Hi, from what ive read on this foum yoiu really like your xps 1530! jst gopt mine the other day and love it too! Ive got the same specs as you,

 

T7500 2.2 core 2 duo

2048 mb ram

8600gt graphics card

160gb 7200rpm hdd

 

i ran 3dMark and i got 3988 :( Can you tell me how you gotyours to perfrom so well? how can i get mine up?

Sorry for opening up this old thread, but first, dont mind your 3dmark score. Both of yours are right on, and the difference wouldnt be (very) noticable in games. Chasing 3dmark scores is not a good idea (I am sorry i dont want to kill my hardware, or spend $600 on a video card to get a few thousand points). However, the difference could be from drivers, different OSes, overclocking of the video card.... and that is about it on a laptop.

Overclocking may kill your hardware and is not recommended on laptops.

Optimising by identifying apps that are resource hogs or causing performance drops and choosing optimum graphics drivers is not harming your system.

My score is now over 4400 marks thanks to better drivers and a few tweaks with no negative effect on the life of my laptop.

While 3DMark is not a direct representation of how a game will play it is still one of the best indicators to show if the tweak or driver you installed has improved or reduced performance and so that you can easily compare with another user. Actual game performance seems to improve inline with the 3DMark too.

Threads like this have helped users identify problems that were causing  3DMark scores of less than half of what they should have been and now they've solved the issue and overall performance has improved for them.

The main purpose of comparing scores is to see what hardware/software combinations result in better performance - this helps potential buyers pick systems that will get them the best results - i.e. paying extra for the next CPU up make a difference? How much better will my system run by adding extra Ram etc. It also helps users see if they could be tweaking there system more if they have the same hardware but a lower result.

Mine is 4142. I'm not doing any overclocking, just tweaked drivers.

I restored my computer and now get 4320 without any tweaks. How do you know if all drivers are up to date? I f all drivers are up to date does thatmean that the system would perform to its ful potential or can some older version drivers be better for performance?

 

It is almost always best to have the latest drivers.

New drivers are brought out to improve performance, stability or compatibility. Sometimes you may find that a newer driver reduces performance in exchange for stability or to fix a compatibitily issue that wasn't affecting you so you could be better off with an older driver. In all other cases the latest driver is best.

This does not include beta or unofficial drivers as they are experimental in nature and therefore can perform great or terribly and stability is random.

I am using unofficial drivers as they are provided by Nvidia for Desktops not laptops but have no negative side effects.

Because laptopvideo2go mod the inf file Blu-ray copyprotection prevents you playing the movie. The secret is to install the driver without a modified INF.

To do this download the driver from Nvidia - I recommend 169.25.
To get to it specify that you have a desktop graphics card as close to your model as possible e.g. the 8600GT

When you run the downloaded file it will extract contents to a folder. If it auto-starts doing and install cancel as it will fail.

==Vista instructions==
Go to device manager.
Select your display adapter (eg. Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT)
Choose update driver software.
= Here is the part where you force it to use a desktop driver without modding the INF =
Choose "browse my computer for driver software"
Then "Let me pick from a list..."
Then "Have disk"
Navigate to where you extracted the Nvidia driver and select the inf
The INF will contain a list of supported graphics cards. Pick the one that closest matches your system (for m1530 go for 8600GT)
Click Next and ..... Bob is your fathers brother.

Hope this helps.

One other thing which i have just noticed (may well be very obvious) is that the battery settings are also veeeery important! I was getting like 3200 on 3dMark06 and bout 2200 on pcMark05 and i couldnt figure out why.... my battery settings where on "power saver"! I changed that to performance and got 4500 for 3dMark and 4900 for pcmark...

Thanks for the advise buttonMasher, im now using the desktop equivilant driver for my graphics card.

btw, Always remember to defrag and run ccleaner before you test your system to ensure optimum performance.

p.s the 9600gt is now out!!! it has 512mb of dedicated memory and it is supposed to own its predocessor (8600)!!

I wonder if dell will offer it on their future xps systems....

They say that Defrag isn't really that important on a NTFS formated harddrive so can't say I've noticed performance improvement from defraging since FAT32 days. Solid State Drives definetly won't need defrag.

The 9600GT is somewhere inbetween the 8600GT and the 8800GT. It will never beat an 8800GT/GTs/GTX/Ultra but it's a good step up from the 8600GT. I'd personally be more interested in an 8800GT card in my next laptop than a 9600GT but it will likely be a while before my next upgrade so by then they'll have the 9800s.

Glad to see another person getting the best performance out of their system rather than sticking with stock settings and loosing out.