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

I very rarely have it anywhere other than my desk or the counter. If I do have it on my lap it's on "Power Save" and I'm just surfing the internet. I never play games anywhere other than my desk. I'll chat with Dell and see what they have to say.

Does that benchmark stress the GPUs too or just the CPU? That's where mine levels out with just the CPU under stress, but once both GPUs are brought into the picture it goes up.

 

Refresh coming?

Was looking through the online manual for the XPS1340 and it lists the Geforce G210M as an available video card on page 72.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/sxl13/en/sg/sg_en.pdf

 

Crap, I hope not. I just purchased mine yesterday. I wonder if it's also an SLI comparable naming scheme.

 

Hey Guys. I should be getting my 1340 this week. There seems to be so many things that need to be updated or installed. All these bios updates an all.

I was wondering if someone could give me a list of to do's, for when the laptop gets here.

Thanks !!!!

D

 

Nice find! Been hoping they'd update to a G210m without SLI. Just need to know if they plan on updating the chassis too. With Arrandale, this would be awesome.

 

Do's: Update Bios(Go to dell.com/support to find it)-My internet is going slow as snails right now

I recommend you replace your thermal paste but it's not super important.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=412389

Also if you know much about reinstalling the OS, I recommend you do that also.

Good Cluck.

 

Thanks for the tips! I've been reading about the thermal paste and checked out that thread. I'm a little nervous to do it, so we'll see how long I can tolerate the heat.

I'm supposed to be getting a windows 7 upgrade for free, so hopefully that means at the end of october. Do you think I should still reinstall Vista?

What about graphics drivers? I've seen a couple posts in here.

THANK AGAIN!!!!

 

Well, after my excitement in tons of blue screens with Win 7, I'd recommend just using Vista for the time being and waiting for "official" support. I've had fantastic luck with Windows 7 on both my Mini 9s, a Inspiron 530 desktop, several other laptops, and a bunch of VMs. This is the first and only system that I've had any blue screens, much less a couple dozen in the two weeks I've tried using it on this system. I did a clean install (blew away all partitions) and just used the Dell install media as it had SP1 and bare minimum drivers slipstreamed into it. It has been working fine for the last couple days, and I'm going to keep it like this until Dell kicks out newer chipset drivers that are stable in Windows 7.

 

Excellent! Good to know. I will play around with it when it gets here.....if ever....i've been waiting over 3 weeks for it to ship which it did yesterday finally........grrr...anyways I will report back.

Thanks for all the help !!! I'm sure i'll need more of it.

D

 

If you're getting windows 7 at the end of october, you could just wait till then instead of reinstalling vista.

I just use the graphics drivers from dell, I'm not much into custom ones.

You're welcome

 

Hey guys, so I recently purchased a refurb 1340 and I was pretty happy about the deal. I was about to get a cheaper one, but was unable to purchase that one. I got this one for $1158 shipped, but after rereading this thread a bit, I feel a bit ripped off. Do these specs add up to this price? Thanks for the help.

I feel like that price may have been bloated by alot of software that I didn't get to see until I ordered.

 

It isn't bad at all, but the drive is a bit small. Mine was Vista Home Premium, 8GB RAM, P9600 CPU, Bluetooth, Dell 1510 wireless, 500GB 7200RPM HDD, LED display, Merlot with leather accent, no supporting software, 9500M GPU, bluetooth expresscard remote and I got it for right around $2K. Once I figured out that the drivers weren't ready for Windows 7 (tons of BSODs) and I managed the heat (and got BIOS A11), I love it. I'm waiting for the Win7 chipset drivers to be nice and stable before I try it again, but I have either Win7 or Ubuntu 9.04 on every other system in my house.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. My only gripe is the extremely small harddrive along with the prospective refresh of the line that's speculated.. I was looking to throw Win 7 RC on it though. Maybe I can wait, but maybe not

I was basing it off of this one: The user got the SSD and it was all about 1000, and this was about 5 months ago.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4850089&postcount=2543

 

There are two times to buy technology: now or never. That's it. So, if it's worth it to you right now, then be excited about it and don't look back. I know, for a fact, that something better will be along in 3-6 months. But, I need this now to do work with a lot of virtual machines (certifications coming up, so I have 8 different VMs right now from CentOS to XP) and some gaming. Waiting several more months wouldn't help me now, and I assume it won't help you, either.

 

Does any one know if I can add the bluetooth mini card to my 1340? If so what part number is it, the only one listed on dell is 430-3164. Will this fit/work in the 1340?

 

You need this: Dell Wireless Card Bluetooth 370 Module Mini card

Sells for $14-15 on ebay. Here's the link

 

I didn't even realize they ever shipped the SXPS 13 with a 160GB HD @ 5400 RPM....

 

I have my my 1340 for about close to 3 months. A lot of us are unlucky with uneven feet/ shaking of the laptop on even surface. I noticed this from day one have lived with it for almost 3 months. Now since a lot of us have this problem did anyone find out how to fix this? i dont mean putting something under one of the feet to make it stable, i mean changing the bottom piece, calling dell? is it the whole chassy that makes it shake? because the bottom panel only has 2 feet, then the airvet has 1 and other one is on the chassy... how do i go about fixing this. dell already opened up my laptop so many times i dont want the case to be loose soon

Im also interested on getting the internal bluetooth card as mine came without it from bestbuy

 

another question I always wanted to ask a Q which is very funny to me.
I bought my system from Bestbuy for $899USD.
With these specs
standard lcd with 2 megapixel cam
p8600 2.4ghz processor
500gb 7200rpm hdd
4gh ddr3 ram
9400mg

Now if you go to dell.com and try to assemble the system with same specs its gona cost you a hell lot more! why? i was monitoring this problem before i even bought the laptop.

The lowest price setup on dell right now is $949 which has a slower processor 2.1 and 3gb ram not 4, and exactly half of my hard drive.

about 1 month ago when they still had the p8600 option the same spec system cost $1150, while i payed $899.
I still have dell 1 year warranty and tech support help. So why such a rip off???

Im sure as hell glad that I bought it from bestbuy and didnt overpay.

 

I have had my 1340 for about 2 weeks now, everything has been great so far except for the integrated webcam.

I did a clean windows 7 pro install and installed all the drivers, webcam central and face recognition software. But when I start webcam central the webcam can't start and tells me to close other video streaming application.

The only thing I can think of that is using the webcam stream is the facial recognition, so in the Fast Access control panel I enable auto-disable and put Webcam central as exception.

Now the Webcam central works perfectly but the facial recognition doesn't work at all. Every time it tries to recognize my face, before it can actually login the camera will go off and say unable to process biometric data.

Any ideas?

 

Bestbuy occasionally has unique deals that aren't too bad. In exchange for the lower price, you lose all configurability and AFAIK the on-site service warranty as well.

 

Well mine is from bestbuy, I had my motherboard replaced by onsite tech and my hd replaced also my onsite tech. So I have same 1 yr warranty and 1 yr onsite tech services for no fee at all

As the only thing thats really different on my system from the ones on dell. I dont have an option of 9500M but thats ok i wouldnt want to pay extra $100
because a $100 price is price of a much better gpu money wise!ut
And then ofcourse im missing the slim led screen. which is also ok i guess because this one can fit 2megapixel cam and i love the quality of skyping on it ... and then bluetooth but Im buying it $15 on ebay like someone said b4

Its funny after a really long time of carrying xps1340 line bestbuy doesnt have it for more than 3 weeks now. Im guessing due to too many returns = low profits haaaaaaaaa

 

Where do you get Webcam Central from? Is it on the drivers disc, or can you get it from the download site? I'll have to look again.

 

call dell support. tell them u flashed ur os and u need the webcam program.
they will give you a link for all the extra software that came with ur system.
once you go to that link it will ask you to register on dell and to type in your tag number, so it will know exactly which extra software you had.... did this many times so dont hesitate and call dell unless someone else has a link?

If that somehow doesnt work out i can send u an install file by email im guessing?

 

Anyone else have problems with low light conditions with the webcam on the wled screen? It sucks hairy sharkfins in low light conditions... or did I get a lemon for a webcam?

 

Same experience. I had the LCD screen CFL and the webcam was so much better. I wanted the RGBLED screen and I wanted white so they swapped laptops. The webcam on the RGBLED is lousy comparatively. Wonder why they had to put this lower spec webcam in the better screen.

 

I don't know if there's an RGB screen. There's the WLED screen. It has the 1.3mp webcam due to it being thinner.

 

The reason best buy is cheaper is because they buy thousands of computers with this configuration at once, and there for get a cheaper price per laptop than you or I when we order just one.

 

So I finally got my XPS 13 today. It was a refurb, and so I didn't get any cool boxes. I was wondering if I should still have recieved that small laptop case anyways? I sorta want it. Maybe I'll call dell.
Unboxing it was fun, but when I took it out, man, I was disappointed. The entire cover of the laptop was covered in tape residue. There were heavy fingerprints all over as well as smudges on the palm rest. I spent about 15 minutes with windex getting as much off, but the sticky residue is still there a bit. I'm considering returning it still. There was also a minor scratch about 2 inches long on the leather.
As far as performance goes, it BSODed 4 times while I was still trying to set it up for use. So, I got pissed and did a clean install of Windows 7 64bit. Now here's my question:

How do I get everything up and running? I installed the latest drivers from dell's site as well as the new A11 BIOS. I just want to figure out how I can activate my Hybrid SLI with windows 7. Thanks for the help guys.

 

Left click on the battery icon, and select "High Performance." You will then see a graphic depicting the change from Power Saver to High Performance and it should be active. However, it seems to only work in some games, and OpenArena (open source Q3A) runs slower in SLI mode than with the 9400 by itself (9400 is embedded, 9200 is discrete). UT3 seems fine in SLI, but I haven't benchmarked it.

As an aside, I had Win 7 Ultimate x64 and it would BSOD regularly. After debugging it, it appears a driver was throwing something into incorrect memory space (irql_not_less_or_equal). I finally gave in and put Vista back on to see what would happen (and complain to Dell), but it has been fine with the Dell drivers. I used the Dell drivers and nVidia's Win7 GPU and chipset drivers for the Win7 install, and they all did the same thing. A11 helped a lot, but didn't completely rid it of the BSOD. Something to look out for until official support comes.

 

Haha, yeah I tried it figure it out. Just a second ago, I just had a BSOD while downloading Company of Heroes. Same error "IRQL_not_less_or_equal" I'm going to continue to trouble shoot what I can. It's having problems enabling the SLI. I turned it to performance boost, got the switch icon, then it waited and the screen blacked out. It reported it had problems installing the drivers. So I need to figure out how to install the drivers again...

 

To install the GPU (video) drivers, you first make sure the chipset drivers are installed. After they are, you have to make sure the GPUs are showing up as "VGA controllers" and not 9400 or anything nVidia. If they are, simply right click on them, select uninstall and CHECK the delete files box. You'll have to reboot to make sure the VGA driver is installed. If it installs for one but not the other, that's good enough. Then, install the GPU drivers you have from Dell (or nVidia, whichever). If you update the chipset, you have to repeat this process for the GPU driver until they fix this bug in the installer.

 

I believe Dell.com had a reconfig on its Studio XPS 1340 because on yesterday when I try to open the customize page, it did not display any button to let me go in. In other word, it just have an big AD for the 1340.

When I open the page today, I found there is one new option under the graphic card if you choose the highest configuration called "NVIDIA® GeForce® N10M- GS - 512MB"

What is this graphic card? Anyone knows?

I did not find it on this page which I usually check and compare graphic card's rank.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Grafic-Cards.130.0.html

Also an old news I found is if you access the 1340 configuration page from small business, you will find dell offered a higher CPU option which is "Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P9700 (6MB cache/2.80GHz/1066MHz FSB) " than that in For Home.

 

A very interesting thing is on dell.com.cn which is Chinese Dell web page, the 1340 has the graphic card named "NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) 210M-GS - 512MB" which is checkable on http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Grafic-Cards.130.0.html

Therefore I guess "NVIDIA® GeForce® N10M- GS - 512MB" should be another name for "NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) 210M-GS - 512MB"

 

Hi all, I can't install bluetooth driver even if i press Fn+F2. It seem not working. Also, I can't found switch to turn on/off.

How can I solve this?

Thanks

 

Ok...now the dell.com website has the 210m GS too for $25 more from the 9500 GE...... 210GS is a 40nm GPU with 16 shader, 64 bit GDDR3 that has the same or higher 3Dmark06 than the 9500GE. I want to have this upgrade
the link is right here: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DYDWGN3&s=dhs

 

Is anyone else's hard drives noisy? I've just realised that a noise that I always thought was fan noise, is actually the hard drive I think. Putting my ear to the back of the laptop and it's silent (and can feel no air being drawn in from the button), but the noise is coming from the front hard drive area.

 

Hi everyone just to say that after many countless hours reading through these vast majority of pages regarding this laptop I have decided to take the plunge I get myself one.

It has these specs :

DELL XPS SX13-163B
Intel® Core™2 Duo mobile processor P8600
4GB DDR3 memory
320GB Serial ATA hard drive (7200 rpm)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
Built-in Dell 1515N mini-card (802.11b/g/n)
.. and so on.

Should recieve hopefully before Wednesday.

I want to install XP on it (I prefer it..) following the recent post by bytecollektr who described on the way to install this OS.
Could someone please give some links or any updates for any new drivers or patches needed to install XP.

I didnt get this laptop for games just web browsing and mostly simple video editing will this Graphics processor be ok for this or will I need to update it?

As it would be appreciated...thanks

 

It should be fine; I normally leave mine in "Balanced" mode (which uses just the 9400M) to do video compression and a little bit of DVD creation. Are you using Adobe Premiere or something with really advanced effects?

 

Yes, A11 wsa better than stock, I was overstating the heat issue.

Dell was here this morning and "I" found the CD problem after he opened the case... there was a wire under the mount screw that was lifting the unit and causing ill alignment with the cd and case slot, he moved the wire and presto.

The touchpad is the biggie, I am still experiencing it after a touchpad replacement. I have the synaptics driver from dell v12.0.1 A04 R203482.exe installed on a Vista x64 Home Prem (from Dell).

Was a problem both with the original config from dell and after a format/reinstall and both before and after a touchpad replacement.

There is not much left to replace, the mainboard? I bought the xtra warranty so maybe I need to drop the computer in salt water to finally get this thing working.

I'm really surprised that not more people have this problem.

More sys configurations:
Dell 1340, P9500, LED screen, 8500 256mb graphics, 320gb 7200rpm, 4 gig memory, from dell, leather (hehe), verizon 5720 mobile broadband, NO BT card.

 

No, the most it will be used for will be using ConvertXtoDVD and Cyberlink PowerDirector. Will it be ok?
If not whats the recommended GPU to get.
So are they any links for Windows XP drives or just go whats been said in
bytecollektr's post. I just want everything ready to go when I get it.
Was toying with the idea to put Windows 7 on it but not sure.

 

You should be fine. I've used Intel integrated graphics for stuff like that. As for Windows 7, I had enough BSODs with it that I decided to wait for "official" driver support from Dell (even though nVidia claims their drivers are up for Win7, maybe it's a problem with the others). I went back to Vista, and it's been perfect.

 

Guys need your help here.
Like said before XPS 1340 now has a better nvidia video card to offer : ® GeForce® N10M- GS - 512MB (210M is the real name)
So I called dell to ask how much it would be to upgrade my motherboard from my current 9400mg setup.

The rep said: " We do not allow motherboard upgrades only if its damaged or you have troubles with it, we will send you the same one only with a revised chipset."

So I told him. That I was gona pay the difference, and he still told me theres no such option.

Is there anyway for me to get this new motherboard, since the latest card is a lil better than 9500m, and since im coming from 9400mg I should notice a somewhat big difference. How do I go about getting this? Tricking them?
Or is he wrong? can dell do motherboard upgrades?

 

I think all the owners who have 9500m GE have trouble with their motherboard. in hybrid SLI mode, opening and closing windows will not be smooth. Few games support the hybrid SLI. Even if the games support the SLI, it will still have lagging issue due to different graphic cards sending different fps.
I think the 9500m GE owners can bug the Dell rep about this so that they will change the motherboard for free

 

the newest upgrade option on xps 1340 (210m card) is one chip and its the successor to g110m, its faster than g100m... but HOW can i get this since i have 9400mg and dell doesnt let upgrade motherboards even if i buy it!???

 

Maybe asking another Dell rep?

 

lol... i spoke to his superviser even. but u never know right? ill try again.
it would be nice to pay a smaller fee than buying a new laptop with better gpu.
I want to be able to play atleast a lil better than on 9400mg, im not a big gamer but it would be a nice option. btw the clocks on 210m are crazy!! very high clocks. has to be good

 

I will ask them too. Accroding to notebookcheck, the 3dmark06 of the 210m is 500 more than the 9500GE. I hope i can get the new motherboard...I have the reasons and my 1340 has been repaired 5 times and i asked for nothing. This time is the newmotherboard time

 

what about 9400mg 3dmark06 score? i want to compare the performance difference

Once you call them please PM me on your news!

 

9400m's score is about 2200 and the 210m gs's score is maybe 3900