not work.Also, wondering if you have seen much improvement when using XP ?

 

Sorry link is fixed

its

http://www.drifthost.com/SIBERIAR169103.EXE

I run linux servers.. case sens make sure the .EXE is uppercase.

Steve

 

Well, I seem to be having the same problem with GRAW2. Just received my xps today and can't select high textures in the config for GRAW2. I did try Quake Wars at full 1920 with all options on high and it flew, so I definitely think it's a driver issue with GRAW2. If anyone finds a solution, please post to this thread. Thanks.

Charles

 

I only have the GRAW2 demo,but under XP the performance is terrible,around low 20s at 1440x900,and it doesn't improve much at lower res....it looks bad too.

Other games I've tried have run really well......hope they release another driver to fix this stuff shortly....pretty ironic,as someone said that this is the game they bundled with it in some countries

 

I think most of the M1730's graphics performance problems are related to the Nvidia driver, possibly not enabling SLI properly?

Using the standard drivers and running the UT3 Beta Demo, performance at 1280 x 800 was barely above that of my Inspiron 9400 with a single 7800 GS. This made me wonder if SLI was working at all!

After installing the beta drivers (posted above) and re-enabling SLI (which is painful, but I eventually got it to work!) seemed to improve performance quite a lot. UT3 was quite good at 1280 x 800, although the frame rate did vary quite a lot - which is hopefully more to do with UT3 still being a beta version.

HL2E1 runs fantastic, right up to 1920 x 1200, although I did drop the res back a little and turned on some AA.

GRAW 2 was a little more tricky. Installing the 1.04 patch seemed to improve things significantly. Was even "playable" at 1920 x 1200, although was excellent at 1280 x 800. Still had a few strange pauses every now and then, and some times the frame rate dropped to like 10fps after loading a saved game, but only for 5-10 seconds.

http://patches.ubi.com/ghost_recon_..._recon_advanced_warfighter_2_1.00_to_1.04.exe

Hopefully we'll see some new official drivers from Dell real soon that improves things even further. Can't workout though how the testers at Dell didn't notice this prior to release!?

 

Yeah it's really a joke! I've ordered mine with the highest configuration, and I'll get the GRAWII with it. I hope DELL will go to their extreme to make sure this laptop will run as smooth as possible most of the time!

 

I agree, I think it's the sli driver. When I turn sli off my peformance actually goes up. It just feels like it's sucking memory out from somewhere, because my hard drive seems to be accessing the game more often when my sli is turned on.

 

i've got patch 1.04 but its got the same slow problems..

I got this reply from GRAW2 Froums..

Does anyone know if thats true?? i thought the ran was combined..

Why didnt dell include 512mb cards i wonder..

 

Well, isn't one of the issues is that we can't get medium textures? Mine defaults to low and I can't change it.

 

Yes thats one of the issues.. The reason why we can't select anything higher is because you need more then 256MB..

U can manually change the quality settings in the rednering xml file.. (Search google for it).

 

Yes, I was looking for the rendering.xml file, but it doesn't seem to be in my directory. Also, I overclocked my cpu to 3.4 and it dramatically iimproved my performance in GRAW2. Not sure how stable it will be in the long run, but I ran into no issues so far.

Do you know the exact directory of the rendering.xml in vista? Thanks.

 

Wow, I recommend overclocking the 1730 to at least 3.2. I am running it at 3.4 and my games are flying now. I just tried the crysis demo and it plays very smooth at 1400 res with everything on medium. It was pretty slow before I overclocked, but now it's perfectly playable. Unreal tournament can be set at 1900 res with everything on and it runs great.

 

Is it possible to overclock the CPU from inside Windows, or only from the BIOS?

Also, I get the Medium textures option in GRAW 2 with the 1.04 patch installed.

 

Interesting. I don't get medium textures even with 1.04 installed. Yes, I overclocked to 3.4 though the bios.

 

I'm new to overclocking...is it merely a bios setting or do i have 2 adjust memory timing etc incrimentally as well?

Is there a guide somewhere?

 

I don't think I'll be over clocking my investment, too much money spent to deliberately risk it.

Is there a warranty issue with over clocking?

 

The bios in the 1730 is really easy. It's under performance and there is a slide bar that lets you overclock.

I think I'm pretty satisfied with the 1730 now. I've manually overidden my low settings in GRAW2 to medium and with the overclocking, the game runs great now. That was really the only game that got me worried, but until they optimize the sli settings for these games, it looks like overclocking is an easy way around it for now.

 

OMFG! Just overclocked to 3.4GHz and UT3 runs so nice at 1920x1200! It is awesome! Only downside is ALL the fans run FLATOUT as soon as you make the change in the BIOS.

Also found out from some googling that Intel are about to release an Extreme Tuning Utility for "tuning" Core2 Extreme processor speeds from within Windows. Would be nice if Dell added an option for processor speed in QuickSet too.

As I understand it there are no warranty issues as Dell (Australia) promote the X7900 as being overclockable to 3.4GHz:

"Feed your need for speed with the first Extreme Edition CPU for notebooks. Overclock the M1730 up to 3.4 GHz with the Intel® CoreTM 2 Extreme Edition X7900."

http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/pro...snb_m1730?c=au&l=en&s=dhs&cs=audhs1&~lt=popup

(Look at the Design tab - sorry don't seem to be able to directly link it).

 

Thxs cpaek, i cannot wait to get my hands on my XPS...then overclocking, here i come

 

Hmm i've only got the T7700 cpu.. can't o/c that one :|

 

Same! I didn't want to spend $1200 just to upgrade the cpu.

 

Well, something is definitely weird. I just switched back the clock to 2.8 and now GRAW 2 is running fine. It just seems like there are some bugs in the latest video driver. Anyone else try switching back and testing GRAW?

 

I've tried about 10 different versions of the driver..

I wonder if it's because its not using the PhysX processor.. therefor throwing all the load onto the CPU..

 

I've read a couple of reviews which say that using the PhysX card actually reduces FPS.

 

Hmm
I heard back from DELL

they are sending someone out to replace my vid cards..

I know there is nothing wrong with them but oh well.. i'll let them do what they need to..

I Really just cant understand why they released the m1730 with GRAW2 when it can't handle it at high quality textures.

 

Use the new 167.26 drivers. They are absolutely amazing. GRAW2 now runs at 1920 on medium res. The performance increase is sick. Looks like our issues with sli are solved.

 

According to someone on laptopvideo2go these drivers still don't support SLI.........pretty sad state of affairs really if they don't and still outperform the dell drivers which are supposed to

 

My sli config is enabled. It's definitely working as far as I can see. I don't have any issues so far with any of my games since the update. Only way to tell is to try it and i definitely recommend it.

 

Ok thanks,will give them a whirl

 

I got my XPS 1730 with Vista and noticed that it didn't run that well with games (Stranglehold, Half Life 2 Episode 2, F.E.A.R, Quake 4, World Of Conflict and a few more) but I haven't tried GRAW AW2 yet so its hard to comment.

I downgraded and installed XP, as I am not a real Vista fan yet, and used the drivers from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15367

I haven't had any major issues since and have been able to run every game I have tried on full specs. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the OS but it seems to have worked for me. I am very happy with its performance.

 

It is likely a problem with both Vista and the drivers that support Vista for the graphics cards, hopefully they will be updating the drivers regularly

 

Tried these drivers, gave me Blue Screen of Death I had to roll back to the old drivers. BTW the problems are more than likely with the drivers' handling of SLi as everything I have played runs better with it disabled.

 

Have you guys tried the new 167.26 forceware driver for your 8700m GT?

 

Couldn't install those on the 1730 sva988. Had to stay with the Dell drivers.