XPS M1730 owners - problems with machine running on battery

I am sorry to hear that your returning the machine Kindred2k7.

I had another conference call with Dell today but again legal are dragging there heals so the chap was unable to comment about specific parts causing a problem. However there is a new BIOS update and some drivers on the way and I will get them soon in order to help with testing. More info on this soon.

They are not meant to fix all the problems but it's a start

What Graphics card are you getting in the Vostro ?
We use the 830 Latitude machnies at work and I have to say for pure proccesing power they are extremely fast and stable whilst on battery - more or less no difference between running the machine on battery or power. The Latitude range also has an option for a proper docking station - it might be worth taking a look at one the machines run 1920x1200 but only have a 15.4" monitor.


Let me know how you get on and Good Luck

 

I'm actually looking at the Vostro 1700 and the Inspiron 1720, both of which have similar hardware to the XPS M1730... Honestly, they're the same machines, minus the light effects, secondary LCD display and high-end quad speakers. It's a no-brainer at this point: replace the XPS M1730 with a machine that is just as fast, yet works properly on battery. I'm just tired of waiting for Dell to come up with a solution.. one which I'm sure they won't ever truly come up with because they don't want to admit to the general public that their flagship gaming laptop is a lump of useless parts while running on battery. Hey, at least you can surf the web on it while on the battery... unless you watch an embedded high-def video. heh

Please excuse the sarcasm, as I am actually quite happy to be getting rid of this machine soon!

As I mentioned before, I will post my findings in regards to the Vostro / Inspiron once I have one in my hands. I imagine performance will be identical to the XPS... same mobo / CPU / RAM / HDD setup... the only difference is the lack of SLI graphics, which is not going to make a terrible difference in Vista (since I don't actually game on the laptop all that much anyway).

Take care and good luck with everything!

 

***** UPDATE *****

OK I have been testing two things for Dell on my XPS M1730
1. BIOS update (version A05)
2. New Graphics Drivers

The BIOS is now on Version A06 and can be downloaded here (UK)
http://support.dell.com/FileLib/Format.aspx?c=us&l=en&ReleaseID=R178153

The Drivers have not yet been release but tests are very positive so far. Although they do not increase the speed of the machine whilst running on battery they do make the machine stable. So far the machine has not crashed whilst running on battery with these drivers. Even the Ageia Demos run without problems.

I am working with Dell and as soon as I know that the new drivers are released I will post the information here.

Please post back with your views on the BIOS as updating the bios did improove stability for me even without the new Graphics drivers

Good Luck - More soon



Breadloaf.

 

Just to keep everyone posted... I ended up replacing the M1730 with an Inspiron 1720. I got all of the same hardware (except for the speakers, dual video cares and the tacky lighting effects) for a lot less money, and the Inspiron 1720 has no problems running at full speed while on battery. Battery life is incredible with the 9-cell battery I got, as well. I would suggest to anyone buying a laptop that they get the best battery they can, as the extra battery life is a definite plus. On "Power Saver" mode (in Vista) the battery lasts nearly 3 hours while doing regular things like surfing the web or checking your e-mail. It's quite impressive.

In the end, the Inspiron 1720 was about $700 cheaper and thus I spent that "saved" money on some upgrades: 4 GB of RAM instead of 2 GB, 320 GB of hard drive space instead of 120 GB, Bluetooth, a Wireless-N router, a Dell 968 Wireless All-in-One Printer and a carrying case.

Yes, the Inspiron 1720 is a much better deal if you need a powerful laptop to both play games on AND work with. The included nVidia GeForce 8600 M GT is actually quite capable of playing games. Unreal Tournament III plays great at 1280x800 and Crysis will kill any machine (including the M1730) but it's still playable on the Inspiron.

Also, now that I have the dual hard drives, I'm dual-booting Vista x86 Business Edition and Mac OS X Leopard on the Inspiron. It's pretty cool.

 

Hey all, i have just joined here to join in the m1730 discussion , i bought mine 2 weeks ago and as u all say, it works perfect on A/C and horribly on battery, games dont even work on half resolution. im about to install the latest nvidia driver, aegia driver and the bios one, will let you all know how it goes

P.S : If you tone down vista (e.g turn off the pretty things such as high tech see through windows and most of the stuff, and just keep the 2 basics that make vista look like vista (the pretty taskbar and the window themes). i can run dvd's on perfect resolution, and they dont slow down on media player or mediadirect, same for streaming videos of most kinds, although it does every now and again lag slightly so the sound is behind the video, its not perfect, but i suppose its a start, i can at least watch movies on the train as such.

hope it helps some people.

 

nope still have every issue as before

i hope dell hurries up with this fix ^.^

 

Sorry I have taken a while to come back to you - been busy so I have not been on the forum for a while.

I am still working with Dell on this, tests of the beta drivers have proven pretty successful as far as system stability goes, but, it looks like the speed issues will never be fixed as this is down to the amount of power the system needs when running and on battery there is just not enough power to run everything at full performance !!

I was hoping that Dell would have released something by now but at the moment it is not looking like they have updated the drivers as yet (just checked on the website)


I will let you know as soon as I hear back

 

hello everybody, my laptop was driving me insane, i loved vista right, but the laptop simply wasnt doing anything powerful enough, i have the basically exact same machine but on desktop, that is amazing compared to this, so last night i went insane and installed xp, wiped vista completely, before leaving vista i novabenched it for you all to see.

my novabench score was a reasonable 234.
after installing xp, all updates, norton 360, all drivers, and the new SP 3 from microsoft

it now hits a whopping 355!. thats like 155% compared to vista, tomorrow when im in work i will test the laptop more thoroughly, and try the battery problems thing again, if it solves all or most battery problems it will be on hhere within 24 hours of this message.

some of you might not be happy about hearing that, but if u have xp anyway, you should definetly give it a try, even if it doesnt solve the battery problems, it still runs a hell of a lot faster, just been playing oblivion on these specs :
all settings dragged to full
1920 x 1080
HDR lighting
anti-aliasing x 2
all reflections on.

and it worked perfectly, slightly laggy as u go thru the scene changes (when it comes up with "loading area", but every1 gets that.

ill post F.E.A.R specs and COD 4 specs later tomorrrow, also with the battery results

fingers crossed ey?

 

the battery problems are still there, but nowhere near as severe

i can play oblivion on 1280 x 800 on full detail as long as i dont run anti-aliasing



better than before i suppose

 

Dienekes, Nice work there, XP runs faster than Vista but I can't bring myself to go back to it as there is no directx 10 support

SP1 for Vista is supposed to speed Vista up a little but from the benchmarks I have ran - it's not much of an improovement.

 

First on a battery performance, a quick tip ongetting more fps outta your battery is to lower your screen brightness as low as you can tollerate, when i get it all the way down starts to feel more like a single 8800M instead of half one, also about vista being slower, if you have not already try clearing utilities out of it like games(HUGE in vista Ultimate) and many other random features you will never use(tablet PC touch screen software ETC) This brings the overall OS running size down and which for me at least increased benchmarks in 3dmarks by a bit and made it boot up faster.

Ive also found that that when on battery the amount of power that is willing to be put to the GPU is not very infuenced by the Power saver max performance ETC settings. As i played around with them i found that lowest brightness on power saver gave me more fps then max, i believe this is because the GPU battery power limit has gone nowhere but you free up more power elsewhere to throw at it. Hope any of this helps, i love my beat and so should everyone else

 

There's only one explanation for Dell limiting current draw (i.e. performance) when running from battery: Safety. Best way to limit draw? Limit GPU speed. Users are more likely to put up with slow graphical operations than a constantly slow CPU (Dell get fewer support calls).

Even with modern lith-ion batteries, I'm guessing that trying to apply a >200W draw would be a very bad idea. At best, it would cook the battery and seriously degrade its life (permanently). At worst... fire, explosions etc.

It's certainly annoying that I can't even play a DVD on battery without a lot of stuttering (though this may just be a combination of unsuitable graphics driver and Vista x64) but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

 

I'd like to add that this problem occurs on the M1330 also with the 8400M GS. 60 FPS solid in Warcraft 3 on AC power, drops to around 30 on battery. Same thing in EVE Online, 37 FPS sitting inside a station on AC, 11 FPS on battery.

I can understand the need to limit the GPU power draw in order to maximize battery life, but it should be an option instead of forced upon us. This sort of defeats the purpose of owning a laptop if you're forced to be tethered to AC power to do anything graphics intensive.

 

I don't think the main reason for the down-throttling is really to SAVE power, although obviously it is handy for those wanting to get the most of their batteries. As I understand it, a main cause is that the battery does not supply the same current to power all the components as the AC adapter. For example, I own an XPS M1710 and I know that the AC power adapter supplies 19.5v at 6.7A. The battery is rated at 11.1v so the current running through the computer is less than while under the supply of the AC adapter. Obviously the CPU, harddrive and GPU require a lot of power but I believe the GPU is throttled down so there is enough outstanding current to supply the disc (CD/DVD and/or BluRay) drive if it is needed as well as whatever may be plugged into the USB drives. I may be wrong (so correct me if so as i know a laptop is a more complex set of circuits) but as I understand it, if two light bulbs are plugged into a DC current, either they both go dimmer (split the current) or one goes dimmer (the more demanding steals the current) So if the battery was supplying most of the current to the GPU and suddenly you insert a disc which needs to be spun up to full speed, the Gpu may suddenly be deprived of the current it is using and glitches / errors would occur - or the Disc drive's motor doesn't have enough current to spin up that high and may cause some other kind of error (or spit out the disc thinking it can't read it) Obviously correct me if im wrong as im not an expert on battery technology or how power is managed in a laptop while on battery and am willing to be educated

 

I get this same problem on my m1330... but only when using modded infs. If I stick to drivers where I can use the original inf, no downclock.

 

Found out that disabling nvsvc (Nvidia display drive service) in msconfig services prevents the problem from happening and allows watching full screen dvd on battery power.


Check "screen flickering on XPS M1730 on battery power" forum for details.

 

How do you disable nvsvc?

 

Guys, honestly, your laptop (esp an M1730) chugs through what must be 200W when the GPU's and CPU's are fully active. Dell forcing the GPU's to slow down is not so they can extend your battery life, it's to keep you safe.

Pulling 200W out of the battery (11.1V, 85Wh) would result in a current draw of 18 Amps. That's a lot.

Consider that the battery will last about an hour, under most circumstances. It's an 85Wh battery, so this roughly means that 85 Watts is the load. This means 85/11.1=7.7 Amps.

Clearly, somewhere under 8 Amps is considered a safe level to draw from the battery. Trying to more than double this to 18 Amps (which would be needed to keep your GPU's and CPU's running at full speed) would undoubtedly overheat the battery, leading to permanent damage and a risk of fire and explosion.

I don't know how this translates to the M1330 or other models, but there's a reason the M1730 comes with a 230W power brick!