D630 Owners Thread

Yes, I would have agreed with you except that I plugged in my in-ear Phillips Bass headphones last night watching a movie and "WHOA! - a world of difference!" . But I tend to agree with you...if that's it's biggest flaw, it's relatively minor.

 

I have no idea myself, but if you want to look it up it's nearly the same card as an 8400gs (it's the same physically but they use different drivers which might hurt performance a little, though you can force it to use other drivers)

 

What 3DMark 2001/03/05/06 scores are others getting with the Quadro card?
I noticed that I was getting consistently much lower scores than its gaming counterpart 8400M GS. I'm using 169.28 drivers...

 

I forget precisely but something around 1200-1300ish.

 

I think it sucks that Dell won't allow Nvidia to release drivers for the 135M unless its through them, as it seems they're always a bunch of versions behind. I tried the 8400 GS driver with the same affect (DVI output won't work on my dock in 64 bit XP)

I have several of these to setup for work, XP 32 bit works like a charm. Lame

 

1.) The best "no questions" driver I've found was actually from Windows update. It is a newer driver than the latest Dell driver. 4.0 score by Vista. There are people who mod the latest nvidia drivers to install on our systems, but that requires more work, and becomes more of a gamble. For now the MS update driver is the most recent certified driver for the NVS135, and the performance is quite nicer than the original install driver.

2.) Incculus, it sounds like you are still setting yours up. To really have the screen right, you need to be sure you are running at the panel native resolution (should be 1400x900) and also make sure the brightness is set all the way up. Running any LCD off it's native resolution gives a smeary appearance. I mean no insult by this if you already know it, but it is a very common mistake.

Graphics/rendering will be choppy until you install a certified driver. If you've checked all of that, and still have the problem, return it. Dell will happily replace it.

3.) Gerrad, if you can buy Vista Ultimate through school for ~$10 on the university program, just do it. For $10 it's a no brainer, along with Office and whatever else you can buy on the university program. Having legit copies of Vista and Office at the college partner pricing will serve you well over time. In terms of whether the update is worth it or not, quite frankly going from Basic to Ultimate probably isn't worth it if you don't know why you'd do it, and definitely not worth it if you are paying discount rates and not the $10 special program pricing. Most people will only see a little added visual appeal and a lot more used hard drive space. Google "vista product feature matrix" if you want to see the differences. Buy it, keep it, and use it if you have some problem in the future that requires a reformatting. But only if your university is on the really cheap volume license plan.

 

Oh and I'd just like to add, for those considering a hard drive upgrade or looking for a top-shelf solution, Best buy has the external 200gb Hitachi drives on sale for $119.99 this week. If you can find a unit in the store with a DTG serial number, inside the enclosure is a 7k200 7200rpm/16mb 2.5" SATA drive which will drop into our D630's, and is arguably the best performing 2.5" drive available right now.

You can apply a 10 or 12% coupon to get it down to $108-110.

The only problem is the warranty on the drive becomes at worst, non-existent, and at best, requiring some arguing. But for about half price most people are happy to take the gamble.

 

Here is a benchmark list of laptop video cards. NVS135 is more or less equal to 8400GS, just slightly below it. What you consider playable is a very loaded question, but this should give you some comparison points.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

 

interesting, after I install R158407 and then go to windows update, I get no updated video driver at all. You're right though, the Dell driver is from June '07, quite old. It sounds like the one you got from Windows Update is ear marked for Vista only. ugh...

 

Hello there,

I got my new Dell D630 with Nvidia Quadro 135M, I am very happy with it...until I found that under windows XP, the graphic card does only support a handful of resolution modes for an external monitor. I have a 20" samsung external monitor with 1400x1050, and this resolution is not supported by the graphic card! The card gives 1280x1024 and then jumps to 1600x1200.

But this is only because of the driver in windows, because I installed linux, using the Nvidia linux driver I get the resolution I want without any problem under linux.

My question is: does anybody know a way to "unlock" a resolution mode not offered by default in windows XP? I tried to add a "custom resolution" mode in the Nvidia control panel but this does not work either. Probably using a different driver?

Thanks,
Marcelo