Stock drivers for e1705 stink...

Hey yall.

My e1705 just arrived. After a format, this thing is a amazing. For all those on the fence between Dell and HP, Gateway, whatever, I had 2 zd8000s (one broken in 48 hours, and the other out in 2 mos!), and this thing blows them out of the water. In short, no comparison.

One gripe: this thing seems to hang in BF2 at modest/high settings at 1024X768. Seems weird for the 7800. I think it may be driver related... on to my next point.

I know about the overlocking GPU drivers; I am hestitating to implement them at this time for fear of screwing up this laptop and voiding my warranty. Is there really a risk in minorly overclocking the 7800? I am wondering if there are better drivers for other components. The stock dell audio driver is ABYSMAL. Upon reformatting and using all their stock drivers, I now get an audible BEEP everytime I touch the volume controls (in windows, not with buttons up front) and whenever the intelprowireless detects a network. This is super annoying and inappropriate for quiet places, i.e.: lecture halls and libraries. I have 'no sounds' set in the windows. Here's the weird thing: it sounds like it is an internal speaker making the noise, and when I mute the pc speaker in advanced controls, it kills ALL of the speakers. So... all wav and midi sounds are dead and this thing still BEEPS when I touch the volume in win, or when it detects a network. THIS BUGS. Pretty ironic that this fabulous machine gets hung up on such a fickle thing.

Anyway... help.

thanks

 

The sound is beautiful on both of mine. You should install the mobilforce 83.90 drivers from tweaksrus.com. The dell drivers totally blow and are seriously underclocked. the mobilforce drivers will give you about 40-50% more "horsepower" then the dell drivers. You should check out the big 80 something long page thread about the 9400 in the news and reviews area for a ton of info.

 

Yes, I agree on the 83.90 drivers. Also, and this is COMPLETELY my opinion, I wouldn't worry about problems with overclocking. From what people have said, the 7800 from Dell is severley underclocked, so essentially you would just be setting your card back to its intended clock speeds. Of course, there is always a possibility of something going wrong when overclocking, but I think the benefits here outweigh the consequences.

 

Surprising BF2 would crash on just mid to high settings at 1024. I run FEAR almost cranked out at 1024 and it runs pretty smooth. My card is OC'ed though. 350/850. Went from a 3483 to around 5400 on 3dmark05. I would specualte that OC'ing would void your warranty, but from what I've read in posts, people haven't had problems yet. *touch wood* But techinically how do you overclock an underclocked card, since the stock one is around 400, but that's another debate.

As far as the sound, I believe the sound card is a Sigmatel 9200. But don't think you'll find 3rd party drivers. Their web site says due to some licensing thing, they don't provide drivers. Could probably find someone that posted drivers from other systems.

BTW I didn't reinstall win XP on my system, just did Add/Remove, and it does beep when I move the slider in windows volume control. I never noticed that till I read your post and checked it out myself. ( I checked it by re-enabling my sound card, still beeps, USB connected, still beeps.. rather annoying)

I found the sound from the 9400, although pretty clear to be lacking punch. I use a pair of Sennheiser's and I found the onboard sound from my desktop to be better than it. It's clear but I guess not enough juice. If you use headphones or a small pair of pretty decent speakers, I'd recommend getting an external sound card; specifically the turtle beach audio advantage micro (NBR has a recent review on it) It amazes me everytime how such a little thing can drive my headsets so well. For about 30 a pair they can't be beat. I just disabled the sound card in bios and use these. They double as a digital out to drive your home theater should you so wish.

Edit: Also if the Intelpro is annoying, just have windows manage your WiFi in the right click options. That's what I did, didn't like the Intelpro interface. Might help with the beeps.

 

i uninstalled the intelpro drivers. then i went into the hardware control panel and installed just the drivers for the wifi card. i had to walk through the full software install so i could get it to extrac teh drivers somewhere i could get to. it works great.

 

I have now had a E1705 for a week, and have had flakey connectivity using the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 the whole time. I also have an IBM T40 from work and it is rock solid. The E1705 connects with 'a' and 'g', while the T40 connects only with 'a'. E1705 will connect, then periodically drop the signal. Also it seems to be much more finicky as to where it will pick up a signal. The Dell wants to default to 'g'. Is 'a' more stable, and that is why the IBM has a more robust connection, or is the old big blue just a better unit?
To answer the questions: The wireless is turned on, and power saving is turned off. What else can I do? BTW, I am a laptop technical 'noob', so please do not assume that I have done the 'obvious'.

 

Hey. I tried the 83.90 drivers from the tweaksrus website and they didn't work. Something like 'no drivers are available this card'. something like that.

Any ideas?

 

Make sure you download the 'Mobileforce' drivers not the 'Forceware' drivers I did the same thing lol , well had that error message.

First link here http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=163&Itemid=41/

 

Ok.

I'm still tripping on installing these drivers. I've never overclocked ANYTHING before, and this computer is like 3 days old. I would hate to fry something by the 4th day. I understand that the 7800 is underclocked by dell; but how do we REALLY monitor GPU temps and all that stuff if were to go ahead and tweak it? And... I have yet to hear from anybody that overclocking does/doesn't void dell's warranty.

Thank for any info this subject.

 

Well, safe to say that many, many owners are using the mobileforce drivers and "overclocking" to the optimal detected frequencey (auto overclock not manual). It's as easy as can be. Temperature wise, these drivers give you a gauge to read the gpu temperature and you will see if you "overclock" that the gpu still runs in the same range. Besides that, the dell drivers are not as compatible in general so even if you don't overclock to optimal settings, these are still better drivers. (you have an option to install stock or "tweaked" version during installation. Most select tweaked. IMHO