I received the following email, and thought the response would be useful for others:
-----------
Thank you for the informative article on the Dell Gaming system. I was curious on if you know how this Laptop: http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/go_np5950.html">http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/go_np5950.html would stack up to the Dell system. I am thinking of purchasing a gaming laptop and would like to know if you have had any experience with the sager systems vs. the Dell systems. Would the SLI in the sager give me twice the performance of the Dell?
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I haven't used the Sager system, but let me just provide the few comments looking at the specs.
First, SLI pretty much never gives you twice the performance, and on that system it has the older 7800 GTX cards instead of the new 7900 GTX card. That means that the cards are clocked slower. Going along with that, 7800 cards are built using a 110 nm process, while the 7900 is built using a 90 nm process. The smaller process results in lower power requirements and thus lower heat out. The end result is that I'm sure the Sager system will be hotter, and while it might be a bit faster I'm not sure it's worth it. There are other issues I see as well.
Dual core Athlon 64 processors compete very well with Intel's Core Duo processors. AMD Turion processors are at present only single core. That may not matter a whole lot right now, but I would again give the advantage to the M1710.
In terms of size, that Sager system is a real beast. 15 pounds with a battery pack means it's about 50% heavier than the Dell. That may not matter much to you, but I certainly wouldn't want to have to carry that laptop around a lot. Periodically toting it between two locations would be fine, but hauling that thing around a trade show or university campus wouldn't be my idea of a good time.
Finally, the Sager system has a larger display (19 inch widescreen) but a lower resolution. The Dell system can run practically any game (*NOT* FEAR and Oblivion struggles at times with maximum detail setttings) at native resolution with a single 7900 GTX card. If you're going to have a 15 pound "laptop" then you might as well have a 1920x1200 resolution as well. It also ships default with 1 GB of RAM and a smaller, slightly slower hard drive.
When I look at all the aspects together, as well as the final price, that particular system doesn't look like a great deal -- and besides, it's still in preorder status. I'm sure there will be 7900 SLI laptops available shortly, so if you really want the added heat and add performance of SLI, that's what I would wait for. I would also insist on some form of dual core processor, but that's personal preference.
I will reinforce that dual core is going to be more and more useful in the coming year, even in games. If you online game, which can run other comm processes in the background it is already useful to have dual cores.
64 bit dual core by dropping in Merom is going to add 20-30% to your 1710's ability. Expensive yes, but damn nice to know.
This laptop series from the Gen2 to the M170 and now this, have a decent track record of at least one gpu upgrade, sometimes two. It is entirely likely (watch the news as it comes if I'm wrong I apologize) that you'll see the current Gen2/170 series be able to go to the 7900GTX. It is not illogical to think that the 1710 should be able to go to the G80. There aren't enough details yet to say what the G80 will give you, but the ability to add Merom and the likely ability to go one next generation GPU up is a fantastic (albeit expensive) ability to have in a gaming laptop.
4gb of memory limit. The SLI machine has only 2 as the limit. Even then it may well drop timings at 2gb to 2T (unsure). Even if it does not, when Vista comes out 2gb is going to feel like cramped. The Vista OS can eat as much as 800mb of your memory for the OS alone, and we haven't even seen the memory footprint of DX10/WGF 2.x. For a regular user, this is a liveable issue and thus most machines at 2gb limit will be ok. But for a gamer, the experience could be very frustrating, as hardrive memory extension in the laptop arena is sloooowwwwwww. So 4gb is another reason to go with the 1710, not for right now, but for later.
Heat kills. Dual SLI is going to be pretty toasty. Ask anyone who has a P4 based notebook and they can tell you that over time, the extra heat eventually kills parts of the machine. There is a long time user satisfaction reason that Dell and others have gone the way of Centrino coupled with a single high end GPU like the 7800/7900. The heat can be controlled and keeps it from getting nasty with other components. This has the effect of allowing the entire system to live longer, especially since gamers are rarely the type to pick up their laptop and use it for 20 min then shut it down, lol. Long use, upping the heat levels and long term durability/reliability are good partners with low heat production, another pick that says the 1710 is better than the SLI machine.
Nah, keep the lights. The lights are my favorite part! This is a gaming laptop so if you're looking for something a bit more formal and energy effecient, don't look at this baby.
The reason I state this is simple; the author failed to produce timing specs for the DDR2-667 for the M1710. Come on, its 5-5-5-15, put it up as its labeled on the SODIMM or CPU-Z reports it as.
It is running at 5-5-5-15 at present (not sure if the BIOS will allow me to change that). However, think in terms of latency.
200 MHz base speed with 3 cycle latency = 15 ns
266 MHz base speed with 4 cycle latency = 15 ns
333 MHz base speed with 5 cycle latency = 15 ns
Given that latencies are the same in all three cases, the added bandwidth ought to offer a slight performance increase. I would guess the difference is at best 2%, though, and often less than even that.
It is running at 5-5-5-15 at present (not sure if the BIOS will allow me to change that). However, think in terms of latency.
200 MHz base speed with 3 cycle latency = 15 ns
266 MHz base speed with 4 cycle latency = 15 ns
333 MHz base speed with 5 cycle latency = 15 ns
Given that latencies are the same in all three cases, the added bandwidth ought to offer a slight performance increase. I would guess the difference is at best 2%, though, and often less than even that.
At DDR2-667 it will be better because it can run synchronously with the FSB. Probably add another 2% :).
Thanks for the explaination. I upgraded my laptop to DDR2-533 1GB for 63$ instead of DDR2-667 for 90$, which is almost 27% price differential for maybe 4% gain, so on the price-perfomance curve, it doesn't rate as a good buy.
Why hasn't anyone called Jarred on this? Why is the article linking to the M170 laptop for 1300$ and not putting the link to Dell's M1710 which is 2600$ starting?? Come on, stop with the bait & switch advertising.
Also, I'm peeved with Dell as I got the E1710 with the Go 7800 GTX, and now, a month later, they pushing the ATi X1400 mobility! What a joke!
Also, Dell didn't offer a CD replacement install disc for XP MCE for $10 at the time of my purchase. Dell won't renegotiate with me to extend that offer which is bad business. Corporate Greed and Penny Pinching at its FINEST!
And Also, why is there DDR2 2GB Upgrade obnoxiously high at 300$? OCZ / NewEgg has a super deal for 1 GB DDR2-533 SODIMM PC-4200 for 73$ with 5$ S&H and a $9 rebate!
Also, the E1705 had a promotional rebate period. I got $400 off mine, nearly 33%. Now with the M1710 there is nothing happening. I'll be damned if I paid stock price.
Also, it'd be nice if Dell would think to offer an upgrade (reasonably priced) to replace the E1705 with a Go 7900 GTX graphix mini-board. It can't be that hard to manufacture a common board and PCI-e interconnects for all their laptops?
In closing, Dell better wake up and offer a Merom upgrade path as well for all these new laptop lines for enthusiasts. Its long due that laptop upgrades, especially for DTR machines, are commonplace and easy for DIYers.
The CD replacement disk, write to Dell and CC Microsoft support in the email. Microsoft doesn't need the rep that comes with this double dealing. They should send you the install CD without issue. A call to your Attorney General's office would further enforce the point. That disk is your ultimate proof of ownership if the hardrive goes south or the laptop gets destroyed. It is illegal in many states to deny you that.
The 7900GTX doesn't fit the power spec of the 1705. There are ways around this, but they are not for the faint of heart :) Notebookforums.com has some pointers if you look around.
Merom is pin compatible with Yonah (per Intel) and "should" (with some people out there having done it already) be a drop in replacement into a Yonah notebook (like the 1705 and 1710). Some risk of proprietary design issues is there, but likely with Dell being Intel's kid sister, you could expect they'd get it right. :)
I think it's fantastic that Intel is finally back in the game again, especially in the desktop arena. They never really did cede much in the portable market. Now if ATI could finally get something worthwhile for portable graphics. See this is what makes me smile. Good old fashioned competition. I think AMD has gotten a little too smug with themselves after 3 or 4 years total dominance, much like how Intel was around 3 years ago. As far as I'm concerned, all of the Intel vs. AMD and nVidia vs. ATI back and forths is fantastic. In the end it almost always results in progression of technology and increased performance. Oh yea, that's one hell of a laptop too :) I hope that I can stand to stick it out until we see a version of this laptop with Merom. If I'm going to spend 4 G's, may as well get 64-bit capability even if I don't take advantage of it right away.
With my M170, I am unsure how to update the Nvidia driver to the latest version on the Nvidia website. They have specific drivers for the 7800 GTX Go but they are not supported by Dell so when I try to install them, it won't let me.
Is there a mod tool somewhere that will allow me to force the driver to be installed? Dell never updates their official video drivers so this is important.
(I know for my old XPS with the Radeon 9800 I had the same problem but there was a mod tool available to get around this.)
'since' indicates passage of time, while 'because' indicates some form of causation. So, rather than, 'Since this is the very first notebook...,' the sentence would read, 'Because this is the very first notebook....'
Fairly disappointing that this notebook will have a problem with watching many DVDs. Considering the size and weight it's amazing that there isn't a larger capacity battery.
I will be running those in part two; delaying the article for another day or two just for those two applications didn't seem to make much sense, especially since there's so much to say about this laptop that it would have ended up a monolithic single review. Heck, the laptop can even run Oblivion at a reasonable speed even at 1920x1200 -- but there are still some areas in the game that really kill performance.
I should mention that part of the reason some benchmarks weren't run yet is because they require more manual intervention. Quake 4 used to work okay with my automated script, but with the latest beta patch it always crashes on exit. FEAR, Lost Coast, Oblivion, Call of Duty 2... all of those require you to sit down in front of the system and manually execute each benchmark. When you're trying to benchmark several systems at once, especially with a looming deadline, that can be problematic.
Is this tested right out of the box, or was some software disabled/removed? I read an article recently about one of the XPS desktops, and it had major issues playing games with the included software. The games that did play had a major hit in performance.
I did disable/uninstall some software, chief among those being McAfee Internet Security. Many benchmarks like Winstones and SysMark basically require a "clean" OS if you want to have any chance of them running without difficulties. In fact, I couldn't get SysMark to complete either, because one of the scripts kept on failing. There are still quite a few icons in the system tray -- more than I'd really like to have there -- but none of them seem to really affect performance.
You should probable include a disclamer them. Otherwise readers will be upset when they have the product and it doesn't perform up to you specs.
Personally I find it easier to build a custom desktop then remove software from premade systems due to all the "optimizations" done. Plus, since it is a Dell you can't just wipe it and start with a fresh install (since they didn't include the drivers so you have to recover it back to system shipped status).
While I am at it, I would like to see a comparision with a similarly priced desktop (to keep it in perspective) and one of the new mac desktop and laptops. Since both of the macs are basied on similar laptop tech they should make a good comparison.
What's up with the narrow 87-key keyboard layout? The laptop is a sizeable 15.5" across, which is enough room to include the regular 87 keys plus a separate numeric keypad.
Not everyone plays WASD-controlled FPS'es on a gaming laptop, y'know, a numeric keypad helps with a game such as the Civilization series.
Granted, there are certain "economies of scale" that comes with recycling a keyboard part from the budget-ish 6000-series Inspiron, but when every other part of the laptop is stamped with a glowing XPS logo, and the machine costs $3400, it's only fair to splurge on a more functional keyboard that takes advantage of the widescreen aspect of the notebook. Fujitsu does it on their 17" laptops that cost far less than this XPS.
I personally hate laptop keyboards -- I don't care too much about the gaming aspects, but for more regular typing the cramped space doesn't help me out at all. At least the key positioning is decent, with the home/insert/delete/and/page up/page down keys all having the same arrangement as most desktop keyboards. I wish they would move the Fn key to the top left -- not just on this laptop, but on all laptops. I'm also in complete agreement about the usefulness of a number keypad, and certainly on a laptop of this size, they have ample room to add one.
I thought about that, and I figured there just wasn't room underneath the keyboard to enable a full size keyboard? And there are two air intacts on either side of the keyboard as well.
They DO however provide a FN key activated "numpad" over the 789, UIO, JKL and other keys as a sort of compensation, although I found it faster to use the basic number keys in place of it.
I've taken a few laptops apart, and the underside of the keyboard module is always FLAT, save for standoffs. You don't need any room under the keyboard. Unless there's something useful around the keyboard, it can be expanded to the sides.
The FN-activated numpad is of little consolation, because all laptops have that feature, even the ones that cost 1/5 that this one costs.
Incidentally.. how the heck do you test a modern desktop system with a Geforce GTX Go, exactly? Take the laptop apart, pry out the PCI-E card and VGA connector, and stick it into a desktop motherboard?
The clock speeds of the GeForce Go 7900 GTX are 500/600 MHz for the core/RAM. I downclocked the desktop graphics card to the same clock speeds, and that's about as close as we can come to doing a direct comparison between the two. It's somewhat interesting to note that there are a few GPU Ltd. benchmarks were the laptop actually comes out ahead by a small margin.
This machine is still identical in chasis to the XPS notebook I picked up late last year, so I'd assume the fans are still the same. On mine they can only be barely heard if you load up a game and play for a bit, but if you play with headphones on you won't hear them anyway.
I had a question on the battery life though! How long would this laptop last with just simple internet browsing or Word doc typing, or something similarly light? In performance terms my own notebook wouldn't even make it within the ballpark so I'm curious! Does the Core Duo processor allow you to reach .700 volts at 800mhz as with a Pentium M, for egging out another half hour of battery life for when it's needed?
quote: I had a question on the battery life though! How long would this laptop last with just simple internet browsing or Word doc typing, or something similarly light? In performance terms my own notebook wouldn't even make it within the ballpark so I'm curious! Does the Core Duo processor allow you to reach .700 volts at 800mhz as with a Pentium M, for egging out another half hour of battery life for when it's needed?
No, the lowest for Core Duo's are really 1GHz. All the Pentium M generations can reach as low as 6x multiplier so:
Penitium M Banias: 100x6=600MHz
Pentium M Dothan: 133x6=800MHz
Core Duo: 166x6=1GHz
I heard that Intel put a lock on the Core Duo's so you can't lower it from the default lowest, just like AMD did with C&Q on the later revisions.
I'll look at some other areas of battery life in part 2. Needless to say, charging up the battery and then letting it sit 2+ hours at a time doesn't help much with deadlines. LOL I will try to tune the system for better battery life as well. I think the minimum clock speed of the T2600 is 1.0 GHz, but I will need to verify that.
lol! I am very sure it doesn't! I'm certainly in no rush, and I figured part 2 might expand upon the battery tests... I just wanted to provide some extra Qs to answer for it! So maybe I'll toss in another... ;) Does the GPU TDP fit within the previous GO 6800 Ultra/Go 7800 GTX envelope limits? Replacing my 6800 Ultra for a 7900GS and getting better battery life in the process has a certain appeal! Suppose I can keep my desktop 9600XT around just a bit longer instead...
And btw, should have said so above! Thanks for the very interesting article on this "notebook"! I appreciate it :) And that tidbit on the Core Duo too!
Great review, I found the addition of the game tests with sound quite good, just as the inclusion of reference desktop systems for comparison. And the laptop is just awesome...
Not that I have the money to buy one of these (not even close, to be honest), but I got curious about the battery life on uses likes web/office. I wonder if the energy saving features can take it a bit closer to the "normal" laptops on that kind of use, since in gaming the 7900GTX certainly needs a lot of juice. And how hot does it get under gaming?
I'll be getting a copy of MobileMark shortly, but I didn't have it in time for the first part. There are quite a few other things I'm going to try to cover in part 2, like potentially turning down GPU performance for longer battery life. Maximum temperatures are warm but not hot - older P4M laptops are all substantially hotter, and even some PM laptops get warmer. The larger size does help with cooling, I would imagine.
i feel sorry for the person that tries to game with that thing on his/her lap. battery life on that thing must be horrendous. good thing it's billed as a DTR.
"(If you look at what should be a circular map in the top right corner of the screen while playing, you'll find that it's an eclipse, clearly showing that widescreen resolutions are running with the wrong field of view.)"
Did you mean ellipse? Just wondering. Nice article. I'll get one when I win the lottery, otherwise I don't go to enough LAN parties to justify one of these :)
I assume this means you use speech recognition software for dictating your articles? Which do you use, and care to share any opinions about it? Even just a pointer to another forum posting would be great (and probably less distracting to this thread). I haven't ran across anyone who uses it on a regular basis for real work before.
Funny you should mention that, because I was planning on doing an article on the subject shortly. Not to spoil the surprise, but I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 8. I toyed around with the speech recognition in Microsoft Office, and frankly it's pathetic by comparison. You can probably guess that I have carpal tunnel problems, which is what led me to Dragon NaturallySpeaking into first place. I've been using it for about six months now, and while it still isn't perfect, it actually works quite well overall. Probably the best $150 I spent in quite awhile.
I used to get that intense, throbbing pain in my wrists after hours of typing. Then one Christmas I received a pair of typing gloves. They are tight (like spandex?) and have splints in them. At first I really hated them, but after using them for months I found that I no longer needed them.
See, if you fight the material and the splints, you get a pain different from CTS but much more annoying and immediate, so your wrists are trained to assume the proper position when typing. Once I found that I didn't need the gloves anymore, I gave them to a friend who was suffering from the same problem.
A solid, natural keyboard with keys that depress easily; proper chair with good back a nd neck support and good armrests; good posture; correct input device height relative to your body, etc. also helped. There's no point in training your wrists if your computing environment doesn't allow you to keep them in the proper position.
Then again, I don't know how badly you suffer from it or how much typing you have to do each day. Maybe someone else will find this post useful if you do not. :-)
carpel tunnel is not the only neurological condition you need to worry about when doing a lot of keyboard work. you also have muscle overuse syndrome, different types of dystonia (chronic muscles spasms) etc, so if you can get dragon working decently, go that route. your entire upper body will thank you. i may have to try out dragon again, i tried it 3-4yrs ago, or whatever else speech software was out there and it was pretty weak then....
At 8.8lbs it's about the weight of a 17 inch Powerbook G4 so without seeing it I think it's portable. A MacBook 15 inch is 5.4lbs using the Core Duo CPU as well. I think this setup might be able to beat a MacBook in terms of performance which would be cool, because I like to see Apple lose at things, especially to Dell :). This is definetely a better gaming system than a MacBook with BootCamp running a measely X1600.
I just bought an XPS M170 with the 7800 GTX Go and this looks like its pretty much exactly the same on the exterior. This replaced my Inspiron XPS notebook that had a 15.4" screen with the 3.2 GHz Prescott and Mobility Radeon 9800.
With them both sitting on the table next to each other, the new XPS M170 is about a pound lighter and much thinner but amazingly with the bigger screen, the 17" XPS and the 15.4" XPS are the exact same height because the 17" XPS is much thinner it all equals out. They are also the same length (front to back) but the M170 is a couple inches wider. I am amazed that the overall size with the bigger screen isn't all that much bigger.
i have an E1705 which is a xps without the cool lights and currently has 7800 go, instead of 7900 go gtx (but i will be purchasing). i believe mine weighs like 7 or 8 lbs, and i take it with me to class, unless its just because im buff guy, 8lbs isnt that heavy.
...but I'm not going to use this in favor of my Athlon X2 4400+ workstation with 4GB of RAM, multiple hard disks, and a 21" Samsung LCD. While it would be "good enough" for most photo editing (certainly has enough CPU), and it would totally kick ass for LAN parties, it doesn't dethrone the workstation plus smaller laptop that is actually portable setup for people who need more expansion flexibility with some portability as well.
So you would spend your $1000 mobility tax on a laptop and use the rest of the money to buy a desktop. That makes sense. The only disadvantage is if you need mobile power, but I think that would be rare. So you would spend your $1000 mobility tax on a laptop and use the rest of the money to buy a desktop. The only disadvantage is if you need mobile power, but I think that would be rare.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
I received the following email, and thought the response would be useful for others:-----------
Thank you for the informative article on the Dell Gaming system. I was curious on if you know how this Laptop: http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/go_np5950.html">http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/go_np5950.html would stack up to the Dell system. I am thinking of purchasing a gaming laptop and would like to know if you have had any experience with the sager systems vs. the Dell systems. Would the SLI in the sager give me twice the performance of the Dell?
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I haven't used the Sager system, but let me just provide the few comments looking at the specs.
First, SLI pretty much never gives you twice the performance, and on that system it has the older 7800 GTX cards instead of the new 7900 GTX card. That means that the cards are clocked slower. Going along with that, 7800 cards are built using a 110 nm process, while the 7900 is built using a 90 nm process. The smaller process results in lower power requirements and thus lower heat out. The end result is that I'm sure the Sager system will be hotter, and while it might be a bit faster I'm not sure it's worth it. There are other issues I see as well.
Dual core Athlon 64 processors compete very well with Intel's Core Duo processors. AMD Turion processors are at present only single core. That may not matter a whole lot right now, but I would again give the advantage to the M1710.
In terms of size, that Sager system is a real beast. 15 pounds with a battery pack means it's about 50% heavier than the Dell. That may not matter much to you, but I certainly wouldn't want to have to carry that laptop around a lot. Periodically toting it between two locations would be fine, but hauling that thing around a trade show or university campus wouldn't be my idea of a good time.
Finally, the Sager system has a larger display (19 inch widescreen) but a lower resolution. The Dell system can run practically any game (*NOT* FEAR and Oblivion struggles at times with maximum detail setttings) at native resolution with a single 7900 GTX card. If you're going to have a 15 pound "laptop" then you might as well have a 1920x1200 resolution as well. It also ships default with 1 GB of RAM and a smaller, slightly slower hard drive.
When I look at all the aspects together, as well as the final price, that particular system doesn't look like a great deal -- and besides, it's still in preorder status. I'm sure there will be 7900 SLI laptops available shortly, so if you really want the added heat and add performance of SLI, that's what I would wait for. I would also insist on some form of dual core processor, but that's personal preference.
Regards,
Jarred Walton
Hardware Editor
AnandTech.com
Anemone - Sunday, April 23, 2006 - link
Further comparison thoughts vs the SLI system:I will reinforce that dual core is going to be more and more useful in the coming year, even in games. If you online game, which can run other comm processes in the background it is already useful to have dual cores.
64 bit dual core by dropping in Merom is going to add 20-30% to your 1710's ability. Expensive yes, but damn nice to know.
This laptop series from the Gen2 to the M170 and now this, have a decent track record of at least one gpu upgrade, sometimes two. It is entirely likely (watch the news as it comes if I'm wrong I apologize) that you'll see the current Gen2/170 series be able to go to the 7900GTX. It is not illogical to think that the 1710 should be able to go to the G80. There aren't enough details yet to say what the G80 will give you, but the ability to add Merom and the likely ability to go one next generation GPU up is a fantastic (albeit expensive) ability to have in a gaming laptop.
4gb of memory limit. The SLI machine has only 2 as the limit. Even then it may well drop timings at 2gb to 2T (unsure). Even if it does not, when Vista comes out 2gb is going to feel like cramped. The Vista OS can eat as much as 800mb of your memory for the OS alone, and we haven't even seen the memory footprint of DX10/WGF 2.x. For a regular user, this is a liveable issue and thus most machines at 2gb limit will be ok. But for a gamer, the experience could be very frustrating, as hardrive memory extension in the laptop arena is sloooowwwwwww. So 4gb is another reason to go with the 1710, not for right now, but for later.
Heat kills. Dual SLI is going to be pretty toasty. Ask anyone who has a P4 based notebook and they can tell you that over time, the extra heat eventually kills parts of the machine. There is a long time user satisfaction reason that Dell and others have gone the way of Centrino coupled with a single high end GPU like the 7800/7900. The heat can be controlled and keeps it from getting nasty with other components. This has the effect of allowing the entire system to live longer, especially since gamers are rarely the type to pick up their laptop and use it for 20 min then shut it down, lol. Long use, upping the heat levels and long term durability/reliability are good partners with low heat production, another pick that says the 1710 is better than the SLI machine.
$.02
Anemone - Sunday, April 23, 2006 - link
I'm sorry for some of the bad wording above. I didn't reread carefully enough. :(RichUK - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
Is this supposed to be a mobile platform, lol...Also, those lights need to be stripped out straight away!!
timmiser - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Nah, keep the lights. The lights are my favorite part! This is a gaming laptop so if you're looking for something a bit more formal and energy effecient, don't look at this baby.coster - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
You guys have a Dell 3007wfp 30" in the house you can test on the unit to see if it Dual link video card? The 7900 GO's plzzz :)JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
No. :( ASAIK, it is single-link only, but I'm trying to get confirmation from Dell for Pt. 2.spinportal - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
Can someone explain or point me to web references on which is faster and why?DDR2-533 @ 4-4-4-12 timings
vs.
DDR2-667 @ 5-5-5-15 timings
I would think the DDR2-533 would be better, but I need a proof.
spinportal - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
The reason I state this is simple; the author failed to produce timing specs for the DDR2-667 for the M1710. Come on, its 5-5-5-15, put it up as its labeled on the SODIMM or CPU-Z reports it as.JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
The installed DDR2 is actually rated at:3-3-3-9 DDR2-400
4-4-4-12 DDR2-533
5-5-5-15 DDR2-667
It is running at 5-5-5-15 at present (not sure if the BIOS will allow me to change that). However, think in terms of latency.
200 MHz base speed with 3 cycle latency = 15 ns
266 MHz base speed with 4 cycle latency = 15 ns
333 MHz base speed with 5 cycle latency = 15 ns
Given that latencies are the same in all three cases, the added bandwidth ought to offer a slight performance increase. I would guess the difference is at best 2%, though, and often less than even that.
IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
At DDR2-667 it will be better because it can run synchronously with the FSB. Probably add another 2% :).
Anemone - Sunday, April 23, 2006 - link
However the 533 runs much cooler which could be an issue for some users.Personally I went with 2gb of 667, but do be aware that the stuff gets pretty toasty :)
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
Oh yeah, sorry about not including that information. Things slip through the crack now and then, but I've updated the spec table.spinportal - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Thanks for the explaination. I upgraded my laptop to DDR2-533 1GB for 63$ instead of DDR2-667 for 90$, which is almost 27% price differential for maybe 4% gain, so on the price-perfomance curve, it doesn't rate as a good buy.spinportal - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
Why hasn't anyone called Jarred on this? Why is the article linking to the M170 laptop for 1300$ and not putting the link to Dell's M1710 which is 2600$ starting?? Come on, stop with the bait & switch advertising.Also, I'm peeved with Dell as I got the E1710 with the Go 7800 GTX, and now, a month later, they pushing the ATi X1400 mobility! What a joke!
Also, Dell didn't offer a CD replacement install disc for XP MCE for $10 at the time of my purchase. Dell won't renegotiate with me to extend that offer which is bad business. Corporate Greed and Penny Pinching at its FINEST!
And Also, why is there DDR2 2GB Upgrade obnoxiously high at 300$? OCZ / NewEgg has a super deal for 1 GB DDR2-533 SODIMM PC-4200 for 73$ with 5$ S&H and a $9 rebate!
Also, the E1705 had a promotional rebate period. I got $400 off mine, nearly 33%. Now with the M1710 there is nothing happening. I'll be damned if I paid stock price.
Also, it'd be nice if Dell would think to offer an upgrade (reasonably priced) to replace the E1705 with a Go 7900 GTX graphix mini-board. It can't be that hard to manufacture a common board and PCI-e interconnects for all their laptops?
In closing, Dell better wake up and offer a Merom upgrade path as well for all these new laptop lines for enthusiasts. Its long due that laptop upgrades, especially for DTR machines, are commonplace and easy for DIYers.
Anemone - Sunday, April 23, 2006 - link
The CD replacement disk, write to Dell and CC Microsoft support in the email. Microsoft doesn't need the rep that comes with this double dealing. They should send you the install CD without issue. A call to your Attorney General's office would further enforce the point. That disk is your ultimate proof of ownership if the hardrive goes south or the laptop gets destroyed. It is illegal in many states to deny you that.The 7900GTX doesn't fit the power spec of the 1705. There are ways around this, but they are not for the faint of heart :) Notebookforums.com has some pointers if you look around.
Merom is pin compatible with Yonah (per Intel) and "should" (with some people out there having done it already) be a drop in replacement into a Yonah notebook (like the 1705 and 1710). Some risk of proprietary design issues is there, but likely with Dell being Intel's kid sister, you could expect they'd get it right. :)
RogueSpear - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
I think it's fantastic that Intel is finally back in the game again, especially in the desktop arena. They never really did cede much in the portable market. Now if ATI could finally get something worthwhile for portable graphics. See this is what makes me smile. Good old fashioned competition. I think AMD has gotten a little too smug with themselves after 3 or 4 years total dominance, much like how Intel was around 3 years ago. As far as I'm concerned, all of the Intel vs. AMD and nVidia vs. ATI back and forths is fantastic. In the end it almost always results in progression of technology and increased performance. Oh yea, that's one hell of a laptop too :) I hope that I can stand to stick it out until we see a version of this laptop with Merom. If I'm going to spend 4 G's, may as well get 64-bit capability even if I don't take advantage of it right away.timmiser - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
With my M170, I am unsure how to update the Nvidia driver to the latest version on the Nvidia website. They have specific drivers for the 7800 GTX Go but they are not supported by Dell so when I try to install them, it won't let me.Is there a mod tool somewhere that will allow me to force the driver to be installed? Dell never updates their official video drivers so this is important.
(I know for my old XPS with the Radeon 9800 I had the same problem but there was a mod tool available to get around this.)
Anemone - Sunday, April 23, 2006 - link
Video drivers (all versions to the latest) for M170/Gen2 and all similar:laptopvideo2go.com
Should find more than enough there to guide you :)
timmiser - Tuesday, April 25, 2006 - link
Thanks for the link. :)ElFenix - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
'since' indicates passage of time, while 'because' indicates some form of causation. So, rather than, 'Since this is the very first notebook...,' the sentence would read, 'Because this is the very first notebook....'Fairly disappointing that this notebook will have a problem with watching many DVDs. Considering the size and weight it's amazing that there isn't a larger capacity battery.
17" LCDs must suck down a ton of juice.
Trisped - Friday, April 21, 2006 - link
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/...">Actually it can be used both ways.http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/...yacoub - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
so wait, why was it unable to run FEAR or Quake4?JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I will be running those in part two; delaying the article for another day or two just for those two applications didn't seem to make much sense, especially since there's so much to say about this laptop that it would have ended up a monolithic single review. Heck, the laptop can even run Oblivion at a reasonable speed even at 1920x1200 -- but there are still some areas in the game that really kill performance.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I should mention that part of the reason some benchmarks weren't run yet is because they require more manual intervention. Quake 4 used to work okay with my automated script, but with the latest beta patch it always crashes on exit. FEAR, Lost Coast, Oblivion, Call of Duty 2... all of those require you to sit down in front of the system and manually execute each benchmark. When you're trying to benchmark several systems at once, especially with a looming deadline, that can be problematic.yacoub - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
ah ok, thanks :)DarkForceRising - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Is this tested right out of the box, or was some software disabled/removed? I read an article recently about one of the XPS desktops, and it had major issues playing games with the included software. The games that did play had a major hit in performance.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I did disable/uninstall some software, chief among those being McAfee Internet Security. Many benchmarks like Winstones and SysMark basically require a "clean" OS if you want to have any chance of them running without difficulties. In fact, I couldn't get SysMark to complete either, because one of the scripts kept on failing. There are still quite a few icons in the system tray -- more than I'd really like to have there -- but none of them seem to really affect performance.Trisped - Friday, April 21, 2006 - link
You should probable include a disclamer them. Otherwise readers will be upset when they have the product and it doesn't perform up to you specs.Personally I find it easier to build a custom desktop then remove software from premade systems due to all the "optimizations" done. Plus, since it is a Dell you can't just wipe it and start with a fresh install (since they didn't include the drivers so you have to recover it back to system shipped status).
While I am at it, I would like to see a comparision with a similarly priced desktop (to keep it in perspective) and one of the new mac desktop and laptops. Since both of the macs are basied on similar laptop tech they should make a good comparison.
Odeen - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
What's up with the narrow 87-key keyboard layout? The laptop is a sizeable 15.5" across, which is enough room to include the regular 87 keys plus a separate numeric keypad.Not everyone plays WASD-controlled FPS'es on a gaming laptop, y'know, a numeric keypad helps with a game such as the Civilization series.
Granted, there are certain "economies of scale" that comes with recycling a keyboard part from the budget-ish 6000-series Inspiron, but when every other part of the laptop is stamped with a glowing XPS logo, and the machine costs $3400, it's only fair to splurge on a more functional keyboard that takes advantage of the widescreen aspect of the notebook. Fujitsu does it on their 17" laptops that cost far less than this XPS.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I personally hate laptop keyboards -- I don't care too much about the gaming aspects, but for more regular typing the cramped space doesn't help me out at all. At least the key positioning is decent, with the home/insert/delete/and/page up/page down keys all having the same arrangement as most desktop keyboards. I wish they would move the Fn key to the top left -- not just on this laptop, but on all laptops. I'm also in complete agreement about the usefulness of a number keypad, and certainly on a laptop of this size, they have ample room to add one.Kougar - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I thought about that, and I figured there just wasn't room underneath the keyboard to enable a full size keyboard? And there are two air intacts on either side of the keyboard as well.They DO however provide a FN key activated "numpad" over the 789, UIO, JKL and other keys as a sort of compensation, although I found it faster to use the basic number keys in place of it.
Odeen - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I've taken a few laptops apart, and the underside of the keyboard module is always FLAT, save for standoffs. You don't need any room under the keyboard. Unless there's something useful around the keyboard, it can be expanded to the sides.The FN-activated numpad is of little consolation, because all laptops have that feature, even the ones that cost 1/5 that this one costs.
Incidentally.. how the heck do you test a modern desktop system with a Geforce GTX Go, exactly? Take the laptop apart, pry out the PCI-E card and VGA connector, and stick it into a desktop motherboard?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
The clock speeds of the GeForce Go 7900 GTX are 500/600 MHz for the core/RAM. I downclocked the desktop graphics card to the same clock speeds, and that's about as close as we can come to doing a direct comparison between the two. It's somewhat interesting to note that there are a few GPU Ltd. benchmarks were the laptop actually comes out ahead by a small margin.3zero2 - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
any comments about fan noise? is it noticable/annoying?Kougar - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
This machine is still identical in chasis to the XPS notebook I picked up late last year, so I'd assume the fans are still the same. On mine they can only be barely heard if you load up a game and play for a bit, but if you play with headphones on you won't hear them anyway.I had a question on the battery life though! How long would this laptop last with just simple internet browsing or Word doc typing, or something similarly light? In performance terms my own notebook wouldn't even make it within the ballpark so I'm curious! Does the Core Duo processor allow you to reach .700 volts at 800mhz as with a Pentium M, for egging out another half hour of battery life for when it's needed?
IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
No, the lowest for Core Duo's are really 1GHz. All the Pentium M generations can reach as low as 6x multiplier so:
Penitium M Banias: 100x6=600MHz
Pentium M Dothan: 133x6=800MHz
Core Duo: 166x6=1GHz
I heard that Intel put a lock on the Core Duo's so you can't lower it from the default lowest, just like AMD did with C&Q on the later revisions.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I'll look at some other areas of battery life in part 2. Needless to say, charging up the battery and then letting it sit 2+ hours at a time doesn't help much with deadlines. LOL I will try to tune the system for better battery life as well. I think the minimum clock speed of the T2600 is 1.0 GHz, but I will need to verify that.Kougar - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
lol! I am very sure it doesn't! I'm certainly in no rush, and I figured part 2 might expand upon the battery tests... I just wanted to provide some extra Qs to answer for it! So maybe I'll toss in another... ;) Does the GPU TDP fit within the previous GO 6800 Ultra/Go 7800 GTX envelope limits? Replacing my 6800 Ultra for a 7900GS and getting better battery life in the process has a certain appeal! Suppose I can keep my desktop 9600XT around just a bit longer instead...And btw, should have said so above! Thanks for the very interesting article on this "notebook"! I appreciate it :) And that tidbit on the Core Duo too!
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Audible but not terribly loud. Will have details in part 2.timmiser - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Quieter than my Inspiron XPS version 1.Bluestealth - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Do they turn off, because that would just get annoying...timmiser - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Yes. You can change the color and intensity of the lights plus configure the 3 light positions: Speakers/air vents/XPS lid, seperately.The lights are controlled in the BIOS and also in an included Dell windows utility.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Yes, all the lights can be disabled within the BIOS.Patrese - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Great review, I found the addition of the game tests with sound quite good, just as the inclusion of reference desktop systems for comparison. And the laptop is just awesome...Not that I have the money to buy one of these (not even close, to be honest), but I got curious about the battery life on uses likes web/office. I wonder if the energy saving features can take it a bit closer to the "normal" laptops on that kind of use, since in gaming the 7900GTX certainly needs a lot of juice. And how hot does it get under gaming?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I'll be getting a copy of MobileMark shortly, but I didn't have it in time for the first part. There are quite a few other things I'm going to try to cover in part 2, like potentially turning down GPU performance for longer battery life. Maximum temperatures are warm but not hot - older P4M laptops are all substantially hotter, and even some PM laptops get warmer. The larger size does help with cooling, I would imagine.One43637 - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
i feel sorry for the person that tries to game with that thing on his/her lap. battery life on that thing must be horrendous. good thing it's billed as a DTR.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
The system gets warm, but not uncomfortably so (for me). I will get some specific numbers for part 2.plewis00 - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Who games with a laptop actually on their lap? You need a decent mouse anyway and that means a table surely?Rock Hydra - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I sit on the couch with my Dell 110L in my lap and use the couch cushion next to me as my mousing surface and play games.Schadenfroh - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
We got a thread going in the notebook forums about it if you guys want to join us:http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">Text
Cullinaire - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
On the BF2 page:"(If you look at what should be a circular map in the top right corner of the screen while playing, you'll find that it's an eclipse, clearly showing that widescreen resolutions are running with the wrong field of view.)"
Did you mean ellipse? Just wondering. Nice article. I'll get one when I win the lottery, otherwise I don't go to enough LAN parties to justify one of these :)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Tired. Yes, ellipse. I must have misspoke originally.Poser - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I assume this means you use speech recognition software for dictating your articles? Which do you use, and care to share any opinions about it? Even just a pointer to another forum posting would be great (and probably less distracting to this thread). I haven't ran across anyone who uses it on a regular basis for real work before.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Funny you should mention that, because I was planning on doing an article on the subject shortly. Not to spoil the surprise, but I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 8. I toyed around with the speech recognition in Microsoft Office, and frankly it's pathetic by comparison. You can probably guess that I have carpal tunnel problems, which is what led me to Dragon NaturallySpeaking into first place. I've been using it for about six months now, and while it still isn't perfect, it actually works quite well overall. Probably the best $150 I spent in quite awhile.Regards,
Jarred Walton
Hardware Editor
AnandTech.com
nullpointerus - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
I used to get that intense, throbbing pain in my wrists after hours of typing. Then one Christmas I received a pair of typing gloves. They are tight (like spandex?) and have splints in them. At first I really hated them, but after using them for months I found that I no longer needed them.See, if you fight the material and the splints, you get a pain different from CTS but much more annoying and immediate, so your wrists are trained to assume the proper position when typing. Once I found that I didn't need the gloves anymore, I gave them to a friend who was suffering from the same problem.
These are the kind I used:
http://www.imakproducts.com/products/smart_glove.h...">http://www.imakproducts.com/products/smart_glove.h...
A solid, natural keyboard with keys that depress easily; proper chair with good back a nd neck support and good armrests; good posture; correct input device height relative to your body, etc. also helped. There's no point in training your wrists if your computing environment doesn't allow you to keep them in the proper position.
Then again, I don't know how badly you suffer from it or how much typing you have to do each day. Maybe someone else will find this post useful if you do not. :-)
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
I may have to give that a try - the wrist supports I have help, but they haven't solved the problem by any means.bob4432 - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
carpel tunnel is not the only neurological condition you need to worry about when doing a lot of keyboard work. you also have muscle overuse syndrome, different types of dystonia (chronic muscles spasms) etc, so if you can get dragon working decently, go that route. your entire upper body will thank you. i may have to try out dragon again, i tried it 3-4yrs ago, or whatever else speech software was out there and it was pretty weak then....gramboh - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
At 8.8lbs it's about the weight of a 17 inch Powerbook G4 so without seeing it I think it's portable. A MacBook 15 inch is 5.4lbs using the Core Duo CPU as well. I think this setup might be able to beat a MacBook in terms of performance which would be cool, because I like to see Apple lose at things, especially to Dell :). This is definetely a better gaming system than a MacBook with BootCamp running a measely X1600.timmiser - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I just bought an XPS M170 with the 7800 GTX Go and this looks like its pretty much exactly the same on the exterior. This replaced my Inspiron XPS notebook that had a 15.4" screen with the 3.2 GHz Prescott and Mobility Radeon 9800.With them both sitting on the table next to each other, the new XPS M170 is about a pound lighter and much thinner but amazingly with the bigger screen, the 17" XPS and the 15.4" XPS are the exact same height because the 17" XPS is much thinner it all equals out. They are also the same length (front to back) but the M170 is a couple inches wider. I am amazed that the overall size with the bigger screen isn't all that much bigger.
rqle - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
i rather take 2 Dell 17inch w/ 7900GT then one 15.4 apple w/ 1600xt.Or rather take 2 non XPS w/7900GT then one with 7900GTX
Quiksel - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
what are you smoking? The 17" PBG4 is only 6.9 lbs.http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html">Specs for the 17" PowerBook
8.8lbs. is crazy heavy. Nice performance, but DAMN, that's heavy.
NullSubroutine - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
i have an E1705 which is a xps without the cool lights and currently has 7800 go, instead of 7900 go gtx (but i will be purchasing). i believe mine weighs like 7 or 8 lbs, and i take it with me to class, unless its just because im buff guy, 8lbs isnt that heavy.ProviaFan - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
...but I'm not going to use this in favor of my Athlon X2 4400+ workstation with 4GB of RAM, multiple hard disks, and a 21" Samsung LCD. While it would be "good enough" for most photo editing (certainly has enough CPU), and it would totally kick ass for LAN parties, it doesn't dethrone the workstation plus smaller laptop that is actually portable setup for people who need more expansion flexibility with some portability as well.Trisped - Friday, April 21, 2006 - link
So you would spend your $1000 mobility tax on a laptop and use the rest of the money to buy a desktop. That makes sense. The only disadvantage is if you need mobile power, but I think that would be rare. So you would spend your $1000 mobility tax on a laptop and use the rest of the money to buy a desktop. The only disadvantage is if you need mobile power, but I think that would be rare.Trisped - Friday, April 21, 2006 - link
Sorry about the double print, just follow the second lineKeypoX - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
can i have onePeteRoy - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I want one too.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
And I don't want to send this one back! :( LOL