GeForce 8600 performance on XPS 1530 w/XP

Hello, all

As I mentioned in another thread, I've installed Windows XP successfully on my Dell XPS1530 laptop. WOOHOO. Its great to have the "old friend" back after two weeks slogging around Vista.

That said, I am having a bit of a performance issue. It appears that the GeForce 8600 under this setup is somewhat lacking. One online testing site (PCPitStop.com) inidicates I have lower-than-expected video performance, something around 40Mp/s, and it indicated that it expected closer to 150. I downloaded the latest ForceWare drivers/INF mod - version 169.32 - and installed today, but a refresh of this test didn't show any improvement.

I have not yet downloaded anything like 3DMark to benchmark the performance, but I thought I'd post a query here to see if anyone had some ideas I might explore, or if the PCPitStop test is just bogus.

Thanks in advance. Will be glad to share info on my experience installing XP on the 1530 if interested.

-David

 

pcpitstop looks a bit dicey to me. i wouldn't even run their scan. i'll bet their 'scan' reveals lousy performance every time, so then you think you need to buy their product... i don't think so!

 

Isn't that the site that advertises during daytime TV? The one commercial where I guess they couldn't afford an American actress and uses an Eastern European one with a thick accent and really crappy CG?

 

Yikes - if its got that bad a reputation, maybe I shouldn't be admitting I went there. That's what I get for working daytimes and not being home to watch soaps j/k

Seriously, though, I suspected this site might be bogus, so I thought it might be wise to see if others knew that it was merely a site to push other software or had any degree of legitimacy to it. Sounds like its a loser.

I'll d/l 3DMark when I get a chance, and worry about graphics performance if THAT shows me something.

-David

 

Just to let you know SoonerDave, when I ran 3dmark06 on my former m1530 I got a score around 4200 (XP, T7500, 3 GB @ 1280x800)

 

4307 with vista here - specs the same as yours.

My screen is 1440x900, but the free 3Dmark06 runs at 1280 anyways.

PCmark05 is 5517.

Hey - how about some others! I'm very comfortable with XP and hate parts of vista, but if the performance is not much greater in XP, I'll probably just go hang my head in a pint of beer and get over it... which will have to be sooner or later, like it or not. ;-(

 

I'm having some trouble putting XP on my xps 1530. Just wondering if you could tell me how you did it. I tried following some other instructions from this site and they didn't work. The computer just kepy rebooting when xp seemed to have installed.

 

Update: I have downloaded and run 3DMark06, and unfortunately the news isn't good: My 3dMark score is only 1066.

UPDATED 11:47PM CST After adjusting the PowerMizer settings in the NVIDIA control panel to not manage power, and to optimize driver operation in favor of performance, a rerun returned 4186 3DMarks. That's better.

....

Ugh.

This tells me something isn't quite right, although I'm not sure what. I ran it twice, once with the ForceWare 169.32 (very newest) drivers, and then backed off to the 169.21 drivers that the FutureMark site specified as "approved." The scores were essentially the same.

Just doesn't make sense. Any ideas, anyone?

otisb, I'm glad to share my experiences, which I must characterize as successful aside from this caveat with video performance. If you're continuing to reboot right at the time XP seemingly tries to start after what seemed to be a successful install, the first things I think of are master boot record problems, or perhaps your partition table has been corrupted. Are you dual-booting Vista and XP?

-David

 

are you running it while it is plugged in or on batteries?

 

Last time, plugged in; first time, battery.

 

Update on this: I have re-run the benchmark on the same system under XP, and the result is 3849 3dmarks. About a 10% performance penalty under Vista.