===> The Official Studio XPS 1640 + ATi 4670 GPU Owner's Thread<===

has anyone connected their 1640 to a plasma/lcd tv? Curious if the hdmi port redirects audio as well as video.

 

It works perfectly.

 

Yeah, tried it on a 50" Sony, one HDMI cable will get you both video and audio, just make sure to select the right place to output the sound to in your sound options. In Vista, you can find the "Digital Audio (HDMI)" option under PLayback Devices in the sound options. Just click on the HDMI option, and then click the "Set Default" button. That should get the audio to your HDTV.

 

Yes I use my PC daily with my 50" Pioneer Kuro and it works beautifully! I've been using it to watch anime's and I'm very pleased.

 

I got my first piece of dust behind the stupid plastic screen cover! Guess I won't bother messing with it for now but eventually I'm gonna take this plastic cover off, clean it up real nice and then seal it.

 

EDIT: Nevermind

 

How do you seal the screen?

 

out for delivery!

 

Shipped!

Apparently it's shipping from the US even though I'm in Canada and ordered from Dell.ca. Weird.

My estimated delivery date is still scheduled as next Monday though.

Does it sometimes arrive earlier than the estimate delivery date?

 

Mine was scheduled to arrive the 27th of July and it came the 23rd so there is a chance that it comes a bit earlier. I'm from Canada as well and it shipped from the US too so don't worry about that.

 

They do not ship from the USA . They ship from Malaysia

 

Joker, like I was saying...AMD dx11 mobile refresh coming this fall. The high end parts are apparently shipping this august and are pin compatible with the current cards...heres hoping!



Source

In other news my laptop has shipped. Original ETA was August 6th and it will definitely arrive before then..Im excited.

 

Well there was never any doubt the parts would be coming but again, given Dell's lag time with graphics processor updates, I wouldn't expect to see an M9X replacement until at least December if not early 2010. The good news is they are pin compatible so hopefully the motherboard itself doesn't change much either so maybe we'll be able to drop in the i7 + revised graphics core board into our current systems. That will mean having to buy a new processor, heatsinks, memory but as long as the upgrade option is there its worth it.

Right now I'm more concerned about the dust build up behind the plastic panel. I just got my first bit and it can be distracting when you look for it. Dell really needs to find a way to seal these plastic panels better. I'm tempted to open it up and then reseal it using glue.

 

Arrrgh, order's shipped, but still about 7,000 miles away from la France!

By the way, do you guys know how Fedex is (are?) with international delivery? I'm a little bit afraid of the laptop getting yanked around during shipment....

 

Hey guys, finally decided to go with a XPS 16. Just wondering if anyone has any idea when the Dell UK XPS 16 inventory should be receiving an update to the 1GB 4670?

Thanks.

 

If you're willing to shell out the 100 bucks or so for overseas shipment, you can get it now from dell USA.

 

now that there are 2 new optional screens to select, i don't know again what to go for.. the WLED versions are much cheaper, and i don't know if the 1080p or 900p res would be ideal for me, perhaps fullhd would be too high..
does only the fact that it's rgbled worth almost $200 over the 1080p wled one?

 

Cool, wasn't sure if they shipped it across the water. They have a four day sale on various laptops on the UK site at the moment, including the XPS 16.
Got an feeling they may possibly be preparing to update the components. If not may just go the US route early next week

 

You mean the screen is actually open to the point dust can get behind it???

 

Yeah somehow dust gets in there. If you check the other 1640 thread you will find posts about it.

 

My 1640 arrived today.

The screen has two very noticable defects in the upper right corner, two darkish grey blotches each about 3/32nd to an 1/8 of an inch. They do not come off, they are under (in between?) the screen(s). Very disappointing. Maybe dust, maybe just a mar of some sort. This is the 16.0 inch Wide Screen 16:9 1080p FullHD RGBLED LCD W/2.0 MP, XPS 1640.

The screen itself is stunning, best I have ever seen. Didn't have a chance to put it through it's paces, once I had a white background the screen defect was terribly noticable. I asked myself if I could live with it, or would it drive me nuts every time I see it, while I regret not sending it back.

Called Dell, and after going through numerous tech support the are going to send me a replacement and issue a UPS tag for the return of the first. I really like the laptop, like the size, the design and the screen brightness and clarity is amazing. Build quality is good, very solid.

They said to just keep this one till the new one arrives, so I wil play with this one for now. Apparently, the last thing they want is to refund your money and lose the initial sale, so they are being very accomodating on the replacement.

 

Joker if you read that source I posted, the article was by Charlie D..I may be in the minortiy here but I think he's great and always 99% spot on with his reports. Anyway he says the highend "broadway" parts would be SHIPPING in august and would be replacing the high end m9x parts. Then he deduced they'd be ready to go for the notebook refresh for the fall back to school shopping season. I wouldn't doubt seeing a replacement by october. ATI wants to crush nvidia right now since there dx11 parts are super late and delayed.

And as I said in a previous post, mobile i7s wont be pin compatible with anything currently out. i7s dont even have pins...they are in the socket itself. The only thing we can hope for at this point is a pin compatible upgrade for our graphic cards so we can get dx11 for win7...

 

Got mine yesterday. T9550/8GB/500GB 7.2k/High-Res/4670. It took 10 calendar days from order to delivery. My salesman said he put in a request to "expedite", not sure if that made a difference, or if it was just him telling me what I wanted to hear.

First impressions: Not a fan of the leather trim. Everything else is top notch. I have owned well over 50 laptops and this is the class champion. It is replacing my unibody 15" macbook pro. I held on to that to make sure I would like the dell, and after 12 hours the choice is clear.

Things I Love: The screen is best described as the most brilliant display (brightness and color) that I have ever seen. I am a huge fan of the keyboard, especially compared to the chiclet onthe macbook. Best sound I have ever heard from a laptop. And lastly, the fastest computer I have ever used. It might be because I am running windows 7 rtm x64, and my dell xps 420 desktop (quad caore 6gb ram) is running vista x64, but my laptop destroys it. I am speaking from user interpretation, not benchmarked data. Everything is faster, installing apps, loading web pages, boot, etc...It is also very quiet when under normal use.

I am very happy with my purchase, and happy to reccomend to any potential buyers.

For anyone that's interested the Windows 7 experience score is as follows:

CPU: 6.3
Ram: 6.3
Graphics: 6.7
Gaming Graphics: 6.7
Primary Disk: 5.9

(I am using the latest drivers from ATI's website, and the default CCC settings)

 

My laptop shipping status has been "In Transit in U.S. via U.S.A. GROUND LINEHAUL depot" since Sunday night.

Is the Purolator website accurate or what?

 

will undervolting help the heat (to the touch) issue?

 

That's why I am taking a chance and getting a replacement, that screen was the deal maker. Never saw a brighter more vibrant screen on a laptop before. I'm taking my chances and hoping for a good one with NO dust behind it. Any other little quirks I can probably live with, but IMO the screen is the main reason to get the laptop and must be perfect.

 

Just to give my input, I consider the 1366x768 screen to be among the best laptop screens I've ever seen. It is by no means the best in it's ability to go to a super-high resolution....but it has a fantastic brightness spread, the colors and contrast are crisp and vibrant, and overall it just looks very nice.

If I could've gotten the 1920x1080 screen for free, I probably would've gone for it. But I hope people don't think the 1366 screen isn't worth it's salt....it's very nice.

Joe

 

I have the SSD drive and noticed disk space going away without installing anything new. I had already limited System Restore to 19GB, or about 8%, disk usage via the command line. Tried using Vista's built in defrag utility but that was about worthless, ran forever and of course no feedback under Vista. Installed Auslogics Disk Defrag, ran it and recovered 17GB in no time. Just a tip to those who are noticing their SSD's free space disappearing. I have a couple of MMO's installed, Age of Conan and LOTRO, I think they are the culprits of fragmenting my drive.

Love the laptop by the way.

 

Looks like I'll either be getting it tomorrow or Thursday, since I'm in Ottawa.

"Shipment In Transit via TORONTO SORT CTR/CTR TRIE, ON depot"

On the Dell site my estimated delivery date is the coming Monday.

 

I also own a MBP and was wondering how much better you feel the RGBLED is? I've always found my Mac display to be excellent (inky blacks, good color saturation).

 

I removed the dust from my screen using brazillianguy's method. I used an old student id card I had laying around. Before you guys attempt this, just know that Dell has now added an epoxy to that plastic cover so once you lift it, it loosens the epoxy so it could end up being a bigger problem in the long term. I only lifted the cover from the area near the dust particle so hardly any of the epoxy was removed. What I did was wrap the corner of the card with screen cleaner wipe and use that to wipe off the piece of dust. I then used a hair dryer and put it right near the frame until it reheated the epoxy and it sealed back up. My screen has no defects and I didn't want to deal with Dell possibly taking my laptop apart and shipping a replacement screen so I just went ahead and did this myself. It was fairly easy and effective so if anyone else has dust, give it a try, just be careful with the epoxy.

 

FAQ has been updated. User posted benchmarks are now in post #3.

 

I'm well aware of who Charlie is, he's the same guy that worked at the INQ for the longest time and they're essentially internet rumor trash. What I meant by upgrade is that I hope Dell retains the same form factor design for the i7 mainboard, that way we could simply drop the new mainboard + cpu into our existing systems. As for ATi crushing nvidia, don't count on that ever happening. DX11 is meaningless since you won't see any worthwhile DX 11 games for a long time (just look at how few DX 10 games there are). Developers like Crytek may push out a game that takes advantage of DX 11 but it will still be backwards compatible with prior DX versions just like Crysis. ATi/AMD's new strategy is to produce low cost cores that are scalable, nVidia is still focused on single core and SLi performance that continues to dominate ATi. nVidia may start shifting focus a bit now (and there's evidence they have started) since they too are feeling the economic crunch.

 

This is a configuration that i was able to built from dell and im wondering if this is a decent deal?

Merlot Red with Leather Accent
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9550
Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-bit (Windows 7 upgrade eligble)
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1067MHz (2 Dimms)
Edge-to-Edge FullHD Widescreen 16.0 inch RGBLED LCD (1920x1080)
ATI Mobility RADEON™ HD 4670 – 1GB
500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
4X Slot Load Blu-ray Disc (BD) Burner (Writes to DVD/CD/BD)
Soundblaster X-Fi Hi Def Audio - Software Enabled
Intel® 5100 WLAN Wireless-N (1x2) Half Mini Card
3Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis
Dell EPP Members save $483 off select Studio XPS 16 systems!
Receive 7% off your Member purchase - $140.98
$2,040.34


Also Right now i have an XPS M1710 with the following specs:


PROCESOR: Intel T7600 Core 2 Duo Processor at 2.33 GHz / 667 MHz / 4MB
MEMORY: 2 Gigabytes DDR2 SDRAM at 667 MHZ, 2 DIMM Ram
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GO 7900 GTX with 512MB Dedicated memory
HARD DRIVE: 100 GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive
OPERATING SYSTEM: Genuine Windows XP Media Center Edition
DISPLAY: 17" UltraSharpTM Wide Screen UXGA (1920x1200)with TrueLifeTM


And im wondering IF the Studio XPS is gong to be a sizable upgrade? I dont really play many games if any at all, but do a lot of work with After Effects CS4, Photoshop CS4, and some Cinema 4D. Would this new xps16 be a significant upgrade over my current xps? Obvioulsy it has probably better cpu and video card, but would that translate well to the programs i mentioned as opposed to just gaming? Just a few other quick questions for anyone that has one...

1. Is the "Obsidian black high gloss" finish really prone to fingerprints as opposed to the Red or
normal black? And also.. does the high gloss one also have leather accents?

2. Is the red color a bright red, or more deeper darker red? and does it look sick ?

3. My current xps is a 17" screen, just curious why this xps is a 16" screen? Is that a true 16:9 aspect ratio whereas my 17" is a little more wide?

4. Is the RGBLED screen the same as on the Percision M6400 Covet?


Any info would be GREATLY appreciated! THANKS!!!

 

Just ordered one of these puppies... 2 weeks and counting untill it arrives!

Sepcs:

1080p 19x12 RGB
p8700
4670 1gb
4gig DDr3

$1700 CND TOTAL - this includes tax + SH


Sorry for reposting some questions that have been asked quite frequently, but...

How hot can i expect this to get during NON-GAMING applications? Can i use it to browse the internet on my lap? I got mixed responses from the forums some people complain, others dont... i am inclined to think that its not as bad as people made it out to be.

The basic wireless card. DELL WRLS 1515 802.11N,INSP Again the reviews were mixed... Should i buy a 3'rd party card / upgrade this?

if you guys could let me know it would be greatly appreciated!

 

Guys - i just got my studio xps 16 inch and i think my RGBLED screen might have a serious issue. When i open up internet explorer or anything white there is a green blob about a half inch big at the bottom left of my screen near the start button. I've had my notebook on for about an hour now.... i'm going to see if the problem persists after leaving the screen off and turning it back on for a bit... but has anyone else had this problem? I JUST opened it today and am using it for the first time right now. Is this a serious problem or can it be fixed? Should I just contact them and have a tech come out with a new screen? I'm very depressed ;{

 

so i just bought a new xps 16 and joined this forum to see who else got one...i gotta say looking at all the deals people have gotten from dell outlet xps16 previously ordered new models PLUS discount coupons...i'm wondering if i even got a decent deal anymore...lol

full 16" rgb led
1gb ati 4670
4gb ddr3
500gb 7200rpm
8x dvd
core2 p8700 (2.53ghz)
wifi 5300-N mini with bluetooth
office 07 home/student incl.
2yr limited warranty

also got the inspiron mini10v for 50% off

total (incl ship/tax): $1723.57

damn buyer's remorse...worth keeping?

 

wow seems like alot of screen defects recently. yes you should call them right away! i hope mine isnt like this when it arrives..

 

black leather
8600
4GB DDR3
15.6 1600x900 900p LED LCD w/ 2mp cam (new higher rez screen)
4670
500gb 7200rpm free fall sensor
visa home premium
1x2
bluetooth
6 cell
2 year warranty

FREE $50 dell gift card
FREE 9 cell battery extra
FREE next day delivery
FREE upgrade from 320gb to 500gb 72k on both


Started $1294, Education discount 7% to $1204, 4% DPA savings brings total to
Total Charges: $1,155.28

this computer is going to be used for HD video editing mainly and 1080p playback via HDMI... I have an awesome samsung 46" 1080p tv that I will be conecting this too anytime I am home, since the computer would only be used for school I figured I didn't need to shell out the $250 extra for the RGB screen
yay or nay? regardless it was ordered on the 22 ETA aug 6, Im in oregon, hope it gets here early next week

 

Ok, I must have missed how some people are getting this 9cell upgrade free? Would someone please pass along the info? Thanks!

 

I'm sorry to bother you guys with this, but I cannot stand any more of this choppy scrolling through websites looking for what I need. I've managed to battle against Microsoft's best efforts to enforce the rollover to Vista/7 thanks to NinjaRunningWild making it easier on me. However!, his method for installing the video driver doesn't work with the 4670...so.

The funny thing is, I'm running XP because my primary use for the laptop is running Solidworks. I have a 32bit version of Vista Ult. I can use if I have to, but I'd really prefer to save that. Can anyone help me out, please?

 

This is a common issue with first and even second gen drives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM_(SSD_command)

 

quick question, I got mine with ATi 3670 because the site didn't offer the 4670 and that was my only choice. Can I replace my GPU anytime I want?

Also how good is this laptop(with 4670) for gaming?any problems or lags?

 

it was a promotion that ended 7/27 it lasted for about 10 days and was clearly posted on the front page of dells laptop section "free extra batteries on select laptops" it changed to cheap memory and hard drive upgrades on select computers which don't really apply to the xps 16

I dont know why I got upgraded to a 500 from a 320 but it was over the phone

 

Sorry to say this man, but the GPU in this notebook is soldered to the motherboard.
So, if you'll want to replace the GPU, you'll need to replace the whole motherboard.
I don't know anything about the cooling system in the new GPU (HD4670) so I can't confirm if you need to replace the cooling system too or not, as I don't know if it has been improved.

 

web choppiness can be if you battery option is on 'powersaver' and not high performance or balance.

 

If your screen appears to be in any way defective, I would strongly advise you to contact Dell and see about an exchange during your 21 day return window. They will do it for you, they do not want to lose the sale. Any defect you see now will bug you more and more as time goes on, and the only remedy will be to have a tech come out. They wanted to do that with my defective screen, and I simply said no way, not with a new laptop. I am having a replacement sent. Fingers are crossed on this one, I won't try Dell for a third if this one is no good.

 

I wonder if you called a tech and they came out to you, they would do this same method? It seems reasonably easy, of course I'm sure that it will void any warranty you have if it was determined you opened it up somehow.

 

There is no comparison. This display is so much richer. I can so that the reds are a bit too warm. I spent a few minutes trying to tone them down but I couldn't get things just right.

Even when using the new Apple 24" LED cinema display with my macbook pro now seems dull and mundane in comparison to my 1640.

 

I really don't see how they could tell unless someone messes up the cover by mistake. Even then I'd just lie and say the laptop fell and got damaged (complete care coverage).