--->The Official Studio XPS 1340 Owner's Thread<---

That's possible too. If so, hopefully it's fixable with a chipset drivers update sometime soon.

 

Well after waiting over a month and arguing with dell over why it hasnt shipped yet, mine finally arrived on Tuesday! Beautiful, light, great keyboard that is quiet are my first impressions. The dell cloth bag the computer ships in is good to wipe the fingerprints, but it hasnt bothered me at all. Nor has the glare bothered me. When used in a dark room (like when watching tv on the couch) this computer has no glare. Beautiful looking screen, backlit keys are the greatest...

I have the upgraded video card and when I was first playing around with the computer out of the box it got very very hot. I played around with the power settings and when the advanced sli is turned off the computer almost immediately cools. I plan to only turn that on if I have something graphics intensive.

The computer has been very responsive. The facial recognition is very cool. It did freeze on me twice however at startup when the camera was loading up. I havent had problems since - maybe the windows updates helped that. I also went through the vista tweak guide on this website and that has really sped up the startup and shut down process, so I highly recommend that. I am very happy with the response time so far, though I really have only surfed the web and played around with various settings so far.

I was wondering if anyone can recommend a good pc game that I can buy which will show off some of these graphics capabilities?

My config is the base model plus the better video card, led screen and bluetooth.

Thank you!

 

Good to hear you got your computer!
I ordered a sxps 16 from best buy and it wont be here for another week or 2

anyways
some games that i would recommend include (from greatest to least)
1. Far Cry 2
2. Call of duty 4
3. Call of duty 5
4. Fallout 3
5. Left 4 dead

 

Thanks I will def check those out...Are there any good racing games?

Also, btw, forgot to mention in my previous post that my sleep function is working fine with no problems...long term and short term!

 

Just for kicks, would you do the latency check aswell
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Simply post the screenshot of the running program, thank you I would like to see someone without red bars... Ok maybe we will know today if recording is still possible...

 

UGH!!!!

I just checked dell's website, now they are offering the p9600 instead of the p9500, and for LESS $$$

I think I'm going to return this lappy and order another

I paid $1850 for what I can now get for $1641

dell, seriously, .

 

With P9600 you will barely notice 3% improvement, it's not worth it.
I see the price went down, but only in the States, in Canada it's still pretty high. You can just ask them to match the new price, if you don't want to exchange it.

 

Has anyone tried counterstrike source on this yet? what settings do you use?

 

Yeah, I know, but its the principal, along with the $$$

 

I just checked, they lowered the price by 100$ , but removed the wled screen, and wled can be added for 125$!
So effectively its 25$ more , but you get p8600 instead of p8400.

 

I just found out that my CD/DVD drive cannot read CDs...or DVDs...Anyone else having this issue?

 

So the 2.66Ghz option is out, cool.

What's interesting though is the 2.53 Ghz option has suddenly changed from the P9500 to the P8700. Both are 2.53Ghz Penryn's, but the P8700 is cheaper, higher voltage, and has a 3MB instead of a 6MB cache. So note that if you get a 2.53Ghz one now, you're going to get a little bit worse than if you got it a few days ago.

 

I ordered mine on 7th, ESD is 16th. Hope it comes on time as stated. My Vostro broke (nvidia 8400 failed) , and I have sent it for repairs. So lappy"less" currently

Also I pray that the heat problem is not so much as people have been saying. I have ordered mine with just the 9400m , not the discrete one.

 

yeah, it seems they are only offering the 25w and 6mb cache cpu's as their top of the line option...

 

heat won't be an issue with just the 9400m, heck, even with the 9500m option, when running in power save, which means only the 9400m is running, its warm, but not bad.

 

Both the P9500 and P8700 are 25W, it's the T9400 that's 2.53Ghz and 35W. Intel likes making things as confusing as possible I think. And so does Dell.

 

right you are!

 

i did the latency test and get red spikes every 5th bar that range from 2000 to 5000. Has anyone figured out what driver is causing this?

I haven't had a problem streaming the webcam on skype if that makes a difference...

 

+1 Mine works like that too. Doesn't seem to lock up the BIOS either. So I guess we blame the NexStar3.

Cheers, I just checked mine again and it's the same, must've been the circumstances I tried it in earlier.

 

The thing is, we can't blame JUST the enclosure or it wouldn't work on other machines. Vantec and Dell are, in fact, working together in some sort of subversive freezing alliance.

 

Recommend you file a bug report with both dell & nvidia. Even with some enclosures only working at sata150 speeds, the esata port needs to work with them.

Another possibility is sub-standard esata cables (too long, not sufficiently shielded, etc).

 

I'm using the same cable + a converter when I connect it directly, so it's not the cable on mine at least.

 

dudes, I just got my blackberry curve 8330 linked up to the xps1340

then, using it as modem, it totally works! and works, AWESOME! I love this, I don't have to pay anything extra for evdo now! its only rev.1, not rev.a, but still, around 150KB/s

I use sprints everything plan, its pretty sweet to have my blackberry in my pocket like always, and with one click, bam, i'm online using it anywhere


friggin sweet, this is the first time I've ever really appreciated bluetooth

 

Not necessarily - if the cable is allowing the voltages to go marginal the problem may only show up when you use the enclosure (that has an esata->usb bridge chip that is affecting voltages as well).

In other forums, some users have reported that swapping esata cables fixes their problems.

 

Ah okay, thanks.

 

But yes, I'd probably be more suspect of the enclosure than the cable. Would be good to try a different enclosure, one that's known to work at sata300.

 

I see Best Buy is selling the basic configuration for $999, when the exact same specifications are on Dell's site for $1,099. Naturally, this is quite a savings, so I think I'll spring on it.

However... Is the NVIDIA 9400M an integrated or dedicated GPU? If the former, is it better than, say, the Intel GMA 950 in the M1330, which I want to replace?

 

Also, it seems that that the Studio XPS 13 weighs in around 5 lbs, while the older XPS M1330 was around 3 lbs. For those who are taking the notebook to school, work, etc, does the extra 2 lbs. make a large difference for you? I know it's not a lot heavier, but it still adds up.

 

Has anyone installed the latest Graphics drivers from the Dell website (Rev A03)? If so are you able to switch Hybrid SLI modes?

I've found after installing this driver that the GPU options from the Advanced Power config in Vista has gone and I can no longer turn GeForce Boost off...

I've had to roll back to the older driver for now

It also doesn't turn GeForce boost off when I unplug from the mains either.

 

I've noticed this too. The only way to turn it off is to set the profile to power saver and unplug the mains cable.

 

Oh my God, guys....

I have now tried to boot from the XP cd.
It starts up fine, and uses a couple of minute loading installationfiles...

But then, before it is finished, it BSODS, and say:

What do i do now then?? I cant even get to the XP partition manager.. :-(

 

Microsoft's advice on this error message is here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324103

I don't know if it's any help however other as you can't be having driver issues and it's unlikely that you have a boot sector virus. Other than removing any devices you may have plugged into your laptop?

Alternatively have you got an external hard drive enclosure you could pop the drive into and format from another computer?

 

Yes, I have an enclosure. I'll try that later.. cause now i have booted into GParted.. but i have absolutely now idea on how to use it.. it starts up by asking me to configure console data:

what should i select?

 

Additionally you could try booting from a USB Memory stick and formatting the hard drive from there.

You can find some advice on making a bootable memory stick here http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm, although it can be a bit hit and miss whether you can get it to work. You'll need to change the boot order on your laptop in the BIOS to boot from a USB stick (I'm pretty sure there's an option for that)

 

Hey Tissie in the bios change "SATA mode select" to ATA and you should not get a BSOD

 

I assume that's to do with the layout of your keyboard. I'd start by telling it not to touch kernal keymap and see if that works

 

Okay, but now i have just booted into Gparted from a cd i made. Is that a good idea? but as i said, i dont even know what to select on the first step...

 

If i do that, can i then change it back to SATA later?

 

well when i tried to install XP after it finished the install i switched it back to AHCI and it booted fine. I reinstalled Vista because i was not bothered to scrounge around to find compatible XP drivers for the system.

 

Ok, i am into GPARTED.. it shows me a 298 GB of unallocated partition.. what then?

 

Okay, hold up guys.. so which route to take? the XP where i try to change BIOS to ATA..

Or the Gparted route?

Edit: I have no prefference of route, as i have never tried neither... So, as long as you guys are so kind to help me, i have hope.. as long as we start with one route of trobleshooting..

 

I would be guessing if I tried to help you through GParted having never used it myself. Your best bet first is to try the Windows XP route and change the BIOS to ATA and see if you can get far enough that way first. If that fails then try GParted

 

Ok, so now i exit Gparted, reboot, go into bios and change something to ATA?
Then boot on XP?

 

Yup see if it gets far enough to be able to delete/create partitions on the disk

 

Okay, i made it a step further..

It now says

which one?

 

Press enter

 

okay, now i can see partitions:

What now?

 

you want to just delete all of the partitions following the on-screen instructions to do this. This will remove your Recovery partition so you'll have to perform a manual re-installation of Vista using your Vista DVD and then manually install all the drivers and updates but it seems like your partitions are messed up anyway so you probably don't have a lot of choice.

 

Okay, before I start, but what about the partition:

Shall I also delete that one?

 

Once the partitions have all been deleted reboot the laptop swap the xp disk for your vista disk (change the BIOS back from ATA) and begin the process of installing Vista