My XPS M1730 is finally here! Some thoughts!

Alright, Dell actually delivered my M1730 a lot sooner than the estimate date! Kudos for them and thanks for the free shipping! Well, below are are some pics and thoughts of my M1730. I have own a few dell's in the past but have never been in a Dell forum before, so here I am with my New XPS M1730!
Well, I gotta say that I'm very impressed with the design and features of this laptop! It's really a gamer's rig! The Dual 9800M GT and Dual fans intergrated side by side is a cool design. It , dissapates heat instantly and makes gaming fun. So far it performs flawlessly at high, and 19200 x 1200 resolutions, games I currently have installed is Mirrors edge, Crysis/Warhead, Fear, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, COD World at War, COD Modern Warfare, Dead space, Bio Shock, Left 4 Dead, Cryostasis, Legendary, and Mass Effect. I would say the only game that I can't run at max is Crysis cause of course you know the game name says for it's self! It's a darn Crysis to try to run that game to the maxx!!!!!!! I'll post some Frames and Pictures later for that game! Gotta say I'm a little dissapointed to see the Dual 9800M GT hit 11's. I was expecting higher but of course that could be my CPU bottle necking. But the Single 9800M GT hit 9's, anyways over all gaming experience is fun and flawless! I'm glad I got the XPS M1730, i'm sure It'll still be kicking for at least 2 years! Oh by the way I did have to format the drive due to me switching from SLI to Non SLI. After that I got a black screen at Vista boot screen, had no choice but to format. Now my SD/Micro card reader isn't reading anything, I'm sure the drivers are installed! Anyone knows or have this problem pls help! Well, I'll be around the Dell community so see all of ya soon!

 

Try this driver for the card reader issue:
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/chipset/R195300.exe

If not already running it, you may want to try out the 185.81 driver NVIDIA released today. It's a winner.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista64_185.81_beta.html

 

any improvement with the 185.81?

 

@AlienContact, please, install 185.81 drivers and post some scores. I am curious.
When installing the new drivers, do like this:
1. Unistall nVidia drivers only (leave Physx drivers alone)
2. Boot in safe mode and run Driver Sweeper, clean nVidia Display, run CCleaner and clean registry
3. Boot in normal mode and install the new drivers.

 

I installed the driver and my 3dmark06 score dropped from 13382 to 12494.
how do I go back to my old drivers?

 

Just like you got the actual driver.

 

Can i go into the device manager, click on display adapters, then click roll back driver?
thanks

 

Dunno for sure, it may just unistall your actual driver. Try using System Restore.

 

Nice machine!

 

Hey, Thanks for the Drivers Batboy!!! It really helped out on my SD/Micro Card Reader! As for the Nvidia drivers here are my results!

As the 3d mark 06 did dropped I beleive the games did increase. I haven't played all of them yet and long enough to tell the difference. I'll still try to get a review on Crysis when I have time. But so far so good! Thanks all!!

 

No worries - with the nvidia driver you will enjoy nice low temps with SLI enabled. With the dell driver, temps usually climb to 75c and then fans would kick in and drop it down to 60+c then the fans would shut off and then the whole process would repeat itself. This was a direct result of the GPU clocks being locked and not downclocking based on load. With this newer driver you dont have to worry about it as the clocks will downclock automatically (resulting in lower thermals).

Download GPU-Z and you'll see it in real time...

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/

 

So the 9800M GT has the same performance as 8800M GTX, they are really the same card as they have exactly the same specs sheet. Why Dell charge us with more 100$ for the 9800M GT then? What's the point?

 

Sorry if it sounds flippant but simply because they can. They have "upgraded" to 9 series and what was the top end 8800GTX is now the v.v.slightly improved bottom end 9800GT.
I guess it is a form of "product stretching".

 

Maybe cause of the naming? Or series upgrade they call it!

 

Improved? How? In what sense? The only advantage of the 9800M GT (as far as I know) is how the fans are working, this has been improved, that's all. Performance is the same, GPU's are the same (9800M GT is simply a flashed 8800M GTX), power consumption is the same, etc. I hate this marketing...

 

So In other words, Hybrid power Technology for SLI in the 9800M GT?

 

Congrats! That laptop is an absolute BEAST.