Help with NR2003 and XPS M170 Dell

[Guest Terry Deitz]

nv4_disp.infI just purchased a new Dell XPS M170 laptop to run my league races on while i am traveling.

Intel Pentium M centrino 2.0GHZ

Nvidia 256mb Geforce Go 6800 Ultra, drivers are updated from Dell = 78.51, VC Bios version=5.41.02.36.A7

1.0GHZ Ram

Audigy 2 Z notebook Sound card

60Gig 7200rpm Hard Drive, 3 partitions, NR2003 being on C:\

It will not run NR2003 PERIOD.........

I have tweaked everthing i can to no avail. The symtoms are as follows:

1.) Graphics dont keep up at all. I mean as soon as you get in car and mash the throttle it slows down the graphics to a crawl then it jumps forward then to snails pace. The frame rates are saying 120-150 steady.

but the dang car aint moving. The AI cars are doing the same thing.

2.) Anywhere in the menu list on start page or race page (anywhere) you pass the cursor over a command the ding sound echos about 4-6 echos.... WOW . This also happens on every command when you click it .

Some of the major things i have tried are:

1.) Turned sound in DxDiag to very low acceleration . Tried no acceleration but no sound then.

2.) Tried using my CRT monitor and disabling the flat panel on the laptop. No changes in performance.

3.) I have all updated drivers in system. No changes.

4.) I have applied all NR2003 tweaks and the XP tweaks. No changes.

5.) I have tried many different combinations of above settings and have tweaked in the Nvidia panel the results are the same - no improvement.

6.) OpenGL dont work windowed or not.

7.) Turned sound off no help. (Disabling cards in control panel)

You know whats funny I loaded GTR (the resource HOG) I run it at full graphics online and off it dont even stutter under a heavy load.

I loaded Halflife 2 ,full graphics settings, every once in a while it will blip, but only occasionally.

I loaded Far Cry, full settings, runs like a champ.

I loaded FEAR runs great no problems.

My desktop I now run NR2003(Runs great on almost full sttings with frame rates of 70-90) will barely run the above mentioned games. So I suspect it is not the hardware on the Laptop.

Could it be a simple Fix?

I have run Sandra software on it to compare it to my desktop and it is about 10-20% better readings than the desktop..

I feel there must be a tweak or something i can do to my system or the game to make it work.

Can you help or let me know where to turn?

I have attached the NERD readings for my system.

Thanks for lisenting

Terry

LaptopVideo2Go_LogFile.zip

[Bill]

Sounds like CPU throttling down problems again with centrino.

This guy explained it good so I'll let him do the talking. (hes from Germany too Rene)

http://www.setup-guru.com/106184-post4.html

You may want to try Centrino Hardware Control, which works with any kind of Intel CPU according to its author. It's a very useful tool, as it can monitor system temperatures on the windows desktop, and it can be used to adjust CPU clock and graphics core and memory clock (if you have an ATI video card in your laptop).

I set the CPU clock to "dynamic switching" while I am surfing the web etc., as you can see on the screenshot below, that means that it is set to only 600 MHz most of the time to limit power consumption and heat buildup (so the fan isn't in use at all), but it clocks up automatically when more CPU power is required, for example when you launch a further program. When I want to play games, on the other hand, I set it to max performance, so it runs steadily at 1.5 GHz and doesn't clock down when CPU load is low (it used to do that watching replays in NR2003 before I installed CHC, which made the replays run in slow motion). :)

http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm

My brother has never had any problems on his M170 but some older games do have problems with CPUs switching speeds, have seen quite a bit of it on this forum.

Don't think I have ever had problems though, but then mine is set to full speed most of the time from the BIOS anyway. (mine can go from 2 GHz down to 1.2 or as low as around 700 or 800ish MHz)

Just curious, how high are you running FEAR there?

I just beat it at the beach, has an interesting ending... (they already have a sequal in the works)

Also if you are running the game windowed does setting it to high priority from device manager help any?

[Guest Terry d]

Boy was i excited when you posted about CPU speed issues. So i loaded the CHC and cranked her up to max 2.0ghz and looked around a bit temps were fine etc.

Loaded NR2003 and no improvement on the graphics. Says frame rates are in the 140's but the car moves good for a few seconds then slows down to a crawl. then gets a little faster etc etc etc

Guess i need more suggestions from an actual XPS M170 user that has it working.

??????

Terry

[Bill]

Can you post a configeration file for this game?