XPS M1730 and SLI problems

I managed to install them, try following the instructions here if you really want them http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11997
There are bugs

 

What kinda bugs, wogstaa?
And any positive changes performancewise?

 

When I close the lid and leave it for about ten minutes the screen won't turn back on. I have disabled standby when closing lid so it is not in standby when this happens. Otherwise theyre good, overclocking works I haven't turned on SLi yet but using one card was running COD4 well at at about 30fps. I was going to download 3dmark06 today but I went over my download limit until next month, so I wont be doing too much overclocking

 

The webcam doesnt seem to work with the drivers either. The screen keeps flashing black and the driver crashes and recovers which is reported by windows. As soon as I turn off the webcam it works fine

 

has anyone tried running games in XP, and if so what drivers worked well?

 

167.26 in XP runs GRAW2 demo a LOT better than the standard dell driver,makes my 3d05 score go down 4k marks,fixed issues with Far Cry artifacting and a couple of other probs,farcry seems to run a little slower with 167.26 compared to the dell driver but doesn't have the issues.

Used the dell driver for bioshock and stalker,and seemed to perform ok except it would bluescreen occasionally in bioshock.

Thats all I have tried soo far sorry.

 

Does your webcam work with the 167.26 drivers?

 

Um,I hadn't even tried the webcam before now,I did notice originally that it had a camera icon on the taskbar but now doesn't and I can only access the camera control panel through start/all progs/dell/webcam,but I don't have any way of taking a picture or recording....so I guess the short answer is no.

 

DELL have gotten back to me with a BIOS update for the two cards..

I'm going to give it a go soon, i'll post it when i receive the files.

 

PLZ do. And what the hell? They have bios updates? Why arent they distributing them properly, why do we need o call them to get these fixes? thats rediculous.

Anyways, PLEASE do let us know if you get ur SLI working with these bios updates....cause my SLI is NOT working no matter what I do in vista. (YES, i enabled it in control panel, thats not the problem...)

 

Settle down...

I've esclated this issue up the chain, it's now with some Dev guys in the US.. they are sending me things to try.

Its not offical yet and i don't know if it ever will be.

 

BTW..

bios update didnt work.. it was for G94 chipset (or what ever it is i cant rem).

I just got GPU mismatch errors.. waiting to hear back from DELL now.

 

3,000 dollars are ate waste right now until they fix this. I am very not pleased at the moment =\

 

can anyone tell me where these bios updates are? or how to install the vista hotfixes...?

 

G94 Chipset, are you certain? If I'm not mistaken, the current iteration of cards are of G92 descent (8700M series is G92).

If you were given a Video BIOS flash for G94, it's basically all but officially confirmed that the XPS M1730 is getting the M8800 very, very soon.

Any chance you can post further details?

 

Sorry my bad..


Its G92.. but i still get a GPU mismatch.. waiting for DELL to call me back.

 

jeez mate.. just wait..

If your not happy with the laptop then return it..

I've already told DELL i'm not happy and that im going to return it if we can't get it resolved.

 

I am new to the forum - sorry if I should have posted this elsewhere !!

I have recently purchased an XPS M1730, I am having many problems with the system. If the machine is on batteries and I run the Ageia demos from the control panel - the system crashes, I have installed the latest Nvidia drivers (Dell ones though) and made sure that the Ageia drivers are up to date (they are). apart from that the only other thing I have changed is to install Mcaffee Enterprise as I already have it, everything else is as it came.

Called Dell but they have not yet come back to me yet (waited one hour even though the chap said he would call me back in 5 mins)

I have a 2.4 Ghz system with 2GB RAM (Vista 32bit)

Do any of you chaps have the same problem - the demos run perfectly when the machine is powered on.

Not had chance to do much else with the machine yet and I would like to get this sorted or the machine may even get sent back

 

i dont think these machines handle games or 3d applications on batteries

 

Called Dell - they were vey helpful, because of the time that I called (UK) I got through to Canada. The chap said that the machine looked to be faulty and I should call on Monday morning for a replacment machine to be ordered.

Is there any information about these machines not running games and stuff on batteries as my last XPS M170 worked fine ?

It's kinda not good for a gaming notebook not to work from batteries for the purpose it is built/bought for ?

I will see what they say on Monday

 

There is no way the laptop will run in SLI tried everything - drivers, inf file tweaks etc.. And I have not heard about anybody with SLI running.


Really there is 2 solutions to the problem:

1) Update bios, Nvidia drivers, Intel chipset ……. and these will properly need to be DELLs – the funky think is, that people says, that SLI works like a charm with the Nvidia Chipset .. hmmm!
2) Replacement of the 8700M GT to 8800M GT card (recommended

Here is what I think will happen:

1) A driver update for the 8700M GT will be available in the future - this could be tomorrow or in 6 months or never (everybody has problems with 8700M GT in SLI – Toshiba etc.).
2) DELL will replace the 8700M GT with 8800M GT within 2-3 weeks from now, no charge and onsite.

Unstable in Vista
The freezes in Vista is due to old drivers and the 8700M GT I think. Try to run in “SLI” and then run Solitaire this will crash the preinstalled Vista. The machine runs stable if “SLI” is disabled.

I have formatted the machine – and installed a clean version of Vista – runs more stable now.

You will only be able to install a clean Vista with the bios in ATA RAID mode - if you want to go with the ACHI and turbo flash cache module – you will need to extract the SATA drivers from the DELL support site onto a USB stick (insert the USB stick at the load driver page – not before) and load them during the Vista installation (the AHCI drivers are NOT on the DELL Vista or Original Vista disc).

DELL already has clients returning the M1730 due to disappointment with the performance. Another month or two with this bad PR will damage them. GAMERS are an unforgiving species – most of them have technical jobs with a saying on company hardware – potentially dangerous for DELL . This product is not cheap so the owners either have a lot of money or are fanatics ….. both = power … in so many ways.

Another danger DELL faces is the press – they would love to make the “Beast” look like a “Bunny”.

So don’t worry guys – DELL are not stupid the last segment of their customers they want to f*** with are us. But do you self a favor keep emailing and calling DELL – and demand a replacement to the 8800M GT card.

3Dmarks06 score @ 7800 - is okay but not a beast. I believe the 8800M GT will bring the score above 10000.

 

Yes there are problems, but I am sure dell won't be giving us all 8800m cards for free, but I would really, really like to be proved wrong.

 

Compared to my 3yr old desktop this is a beast (I only got 3,000 on 3dmark06 with my old desktop). This laptop is giving me a 8,150 score and I'm not OCing anything plus my processor is only the 2.2ghz which detracts from the score greatly, people with the extreme processor should be getting well over 9,000 based on this.

 

Fair enough - but that do not change the fact that SLI is not working - only 256MB .... even in craw2. Do you get better FPS when SLI is enabled? In ANY game?

I think it is more than fair that DELL changes the 8700M GT to 8800M GT - none of the xps m1730 owners has had the beast experience as DELL promised.

"The ultimate gaming experience" .... that is not medium quality in ex. graw2...

PS: Sorry for my bad English .... I am Scandinavian - everything is what it is

PPS: And in Scandinavia we do not promise our friends - a romantic night out with THE HOTTEST babe .... and then show up with Ma Dalton and a discount coupon for Burger King.

PPPS: I just called the DELL xps support - they say they have not heard about the SLI problem ..... start calling guys!

 

Well,I've just spent the last day or so playing games with SLI disabled and I havent had to drop resolution in bioshock,far cry,stalker....so as far as I'm concerned,sli doesn't work in anything real apart from 3dmark benchmarks.

I have requested permission to return to dell,the customer service contact has requested that I allow their tech dept to assist with trying to resolve any problems,but I am not interested anymore....the only thing that could sway me to keep it now is,for dell to say we will upgrade your graphics for free in a month or so to a single,non-sli 88-89 series card.

SLI......nice in theory,in practise,its a joke.

BTW,I have tried every driver,inf,tweak in the book....it just doesn't work.

 

What drivers are you using, because thats a better score than most of the other guys with the 2.4ghz cpu.
What resolution is 3dmark running at

 

I left 3dmark06 on the default settings, 1280x1024, no FSAA, Filtering Optimal. And 3dmark06 doesn't mention SLI in the system specs, it looks like it only see's one card (see below).

Description NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
Manufacturer @oem60.inf,%nvidia%;NVIDIA
Total Local Video Memory 250 MB
Total Local Texture Memory 250 MB
AGP Aperture Size 1.35 GB
Driver File nvd3dum.dll
Driver Version 7.15.11.6904
Driver Date 10-28-2007
Driver WHQL Certified true
Max Texture Width 8192 px
Max Texture Height 8192 px

 

I'm getting around 7700 with SLi on, 3dmark doesn't see my two cards either but when I tested it with SLi off, the frmerates were significantly slower in the first test, so I am assuming it is using both cards. I'll give it another run and post the settings here to see if there is anything different.
Thanks

 

MrBubbles, do you have the physics card in your system?
What driver version have you installed? you can check on the NVIDIA website for the proper driver version number that we normally go by, and where did you download the driver?
Check you driver verion here http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Scan.aspx?lang=en-us
Open it using internet explorer because firefox crashes when it opens the driver scanner

Thanks

 

I don't have the PhysX card and I am using 169.04 drivers on vista from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/...showtopic=9243, don't use the Nvidia website drivers as they don't work with the patched ini file.

On a side note I also just got a pc mag which says Vista SP1 beta has just been released but it only consists of existing bug fixes.

 

Are there any bugs with those drivers? I will disable my physics card and try those drivers and see if I get a better score than I did before.
Have you tried the Crysis demo or the Call of Duty 4 demos?

 

I haven't run into any driver issues yet, Tiger Woods 08 is missing the medium and light rough but I think that is a Vista issue because no graphics driver has fixed this since I got my XPS M1730 and it worked fine on XP on my old desktop.

 

They sound like they are pretty good, i'll give them a try

 

Has anybody else except me had problems with getting into the options section of GRAW2? Mine crashes when I try to enter.

 

I haven't heard anyone with that problem, there is a patch for GRAW 2 I think, maybe that will help, or try windows update

 

Only got 7847 with the drivers MrBubbles, do you know why your AGP apeture size is 1.35Gb and mine is 770Mb, that might be making a difference, but we aren't even using AGP cards in this system

 

No idea, I have 4gb ram though it may have something to do with it.

 

Yeh, that would be likely, I only have 2gb. I think the aperture size refers to how much of your normal RAM the video card can use if it runs out of space.

Thanks, I've been looking at upgrading to 4gb RAM anyway

 

I managed to get 7940 with the 169.04 drivers now I need my 4gb RAM.
Time to retest Crysis and Call of Duty 4

 

My damn Crysis install file is corrupted, and i'll download it tomorrow. Call of Duty 4 plays much better with these drivers, all settings as high as possible at 1280x768 gets up to 100fps but as low as 40. I will do a benchmark with FRAPS later. But in counter strike source it looks like there is a bug, when you get flashed, one side of the screen screws up and then goes back to normal after the flash has worn off.
Otherwise everything works pretty well and I hope the next drivers Dell officially release for the 1730 are as good

 

Fingers crossed wogstaa!!!

 

MrBubbles, have you got Half life 2 or counter strike source, if so could you run the stress test and see if it works well with these drivers, I get like 12fps and half of the screen is screwed but the game plays fine besides the problem I get when I get flashed

 

i get 8240 with 169.04 drivers

 

Fantastic Stevez, I wonder how hight we can get it to go?

 

Sorry don't have HL2 unfortunately.

 

OK, thanks anyway, I'm sure it's this driver because I had no problems before, I am still getting a steady 60fps during online play with v-sync turned on so I've got no idea why the stress test wont run

 

I got 8711 w/ 169.04 drivers w/ the processor running at 3.0Ghz

I tried upping it to 3.4GHz but 3dMarks06 would just freeze before the first test even started... very annoying (tried it 3 times).

I also have another issue with the drivers, everytime my computer went into screensaver mode it would freeze when I tried to bring it out. It never did this with the dell drivers... but it's a small price to pay IMHO.

 

Wow, the x7900 makes a fair bit of difference, if it freezes at 3.4ghz, the CPU probably isn't stable at that speed

 

I got 8540 with the 169.04 drivers without doing any OC'ing. Can't wait to get my hands on CoD4 and Crysis.

But still can't get GRAW2 into options. It's very irritating becuase it's not at its highest setting at all!

However I play a lot of FSX and with 169.04 drivers and no OC'ing I get good FPS with high resolutions and high detail. It was definantly a good buy this m1730. But I got a few stuck pixels right at the top of the screen, but I hardly ever notice so I won't be returning it. Anyway I got 3 yrs Accidental Damage support, so if I do happen to chuck it out the window Dell will just send me a new. (maybe with the 8800m GTX's? )

 

Yeh, I think our complete cover plans are going to have to be used in order to get us those 8800 cards, well we paid for it and if there's no upgrade I might have to have an accident