my XPS M1730 $4000 blows...........

specs:
4gb memory
160gb 7200 rpm hd
2x 8700M gt's in SLI (lol)
core2duo 2.4ghz
OS: vista ultimate

After spending this amount of money, this laptop is unacceptable and I'm praying its due to a tweaking issue or something. I have a few questions below that I'm hoping some people might be able to clear up and explain how to straighten this money-pit out before it gets sent back. Thanks for any and all information.

1.) Is the SLI working properly? I notice nvidia doesn't back any drivers for these cards on their website, and also note that microsoft is releasing hotfixes because of perfomance issues with these cards and SLI.

- World of Warcraft all maxed should play better than 30fps.....and without the hickups when turning around....

- Halflife series games should play much more crisp even at low/medium settings.

2.) What's the issue with the dual-layer burning? I have read places where no ones dual layer burning even works on these laptops and DELL isn't doing anything about it? I have not tested it yet.

3.) Can anyone clear up the rumors with CPU-Z? I hear it is messing up the XPS laptops, sometimes rebooting them or crashing them. I read places that it doesnt even read the CPU speed correctly. My Clock speed is around 1187mhz.......but then throttles to 2500mhz+ for a second every now and then. Thats great and all, but I would prefer 2500+ nonstop.

4.) I notice I can't overclock this at all in bios, are there ways around this?

5.) Core2Duo throttling? Rumors state that dell's bios fools people and it really isnt running at what cpu clocking programs state? How does this concept work? I noticed DELL has a feature called speedsetting or something in bios where it runs the CPU as 2 independent cpus to work with certain programs better?

6.) vista? Is vista behind me thinking that i own a damn near $4000 piece of junk that weighs as much as the trash can home it deserves?

I'm hoping, no praying....WAIT BEGGING that I get flamed and there is great answers to these questions and reasons on whats happening with this PC.

If not....its time to send it back.


thank you for the replies,

 

Intel processors use speedstep (not dell). Its purpose is to run the processor at full speed only when it is needed. When your computer is sitting back waiting for you to do something demanding (like playing a game), it will lower its clock speed to keep the laptop running cooler, and use less electricity. This is a good feature, do not fret, your processor will run full blast as soon as you launch a game.

You may want to try installing the modded nvidia drivers to see if you get better performance with them.

 

Yeah The Laptopvideo2go Are Much Better

 

Did you buy 4gb through Dell?

 

yes

laptopvideo2go = ?

 

laptopvideo2go.com

It has the latest drivers, and a tweaked inf so that they can be installed on notebooks.

 

Leave the processor throttling alone - the laptop is not designed to run at full CPU speed 24/7. It saves *a lot* of power, and the CPU will run at max when you need it to.

Overclocking the standard C2D is not at all possible. I think maybe the X7900 is overclockable?

 

1) Laptopvideo2go.com. Get the latest [although latest isn't certainly best -- try 169.04 first] drivers there. Read instructions as to how to install drivers. These drivers should improve SLI support and performance in games.

2) You haven't even tested yourself and you're already complaining? Why not give it a try instead of venting it out here.

3) CPU clock throttle down is normal [at least most of the time, I did experience my CPU clock permanently throttled at 1.5 GHz]. It will boost clock speed to maximum when needed and will play around lower speeds when you're just doing less intensive stuff [internet, email, music, etc.].

4) I'm assuming you didn't get the Core2Extreme processor? Core2Duo's have a locked multiplier, but I think there are 3rd party programs that do allow some kind of overclocking. Google is your friend.

5) SpeedStep technology from Intel. See #3.

6) Vista sucks, for now. Maybe SP1 will change that. Of course I don't think it sucks so bad that your PC becomes worthless. People have varying experiences with Vista but the general consensus is that Vista brings down gaming performance juuuuuuuust a bit, compared to XP. [LOL, I can hear the fanboys already]

Good luck!

 

Yes the X7900 is OC'able to 3,4Ghz

 

1) http://www.laptopvideo2go.com Genius.

2) Before you start investing interest into stupid rumors and waisting time, why don't you just try it. I don't think a $3 disk is gonna break you when you're wasting that much money on a laptop.

3) Again more rumors, forget about it. And yeah, all the new processors throttle down, it's normal. It's called Speed Stepping. If you prefer your machine to last longer, have better battery life and run cooler, then leave it alone. If you would rather the full throttle speed all the time turn off speed stepping in the BIOS.

4) OC'n the processor is useless. If you want overclocking abilities, drop another $400 for the unlocked processor. Otherwise, google some homemade hacks to OC you're current CPU.

5) Sigh... So you're saying Dell lie about the speed of the processor, and give you a slower one? That's the biggest load of crap ever - Dell wouldn't get away with it even if they did. Review #3 again if you still haven't grasped the idea of why it throttles down.

6) Vista is fine. Not as fine tuned as XP because it was just released. Xp is how old now? It's had plenty of time to grow and mature. It is true - right now Vista gaming can be slower - by how much - it varies from machine to game. Both have there advantages and disadvantages. Myself personally, will never go back to XP.


Frankly, why novice people are buying enthusiasts computers strikes me. Better yet, a WoW nerd (usually big ass computer nerds from the people I've met) not understanding or being able to trouble shoot these stupid small problems strikes me even more. Even my mom knows to use Google.

 

better yet, why someone buys a 4k computer to play wow on.

 

LMFAO HAHAA..

Bravo man, I needed that laugh.. Rep+

 

I have searched google for hours. And All I am recieving is information from XPS 1730 owners saying that the SLI is completely and udderly broken. That dual layer isnt working on ANYONES 1730. When I called DELL support and asked about the SLI all they said was ... "we heard some things maybe similar"....

Don't bash me because you think i didnt search?

I searched till my heart was content and all I received was horrible horrible information FROM ACTUAL 1730 OWNERS.

btw, any of you own the M1730? Because if you did, I think your responses would be incredible different to this post.

in conclusion:
I have tested FEAR, WoW, Halflife 2, CS:S, TF:2, and Bioshock now.


My little brothers ATI 9800 pro 128MB AGP video card, and old 2500+ M barton processor with 1gb of ram can play these games comparable to my 3500$ investment.

 

too bad it cant even play that flawlessly. I was giving examples of things that it was tested on, would you rather I just said "no it runs bad" and left it like that?

Sorry for typing a game or 2 that it played sub-par on.

Vostro is like a porche boxster


btw, for everyone that kept saying "laptopvideo2go" bleh bleh. None of the drivers seem compatible with my video cards.

So instead of people that don't know/own what I'm trying to diagnose just spitting **** and insults at me, how about you take your budget-top to mcdonalds and hit up that free wifi!

 

Except it should. Simply put. You didn't read the laptopvideo2go. You gotta have the modded INF file or whatever.

 

You don't deserve help with your attitude.

If you READ the laptopvideo2go site, you'd see you need to download the modded INF file and replace the one originally packaged with the driver. I think a few people already mentioned that.

And obviously you didn't search until your hearts content, because if you did you would have used the search feature on the top right hand corner of these forums.

If you expect in depth help, maybe you should name a varied amount of things you tried your system on. Because all you did was give the first impression your some Bone head and spends $4000 for a laptop to play WoW.

I've used and know people who own 1730s, even people hacking them and putting the video card on Vostro mobo's etc. And a few of them encountered SLI issues. I think they resolved most of the problems getting a good driver.

As far as the dual layer crap goes, that's beyond a software fix if the drive just refuses to read/write to the disk. Likely, the firmware on the drive needs to be flashed/updated or Dell got a nice batch of dud drives. As far as I know, no one I know that owns a 1730 complains of this problem.

Pretty much SLI is your only valid problem that I've seen others have similar issues with. But who hasn't had SLI issues - it's a problem prone technology. No good driver support doesn't help matters any either.

 

SLI is not broken...you have to remember it's a relatively new technology and well the complete support is just not there yet. Most games don't have the proper driver profiles to run with SLI. Newer games are going to be more efficient if they're designed with the intent to use SLI but older games are not.

The 1730 is a nice piece of hardware that is just a bit ahead of itself, I think it was one of the first laptops to use SLI. It is by no means a "piece of junk" Most of the games you mentioned playing won't even make that thing break a sweat.

Anyway, good luck with getting your desired results.

 

It's a lepper in notebook form.

It's fat, its expensive, its ugly, its slow.... its sweaty (runs hot) and dies after an hour if its removed from the mains. If this was a person we were talking about divorce would be imminent... If i was dingkingdotnet i would just forget it and at least wait till next year, sometime in January, for the 8800's to come flooding out onto all the top-end laptops.

One of the biggest problems with the M1730 is the choice of GPU. SLI is sketchy under Vista, and the 8700 isnt exactly king fo GPUs.

 

i will refrain from making an offensive post to the author of this thread. The admins dont really like me and issue me warnings/bans every chance they get.

but i will say this:

1. You dont derserve that computer.
2. Reading some of the things you wrote: you know NOTHING about computers.
3. Send it back if you want. With your intellect it is highly unlikely that you would get anything better anyway.

 

According to Trusted Reviews, it isn't. They recently slammed it for this:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2007/12/12/Dell-XPS-M1730/p4

 

cant you disable SLI and just use 1 card until SLI support is there?

you can still play any game out there today.... and wow would be a joke for it.

 

You did lots of research and didn't come across the sager 5791?
Or the fact that the mobile 8800GTX/GTS is right around the corner and you would have realized you should have waited for that?

I'll answer your questions though:
1.) Go to laptopvideo2go.com and follow the instructions to download the latest drivers.
On the topic of SLi 8700GT you should only expect a 40-45% on average performance boost over a regular 8700GT. However, this card will run WoW and HL2 just fine so what your most likely experiencing is a driver issue.

2) Test it, then come back.

3) Your CPU downclocks to conserve power and lower heat output, nothing is wrong with CPUZ

4.) Look harder.

5.) CPU will only throttle when it overheats. I think the second concept your talking about is dual core processing.

6.) Honestly if you can't configure a computer correctly what are you doing with a $4000 computer...

 

Ok, first, this post strikes me with the 'more money than sense' attitude. You bought a $4k laptop to play wow? Instant fail.
Send it back, pick up a mobile laptop and leave gaming to a desktop that would cost half the price, be faster and have less problems.

The xps m1730 unlike it's predecessor uses some new technologies that have still yet to be perfected; sli, vista, physx, etc
Unless you know your way around the machine, hardware and software wise, you are going to hate it.

Google for more info on things you are not sure on/understand. Wiki is a great resource.

My m1730 cost me more than my desktop, which quite simply, murders it for speed in every factor. Had it used 8800m's I would have probably kept it but the fact is, 8700m gt sli is slow. Stop expecting so much from a laptop and don't waste so much money on one.

 

@ Fuzzy, I get a 50-80% performance increase in SLI so it is working for me.

@ RobHague, do you really think the M8800 will solve some people issuses, the hour battery life for example? If anything it will use more power.

I don't know what some peoples issues are with this 'notebook' because I haven't experienced most of them and the ones that I have had, like the battery lasting only an hour is not an issue at all. If you don't like notebooks then stick with desktops, they use 4 times more power and are a pain in the rear end to move. For me, the odd 'weakness' of the notebook is not a bug or a design flaw, it is an acceptable limitation that all notebooks have.

 

chill people....if you don't have anything helpful to say, just don't say anything or else infractions will have to be given.

to op: you might want to check out this review of the toshiba x205. essentially with older games, sli is less effective and in some cases will give you worse results because the game itself isn't compatible with sli.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=194441

 

DeusEx, let's make sure our stance is clear first. We are not picking on you, we do not hate you for no reason (and no, we don't hate you right now either ). We don't allow insulting or downright bypassing the censor filter here on NBR, and when we see members do that, we have to take action. If you see anyone else do that, you have every right to report their post, and we thank you for the reports.

Yeah, just to clear it up that we are not hating on you. We are just enforcing the rules .

 

Well pretty much obviously feels the same about the OP.. lol safe to say I guess?

People expect laptops to be godly desktop killing wonders in a small 2" form factor. Truth is a laptop can NEVER compare completely with a desktop in the graphics processing power department. At least not now.

That doesn't mean laptops suck. Because for the most part desktops are overkill and laptops can handle things but right this very moment, laptops struggle with the newest games. But when the 8800's come out, I suspect it to level the odds out a bit.

Remember this, when you buy a laptop, consider it exactly like getting married. It's not gonna get any better or more beautiful with time, just age really bad and be nasty. That's why theres divorce papers and more fish out in the sea.

 

Haha, that's actually a very good image of the owner-notebook relationship.

 

Captain obvious here. Rep +1

This was the first question that came to mind when I saw the thread

 

Ok i recently bought an m1730 and had performance similar to what the original poster described. Now unfortunately im at work so dont have any specific driver details on hand etc, but i was initially disappointed with its performance.

I also experienced choppy gameplay in wow - and no i didnt buy a $3500 lappy to play wow on, but you would think at the very least it would play wow well as well wow just plain and simple isnt what you would consider an over the top game requirement wise.

Anyhow i was getting a solid 29-30 fps but it WAS chopped when turning around etc, so i set out to fix that, and i basically have.

I can now play wow with the same fps, 29-30 on average, but its smooth as silk, and in 1900x1200.

First and foremost i formatted my machine and removed all the dell bloatware. This is running vista ultimate.

I then put on the customised/enhanced whatever you want to call them, nvida drivers that you see linked around here a lot - again, im at work so cant remember what they were, but i will edit this post when i get home.

Also made sure power saving options was set to performance - was on balanced by default. I think this made a big difference.

Also - disable AERO in vista itself, this is a bloody big memory hog.

From memory this was all i did, but the laptop now runs as well as i would have hoped. Things like Unreal tournament 3 runs really smooth in 1280x1024 res - probably higher, but fps requires super smooth, so yeah.

Anyway dont overly dispair, it does require some work but you will get it there. I cant remember if i have sli disabled or not.

I bought my machine as a 'desktop replacement' for me to use next year as i'll be living overseas for a year and couldnt take my desktop with me.

 

Well I finally got back to Sydney, to walk in and find my XPS 1730 waiting for me in the hallway.

I must admit it is a nice laptop. Its big, and ways a ton. The screen is nice. Performance wise im getting 8005 in 3dmark06, my bro has a desktop kitted out with a single 8800 gts, and he gets 9500. The performance of this laptop is pretty good in my opinion, but not as good as I was expecting.

My spec:
T7700 2.4 ghz
2 gig ram
2 x 160 gig HD
Grey lid inserts

Now i need to install those new drivers people are talking about. Is there a website or somewhere one can go for help with these things? I had a look at laptop2video and was a little confused by it. I'll have to have another look tonight.

 

To get 30fps at 1900x1200 in any "modern" game is awesome.

Hell, to get decent gameplay in Call of Duty 4 on my notebook I have to play at 800x600. You're at DOUBLE my res and getting great gameplay in WoW.

As someone said earlier, SLI is a new tech and will have problems. Lack of good Vista driver support for the new video cards doesn't help either.

 

Hey, that's actually *four* times the resolution.

 

MOOOOO!

..........

 

Just to correct you there, SLI is not new technology, nVidia has had it since 6800 generation. The problem is that nVidia does not provide or support laptop SLI drivers, it is up to the manufacturer, and Dell is very slow. On top of it notebook motherboards use Intel chips and a special nVidia chip to enable SLi (on desktops SLI is supported only on motherboards with nVidia chipsets).

The only reason why Dell released SLI 8700 notebook is the poor performance of a single 8700 chip.

 

When you buy the M1730, do Dell not supply ou with the SLI drivers for the cards????
Do these drivers not work well either, or is it just that they are old?

 

They do supply drivers, but they are old and do not support some new games, such as COD4 or Crysis. nVidia very often releases new drivers when a major game is released.

 

So, which is the best, fully working driver, to use at the moment???

 

169.21 works well for me.

 

Ditto 169.21

 

So after all the trolls WITHOUT one of these machines have finished bashing a real post, can someone fill us in on help, i already have 169.21, modded and still performance sucks MAJOR, i cant keep framerate over 24fps consistently in most games, and unreal tournament is flat out stupid, at 1920x1200 its 16fps. lowering the resolution is not an option, i did not pay 4000 dollars to have a computer that cant even run a 4 year old game decently.

I also have a 1710 XPS from 2 years ago, its 7950GT card runs wow FINE at 45 FPS at all times. and this is retarded. im preety sure im not alone, anyone else has got this problem? im really tired of messing around, thats the 17th format in 2 weeks ive done trying to pinpoint WHY this machine sucks so much and i just cant find it, im 1 min from grabbing the phone, returning this machine and just buying a $1000 vostro with a 8600GT, ive seen it run and it runs THE SAME as this machine. and what the hell is that all about.

 

In all fairness I think people with 1730's are expecting far too much from their 8700gt cards. Some people are stating that their old 1710's perform much better. This is partly down to the fact that the 8700gt is ony a mid end card and even when working in SLI is generally not going to run Directx9 games any better than a 7950gtx.

You have to take into account that the 7950gtx was a top end card and to be fair is still a fantastic card now. My friend currently has an m1730 which is running very well with modded drivers but is absolutely no where near on par with my Alienware 9750 which is running 7950gtx SLI. If you look around the review sites you can find comparisons of the two cards and you will instantly see the 7950gtx is a more powerful card by far.

Things will change now as the 8800gtx has been released as this is a true top end mobile card just as the 7950gtx was. Again you can see the results of this card if you do a bit of googling.

End of the day just dont expect great things from the 8700gt even if you have it in SLI and actually working

 

There's always better prices out there. I paid 2k for my M1730, and I'm pretty sure some have better deals.

 

wow look at all these people that mentioned how WoW ran on their 1730, but none of them got bashed for "BUYING a $4000 FOR WOW"

You wonder why I im frusterated, because people can't read and go into instant troll-bash mode.

*NEWS*

Have had the laptop for a month now. grabbed the video drivers and formatted to XP. Games play 60fps+ in 1920x1200.

But like someone said, judging by my post i don't know anything about computers and don't deserve a laptop bleh bleh bleh because you have a vostro.

PEACE!

 

I don't understand what me having a Vostro has anything to do with knowing about computers. You've only proven that you know nothing with your 6 pages of whining, and I GURANTEE that someone else did all your formatting for you.

Why do I own a vosto? Because I'm not stupid enough to drop $4k on a computer to play wow, let alone stupid enough to play wow in the first place.

Get a life dude. You spoiled little baby.

 

Good post!

We expected way too much from the 8700 card and now, in our disappointment and frustration, we're blaming everything but the card itself for poor game performance.

 

Definately install the modded Nvidia drivers with the new inf file. They make a world of difference on my XPS 1530 and HL2 Episode 2 plays smooth as silk... and lightening fast. I have a single 8600 GT with 3 gigs of Ram running vista ultimate. Noty sure if your SLI is slowing you down or not but even the single 8600 will rock HL2. I am also getting stable framerates on crysis @ medium game settings but its definately not as smooth as HL.

Running Forceware 171.16 btw

 

It´s not that bad, I mean managing to run Lost Planet DX10 at 1440x900 with all settings maxed except HDR on Medium and running at 40-50 fps is not bad in my opion, considering this port isn´t optimized so well.

Also I can run Crysis at 1440x900 at medium settings and around 30fps. Now all this in Vista of course, installing XP will give me even more boost.

 

I have had the same experience, my M1710 was faster in most games than M1730. 8700 cards are simply not powerful enough, and on top of that Dell has decided to outfit them with only 256MB of memory which further reduces performance at higher resolutions.

I have since returned the M1730 and bought a Clevo M570RU with a single 8800 card, it is much faster than both M1710 and M1730.

 

omfg another person who can't read. Where in any of my 2 posts (not 6 pages) did i mention i bought this for wow? wow was used as 1 of many different types of benchmarking tools.

Someone did all the formatting for me lol, have you ever rolled back to XP from vista? installed SATA HD drivers in pre-format without a floppy drive in your laptop? then compiled an unattended version of XP with your specific SATA drivers in the build? gtfo and stop using "you know nothing about computers" as an insult.

You ride the school bus, I drive it.