Dell :: Poor OpenGL Graphics Performance New M4400
Aug 26, 2009
I've just taken my new precision m4400 out of the box and I've already found 2 majour things wrong with it. I'm hoping someone can help me with this.
FIRST:
I'm getting very poor graphics performance. Both observed bad windows refresh times and low OpenGL benchmarks using cinebench 10. I've already run windows update and installed the latest nvidia driver.
Initially I was getting an opengl score of ~1500 on cinebench, now i'm getting ~3500 but it is still too low. It should be over 6000 ....
Over the last few months the graphics seem to have deteriorated dramatically, particularly when using the 'speed' mode. The laptop will not play any high definition videos (even with a resolution of just 720p as well!) remotely smoothly, videos which play without a hitch on my 7 year old Pentium 4 with 1gb of ram and 256mb graphics! In fact, graphics and the whole PC itself seem to run much more smoothly when using the 'stamina' setting. This really makes no sense in my mind. It's quite irritating and disappointing since I wanted to be able to attach this laptop to the 42inch plasmascreen with the HDMI cable and watch films!
I upgraded to a new driver to see if it would help (using one of the driver packs made by nautis/dox in the 'discoveries on Vaio Z hybrid graphics' thread) but it has not helped at all, just made the 'stamina' setting even slower!
Will I get around a complete re-instal to factory settings?
I just need to verify my sanity by asking you how your Studio XPS 1640 with a t9800@2.93GHz and the 4670 ATI graphics card performs in general. I was playing Left4Dead and now I have the Left4Dead2 demo installed, and it just seems a little glitchy with both of them. I am running it at 1080p and graphics mostly on high, aside from shading and AA is off I believe, but it is still glitchy. The way the game recommends it to be run with my computer's specs is maxed out, however, its far too jerky and slow. Is there something stupid I may be doing wrong? Also, a friend with the studio 15 and a smaller cpu and the lower gpu seems to run it better, albeit on lower settings, but it just seems smoother.
I have the m1530 and recently got team fortress 2. Have updated BIOS A012, somewhat updated graphics driver 185.85, can't seem to download the 186.06, links are down for Windows XP Pro 32 Bit version. I am running the game at 800*600 and it still lags.
My screen becomes extremely choppy when more than 3 players are on screen at the same time. From what I've gather on other threads,
Anyway, he has yet to install anything beyond what came with the laptop and he commented that a antivirus scan took 8+ hours to run.
That seemed incredible to me so I went over and we ran a few benchmarks and the results were frighteningly bad.
Using HDTune, the normal curve one sees of a declining arch is rife with drastic spikes all the way through with minimum of 2.2 MB/sec (seems VERY low), and a maximum of 65 MB/sec (normalish).
Additionally, the CPU usage was 11.9 percent, which seems unusually high.
Well, my Nvidia 8400 died for second time and I called Dell to replace it. After asking for a sustainable solution and to ensure me that I won't have the same issue once more, they said that they will install me a new motherboard revision which reduces the possibilities of having my GPU dead.
Thus, they replaced the motherboard. I didn't format my system but kept my Windows Vista Ultimate x64 installation.
After using the system for a couple of hours I realized that the system was under-performing. Then I checked with CPU z utility and found out that the CPU clock was stuck @1,6GHz (although my power scheme was high performance). My processor is the T7500. The system was overheated and the clock speed was reduced (I guess). The thing was that I could almost do nothing, not even surf on the internet. This makes my laptop unable to deal with applications that need lots of CPU power.
Does anybody else face the same problem? Is there something I could do to return to the old situation? Should I contact Dell and complain? It is a huge problem cause half of my applications cannot be used any more!! After a few minutes of use the laptop stops performing normally!
Could it be that if I format my HD and make a fresh install the problem will be resolved? (I repeat that I didn't format my system after the MB replacement).
I have been getting really poor hard drive performance since I've got my computer. It's getting a 5.9 on the windows experience index which I think is quite low for an 128GB SSD? Also, when copying and pasting large files it seems to stall for a few seconds during the process.
Has anyone else been having this problem or know a solution? What kind WEI ratings are people getting?
My machine is a SXPS 1645, Core i7 720Q, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD.
I'm a little sick of sub-par Flash performance on mac. I'm aware of the Adobe-Apple catfight.
Using a mid-2009 15" with a C2D at 2.53 GHz alongside Nvidia's 9400 M, Firefox 3.6.3 on OS X 10.6.3. Flash version is 10.0.45.2 -- the most recent release version. Have tried the 10.1 beta (and newer RC) with little change.
Streaming YouTube vids staggers every minute or two for a few seconds. This is not an issue I've had much, if any, of on a Windows box.
I've tried the about:config suggestion where you extend the time in which Firefox saves its state in case of a crash; still seeing the stuttering. Is this just a Firefox issue? Firefox + Mac issue?
I'd migrate to Chrome / Safari, but both browsers seem to render fonts smaller than Firefox does; Safari has a minimum font limit, but it seems like that's not always respected (or 9-point fonts are much smaller than I'd imagine).
MacBook Pros with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M silicon making questionable graphics switching decisions
Quote:
Originally Posted by Engadget
"With every choice you make, ask yourself: is this a good choice, or is this a bad choice?" That's the sage advice we were constantly given as tykes -- and it's advice that replays in our feeble brains every day as we write news. Turns out it's also a piece of wisdom Apple's latest round of MacBook Pros would be wise to heed, because currently, they're making some awful decisions about when to turn on that power-sapping NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M discrete chipset. Read on to see what we mean........
When I first received my M4400, it was pretty choppy and sluggish, even on the desktop for things like opening start, and clicking on the dropdown menus! But when I went into the Nvidia control panel and changed the resolution from 1900x1200 to 1200x800, it started performing smoothly.
The M4400 supports dual-channel DDR2-800 memory. The M6400 supports dual-channel DDR3-1066 memory. Both systems have a FSB that operates at 1066 MHz.
I'm trying to understand if the different memory technologies ultimately make a difference for computational (i.e. math on large data sets) performance in these particular machines.
Consider an M4400 and M6400 with identical CPUs and amounts of DDR-2 and DDR-3 memory, respectively. And suppose that all relevant memory latencies are identical. For the sake of this question, I don't care about power consumption and heat (which is obviously a benefit of DDR3).
Question: Since both machines support dual-channel memory operation, the maximum effective bandwidth of the memory bus is doubled. So the dual-channel DDR2-800 can achieve 12.8 GB/sec transfer rate, while the dual-channel DDR3-1066 can achieve 17 GB/sec transfer rate. In either case, these rates are higher than the 8.5 GB/sec rate that the FSB can achieve, so it seems that performance in both machines is limited by the speed of the FSB (1066 MHz). Is that correct?
For more info on matched FSB and memory ratings under Core 2, see: [url]
I got myself a lovely little Precision M4400 on christmas eve. It was downgraded from Vista to XP from Dell. Since I have a specific way of setting up my systems, I spent a week in januray installing the OS from scratch.
Usually this isn't a problem, I have installed my own systems the past 15 years, and things have worked out pretty good so far. But there are some things about the M4400 that I simply don't understand, and I hope there are someone here that can guide me towards a solution.
The specs are: Dell Precision M4400, with 4Gb Ram, a Quadro FX 1700M graphics card, and a Intel WiFi Link 5300 AGN card. I am currently running 32bit Windows XP on it. I think those are the relevant specs for the things I'm fixing.
So, there are three main issues with the machine.
First, I haven't been able to find any official graphics driver for the machine! On the Dell site there are only drivers for Vista. If I select XP as the OS, I only see drivers for a 770M graphics card.
I got a forceware driver from Nvidia installed, but I get a lot of BSOD right now (sometimes from just resizing a Quicktime window!), so I could really need some help on this. That's the most critical issue .....
I have a Acer Aspire 5920G (Vista Home with SP1) laptop which I use for general purposes as well as occasional DVDs and a little games.
With the kind help from members of this forum I upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 4GB a couple of months ago but of course my 32bit Vista only uses 3GB which leaves 1GB unused. The laptop's processor is a T7300 at 2.00GHz.
Its NVIDIA GeForce 8600 M GT graphics card (with latest driver installed) seems to work quite well but a friend who I occasionally game with said I could go into the BIOS and allocate the unused 1GB of RAM to the card which will improve its performance.
I googled this to check but the articles I read (with my limited technical knowledge!!) seemed to say that allocating extra RAM in the BIOS does not work with dedicated cards and attempts to do so could in fact reduce performance.
I would be very grateful if an expert in this excellent forum who is knowledgeable about graphics cards could please clarify the situation for me. Basically can I go into the BIOS to increase the card's RAM allocation to improve performance as my friend suggested or is this a waste of time and/or dangerous ?
Looking at the NVIDIA system info, I see that it says Total Available Graphics is 1535MB but dedicated video memory is 256MB. Does this support what my friend says or is it unrelated ?
I've heard rumors that VAIO laptops have issues with OpenGL. Doing a quick google search, I've seen some posts (Not here) that mention issues with VAIOs and opengl, though all such posts seem to only to involve Intel and nVidia graphics cards.
Could anyone please confirm whether or not OpenGL works on their FW390? It uses an HD 3650 graphics card. Presumably OpenGL compatibility would be the same for other FW models with the same card. Haven't written any OpenGL code in quite a while, but wouldn't want to be unable to play with it again due to driver issues.
If it doesn't work with OpenGL, I might have to go with the incredibly hideous, though competitively priced, ASUS G50VT-X6 instead. (Don't care that much about laptop appearance, but the thought of using the ASUS to give a talk at a conference makes me shudder)
I have a newly installed program that requires OpenGL 2.0 on my Acer 5580 laptop in order to run key features. I've searched all over the internet for a solution to no avail.
Where can I find the driver upgrade?
Additional Specs: Intel 945gm graphics card with intel 950 media accelerator Windows XP SP3 DirectX 9c
I am aware this is Notebook review but I figure Dell is Dell and it could apply to all Dell branded products.
I ordered a Dell PC 2 weeks ago. It has been 'In Production' for 2 weeks now. I phoned CS today and I was transferred a total 8 times due to no one being able to match my Name with my order number.
I finally get through and they tell me that a part was on back order (i never received any emails about this and no notification on my confirmed order page before I checked out) .....
On my new studio 1536 the battery seems a little messed up.
By this I mean that my laptop will be put into sleep mode over night (by me) with 80 or 90% battery, and when I wake up (6 hours later or so) it will be at 8-15%.
Note that this is a NEW battery and has been charged and depleted several times since getting it on may 22nd.
I'm in the process of returning my system (not due to this paint issue) but due to the screen issues/dell's inability to give me a replacement [full story: The continued adventures about a boy and his laptop....
Back to this thread's topic, I have babied this thing and have never dinged this portion of the laptop on anything but the paint still seems to chip away.. does anyone else have anything like this picture?
I tried playing a dvd for the first time (in PowerDVD and Media Player). It's extremely blocky and generally looks like crap. When using it in Hybrid SLI though, the video looks fine. The integrated card should be more than capable of upconverting a DVD so that it doesn't look so horrible. Notice the lip of the counter and see how much blockier it looks in the first picture than the second.
I know when we first got our's we read about the grainy LG Screens and worked hard to avoid it.
Now we are looking to get a replacement system. Has this issue been resolved? Or do we still need to be on the look-out for those bad screens and make a special request not to have the LG ones
It's only since I started reading these forums to try and fix my fans being on all the time that I realised my XPS's battery life was way worse than most people's on here.
I have a six cell battery and out of a full charge I get maybe 1:35. this wouldn't be so bad except, when my warranty ran out 3 months ago, I made dell replace my current six cell battery which got around 1:17 full charge.
This current battery is only 3 months old, initially it did an two hours and a half but now i'm lucky to get an hour and a half out of it.
why my computer is eating my batteries? Other people talk about battery life of 3 hours plus
I have 3 laptops in my house, all use Intel cards. My other halfs D620 gets excellent signal everywhere downstairs but my new XPS 1530 seems to have poor/fair signal all the time.
I know it's not the router as the other laptops are and have been fine for months, I have updated the card to the latest Intel drivers but this didn't help?
I just had a D420 replaced By Dell for heating issues- after 4 motherboards- they Gave up and offered a replacement-
Now I got an E4300 and not to thrilled with it any comments about the 4300? did i just get a bad apple. My issues are = poor WIFI pickup.
it came with a 1397g card and i get 4 bars max sitting on top of the router- leave the room and i get 1-2 bars and 1mbs, at the router max is 40mps-
I switch the 5300 card from my e6400 and it does go up to 80 ( 130 in the e6400) but i still get drops - and still see none of the neighbors routers i see on my other machines.
I have an InspironR Special Edition 7520 and my AMD 7760 2GB will not activate or do any graphics processing. It is stuck on the Intel Graphics. I am running windows 8.
-My laptop is set on high performance and is plugged in.
-I ran NovaBench and it used the intel graphics card
-FurMark detected Intelgraphics as my main graphics card
-I ran a small game called "Slender: The Arrival" on the lowest settings it could barely handle it
-During the game and the graphics run I had Catalyst Control Center Up and it showed 0% usage of the graphics card, indicating it failed to switch
- All the drivers are up to date, per the windows solution and from downloading them from the AMD website.
I would like a solution to either, have the switch start working, or to change a setting so only the graphics card is constantly used. If this does not work I fear I'll have to return the laptop for faulty hardware.
I have a Linksys wrt 150N wireless router that is about a year old. My Rev B MBA is not performing with the speed I had anticipated moving to Wireless N. I was working with Linksys tech support yesterday and pretty much exhausted all options to get speed and range acceptable. I have Comcast cable and my iMac is seeing download speeds shown below hardwired directly into the router.
Using my MBA right next to the router I am barely getting 10% of that throughput. Before I replace the router I was considering a Time Capsule instead of a straight router. Is there anything I can do on the MBA side to remedy this? Is anyone using Time Capsule and getting good results?
One final note I did re flash the firmware on the router and when I reset the router on the first try I get very good speed (14,000KBPS) and thereafter it drops back down to 1200KBPS or so. I am thinking the router is the problem not the Air.
