X3100 Dell XPS M1330 Enthusiast Information / Myths / Facts

[7oby]

Given that we have more than 125 broken GeForce 8400M GS equipped Dell XPS M1330 in this forum and given the rumors about all GeForce 8400M GS being defective more and more people are asking:

What can I expect from X3100 graphics of the GM965 chipset in Dell XPS M1330?

Office:

. Vista Aero works fine, no lagging even in 1920 x 1200 and 1280 x 800 in extended Desktop.

. The average memory consumption during office with a 1920 x 1200 screen is ~180MB. This memory is taken from main memory and can't be used otherwise. It may use up to 358MB, but I've never seen that. There's just one exception: If you have 4GB installed and a 32-Bit OS installed, then video memory is taken from unusable I/O area below 4GB. In practise this means with 4GB installed using GeForce 8400M GS or X3100 results in the same mount of usable memory which is 3,58GB (*) if I remember correctly:



Gaming:
Intel doesn't stop emphasizing that intel integrated graphics is good for gaming:
http://blogs.intel.com/technology/20...d_graphics.php

Roughly speaking the performance of the GeForce 8400M GS, which isn't a great performer anyway, is still 3x better than the X3100 performance:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-...ist.844.0.html

Some feel reliefed once they discover that there is at least some performance left in the X3100:
http://www.computerbase.de/forum/sho...d.php?t=309411
Some performance number os X3000 (not X3100!):
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60232

Practise is different. It's not only about speed, it's about compatibility and stability. An image during gameplay might supposed to look like this one:



But you may end up looking at something like this:


source:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3258&p=8

In another game the textures of your characters might be invisible:


I also do see people encountering crashes in World of Warcraft. Therefore the best strategy for gaming regarding X3100 is: Expect nothing, but be happy if things run.

If you bought X3100 already for gaming, you might be interested in knowing how to switch between Software T/L and Hardware T/L:
http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/whitepaper/318888.pdf
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/i....aspx#30255386

Heat / Power Consumption:

. Can't say for sure. I've done some testing and my current believing is that X3100 with GM965 consumes ~ 1 Watt less than GeForce 8400M GS including PM965 during Office work.

. During office my temps with T7500 @2,2V undervolted at 1,025V and ambient being 24,6°C look like this (A12 BIOS):


. Some guys asked me to play Trackmania Nation Forever in 1280 x 800 native resolution at normal settings and I did that. Look at maximum temps:


. The above temperature shot was taken after several hours of office, development use. Therefore the table on which the Dell XPS M1330 stands gets warm and cooling isn't that efficient anymore. I lifted M1330, such that cooler ambient air can reach the bottom of the notebook. Replayed Trackmania and got these numbers:


H.264 BluRay playback:

. X3100 doesn't have VC-1 nor H.264 (MPEG4-AVC) hardware acceleration for BluRay content. Only for wmv9.

. I don't have BluRay player in my notebook. Therefore I downloaded Wanted 1080p movie from Apple Trailers:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/wanted/hd/

It's a 10MBit/s MPEG4-AVC encode:


And played it back using CoreAVC Codec. Output on 1920 x 1200 screen I got this cpu utilization on T7500:


Doesn't look too bad and has some room left. It's true that GeForce 8400M GS features hardware accelerated H.264 playback. But you'll need to buy a Codec using this facility. I think it's only included in the Ultra Edition of PowerDVD in case you're interested in HD (1080p, 720p) content:
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/produ...are_1_ENU.html

Home Theater PC:
24Hz output support disappeared in recent drivers. There are also some issues with Denon receivers. Read yourself:
http://softwareblogs.intel.com/2008/...e-theater-pcs/

CUDA:
There's no CUDA for X3100. But since there's no serious x264 development regarding CUDA currently, it doesn't bother me that much:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...50#post1151050

Linux:
. People love X3100 for being open source:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=446978
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Linux_Graphics_Essay

. Compiz-Fusion runs just fine

. HDMI made some troubles by outputing one pixel off: e.g. 1920 x 1199 instead of 1920 x 1200. This was the bug:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15370
but its fixed in intel video drivers 2.3.2
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archive...ne/000589.html

. I've been playing with WQXGA ( 2560 x 1600 ) on analoge VGA output. It's fun. I don't know for sure yet, but I think with the HDMI SDVO transceiver you might be stuck at 165 MHz signal bandwidth. If you have a display which allows to display low vertical refresh rates like 24Hz you might be able to display this using HDMI.

Mac OS X:
. Leopard 10.5.4 runs fine on integrated graphics on Dell XPS M1330.

. You will encounter one little issue, which is known as sleep trick to get the genuine Apple driver working, but QE/CI works just fine.

. Only internal display and VGA out work. HDMI will most likely never work (I think it does for GeForce 8400M GS).

Summary:

Only two days ago, I wouldn't seriously recommend anybody a Dell XPS M1330 with X3100 graphics. There was a serious issue, which resulted in data corruption with all recent intel drivers:
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/i...howThread.aspx
This got fixed in the A12 BIOS release. You may now use the latest DirectX 10 driver, which is currently 7.15.10.1472 (v15.9). I'm not saying it was painless to get where we're now with X3100 graphics, but it's great being finally there!

If you asked me whether I'd buy integrated graphics again, I'd say yes.

(*) Dell ships Vista with PAE mode enabled from what I read. If you do your own install, you have to enable that one as well, otherwise you might be stuck at 3,12 GB:
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=k...9605&x=13&y=14

P.S.: HWMonitor is the only tool I found which reads the GM965 chipset temp and updates its values (SpeedFan will also read it, but values are stuck). Vista gadgets are nice to display those values:


To get those I needed a small adapter application:
http://blog.orbmu2k.de/tools/hardwar...r-gadget-host/

[Joako]

So how much did Intel pay you?

[chelet]

Originally Posted by 7oby

Summary:

Only two days ago, I wouldn't seriously recommend anybody a Dell XPS M1330 with X3100 graphics. There was a serious issue, which resulted in data corruption with all recent intel drivers:
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/i...howThread.aspx
This got fixed in the A12 BIOS release. You may now use the latest DirectX 10 driver, which is currently 7.15.10.1472 (v15.9). I'm not saying it was painless to get where we're now with X3100 graphics, but it's great being finally there!

If you asked me whether I'd buy integrated graphics again, I'd say yes.

I hadn't heard about that bug before. Maybe that's why my Vista install went bad and I had to reinstall. I'd thought it was due to a bad Windows update.

[radyoactive]

7oby,

Thanks for the info. Your info is enough for me to cancel my m1530 order and reorder the m1330 with the integrated vid card.

[paper_wastage]

even with the problems with 8400, i still want a machine with a graphics card

[kinetic758]

@7oby: regarding the serious data corruption bug, i believe i experienced this as well (vista continually popped up msgs "xxx file is corrupt or unreadable, run chkdsk etc."). this was on a 1330 with discrete graphics card. i ran chkdsk a few weeks ago and everything seems fine now.

my question: after running chkdsk and repairing the bad files and then flashing to A12, am i now in the clear? or should i do a clean install? just wondering if my system is still somehow unstable even after repairing and updating.

[7oby]

Originally Posted by kinetic758

@7oby: regarding the serious data corruption bug, i believe i experienced this as well (vista continually popped up msgs "xxx file is corrupt or unreadable, run chkdsk etc."). this was on a 1330 with discrete graphics card.

You signature tells as well that you're really meaning GeForce 8400M GS. I do have some insight in this data corruption bug and this I can tell for sure: There is no way you could have encountered the same bug with the GeForce 8400M GS. It must have been a different issue on you machine.

Originally Posted by kinetic758

my question: after running chkdsk and repairing the bad files and then flashing to A12, am i now in the clear? or should i do a clean install? just wondering if my system is still somehow unstable even after repairing and updating.

Since you don't know the source of the bug, you don't know for sure whether it's gone. If it's not a hardware issue (run Dell Diagnostics), then it's most likely a driver fault. The driver with the most probability of failing is the graphics card driver.

Anyway: To verify whether your Windows installation is still valid open an "administrator command line" and enter:

sfc /scannow

This will verify and repair the integrity of your Windows installation. You may also open the installer of one of the most important application suites you are using (MS Office?) and check "repair". Just to be on the safe side.

[mindstream]

Is it powerful enough to play older games (i.e. Warcraft III, Morrowind) on higher settings?

[7oby]

Originally Posted by mindstream

Is it powerful enough to play older games (i.e. Warcraft III, Morrowind) on higher settings?

I can see that intel tested World of Warcraft since it is forced to use Software T/L in the driver configuration. It is also mentioned in intel's compatibility list:
http://www.intel.com/support/graphic.../CS-026200.htm

You have to reduce graphics quality (and maybe resolution) more than with GeForce 8400M GS. Image quality and fps are better with GeForce, but in general WoW with X3100 works:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...15145587&sid=1

Regarding Warcraft III situation seems to look better. Out of the box, the framerates are aweful and intel didn't test the game. But switching from HW T/L to Software T/L does the trick:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread....57#post2608157

Why is Software T/L faster on old games?

Well, X3100 has 8 unified shaders. Those are split to be used for vertex processing (= HW T/L) and pixel shading. The vertex processing power required by older games can easily be done on the CPU (it's not very computation intensive) and you have more shaders available for pixel shading. That's why it's faster.

All you've got to do is edit registry and add your game to SW T/L List:
HKR,, ~WoW.exe, %REG_DWORD%, 1

Reread my top posting. It contains links to information on how to switch from HW T/L -> SW T/L.

[jnewell]

Does this mean that the video drivers should be reinstalled after flashing the bios from A11>A12? Recommended? Necessary? Not needed?