Inspiron 9300 w/7800 GTX Go

[Striph]

Just upgraded my laptop today, replaced the old 6800 go with a shiny new 7800 GTX Go. So far I'm using the stock Dell drivers, which are v78.30.

With speeds of 450 core, 1300 memory I'm able to pull a 3dmark05 score of 7560. I'm hesitant to upgrade to the latest 81.95 drivers from Nvidia as i usually have tv-out problems where when I set the display to clone, I can never get my TV to show anything, has always happened with th 80.xx series drivers, also have some weird texture problems with the 80.xx series in Guildwars, their tech answer is that the drivers are broken and to roll back to the 70.xx series. Has anyone had any luck with a solid driver on a mobile 7800GTX?

Thanks

[mobilenvidia]

Nice, :)

How about a 'How I did it' for others to maybe that are thinking about the upgrade.

Was it worth it, what did it cost, performance gain etc etc.

Have a go with my v31.10 INF that I have just uploaded for 81.95.

In here look for (ie edit INF)

;MEDION MD41300 TV out fix thanks to Jeroen

;HKR,, DisableTVOutBIOS, %REG_DWORD%, 1

;HKR,, "TV Out", %REG_DWORD%, 2

;HKR,, DevicesConnected, %REG_DWORD%, 1

Remove the ';' from the front of each line starting with HKR.

Now install driver with the above modifications, you should now hopefully have a working TV out.

The above fixes both Medion and Toshiba TV-out, so why not Dell.

or you could just try 78.30 Dell INF with 81.95 this might also work.

Anyway nice to see the upgrade works.

[Striph]

Nice, :)

How about a 'How I did it' for others to maybe that are thinking about the upgrade.

Was it worth it, what did it cost, performance gain etc etc.

The Inspiron 9300 and XPS Gen2 are identical systems with the exception of the XPS2 has a gigabit ethernet and the fancy LED's in the body housing and it runs with a 130watt adapter instead of the Inspirons 90watt adapter.

So with that in mind, a group of us diehard Inspiron 9300 users found that if you take the XPS2 130w adapter and the XPS2 bios and use those on the 9300 you can swap out the 6800 Go video card and use either the 6800 Ultra or 7800 GTX in place of it.

Cost on the 7800 GTX was about 390 before taxes, the 130w AC Adapter can be found on ebay for as low as 40 bucks after shipping, or around 50 direct from Dell.

My 3dmark05 scores with my 6800 Go before averaged about 4200, with the new 7800GTX my average score is up to 7520 now. About a 70% increase in speed. For comparison my desktop is a p4 3.2 with a 6800 GT setup, and it only scores a 5500 in 3dmark05, so this is now my new "desktop" system. :)

I'm definitely glad I did it, before I was disappointed that the system was a bit slow in some of the stuff I was doing, a native resolution of 1920x1200 causes a bit of lag in the newer games, with this new card its smooth as silk in anything I throw at it, definitely futureproof for a little while. If anyone else is interested in this I can point them to a thread that would show how to do this or I could explain it myself. Whichevers easier!

[Fenuxx]

I've been contemplating doing the upgrade as well, as it seems to have a very good success-to-failure ratio :) :) .

[mobilenvidia]

Cheers for that insite Striph,

Give us the link, where not too self important not to allow offsite linking. :)

Always good to squeeze a bit more life out of an expensive purchase.

Enjoy

[Striph]

Cheers for that insite Striph,

Give us the link, where not too self important not to allow offsite linking. :)

Always good to squeeze a bit more life out of an expensive purchase.

Enjoy

Inspiron 9300 - 6800 Ultra/7800GTX Howto Guide

If anyone has any questions they can post here, email me, or get with me on IM. :)

[mobilenvidia]

Good on yah mate :)

[jamesd]

Hah, pretty cool what you did there. I'm lazy and love Clevo D900T's, so i'm getting one with a go 7800 GTX myself.

BTW, 7520 is ###### good for a go 7800 gtx, i'll have to do soem extensive benchings with mine when I get it :)