First Confirmed M18 order (9800 mobility) - Page 6

Yeah most of the time they seem to ship early. Hell they shipped my new XPS with the new 9800 a week and a half from what they said. No complaints here though

Order Cancelled

What the FU#$&^% HELL!

For a while it looked like I was in better shape than the rest of you guys since I received an email saying that shipping would be delayed 'til Septamber 2. I just go online to check the shipping date and see that the order is cancelled now. They could not even write me an email about this.

Damit! After reading all your problems and now mine, I'd be sooo happy if Dell just goes out of business. I think I'll just buy an Alienware and wait 'til they have the M18 available (probably be the same time as Dell gets it's fu@!#$% act together).

Laptop Man, be patient, sometimes things get screwed up like that then all of a sudden they've shipped your laptop. Just hang in there bro. It'll be worth it

Received card yesterday, performed install. Wasn't anything really hard about it. Booted up, everything seemed fine. Installed drivers off of Dell's site. Went to run Double Cross ATI demo, artifacts everywhere. Not just random, but evenly spaced out and either at the top 1/3 or bottom 1/3 depending on the app that is run. Tried DNA and Omega drivers, both 4.7 and 4.8 varieties, same results. Some programs if you run them in a different res will not show the artifacts, but most modes do. Tried the usual, reinstalling DX9.0c, reinstalling Dell Resource drivers from their site, booting with everything disabled using MSCONFIG, still problems. Ran Microsoft's memory diagnostics, passed. Ran Dell's Diagnostics, testing system memory, video memory, video controller, system bus, fans, sensors, everything I could possibly test, and everything passed. Short of a complete format, I'm not sure what to do at this point. Oh, and I've also been running BIOS A03 since I got the laptop without problems.

Elkay

sheesh you guys are getting MR9800's all over the place and they are holding my laptop because they are short of them now =p

SHAME ON YOU ALL

stop ordering MR9800's .... so I can get my XPS .... *cough cough*

no crap... seeing me and rogue are the first 2 original orders

Just did just that. Tore it all the way down, blew all the connections to make sure no dust somehow got in there, got it all back together, and just tested it. Same thing. I don't know what it could be at this point since ATI doens't have their own diagnostic tool to test specific VPU functions. Weird thing is, 3dMark01, 3dMark03 and AquaMark all run flawlessly. Unreal 2K4 runs flawlessly. Every ATI demo is flawed. Alice is 50/50. Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness is flawless. Ghost Recon has flaws at 1920x1200x32 but runs fine at 1600x1200x32 and 1920x1200x16. It's just really, really weird, and I have nobody else to compare with. Maybe I can dig up an old laptop drive and try a clean install on that because I'll go back to my 9700 for now before I'll format this drive again.

Lon

More testing. Manually deinstalled DX9 back to 8.1 with a utility and went to the DX9b that came on the resource cd. No difference. DX9c then wouldn't reinstall though. Had to rerun Windows XP SP2 install to get DX9c reinstalled. Still the same problems. Thinking of trying to go back to BIOS A02.

Lon

I wanna play too....

Keep us updated on your progress! :drunk:

I just called dell too because their "replacement" screen they installed in my machine has worse light leakage and like 15 dead pixels...

maybe my card will come about the same time... god willing...

glad I haven't ordered it yet.

although I do plan to.

Elkay. really sorry that your card is malfunctioning. It sounds like a memory problem. I don't think that theres anything that you are going to be able to do to fix it. This scenario is my worst nightmare. I have an opportunity to buy a 9800MR from a 3rd party and I am really afraid if I do that the card will be bad, or go bad and I will be screwed. But if I don't I am afraid that I may not ever be able to get my hands on one again. At least your part is warranted. Silver lining I guess. What are the odds of getting 2 bad ones in a row? ( from dell, probably even money )

Well, I can say I think I've exhausted every possible option at this point. I've put a different drive in the machine and done a complete reinstall from scratch using strictly Dell drivers (including for the MR9800) which brought it also back to clean SP1 and DX9b. Same deal right off the bat. Gambled and downgraded to BIOS A02, in the BIOS it said 256MB vid card but not installed, but it did allow me to boot back in as if everything was fine, but the snow effects were still there. I tried hooking up to external video, the effects were visible on a CRT as well. I would say that it's definitely a video memory problem, but Dell's Diag utility does a very throrough test of the video memory, and it came back fine. I'd also be seeing problems in memory hungry games like Unreal 2K3, but yet I've yet to see any problems there. 3dMark01 and 03 both run flawlessly as well. I almost want to say it's got to be something very specific in the chipset itself, or god forbid that it's not compatible with the 9100 BIOS since this was technically an XPS card. I really don't see ATI manufacturing 2 different cards for the 9100/XPS. Guess I'll call Dell tomorrow and see what can be done about an exchange. Oh.. and the real kicker.. I went back and looked at my invoice and on the invoice it was listed as part C7070. =P

Have you tried underclocking the memory and or core with something like ATI Tool ?

I *think* Dell may do individual tests on each system to max out the memory on each unit. I say this because my 9700 seems to run at 398, while I've heard others say theirs run at 445.

Since you bought the card seperately one would assume that if Dell does do testing on each individual unit they did not get the opportunity to do testing on yours. Maybe if they had they would have underclocked the memory or core on your specific unit.

Just some thoughts...

wow its nice to see old faces like red, im a dell for-um regular (under da rickster) used to have that horrible 5100 with overheating and that whole headache about the ati 9000 64mb (was one of the first people to try it)

i ordered a 9100 with ati 9700 128mb, and a week later they release the 9800 mobility (in the u.k.), not sure what to do i read these forums and saw how hard it is to get that upgrade (england would be 10x harder to get) so i immediately returned my 9100 and opted for a new one with a 9800 mobility (which i have now and runs great) wanted to thank you guys for saving me alot of heartache... (amazing thing is the new system only cost me about £30 /$50 more with the EXACT same specs and the moblity 9800 instead, next day later the price shot up 200 or more)

also Briandl has a very good point, your card may need to be underclocked a little, as even people playing doom 3 got artifacts and they just turned down the clocks a bit and it disappeared, since your card hasnt been tested on your machine that may be the problem? try turning it down a bit until the artifacts go away, if not then it truly is a faulty card.

Hey informant ( da-rickster )!

We blazed the 5100 MR9000 trail over on forums.us.dell.com back in the day. Glad to hear that you took the smart route and got the 9800 with your original purchase.

BTW I still have that horrible 5100. It still runs fine, but it is used for quicken and excel nowadays with an underclocked MR9000.

Good to see you again!

heya red how ya doing - longtime no see, lol yea i still have my 5100 and i spent so much money upgrading the vid card to the ati 9000 (i did it only few months ago) but was so fed up with the overall performance (not to mention how many faulty m9's are out there) that i decided to get the i9100, runs like a dream.

i really hope things work out for you getting that m9800 because i remember how much it was a REAL PAIN when we were trying to get our ati 9000's for the 5100, i couldnt help but laugh when someone said dell sent them a desktop 9800 pro instead of the m9800, because that happened to me when i asked for the ati 9000 (they sent me a desktop ati 9000 even though i asked 100 times is it for the 5150 laptop)

well at least we know someone got their 9800 (even though it has issues) so it looks hopeful that you will receive yours, best of luck to ya.

I tried that even. Underclocked both core and memory by 100 each, still did it. There's definitely a flaw in the core itself somewhere. Anyway, I called Dell, they said they'd overnight me another card, which really surprised me. Get off the phone, go check the order number, and it has a shipping date of Sept. 1. Man, talk about a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. ::SHRUG:: Hope you all get your cards soon and that you have better luck than me.

Lon