Dell Laptop Advice

I hear the M50 and M60 are good machines and as a perk they use the quadro4 cards that will use the realview stuff that might be in the next release

If I had a choice, $$$ not an issue, I REALLY like Alienware. When, rather than if, they get the 3.06 8000mhz FSB on the mobile workstations....OMG it is over. Though weight and battery life IMO are the only drawbacks. And maybe screen size, but hell MAC is the only on with 17".

Hi Andrew...

I have been using Dell laptops for the last 3-4 years for SolidWorks and they have performed brilliantly..... I first started on an Inspiron 7500 and now running an Inspiron 8200 at 1600x1400 on a UXGA screen. The machine has 512mb ram and a 40gb hard drive. The image quality is superb. You would most likely need to run with large fonts, as normal fonts will most probably be quite a strain on your eyes.

I have 'hacked' the nvidia drivers with either Rivatuner or SoftQuadro on all the laptops I have used because of the crappy performance with multiple openGL windows in SolidWorks. I am not sure if it causes long-term problems with the video card, but it surely removes that limitation and the performance is very good. Our assemblies run anywhere between 75-400 parts, so they aren't very large. At any given time, I may have between 2 and 15 models/drawings open and working quite productively on them.

Hope this helps....

D. Short

Andrew Rodgers wrote:

If $$$ were not a big issue, the Alienware laptops kick ALOt of butt. Though a little heavy, and short on battery life, there is quite a bit of horsepower under that pupppy

Matt

Are you able to run Dual-view (on the M50) successfully with SolidWorks

2003? I find I have to choose between them, hence cannot connect my big monitor (other than as a mirror), unless I want to crash repeatedly with an nVidia error, or run software OpenGL

regards

Andrew Troup

"Andrew Troup" wrote in news:RjnKa.50380$ snipped-for-privacy@news.xtra.co.nz:

I can run dual monitors using nView. Sometimes it's a trick to run a projector as the main display instead of using it as a second monitor. Mine doesn't crash when doing this. You may want to get with Dell support, they have come out with new bios, video driver, and video bios to fix some earlier problems.

The newer M50 and M60 have the 700Go that supports the RealView in 2004.

Thanks Matt

I had been checking the Dell website for months, the only M50 video drivers were ANCIENT, and had finally got sick of it and given up, but as you say, they've recently posted a MUCH newer nVidia driver, together with a video bios updater to match. So far it seems to be working well- only one crash in an evening of work.

Kind regards

Andrew Troup

Try

They have modified INF files for use with the newer nvidia drivers. I have 44.10 running on my M50 and it's a major improvement.

Cheers

Jim Elias Munich, Germany

I have used the Dell Inspiron 8000 with 512 megs Ram & Win2000 for just over 2 years and am now on SWks 2003 with the old original nVidia GeForce2Go 32 megs, no video hacking.

Never understood much about Wintel optimization and BIOS and hacking video software so I left it alone. Swks 2003 did slow the Dell down, though the SP3 release is better. I tend to have major slowdowns with

4 dozen parts in assemblies with lots of curved parts. I do NOT have a problem with 20+ files open while working on an injection mold.

All in all the Dell has been nearly bulletproof, but I don't abuse it. I wouldn't count on battery time being good, nor the life of the battery unless they've made major improvements in the last 2 years that I haven't heard about.

I'm guessing Swks 2004 is going to mean I have to upgrade to a new Dell.

I'm not a video driver authority, so here goes about as far as I can understand it:

The standard INF files supplied with the drivers block installation on mobile cards. Nvidia claims this is because the laptop manufacturers want to make sure and test the drivers very thoroughly before approving them ... who knows. If you read the driver release info from nvidia, it quite specifically states what families of units the Quadro mobile cards belong to and explicitly states that the 44.xx drivers are compatible with them, as they are supposed to be (part of nvidia's famous "always-compatible" driver system.) So the folks at the website I mentioned earlier have modified the INF files (removed the blocks) so that the "desktop" drivers can be installed on the mobile cards.

44.10 is a Dell release driver that I assume is from the same family as 44.03, which claims 30% better performance compared to pre-44.xx drivers. I have never tested 42.58 or 44.03, but I tested 44.10 against 43.51 (the last SW-certified release) and 44.10 is definitely faster. I don't think 42.58 was ever certified by SW, so you should probably go to at least 43.51 if you want to use nothing but a SW-certified driver.

Cheers

Jim Elias Munich, Germany

Jim

Thanks for clarifying that. I knew the drivers wouldn't load on a mobile installation, but I didn't know exactly who was blocking it.

I'll give 4410 a try

Thanks once more for your help