Hey guys, just recently got my XPS 2 but I'm having a few issues with it, mainly around the graphics card and its drivers.
The main problem is that I can't watch a DVD unless I have the whole system running at maximum performance - if the CPU is running at the batterymode 800 Mhz then the playback is jerky and while the graphics card is on battery,frames get 'stuck' and briefly show over the new frame. Clearly there's something wrong here, even when the machine is running on battery it's easily capable of playing a DVD back smoothly. I've tried installing the new drivers from Dell's site, and then reverting back to the old ones, but it makes no difference at all, another problem is the DVDs aren't scaling to fit the screen - they run in a sort of 4:3 mode, so I get a letterbox in the middle of the screen with borders on all four sides. I've still to properly test 3D performance, it wasn't particularly smooth in Halo or Sunrise but the machine only has 512MB ram which may be the problem when the machine is running full whack at 1600/1920x1200, I'm going to try it with some benchmarks shortly.
I'm generally unfamliar with Nvidia drivers as my preference has been towards ATi over the last couple of years, so I'd appreciate any advice in getting this sorted - tomorrow the machine is at the end of its seven day acceptance period so I need to decide what I'm going to do with the machine, it's unacceptable in its current state as it's clearly not right.
John
The main problem is that I can't watch a DVD unless I have the whole system running at maximum performance - if the CPU is running at the batterymode 800 Mhz then the playback is jerky and while the graphics card is on battery,frames get 'stuck' and briefly show over the new frame. Clearly there's something wrong here, even when the machine is running on battery it's easily capable of playing a DVD back smoothly. I've tried installing the new drivers from Dell's site, and then reverting back to the old ones, but it makes no difference at all, another problem is the DVDs aren't scaling to fit the screen - they run in a sort of 4:3 mode, so I get a letterbox in the middle of the screen with borders on all four sides. I've still to properly test 3D performance, it wasn't particularly smooth in Halo or Sunrise but the machine only has 512MB ram which may be the problem when the machine is running full whack at 1600/1920x1200, I'm going to try it with some benchmarks shortly.
I'm generally unfamliar with Nvidia drivers as my preference has been towards ATi over the last couple of years, so I'd appreciate any advice in getting this sorted - tomorrow the machine is at the end of its seven day acceptance period so I need to decide what I'm going to do with the machine, it's unacceptable in its current state as it's clearly not right.
John
