**official Dell Xps M1730 System Optimization Thread**

The point of this thread to get as much juice out of our m1730 machine as possible. So gather your thoughts, tips and tricks and lets together get as much bang for our buck as possible!

So I'll start the thread with a little question:
To make this system as lean as possible we all know that as few processes running the better for our performance. And we all know Dell to be generous with its bloatware. So here is my process list: (attached)
How much can I cut away from my process list? What do i NEED??

 

Thanks, I was hoping somebody would make something like this. Also, it'd be nice if everyone with this Dell Xps posted their 3DMark06 score and/or Windows Base Score. Mine is about 7768 on 3DMarks06 and 5.1 on the Base Score. Just as a comparison tool.
Just to keep the thread with mainly useful comparison posts, I'll make this my first and my last post, unless I can come up with a good system optimisation idea (unlikely).

 

Nobody have any tricks?

 

sva988, you have 83 processes running in that screenshot, I only have 72 on startup, I also have a lot of crap installed as well. You can disable roxwatchtray9.exe (I think it watches for new media or some crap) volpanlu.exe sttray.exe (these are the sound controls that are in the notification area, but can be accessed in the control panel)

 

Use the 169.09's from nvidia or LV2G use the inf file from 169.04 or the inf file posted halfway through the vista x86 thread.

Rivatuner 2.06 for overclocking, 725w/linked shader clocks and 875 should be easily attainable.

Supplied drivers for the game panel are old and crap, use the g15 drivers from the logitech site, there are some beta's floating around the internet that allow a large number of vista sideshow gadgets to work on the lcd too.

LightFX for the system led's will give horrible sound problems if your Khz rating is set too high, 48 or 96 should work ok though.

Don't install crap , I boot with 52 process in vista, everything installed and a few things running in the back.

Disable UAC, windows firewall (if you have a router in your house), defender (don't do this if you browse dodgy sites in ie7)

 

52 processes, your system must run pretty good without all the crap we have, 20 less processes than I do and i'm still pretty appy with my performance. I got the g15 keyboard as well and the software works with both LCDs at the same time. UAC is the biggest pain of all the new Vista features and should be turned off by anyone who knows what they are doing. Their version of security is to ask you if you are sure before you do anything.

What 3dmark score do yo get with the 169.09 drivers, I got a bit over 8000 with the Dell 156.69 drivers after a clean Install of Vista, which is much better than the score I got before with the same drivers, around 7700 I think. Do you have Vista Ultimate, if so does Windows Dreamscene work with the drivers, it kept crashing when I had the 169.04 drivers.

Thanks

 

Windows Dreamscene is a pointless, cpu hogging, broken joke.

Yeah, it works but it saps cpu power to the point where the fans are on all the time, can get a bit laggy and can cause problems when coming out of a game or sus/hib.

Not run 3dmark on my machine, I game on it (stopped benching a few years ago) but I did get significant boosts in ut3, bioshock, source games, nfs and GoW.

 

What could I do to maximise battery life and how long do ya reckon we can get out of it?

I generally don't have many processes running and i turn all the LEDs off... what else?

 

I wouldn't bother with battery life to be honest. I can get about 90mins out of mine, at least that's what windows estimates for me but if you have a computer like this I don't think you should be using it on a battery.

Firstly, you could reduce the brightness of the screen, disable all of the devices in device manager that are not needed, ie physics adapter, and in the power settings you can change the settings for on battery usage to max power saving etc

 

yeah i see what you mean. I mainly need this thing for uni, extreme multimedia authoring etc... but i also wanted it for during lectures, save me buying a second machine, well if you can get round 90 mins I suppose that should do really. I'm not getting the AGEIA physics accelerator in mine coz I'm not really gonna use it

Someone told me that if you're running XP, you're likely to get more battery life out of it since not so many processes are running, is that true?

Appreciate the help, thanks mate

 

Idno about getting more battery life in XP but it sounds pretty realistic, as XP has had way more updates than Vista and plenty of those would have catered for the power usage of the system. You should turn off the Vista Aero and the sidebar, or download Vista battery saver which turns these off when you unplug it from the power. You can download it here http://www.codeplex.com/vistabattery
Just click on the releases button at the top to take you to the download section

 

you can read this article too http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/..._-and-Vista-Battery-Saver-is-very-useful.aspx