XPS M1730 SLI problems

I know Dell has provided their drivers, but these aren't the best drivers around, nor are they new either. I'm not sure on the Ageia issue with most people, but the video card one is pretty bad, at least by those contacting me outside of the forum. It is the cart before the horse, and I don't know why there was a rush on that laptop from dell to get it out before drivers would ever be available, officially. It really doesn't matter now, but even Nvidia doesn't have them, not even betas, so yes, SLI will be weird for a while until the first official driver release. It will lock up pc's. Why, why, why do they do this. It also gives a bad representation off the benchmarks on this card. We'll see soon. They will be out, so for now enjoy what you can out of the machine that gets half crippled on the gpu side. Watch for Betas on Nvidia, or any of the sites trying to get these drivers out. Good luck my friend, and happy gaming in the mean time. You don't have to just read the Dell forums, check Notebook, etc. etc. You'll see others griping, and I don't blame them. But the machine could have waited a little longer for the proper gpu and ppu drivers, yes the physx processor is causing issues out there as well. I get emails on them as well. It's funny, I've been contacted over 70 times + now on Dell issues since Aug. 28, hence why I don't get to the forum as much. I just might open up my own tier 2 tech support for Dell. LOL I don't want to be in that category, trust me. I've had people email on issues that don't get resolved, or explained by customer service, so they think I do Dell work. That's the farthest thing from the truth. I actually like the home builds better, it's more challenging and keeps me sharp. The thing is, it actually shows that some are turning to other means of support, cuz they are tired of run arounds or escalated unresolved issues. I have to block my outgoing # most of the time.

 

XPS 600
Vista Home Premium 32 bit and Ubuntu 7.10 32 bit dual boot
Pentium D 955 Extreme 3.46 Ghz OC'able
4 Gigs of PNY Optima 667 Mhz PC5300
640 MB EVGA Geforce 8800 GTS
128 MB Ageia Physx PPU
320Gig SATA Vista,160Gig SATA , 500Gig WD MY BOOK
Thermaltake 5.25" bay fan controller/3-80mm modded extra fans/low rpm(noise factor)
Avermedia MCE500 TV dual tuner
Creative XIFI Extreme Music
G5 Logitech Gaming mouse, Wireless Logitech Rumblepad 2
2007WFP
One Happy Camper

XPS M140
XP Media Center 2005
Pentium M 760 2.0 Ghz
2 Gigs DDR2 533 Mhz
60 Gig 7200 RPM drive

No it pretty much locks up solid no matter what I run...

Certainly MediaDirect locks up, but solitaire, freecell... Internet Explorer lock up too!..

 

The most annoying part is, Dell knew about this issue before I even ordered the machine, but nothing was said..  My fault I suppose for not doing more research before buying......

 

Hey WolverineMachine.. where were you before I ordered

You mention, or at least suggest there are other drivers around??.. Any idea where I might go looking for them?

 

Thanks heaps..

I haven't hunted them down just yet, Anyone else got some sites for tweaked drivers?

 

XPS 600
Vista Home Premium 32 bit and Ubuntu 7.10 32 bit dual boot
Pentium D 955 Extreme 3.46 Ghz OC'able
4 Gigs of PNY Optima 667 Mhz PC5300
640 MB EVGA Geforce 8800 GTS
128 MB Ageia Physx PPU
320Gig SATA Vista,160Gig SATA , 500Gig WD MY BOOK
Thermaltake 5.25" bay fan controller/3-80mm modded extra fans/low rpm(noise factor)
Avermedia MCE500 TV dual tuner
Creative XIFI Extreme Music
G5 Logitech Gaming mouse, Wireless Logitech Rumblepad 2
2007WFP
One Happy Camper

XPS M140
XP Media Center 2005
Pentium M 760 2.0 Ghz
2 Gigs DDR2 533 Mhz
60 Gig 7200 RPM drive

Oh yea....tried re-installing windows (Vista) clean, that in itself was a challenge as I had to disable the turbo cache in the bios so I could install!!!  Anyway still nfg. BTW I am now on hold to Dell service and been told how patient I am for 58...no 59 minutes now.

I believe i have  a problem with m1730 to i bought it for gaming purpose i believe the sli do not work in the game ' world of conflict' because when i enable or disable the sli it makes no difference in the game.

I guess nothing peeves me more than buying a "Gaming" system with SLI that doesn't work. I purchased mine several weeks ago and was seeing the same issues. When I contacted Dell support same thing, new drivers coming don't know when. My main issue was being sold a 64Bit system that Dell won't offer 64Bit support for ( as I actually want to see and use the 4Gb RAM they sold me). So I thought I'd give it a try, I've installed 64Bit Vista managed to find all the drivers including video from www.laptopvideo2go which I was told by a Dell support person to try. I now have a pretty stable system SLI works 3DMark06 score of 8600, I have run COD4, COD 2, Company of Heroes, Crysis, MOH Airborne, Graw 2 and all seems to go good but still hoping for optimized drivers. 

 

XPS M1730

Video Drivers Vista x64 version 164.02

 

That sound really, really promising!..

Did your 1730 lockup when enabling SLI when you were running 32bit Vista??

If so, and 64bit is behaving... I'm moving over to 64bit too.. Apart from the video driver, how did you go with other drivers for the machine??.. Easy to find?

Tnaks for the Guide, I may try it.

 

So u suggest installing Vista 64b version on a m1730? I bought it about 1 month ago and I am not happy with gaming results.

I tried with XP 32b and even the computer works better, when I talk about gaming it's still about same.

Only thing that keep me away of 64b versions is that you can create IDE virtual units with Daemon Tools Pro.