Lag in Vista with new 1330

Hi, I've recently purchased an M1330 in the color blue. It's very nice and all that but I have a small problem in Vista. When I close a program and the windows fades away, it's choppy. When I move my mouse down a long list of bookmarks, the highlight bar is slow to follow. And lastly, when I drag a window it feels like it floats.

If I do the action a few times in a row it smoothes out, but it's very annoying. When I first start Vista, everything is perfect and responsive for the first few seconds then these problems start occurring.

I've tried Dell's video drivers, the ones from windows update, and various versions from laptopvideo2go.com. Is this common?

Specs.
T5450
Nvidia 8400 GS
2GB RAM

 

Did you try the Vista tweaks yet? It's under Windows OS section stickied.

 

I have the exact same issue with my 1330. Though I'm not completely sure, I think the lag is caused by the PowerMizer technology. It's supposed to help conserve battery life by underclocking the GPU when you aren't using graphic intensive applications.

 

I think you should update the driver. It help!

 

I've updated the driver to the most recent version. I've switched to the popular 169.09, and tried many others. None get rid of this lag. It's annoying. Everyone with the 8400 has it, or just a small group.

 

I don't have the issue at all. Have you done a complete reformat of your laptop, or are you using it with the OS as shipped from Dell?

 

I messed around with it as shipped, but within an hour of ownership formatted it. Had the choppiness both ways.

b_vince4 mentioned powermizer and I think he's right. I think Vista is down clocking the video card when not in use so much that it can't render the animations smoothly. After a few seconds of moving the window around it smooths out. It's extremely annoying on a computer that should have no problem running everything beautifully.

 

I dont have any problems wiht any lag on vista..running 3.5 gb ram tho 2.4 ghz Im always plugged in so always run at full performance

 

Solved. It was powermizer or Vista. It down clocks the processor into a 2d mode that just doesn't have enough power to handle the animations. After a few seconds it pushes it back into a 3d mode and performs like it should. It's a driver issue that will hopefully be fixed someday, but for now here is the fix.

Download RivaTuner and follow these instructions.

As found here.

It's not such an annoyance that I'm going to run RivaTuner and this fix. It will make the computer hotter and ruin the battery life. But it's good to know that it's not something wrong with the computer and could be fixed in a driver.

 

Dell seems to have released a new NVIDIA driver (174.31) today. Anyone tried it yet?

 

I'm now running the official SP1 with Dell's newest driver for the card, and it still lags. I was hoping one of those would fix it.

This along with the whine and a few other smaller issues make me wonder if I should keep this thing.

 

As you mention, it's not a problem with the system, unless you're saying that you don't want an nvidia 8400. The other option is to set the system to turn off eye candy when on battery power.

I can't say I've experienced the same thing you have though. The experience has been very pleasant overall, the laptop is blazingly fast and everything is super responsive. I've even set my processor to a lower max clock on battery and all seems fine. Of course, I'm coming from a geforce go 6600 and Pentium M 2.0ghz, but even that didn't have any strange performance with aero, just took forever to boot and load the sidebar.

 

Sor, it has nothing to do with battery power. My m1330 downclocks the 8400 always unless I force higher clock speeds using rivatuner. You could/should check whether yours does too.

 

I personally found Vista Home 32bit very sluggish on my stock 1330 T7500.

After installing Vista x64 I am finding the whole experience of this laptop fantastic.. So smooth and quick.. No slowdowns in any way..

Although I'm still bitter over missing out on a Penryn processor by about a week and the fact that Dell wouldn't let me change it or return it as I ordered with an online account I used to order a business server in the past (though I ordered via the home section of the site and got a consumer warranty. grrr).

I'm running the 174.51 drivers from the laptop2go site.. Seem perfect to me - no issues at all so far.