ATI card in laptop...

[Jack Mitchell]

The latest Ati driver for the Dell XPS are now available from Dell support.

 

R83268.Exe available on Aug 18/2004.

 

Full acceleration now on Mastercam with the Ati 9700 mobile solution.

Still testing with Inventor and Solidworks...

 

 

Regards, Jack

[Mick]

Jack,

 

Are you saying that the ATI 9700 Mobile runs fine with Mastercam? I'm considering a Dell notebook, and most of them down here come with the ATI.

If it runs fine, I'll probably be running with a Dell.

 

Cheers

[cadcam]

I say stay away from ATI.

I still to this day even with new ones have not seen one run right out of the box right.

 

A friend of mine bought a new Fujtsu laptop really nice and a GREAT screen and 128 of video, then when we turned on the MC had to drop the Hardware acc down low.

 

This was a $3000.00 laptop. I tried to tell him not to get that and get the one I just got.

 

I will have to try the latest drivers that Jack speaks of with his laptop.

He has the ATI 9700 Mobile to.

I would say play safe and just go with proven till other wise.

 

JM2C

[Rick Damiani]

FWIW: I just got a new Dell Latitude D800 with the 128MB GeForceFX Go 5650, 1680x1050 screen, and a Pentium M 1.8GHz CPU. It does a bangup job with MasterCAM, Inventor, AutoCAD, Combusiton, and 3D Studio MAX. Plays games (Uru, mainly) well, too. I was looking at the 5150 before I settled on this one, but decided that the extra video RAM and built-in bluetooth (I've got a bluetooth phone and PDA) were more useful than the hyperthreading offered by the 5150. The avalibility of an extra battery is a real plus, too. With both batteries in it lasts a lot longer than I'm willing to mess with it in one sitting. 6+ hours, or so the meter claims.

 

The only downsides:

 

- Fookin' massively heavy and large notebook. Not nearly as bad as some of the 17", 15+ pound beasts from HP, but a real drag on the shoulder nonetheless.

- Floppy drive shares the same bay as the CD-ROM (and extra battery), or can be connected via an included cable.

 

On the ATI stuff: the latest chipsets are kinda interesting. ATI's low-end FireGL stuff seems to borrow from the NVIDIA model. That is they use the same GPU for high-end consumer and low-end CAD, with the difference down to driver features. Hopefully that means that the 'prosumer' stuff will be more stable. Then again, ATI's problems seem to be driver related, not shortcomings in the hardware.

[cadcam]

Rick, I went to the Dell site and basically priced out what you got and with 512 of ram it is saying like $2916.00 WOW that is high from my view but dell does make good laptops.

What did you get for hard drive?

How much do you say it weights?

 

Also how do you like 15 wide screen?

[LNDCAD]

I just bought a Dell Precision Workstation (M60 Laptop). VERY EXPENSIVE BUT....... I had been following this forum for quite awhile and wanted desperately to stay away from ATI cards. Also, I had a need for legacy ports due to some older programs that I use to communicate with PLC's and DOS based programs. This basically ruled out all systems that I found except for the DELL M60. Need to look on the Small Business site since this unit will not show up on the Home and Home Office site. Select Precision Workstation M60 Laptop. The only drawback other than price is no full keyboard, but I use the docking station whenever I am not on the road. I bought my unit from the Dell Outlet site (it was a returned / refurbished unit). The system has 2Gb RAM, 60 Gb Hard Drive, Nvidia Fx1000 with 128 Mb Video Ram, and a Centrino 1.7 processor. I am very happy with the system and it is running both Mastercam and Solidworks without any problems. Running Windows XP Pro. I created a dual boot with DOS so that I could separate all of my old programs, and so far everything is working better than I could have expected. HTH.

[Chip-pan]

Cadcam,

Sams club has the HP 7000 series withe the nivda card.

forgot the price.

 

Chip pan

[Jack Mitchell]

When I bought the XPS 3.4 H/T extreme, I purchased the ATI 9700 by choice and spent the extra for it as well. This mobile solution cost me a little less than 6K then and can probably be had for considerably less today.

 

The new drivers that just became available from Dell seem to work flawlessly at this point in time. Mastercam, Inventor, Solidworks, and most importantly “Doom3” are all running at full hardware acceleration.

 

Prior to the new driver release:

Mastercam 9.1 was 1/3 acceleration otherwise mouse was real jumpy

Solidworks 2004 full acc

Inventor 8 full acc

Doom 3 ran for a bit then hung with a full freeze which required a power and battery disconnect in order to establish shut off.

 

 

Would I again spend the additional 15 or 20% on a Dell system?

Yes, in a heartbeat, and I would have no reservations whatsoever concerning the ATI 9700 or the new ATI 9800 mobile graphic solution.

 

Regards, Jack

[Bullines]

quote:

---

Doom 3 ran for a bit then hung with a full freeze which required a power and battery disconnect in order to establish shut off.

---

What are your display settings? What kind of framerate do you get?

[Jayson Kramer]

Doom3 is working well so far this my first time palying Doom.

 

Have any of you guys updated your laptops to XP SP2?

 

Chippan, I had posted about that earler.

I almost got one of the refurbs for alott less money.

only problem was waiting for it to come. so I went to the store and bought instead.

[Jack Mitchell]

quote:

---

What are your display settings? What kind of framerate do you get?

---

The lowest setting is given through automatic detection in Doom 3.

Torture testing with 3DMark03 gives 3468 points.

I'll play with the settings in Doom tonight sometime.

 

Keep in mind the 9700 has only 128 since the 256 wasn't available at the time of purchase.

 

Don't forget to visit http://www.hardforum.com you will be glad that you did.

 

Regards, Jack

[Bullines]

The [H]ardocp forum is good, but full of o/c-happy folks

[Jack Mitchell]

quote:

---

The [H]ardocp forum is good, but full of o/c-happy folks

---

Is there any other kind?

 

I used to frequent Anantech (sp) and Tom's Hardware as well, but I found that the people that frequent [H]ardOCP were more fun and very serious about overclocking and big time gaming; which reminds me of when I bought one of the overclocked Outside Loop Computer systems and then proceeded to key chain the CPU when I pushed it to the max - oh well, it was costly but still lots of fun.

 

 

Regards, Jack

[Matthew]

I picked up the HP ZD7140us this afternoon. So far I'm impressed. I loaded a big file into Mastercam (6 meg, big for me!!), then copied everything in it 100inches to the left. Took a few seconds, then I could rotate it pretty easily.

 

I need to get a USB dongle to put Cadkey V21 on here. Hopefully that'll be faster, until I can switch to SW.

 

After going from Futureshop to Staples I was able to get a price match and the system cost $2000 CDN before taxes.

[Rick Damiani]

cadcam:

 

quote:

---

Rick, I went to the Dell site and basically priced out what you got and with 512 of ram it is saying like $2916.00 WOW that is high from my view but dell does make good laptops.

---

You gotta be careful when you customize a Dell system. By default Dell includes stuff like a spare primary battery ($50.00), MS Office ($319.00), a docking station ($199.00), a cheap-xxxx nylon case ($70.00) and a bunch of other stuff you likley don't actually want. Current price from the Dell store for the system I got (with 1GB RAM) is $2,629.00.

 

Yeah, it's a lot of money. But I use it every day, I'm gonna be using it for two or three years, and I use it for lots of things, including service and support of our RP machenes and preparing seminars.

 

quote:

---

What did you get for hard drive?

---

80GB. I need lost of space 'cause I do a lot more than MasterCAM with it. It's my support and presintation system, so I got to have AutoCAD, Inventor, Arch Desktop, 3D Studio MAX and VIZ, combustion, MagicsRP, and a double-dozen other things. The 'basic' software load was somewhere north of 20GB before I added so much as a text file. Working with video-related stuff like combusiton and MAX eats up hard drive space in a hurry.

 

quote:

---

How much do you say it weights?

---

With the extra battery about 8lbs or so. It's ~the same as the Gateway 9550 it replaced. As much as I like it, I gotta admit that my wife's 300XL (4lbs) makes me wistful sometimes...

 

quote:

---

Also how do you like 15 wide screen?

---

Fookin' awesome. I got the middle resolution one (1680x1050, or WSXGA+) rather than the high rez option. One of my clients has an M60 with the WSUXGA screen and I was afraid that it'd be too small to live with. WSXGA+ is a nice comprimise.

 

One of the coolest things the wide screen allows is side-by-side editing of posts and .NC files. It's wide enough that I can have two normal sized edit windows next to each other. It's almost as good as having a second monitor, while still being portable.

[Rick Damiani]

quote:

---

Have any of you guys updated your laptops to XP SP2?

---

I have. I needed to so I could figure out what kinds of problems my clients will experence. So far most everything is working out pretty much like I expected. Non-network stuff works fine, and network stuff mostly works fine, 'sept for some remote control apps and the like.

[Jack Mitchell]

I hammered away at Doom tonight and settled with the second setting called high which runs at 800 x 600. The ultra high setting surely requires at least 256 video ram (warning comes up that 500 bits are required); the 128 that I am stuck with worked but the frame rate makes it impossible to react to the little beasties - this ultra setting will video at 1024 x 768. Very cool game.

 

I have tried to grab the XP SP2 ever since it was announced, but alas, I believe developers have preferred status and I am patiently awaiting the opportunity to download unless Bullines wants to leave it at the front desk for me hint, hint.

 

Regards, Jack

[Chris Rizzo]

Well, I returned my original purchase of a Compaq 3250 (amd 64 bit, 512mb, nvidia 440, 15.4 high res) and stepped up the the HP zd7140....JUST got it home, and havn't had much time to play, but I am liking the looks of it already....FULL keyboard, 4 usb ports, serial port, parallel port, IR, etc. etc. Have not loaded MC on it yet, I'm busy running an emergency job tonite at the shop.

 

thanks again for the hot tip on the HP's Jay....and thanks to everyone else for all the enlightening chat.

 

With this new rig, I hope my 2.8mhz desktop doesn't turn into a doorstop.

[Matthew]

Jay/Trevor,

 

Do you guys have problems with your WCS XYZ Axes indicator and Display indicators not showing up properly?

 

Mine show up when I first open the file, then after I rotate or change views they disappear. Sometimes if I zoom out far enough it will show up again, but when I zoom back in it disappears.

 

If I move the troubleshoot selector bar to the second setting from the left it is OK, but that disables all but basic accelerations. My system has the Geforce FX 5200.

 

I updated to the latest driver also, did not help.

[Trevor Bailey]

Matthew,

 

I have no problems at all with mine. I have the 5700 128 mg card, though. I keep my comp updated with all drivers from nVidia direct. Try setting your antaliasing settings and anisotropic filtering to "off" and see if that helps.

[Matthew]

Trevor,

 

Those settings were set to allow the application to control them. I checked them and made sure they were off, but it still made no difference. I went through every menu and tried changing all the settings one at a time and none seem to make a difference and allow me to see my WCS axes consistently.

 

Here are is my driver information page. That is what I downloaded today. Do you know if that's the latest, or is it the same as yours? When I went to download it had only one selection for all Geforce cards.

 

[cadcam]

I am sorry I am not have that trouble and I have the same driver.

 

But I did update the box to 1.25 gig ram

And I got the docking bay.

 

I will set it up and take picture of it it is cool.

[Matthew]

If I turn shading off completely I get my axis indicators including the WCS indicator. As soon as I turn shading on, they disappear. I've tried different versions of the driver but nothing changes it. Does anyone have any other suggestions other than taking this back to and trying to get my hands on the one with the FX5600 video card?

 

It ticks me off, why would the same model number have a different video card? [end rant]

 

Thanks,

[cadcam]

quote:

---

It ticks me off, why would the same model number have a different video card? [end rant]

---

The ZD7000 is a seris not the actule model.

 

The model is on the bottom.

[Chris Rizzo]

http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpdirect/shopping/scripts/generic_store/generic_subcategory_view.jsp?category=notebooks/hp_pavilion/zd7000_series&subcat1=rts&landing=comp uters&catLevel=3&BV_SessionID=@@@@0355255301.1093485605@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccefadcmgghdfdecfngcfkmdflldfgf.0://http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/...gcfkmdflldfgf.0

 

the 7140's got the 5200 card, the 7260's got the 5700 card.

 

I still have'nt had a chance to put my new 7140 through some paces yet. too busy with work work.