1720 + 8600m GT performance issues?

First time posting. But hopefully I can help some other people if they are having similar issues as me.

My wife and I just recently purchased a inspirion 1720 with a 8600mGT to plan and play some games together. I have a 8600 GT in my desktop so I assumed I knew what range the new laptop would play in (FPS wise), even with the ddr2 and new die.

We recieved it about 2 weeks ago, and first thing I noticed was very sluggish FPS on all the games I installed (20% of what my desktop 8600 GT can produce). So I go on the normal witch hunt, trying different drivers for the GPU and make sure all chipsets and bios updates are in...all to no avail.

So I dig deeper..I downloading 3dmark, GPU-Z, and CPU-Z. First thing I notice is my 3dmarks are 1.5k when other 1720s are getting 3-4k on their tests (even with somewhat lower stats )



So then I run GPU-Z and CPU-Z and the only difference I could find from other 1720s is that the 8600M GT I had was running at PCI-E X1 not the maximum the card (and motherboard) can handle which is X16.


*the imageshack pic is from another 1720 who ran GPU-Z

So I looked around to see the difference from 1x PCI-E to X16 (my thinking was zero difference just like AGP 4x to 8X)...and apparently the difference is HUGE.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/104...0gt/index.html

*Only difference from those 2 cards is the speed at which the bus is running for PCI-E

I also concluded that those benchmarks fall around what Im getting compared to other 1720 users with the exact same GPU.

So Ive contacted Dell and had to convince him that my card was NOT suppose to run at that X1 bus speed. After and hour and a half, he did not know how to fix that(Bios has no option) and he scheduled a call back within 2 days from another tech to try and get this resolved.

I do have the option to just return the laptop(within a month). But hopefully if by sending it back and having them replace it after troubleshooting with them, I wont get another lemon..

so lesson of the story, if your getting less performance then what your expecting..run GPU-Z and make sure your card is running properly.

AngryCanuck

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately its not a performance problem with vista. I max them while the laptop is plugged in, and still the PCI-E bus speed is X1.

Also I ask if anyone else has a 1720 with 8600m GT, If they could take a screen of their results so i can show dell more proof that this card is not suppose to be like this!.

Thank you

Yup its in max performance, with little to no regard for battery life. Thats when its plugged in, when i disconnect it, it does switch to the balance profile which i had it set at. Either profile shows X1 as PCI-E bus speed, unfortunately.

Angry

Ive tried dell drivers (both canadian and US drivers), laptop2go drivers as well as modified omega and mobile drivers. I even tried the normal nvidia drivers telling them to think of the card as a normal 8600 GT.

Im using the laptop2go drivers at the moment. No driver changed the PCI-E bus speed on this laptop.

thanks. The bios also caaught my eye, but you cannot flash the bios without voiding all your warranty. I actually had the dell tech try and tell me that i might have to overclock this card to get the bus to work (Uh, and void my warranty and have you hang up on me? no thanks!)

First thing we did when we got this laptop was take all the bloatware off this system and consolodate all the partitions into one and just installed vista on it. so is as fresh as it can be on a dell

I have tried an older version of GPU-Z to no avail.

thanks for the inquiries. Im really thinking this is a faulty GPU(could be that bios issue that i cant touch) or wasnt installed right.

Heres an update on what has happened since my last posts..

Dell did call me back, but they had no idea what was going on, they again tried to suggest that the 8600m GT is suppose to run at X1 PCI bus insted of X16 and that its a "feature". After showing them even more proof, they suggest just returning the laptop for a brand new one as they wont be able to fix that.

The new laptop took 2 weeks to get to me,and its sitting at home, before I even format Ill be running CPU-Z and GPU-z to compare to what I had earlier. If Its X1 its also going back and im getting something else.

I know 8600s have die heat issues, but they can find a better way. This was probably done as a "silent" fix so they dont have overheating problems, and as most users wouldnt find that, they have probably gotten away with it on other systems as well.......horrible.

Update:

The new laptop came, and it has exact same specs(even bios) other then the X16 instead of X1. I get 3500 on 3dmark 06, which is 2X as much then with the laptop running at X1 PCI express.

So make sure your Dells are running at X16 PCI express BUS, otherwise you could be losing out on alot of performance!