7950GTX GO

Bald-Eagle22 · 4 May 2007 at 07:00

I have just bought a very nice Dell XPS M1710 Laptop with a 7950GTX go . It has Vista Ultmate 2GB of Ram and a 2.1 GHZ C2D

Now this is my frst time using Vista ( i installed it on my desktop and binned it ) how can i find out what Graphics drivers I have and mores the question do i upsate using the 7 series drivers or the 7900GS Go drivers ?

Bald-Eagle22 · 4 May 2007 at 16:05

Any ideas guys ?

lay-z-boy · 4 May 2007 at 17:43

Unfortunately, what could have been a high performance laptop with almost flawless drivers is now no longer, vista doesn't have any decent drivers for the go series of graphics cards, not even the desktops.
XP however runs like gold with dells drivers.

Stick with what dell have put on there (might want to download and install the latest from their site) but don't expect anything amazing, vista really does make it seem like a slug of a machine.

Bald-Eagle22 · 4 May 2007 at 21:55

lay-z-boy said:
Unfortunately, what could have been a high performance laptop with almost flawless drivers is now no longer, vista doesn't have any decent drivers for the go series of graphics cards, not even the desktops.
XP however runs like gold with dells drivers.

Stick with what dell have put on there (might want to download and install the latest from their site) but don't expect anything amazing, vista really does make it seem like a slug of a machine.

I have everything funnily enough working fine with Vista ( I do know what you mean though I binned Vista on my desktop and whent back to XP.)

Do you think it worth insatalling XP on it ?

Teknobry · 4 May 2007 at 22:20

For gaming, definately get XP on there!

I'm actually looking for that exact laptop spec, can I ask where you got it from and how much?

lay-z-boy · 4 May 2007 at 22:57

Bald-Eagle22 said:
I have everything funnily enough working fine with Vista ( I do know what you mean though I binned Vista on my desktop and whent back to XP.)

Do you think it worth insatalling XP on it ?

Deffo, I get over twice the fps in css and 3 times the fps in stalker and fear. :eek:

Vista is poo for games.

can I ask where you got it from and how much?

No you can't. Read the FAQ

OcUK did stock them, that's where I got mine but now they don't you can't talk about competitors.

Surfer · 6 May 2007 at 14:35

Teknobry said:
For gaming, definately get XP on there!

I'm actually looking for that exact laptop spec, can I ask where you got it from and how much?

i can tell you where i got mine if you like. email in trust. Paid approx £950.

H0wz3r · 13 Jun 2007 at 09:07

I bought an XPS M1710 about 3 weeks ago with similar specs:

C2D T7400 @ 2.16GHz
2Gb 667MHz RAM
160Gb 7200rpm HDD
Go 7950GTX Graphics

I'm running Vista Ultimate with nVidia 158.24 drivers. Download the driver from the nVidia website (choose from the 7 series drivers) then obtain a modded INF file to allow the driver to install.

Under 3DMark03 in XP I obtain results of about 21000 - in Vista I get about 20400 which is a vast improvement over Dell's supplied drivers.

Games show little difference between XP and Vista, only about 3 or 4 fps at the most.

If this is the way drivers are going for Vista then I would recommend you stick with Vista as the operating system is much more of a joy to use than XP in my opinion.

Legionaire68 · 13 Jun 2007 at 09:41

Hi, how do you obtain the INF file? Waiting for my 9400 with a Go 7900, 7200 2GHZ and Vista Ultimate to be delivered this week

Its only got a 1440 x 900 screen so shouldn't be too much of a push for it.

MartinG · 13 Jun 2007 at 10:14

I've got the same laptop and got modded inf files etc from here http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

It's made a huge difference; I was getting poxy frame-rates even in WoW. Also got a fan control program from here, http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html, certainly worth getting.

james.miller · 13 Jun 2007 at 10:20

i was looking at an xps m1710 for myself, but then i saw the Rock xtreme 770's ....with an 8700m card. choices choices

Crowze · 13 Jun 2007 at 10:25

Not heard of the 8700m, can't find any mention of it at all so I've no idea how well it performs. Personally I'd still take the Xtreme CTX Pro over the Dell, solely for the quality of their support.

Emlyn_Dewar · 13 Jun 2007 at 10:44

I used the mobileforce drivers when I was using Vista on laptop, I still use mobileforce on XP aswell since Nvidia are absolutely rubbish at supporting their mobile gpu's...

Legionaire68 · 13 Jun 2007 at 11:09

Could I put XP on the main partition that Vista is on and keep the recovery partition with the vista image that Dell has on their systems? Only got it to play games on and Vista on my desktop is nice apart from game issues with Punkbuster etc and crap support for the X-FI. Would like to keep recover partition just in case, anyone done this?

H0wz3r · 13 Jun 2007 at 12:06

Legionaire68 said:
Could I put XP on the main partition that Vista is on and keep the recovery partition with the vista image that Dell has on their systems? Only got it to play games on and Vista on my desktop is nice apart from game issues with Punkbuster etc and crap support for the X-FI. Would like to keep recover partition just in case, anyone done this?

Yes, you simply format the C: partition and install XP as you normally would. The recovery partition D: is untouched unless you specifically format it yourself.

Re-installing Vista from this partition is a sinch so if you ever want to go back to it, then it takes about 10 mins to reload it from scratch.

I have Vista installed on my main PC which is used for gaming. Personally I don't have many issues with Vista and the Punkbuster problems can be circumvented by downloading the update utility and 'patching' all games that use it. I haven't had a problem with it since.

As for the X-FI drivers / support, you could always try YouP-Pax - they worked a treat for me and includes all the apps. Go here to download http://www.youp-pax.org/viewthread.php?tid=362&extra=page=1 Failing that, Creative have promised full Vista support for all the apps and drivers very soon...

H0wz3r · 13 Jun 2007 at 12:16

Crowze said:
Not heard of the 8700m, can't find any mention of it at all so I've no idea how well it performs. Personally I'd still take the Xtreme CTX Pro over the Dell, solely for the quality of their support.

I wouldn't go for the CTX simply for the support, if only because the 8600m (not heard of 8700m) still can't touch the 7950GTX for raw processing power. By going with Rock you'd be trading the spec for support (which should be good anyway considering the amount of money you're willing to spend!) and that's surely bad value for money?

Dell's support have, in my experience, been second to none and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone. Don't know about Rock as I've never dealt with them.

At the end of the day, I'd go for the laptop that provided best value for money as far as the spec is concerned.

james.miller · 13 Jun 2007 at 12:37

they both seem very evenly priced to me

btw did you guys go with the high res options for your screens?

Crowze · 13 Jun 2007 at 12:45

H0wz3r said:
I wouldn't go for the CTX simply for the support, if only because the 8600m (not heard of 8700m) still can't touch the 7950GTX for raw processing power. By going with Rock you'd be trading the spec for support (which should be good anyway considering the amount of money you're willing to spend!) and that's surely bad value for money?

Dell's support have, in my experience, been second to none and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone. Don't know about Rock as I've never dealt with them.

At the end of the day, I'd go for the laptop that provided best value for money as far as the spec is concerned.

The CTX Pro has the 7950GTX i.e. a similar spec to the Dell at around the same price, and in my experience their support is the best I know of - granted I've been very much been put off Dell for more than a few issues a few years ago, so they may have changed since.

lay-z-boy · 13 Jun 2007 at 12:46

8700GT M

http://www.4gamer.net/news.php?url=/news/history/2007.06/20070613100000detail.html

H0wz3r · 13 Jun 2007 at 12:52

james.miller said:
they both seem very evenly priced to me

btw did you guys go with the high res options for your screens?

I would agree on the price, they're both priced about the same for a very similar spec to each other.

The main difference is the screens in that the Dell comes with a 17" widescreen 1920x1200 'Truelife' (a fancy word for 'glossy' I think!) screen whereas you have to specify a hi-res screen on the Rock which I think has a res of 1680x1050, again this has a 'x-black' coating (glossy)

Obviously as I have the Dell, my screen is of the 1920x1200 variety with the glossy coating.

I would recommend the hi-res screens without a doubt BUT only if you specify a good graphics board to run it at such a high resolution. If you're only going to go for a more modest graphics setup e.g. 7600 / 7700 or 8600 / 8700 then I would perhaps err on the side of caution and go for the lower res screens e.g. one of the 1440 ones.