the price increase for batteries were caused by battery shortage several months ago. i guess the price has not changed since then. u can try to ebay them, but i wouldnt fiddle around with dangerous explosive stuff like batteries. make sure the source is reliable before u make any purchase.

if you are constantly relying on batteries, there arent many ways to preserve it. it will eventually fail due to wear and tear. the few golden rule are simply to not subject your batteries to high temperature, charge to 40+% when you need to store it for a long time, reduce charge and discharge cycles, avoid using your battery to complete flat before charging and i think that's just about it. others are welcome to add. my 9 cell, which has served me everyday for 7 months now, has about 9% wear, so my total capacity is reduced to about 77WHr (compared to 85WHr brand new). not bad for a battery made in malaysia.

good one Demonic Wrath. so you are doing 650/550 too ya? any stability issues? when did u purchase ur 1520?

added your 3DMark06 score to front page. one more question, was your physX enabled or disabled during benchmarking?

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 19 2008, 12:33 AM

oh crap! you just beat my record!! very impressive, you are now top on the OC list.

you must be having one of those good batch of 8600M GT with a very overclockable set of DDR2 RAM.

i am actually expecting you to hit the elusive 5000 Mark for our 8600M GT because of the extra 20MHz in clock speed for RAM you pushed. 8600M is extremely bandwidth hungry due to the limited 128-bit bus used, so any increment in RAM speed will show better result than the same amount of increment in GPU speed. moreover, you cranked another 20MHz from core too! also, be very careful when operating at that speed. 650/550 is already very close to the edge.

for me, physX reduced my 3Dmark06 by almost 1k points. and you are right, enabling and disabling it in nvidia physx control panel makes no difference. i had to unintsall physx to get back that 1000 poin loss. the irony is that, the benchmark does not support physx!

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 19 2008, 06:41 AM

to OC, you need an OC compatible driver. usually the ones from 175 and above will do. as Demonic Wrath mentioned, the newer the better. 177.83 will OC just fine and has physX enabled. you can grab them from the front page of this thread.

8600M GT core can generally OC to 600MHz without any issues. the RAM however, depends on the purchase date/ batch you got. from my personal investigation, any system purchased after JAN 08 will be able to OC above 500MHz (threshold 550MHz). system purchased before Jan 08 will have a less OC'able DDR2 RAM, and the limit is 500MHz and below. a trial and error will reveal the OC capability of your RAM.

eg. first set your RAM speed to 500MHz, the slowly increase 10MHz and run a full 3DMark06 test. LOOK for artifacts. if non, increase another 10MHz, until u reach 550MHz. the same goes to GPU core. start at 600MHz, then increase by 10MHz and so on (until 650MHz). when you reach those speed, i would recommend you to slow down a bit, increase by 5MHz, monitor the temp to make sure they are within acceptable range, and look for artifacts and system stability issues.

ok, OC issue aside, to open up your laptop, you need a philips head screw driver and a flat head screw driver or plastic tool AND some guts. start from the front plastic cover on the top (the one with power and MD button). look to the right, you'lll see a dent, insert the flat head screw driver and it will pop up. remove the plastic lid carefully, then work your way to the back. almost all the screws are located on the back. there are about 4-5 screws on the top front (after u remove the plastic lid). never use force, always double check if you've removed all screws. after removing all the screws, the front plastic lid should easily come off, and that goes to the LCD and hinge as well. ALWAYS make sure u removed all connectors and NEVER pull the wires with force. remove the keyboard next and you'll see the massive CPU and GPU heatsink. remove them and clean them up properly, reapply the thermal paste with high performance ones, and assemble your lappy back.

WARNING. OC and disassembling you laptop are NOT for the faint hearted. you can easily damage your laptop if you dont know what you are doing, so PLS PROCEED WITH CAUTION. nobody can other than you can take responsibility for the welfare of your laptop and actions, so do it at your own risk..

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Added on August 20, 2008, 2:03 amCONGRATULATIONS! you hit 5K MARK! very very impressive indeed!

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 20 2008, 02:03 AM

to get the centrino branding, u need 3 components.
1. intel pentium m/core cpu
2. intel chipset
3. intel wireless card

missing any of the above will be disqualified for centrino logo. there's no specific model of any of the above 3 items you need to purchase. as long as it has an intel logo slapped on them, you'll get your centrino sticker. very often, dell bundles system with their own dell branded wireless card, which explains why you become "disqualified" for the centrino logo

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 20 2008, 12:48 PM

yes u r right. centrino2 is a bit choosy, the "flexibility" is a bit limited. here's an example,

1. you can use any of the new 45nm penryn processors (not the santa rosa refresh cpu, but the montiviena ones with 1066 FSB)

2. chipset is fixed, which is the latest intel PM/GM45 chipset

3. any 5000 series intel wifilink wireless card.

you're in! 2nd member for 1525!

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Added on August 23, 2008, 1:53 amyes, 1520's santa rosa platform can only support DDR2 667. the easiest way to swap out your RAM for (one) higher module is to open the case on the back (middle). the other hidden RAM is located underneath your keyboard, so u've gotta open the plastic cover and remove the keyboard.

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Added on August 23, 2008, 1:57 amexactly, no centrino certification (logo). dell should get 8600M GT back on the scene. 8600M GT is what makes 1520 stand out from the crowd.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 23 2008, 01:57 AM

means it doesnt matter where you install the RAM, you wont be able to run dual channel because the RAM configuration is no longer identical, but it doesnt really matter because dual channel on most cases has less than 5% improvement anyway, and you might get more boost from the extra RAM.

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Added on August 23, 2008, 5:22 pmthis is NOT the problem with xp. this is an addressing limitation of 32bit OS. in fact, if u use the correct version of xp (64bit), u can address more than 3.5GB. even vista 32bit cannot escape from this issue. but since RAMs are so cheap nowadays, it's not like you loose a lot from that addressing lost.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 23 2008, 05:22 PM

erm, maybe i could be wrong, because tha maths does show 32bit can theoretically support 4GB. but the OS is designed not to do so, and i quote

"Due to an architectural decision made long ago, if you have 4GB of physical RAM installed, Windows is only able to report a portion of the physical 4GB of RAM (ranges from ~2.75GB to 3.5GB depending on the devices installed, motherboard's chipset & BIOS). This behavior is due to 'memory mapped IO reservations'. Those reservations overlay the physical address space and mask out those physical addresses so that they cannot be used for working memory. Significant chunks of address space below 4GB (the highest address accessible via 32-bit) get reserved for use by system hardware: BIOS – including ACPI and legacy video support; PCI bus including bridges etc. PCI Express support will reserve at least 256MB, up to 768MB depending on graphics card installed memory", explained Hilton Locke, Microsoft Software Test Engineer.

you are right, vista sp1 does "resolve" this issue by and i quote,

"With Windows Vista SP1, currently planned for the first quarter of 2008, Microsoft will force the operating system to show the full amount of system memory installed, and not only the memory that Vista has available. The Redmond company warned that the change will ultimately depend on the integration with the machine's BIOS and, as such, not all Vista users will experience it. But, it does not mean that Vista SP1 will resolve the 4 GB of RAM limitations of the 32-bit Vista operating system. In this context, if you have a 32-bit copy of Vista, there is no point waiting for SP1 to enjoy up to four GB of RAM, the simplest solution is to go 64-bit. "

faking the info shown on info screen. in other words, it will show u 4GB if u have 4GB RAM, but it can still ONLY address up to 3.5GB

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 23 2008, 05:32 PM

inspiron 1520 and vostro 1500 are identical units, the only difference being BIOS version. to be strict, 1520 is not completely built with magnesium alloy. only the outer shell is made of metal. the inner part (when you open the lid) is plastic.

today, i dropped my 1520--FIRST TIME!!!! the freaking cable was caught on my leg when i was walking and pulled the laptop to the ground. thankfully it fell for a distance of about 30cm and landed on the carpet floor, so no scratches and a softer landing. my heart junk sank when i heart the thump. the 9cell battery took the impact and the LCD absorbed the rest. im just hoping that fall wont affect my 320GB hard drive.

im not sure how much u can get with these cds because they do not include any license and they are customised for dell systems only.

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Added on August 27, 2008, 2:05 ammy A09 seems fine too. try to reset the BIOS settings to factory default

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 27 2008, 02:05 AM

i've been using it since yesterday, havent really tested it on games. thanks for the heads up.

try driver sweeper pro. it's good.

after you clean? mm.. shouldnt be seeing such issues. anyway, u can easily get rid of that message by deleting key from startup.

restart your pc, that program shortcut will be gone. i've had that before too. it has nothing to do nvidia drivers

what driver are you using?

u r right. by right, 1520 has been discontinued several months ago. if you look at dell uk or dell us, 1520 has been taken off the list since march or april. last month, dell malaysia pulled the plug on 1520, but quitely reintroduced it back after several weeks. i think they are clearing off the final stock. 1520 is replaced by both 1525 and studio 15 (1535)

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Added on August 31, 2008, 7:46 amalexnvidia wishes all Inspiron 1520, 1525, and 1720 users in this thread, Selamat Hari Merdeka!!

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Aug 31 2008, 07:47 AM

if i remembered correctly, based on a report published by microsoft this year, more than 50% of vista's blueescreen was caused by nvidia's drivers, so you might wanna start from nvidia's driver. do a proper uninstall, restart, use driver sweep pro, install new driver, restart. if you are not comfortable with modified drivers, use dell's latest forceware release. you can get them from the first page of this thread.

my heart skipped a beat when i saw his 3DMark result and GPU ID capture. i thought 1520 finally has 8800M GTX support. haha.. piskin, you are making us look really bad here with your M1730. it's way out of our league.

it sure can, and i have confidence in 1520's cooling system to handle 8800M