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XPS: Replacement unit STILL locking up. - Page 2

post #21 of 94
4/4/04 at 8:10pm
Thread Starter 
av8ing, yeah. That's the symptom alright.

Dell is going to see a SEVERE backlash with this. This thing is targeted at Gamers, and gamers are GOING to find this problem...

They need to take this unit (and anything else that requires the Mobility 9700) off the market until they can definitively solve this problem. Until then, consider every *DELL* unit that has the Mobility 9700 in it a potential lemon.

I hate to break it to everyone waiting on an XPS or 9100 w/Mobility 9700 - but the chances of your getting a defective GPU card is EXTREMELY high. Expect headaches at this point. I consider myself lucky that ONE of the 3 GPU boards i've tried is ok. Unless you're willing to either have a field tech come by and swap GPU's until you get a good one, or do the work yourself, I would not recommend buying one.
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post #22 of 94
4/4/04 at 8:31pm
Well I've had my XPS since Friday no review yet, but the system is very solid. I'm just using the shipped OS on the system I wanted nothing installed except for Dell's photo program just to see how it is. I ran 3dmark03 looped six times on all test the first nite. I've installed Rise of Nation, Battlefield Vietnam, Unreal 2004, and Far Cry so far not a single problem. And I've been gaming almost nonstop today between Unreal and Far Cry. One more thing I have a Sony desktop at home that I put in a Radeon 9800 pro in and Battlefield Vietnam will not work on my home system with AA on but my XPS works flawless although not a fast for obvious reasons with Battlefield. So far I'm very pleased with the system. Hopefully those getting ready to recieve theirs will have good luck also.
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post #23 of 94
4/4/04 at 9:18pm
Has anyone heard if the other notebook manufacturers who use the 9700 get such a high failure rate?
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post #24 of 94
4/4/04 at 9:20pm
My head is spinning.

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post #25 of 94
4/4/04 at 9:21pm
Thread Starter 
Dell's the only one that has the default core set to 464mhz. The rest are clocked significantly lower.
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post #26 of 94
4/4/04 at 9:29pm
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones too... I've had my iXPS since Tuesday and its easily handled everything I've thrown at it... I reloaded the OS and am running the Omega drivers and everything is running flawlessly... I've played plenty of UT2k4 and Splinter Cell 2 and not a single lockup at all.

Of course, I gave Dell hell about my system and the delay in getting it to me, and thus it was actually moved backwards in the production cycle for them to do further testing with the video card, so I can only think they made sure my card was good....

In either case, I agree that if Dell is still producing systems with bad GPU's, they need to stop production and work with ATI to solve the problem.

*** FYI, the Omega drivers install advanced control panel tools, including RadLinker, and it is detecting my core clock at 445.50, memory at 263.25... I wonder if Dell did this on purpose or not? Karl, you claim your systems shipped at 464 core?
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post #27 of 94
4/4/04 at 9:46pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Panther04
*** FYI, the Omega drivers install advanced control panel tools, including RadLinker, and it is detecting my core clock at 445.50, memory at 263.25... I wonder if Dell did this on purpose or not? Karl, you claim your systems shipped at 464 core?
Yeah, I disable floating point precision in Powerstrip, so it reports the "rounded up" 464/263 speeds.
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post #28 of 94
4/4/04 at 9:49pm
Panther, are the Omega drivers compatable with the 64 meg version of the 9700 video card? I might be interested in loading them on my PC.

Also, where did you locate them?
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post #29 of 94
4/4/04 at 9:49pm
Well.. I'm d/l 3dmark03 and have used RadLinker to change my clock to 463.5/263.25 and will run some tests... what test should I run to see if this higher clock locks up or not?

Karl - In talking to XPS techs, were you able to get them to tell you what the card should be clocked at according to Dell specs? Is it supposed to the be 464/263 or the 445/263 as mine shipped? What is the official "card spec" according to Dell?
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post #30 of 94
4/4/04 at 9:52pm
ArchAngel - there was a post on this forum with a link to them, but you can go to http://www.drivenheaven.net and look for the link on the left to Omega's Corner... that will bring you to the site that has the Omega drivers
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post #31 of 94
4/4/04 at 10:10pm
Well... I ran the default tests and I too locked up with my clock set to 464.5/263.25, it locked up right on the first test, about 20 seconds into it. I re-ran at 445/263 and it was running through those tests just fine. So... I guess I need to contact Dell and see to it that they come and replace my video card.... anybody in particular I should be asking for in the XPS support department?
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post #32 of 94
4/4/04 at 10:40pm
When I ran the tests, (and i ran all the tests the first time), it came back with a score around 1800, which from what I can tell is a pretty crappy score for this system... what settings should I be running to optimize my performance?
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post #33 of 94
4/4/04 at 10:44pm
Try everything balanced with application prefernce for AA and AF that should put you in the 3300 range with no overclocking. If you ran the test straight out the box your settings I believe should have been right. Make sure 3dmark is set ot 1024 by 768 as well the other settings are changed in your desktop Radeon settings.
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post #34 of 94
4/4/04 at 10:58pm
SimpsonFan - Thanks for the heads up, will try again with those settings...

Also, after several attempts at running the card at any core speed higher than 445, I am immediately locking up in 3dmark03... the real question now is do I call and spend more time on the phone w/Dell in trying to get my card replaced, or do I just live with it considering it is running at what is considered spec for the card itself?

What do you all think? Is it worth the effort to get a card that can run 19mhz faster on the core than what the spec for this card is? Does that really equate to a tremendous boost in performance for games?
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post #35 of 94
4/4/04 at 11:00pm
Where are you getting the 'spec' for the card? What is came installed as? What it is listed in documentation? what?j

B.
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post #36 of 94
4/4/04 at 11:08pm
BBerman - I got the info that the spec is 445/263 from this post: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=18080&page=1 which Karl claims comes from HardOCP's "first look review" - so I take it that's what they got from ATI?

Well, I re-ran the 3dmark tests with the settings Simpson recommended and now I got 3369 for a score... so I feel better about that. I'm still not sure if the extra 19mhz is worth the effort to get the GPU replaced, so I'll wait and see what others have to say to that...
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post #37 of 94
4/4/04 at 11:11pm
If we are gonna quote this stuff to tech support, don't you think the link should be to ATI or Dell?

B.
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post #38 of 94
4/4/04 at 11:15pm
I just looked at that article and it states:

"Our test notebook had the Mobility Radeon 9700 with a core clock of 446MHz and a memory clock of 263MHz, or 526MHz effectively because of the DDR interface. "

Where is carl getting 464.5 and 263.5? Confused here, and want to make sure I test my machine properly when it comes in tomorrow...

B.
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post #39 of 94
4/4/04 at 11:26pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Panther04
Well.. I'm d/l 3dmark03 and have used RadLinker to change my clock to 463.5/263.25 and will run some tests... what test should I run to see if this higher clock locks up or not?

Karl - In talking to XPS techs, were you able to get them to tell you what the card should be clocked at according to Dell specs? Is it supposed to the be 446/263 or the 445/263 as mine shipped? What is the official "card spec" according to Dell?
445.50/263.25 IS the correct number. Again, if you turn off floating point precision, the numbers are simply rounded up or down to the nearest full mhz. If I enable floating point precision with powerstrip, it's displayed as 445.5/263.25. I simply don't care about the decimal points, as they are statistically insignificant.

if I fudged a number in my post before, I meant 446/263 (445.50 rounded up to 446, 263.25 rounded down to 263). I am NOT an overclocker
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post #40 of 94
4/4/04 at 11:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl
Dell's the only one that has the default core set to 464mhz. The rest are clocked significantly lower.
Eum just wondering... your system comes w/ 464 MHz as the default setting? or u ment in the later post the 446 MHz setting.. i was gonna oc it a bit to 453 then i remeber reading it somewhere on the internet that 9700 is ment to run btwn 400-450mhz
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