[NEWS] Studio XPS 15 and XPS 17 !!

Ok, got a question regarding audio on the XPS 15:

The specs say "Audio jacks (headphone with SPDIF support (2), 1 Mic-in)"

Does that mean it has a proper coaxial spdif output?

Will be hooking the laptop to an external standalone DAC with choice of SPDIF and USB inputs.

 

Grrrr cant make up my mind. I already canceled 3 XPS 15 orders.

Order thats now in production: XPS 15,1080p,i5-460m,4gb,640gb,bt,backlit,9cell,2year basic warranty:$950 after taxes

System I'm thinking about getting now: XPS 17,4gb,640GB,BT,Backlit,9cell,1year mail-in warranty: $796 after taxes


Trying to get the most bang for my $$$ and staying under $900.

What do you think? This will be a desktop replacement. Little gaming.It will stay around the house.
I loved the 900p resolution on my XPS 16. Will 900p still be enough for a 17" display?
Also should I spend $$$ extra for longer warranty for a laptop that price?

 

Wow that's a great price for the 17.

Of course, everyone will have different opinions on best screen resolution, but I am really glad that the 900p is offered on the 17 that I ordered. I'm on my PC all day working with all sorts of documents, quotes, email etc and my aging eyes are going to thank me for ordering the larger display size with reasonable resolution.

Good luck on your choice.

 

Can somebody describe what the GT445M is like in the XPS 17? What would be a comparable GPU?

 

And i comes with 9Cell.
I think I will go with the XPS 17.I'm feeling I get the most for my money with that one.

 

It is most likely an optical connection. You'll need a little adapter that will let you hook up an optical SPDIF cable to that jack like this: Amazon.com: Digital Optical (Toslink) Female / 3.5mm Male: Electronics: Reviews, Prices & more

Or you can get a cable like this: Amazon.com: 50ft High Quality Digital Fiber Optic Audio Toslink to 3.5mm Optical Cable - 5.0mm: Electronics

 

Sorry if I am late on the news but it seems the backlit keyboard is available again..yaay.

 

hi, I have got email today with new delivery date which is 11/11/10
cant wait for my new xps 17 eh. what is dell policy about adding extra memory (less than 100gbp compare to 330gbp directly from dell for 4Gb); and anyone have experience with accidental damage cover with dell in the past? I decided for it because of low cost.

 

Thanks for the info. Shame it's optical, will probably use USB.

 

Too bad there's no backlit kb for latinamerica; anyway i cancelled my order, after a couple of nights reading this forum i got convinced to move into the 1080p screen, so my order got re entered today; EDD december 2nd, maybe my xps will be arriving @ xmas

Of course i paid the extra premium, but as long as i´ve read, the waitng and the premium is more than worth, considering how expensive the whole system is, i don't i´ll move to another lappy for the next 2 years

 

If anyone (Australia) is thinking of getting one, Call this guy, he is great. Doesn't wiff waff you about, answers your queries, if he doesn't know something he finds out and just generally I found him very professional and good to deal with.

His name is Vikram. Number 1300 733 353 ext 8610017. Tell him Raji sent ya haha!

Also, he was able to add a backlit keyboard to the Cart I configured online (14").

 

Well, finally here it is:

Dell XPS L501x: An Excellent Mainstream Notebook - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

No i7/435 review though, disappointing.

 

Good review, looks like we got a winner here so far.
Too bad no reviews for the i7+435m are up yet.

 

They took so long for a GT 420M review. Zzz.

One thing though, guys, I am really confused about the colour.

XPS 15 (the top part - touchpad, keyboard area) looks black in some photos, grey in some, but in the Review photos it is the grey one.

So what colour is it really? Because beige/grey is totally ugly. Silver/black is better.


"but you could at least watch a movie with a couple of friends and not strain to hear the audio"

Now that is a statement I simply cannot believe before first hand experience.


On the review the tests place GT 420M just under / nearly equal to the GT 335M. So just how much better is the GT 435M expected to be? Are these expectations too high?

 

I am a happy camper, you can't beat 100% AdobeRGB gamut. I am glad mine is already ordered!

 

On my freshly received XPS 17 it is dark grey. Definately not black. And the screen bezel is the same colour, not shiny like in the reviews.

 

Mitchell can you please checkout which kind of VRAM your 445M GT uses? This only takes a few seconds with GPU-Z. Thank you!

 

I was just doing so. It is regular DDR3 with a 192bit bus, and it reports a bandwidth of 38.4GB/s

I will post a screen shot later on, maybe in a new thread, but will link here.

 

Thanxx for the info. Curious. I thought, resp. Nvidia says, the 445M GT is available either with DDR3 + 128 bit bus, or GDDR5 + 192 bit bus.

 

I have some work to finish, so I cannot do too much with the XPS just yet. I will run 3DMark, and show some screens (GPU-Z, 3DMark) when I have the time!

 

Any recommendations for some good games to play on my new XPS 15 (i7-740Qm, 435m, 1080p Screen). Used to love playing FPS on PCs in the olden days (half life, farcry, F.E.A.R. etc) but since getting a ps3 have got out of PC gaming. What decent FPS or other genre games are better on PC than PS3 and are playable well on my new toy?

 

When you give it a work out can you please comment on heat?

 

Looks like I'm not the only one that dislikes the stick-out-the-bottom 9-cell battery:

"If we had our dream setup, we'd get Sandy Bridge, a "flat" 9-cell battery option, ..."

 

So I ended up buying the XPS 15 with the 1080p screen because I got tired of waiting for the XPS 17 1080p. I justified it by buying a monitor from Dell. After reading the Anandtech review, it sounds like the B+RG screen is really awesome. Do you guys think the monitor I got from Dell is still going to beat it (if size wasn't a factor)?

Here is the one:

Dell SP2309W

It sounds like a great monitor from the reviews, but don't want to keep it if I'd rather be staring at the XPS 15 screen!

 

Just a quick note. Ran 3DMark @ 1280x1024 (on external screen), scored 10145 (4266/4185/3312). This was the stock system, no drivers updated, no processes killed, just the plain system. It got to 65 degrees celsius.

Now running Furmark, ant it is @ 67C. Will leave that for a while, and will report later.

 

Ahhhh I ordered a XPS Studio 16 with the 1080p screen a few weeks ago and its due to be delivered tomorrow! I didn't know about the new XPS15 and 17s ;( Do people recommend I return the Studio 16 for a refund and order a XPS15?

 

Brilliant mate thanks

How is the external heat (ie the keyboard and palm rest?)
+rep

 

@Mitchell, maybe you can post also the VRAM clocks which are shown at GPU-Z? Because if they are at 800 MHz, I have to believe that it´s really DDR3-RAM. But if they are at 1250 MHz, it must be GDDR5-RAM and the "DDR3"-Info of GPU-Z in that case is wrong.

 

It's warm but definately not hot. I had to go out for a bit and left Furmark running. After a little under an hour, it's still at 67C. According to CPUID Hardware Monitor the max temp was 68C.


Oh, and thanks for the rep

It is at 800Mhz (GPU = 590Mhz, Mem= 800Mhz, Shader = 1180Mhz)

 

Im happy to see the XPS series stick around. For a while I was thinking I had the last of the iconic series but boy am I glad I was wrong. I am also happy that I got the intel/ati/slot optical drive version as Im not a tray loading fan nor am I an nvidia fan (although the 435 should beat my 5730). But alas my SXPS plays all my games in FHD very well and it is quite the workhorse too. Cant wait to start seeing benchmarks from these new machines!

 

When you have some time an estimate of the battery life would be much appreciated, so we can see if the i5 optimus combo actually makes a real difference. The only reason I wanted the i5 was because of optimus, but if the battery life / heat isnt much difference then it makes no sense for me.

 

I did, though mainly due to poor service from the Sales Rep who handled the SXPS16 order. In the end I refused delivery. Accordng to UPS it's still sitting in the Reading, UK Depot

 

So you recommend me refusing delivery? How does this affect any refund?

 

I don't necessarily recommend it. Just saying that's what I did and it worked out ok for me.

 

OK thanks. Just trying to work out if I should and the XPS15 is better in anyway? It seems fairly similar.

 

The anandtech review sold me on the XPS 15.

Ordered it with i5-460M,4GB,640GB,BT,Back-lit,FULL HD, Blu-Ray,6Cell.
I opted for the basic 1year mail-in warranty to save some $$$ (new option, save you $50+ over basic in-home warranty)
Total: $876 after taxes! I achieved my goal to get a loaded system for under $900. Really cant beat that.



Anyone in the US got their system yet?

 

I wonder where is seeker moc hiding now... He said the 445M wouldn´t even reach 9000 points at 1280x1024

 

If you can wait, I'll be taking it to a client's office on friday, to do some work, and I can start out on battery to see how far it gets. I'll be doing Visual Studio / SQL and a little Photoshop.

That's the soonest I can try, or maybe - if I'm lucky - tomorrow evening on the couch with a movie...

 

Great!!! Thats exactly what I will be using mine for... I am a programmer / developer as well.

 

FYI, for those that want to know, I just opened the bottom, and the XPS 17 comes with an extra bracket-thing for a 2nd harddrive. Nice!

 

That's good news. So is the temperature! When you said 67 degrees is that CPU temp?

 

As shown in the Anandtech review, +1 hour 3DMark06 on the XPS 15:


Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3999/dell-xps-15-l501x-review/6

 

That was the GPU, the CPU was a little higher at 70C if I remember correctly.

What I find strange, is that the BIOS doesn't support RAID, even though it does support two HDDs

Maybe I'm missing something, but it only allows for ATA and AHCI modes.

 

Maybe the RAID option is activated once you have 2 similar HDD´s installed, and if itsn´t I guess that feature will be implemented in further BIOS revisions.

 

Any user impressions on the 15", i7-740, 435 would be really appreciated......

 

Is there some problem with the anandtech review?
They mentioned their config as Core i5 460M and it is repeated several time.
But in the images posted,it is showing Core i5 540M.
Are we being fooled?

 

Anandtech is not the site it used to be. I wouldn't be surprised.

 

Well, I installed a second HDD as test, and nothing changed. I don't need RAID, but was surprised anyway.

I noticed that too. Curious isn't it.

 

Perhaps CPUID Hardware Monitor just doesn't recognize the processor correctly.