===> The Official Studio XPS 1640 Owner's Thread<===

Only few notebooks have the option to actually change the video card in them and you need an MXM format for that. Even among the MXM, there are different sockets and standards so you can't just upgrade anything, there is a certain range of GPUs you can upgrade to.

If the HD3670 is the same socket as the HD3650 MXM which Inferno put inside an MSI GX620, then the best you'd be able to do is a 9600M GT from Nvidia which would provide no real significant boost in perforance.

The HD4xxx GPUs use a different socket IIRC so unless Dell upgrades their motherboards, a GPU upgrade for old users to an HD4xxx GPU isn't going to happen assuming the newer GPUs use a different format.

 

Yea yea, two batteries and two chargers (one at home, one at college) are matter of course.

 

But knowing dell there gonna use a proptiary connector like they did with 1730. So for all we know we maybe able to get the 4670

 

ah well.. that explains other stuff i didn't know about .dont know what that technitian really meant by saying i could upgrade it on my own then.

guess i was punk'd

in any case, im happy im getting an ATI, what with terrible nvidia experiences.

 

hey, i've got a problem with my HDMI output. Basically got a 42" Pansonic plasma which ive had for couple years now, supports upto 1080p and works fine with skyHD via HDMI etc but when i try and connect my SXPS16 to it via HDMI cable it comes up but for some reason the whole screen has a red tint over it and obviously this makes watching things.. well rubbish, also i cannot seem to get the sound to come out of the tv although the HDMI sound output its selected and seems to be working in sound properties, could anyone help with this?

Just strange as SkyHD works fine and this doesnt, slightly confused, and yes i have latest ATi drivers. Thanks.

 

Yes Dell uses their special connector, but that depends if they'll change the standard of said connector and if said connector still provides enough juice to the chip. I recall a few Studio 15 users saying they couldn't upgrade to Dell's new HD4570 ebcause Dell changed their own proprietary connector as well.

I mean, I personally think/hope Dell upgrades the GPU, I'm just not sure if they're willing to give the owners of a previous XPS16 this new GPU(at least not without some kind of major cost addition).

 

If i want the 4670 bad enough ill say my gpu is malfunctioning and have them replace the motherboard and pay the difference if they release it. i just want someone to open up there 1640 and see if the gpu is removable and what kind of connector it is

 

I'll have a go at it this weekend, i'm curious as to if this is possible at all! Pictures will be included

 

Sweet!!!!!!

 

I've the same problem since I got my 1640. Touchpad scroll works on everything except Firefox.

Some people say to get the generic Synaptics drivers, but I think doing so will remove the gestures support.

 

The only thing i noticed is that you have to bring the focus to FireFox.. eg.

if you switch over to another app. and mouse over back to FF, you cannot use the scroll until you click on it to focus the mouse cursor.. other than that, the scroll thing works fine for me; actually, it works great.

 

ok, i received my new studio xps replacement.

the left hinge is a bit loose, but it wont cause anyharm to the laptop or fall off will it? as i dont mind if its just a little loose, no harm....

although my touchpad is is buzzing, lmao. when i put my finger on it, it buzzing and a can clearly feel it.
im got 2 systems next to each other and my old one doesnt do that, anyone have this problem?

and my screen clicks evertime you try to move it

 

For me it works fine in Firefox (Vista64), but only until I watch a video on Hulu. Then the scroll doesn't work in FF any more. Also, in Windows 7 it doesn't work at all in FF for me.

 

Hi all - I'm thinking of buying an XPS 16 from the dell outlet store but it would come with the 32bit Vista installed. Is this a major concern and if so would I be able to upgrade to the 64bit reasonanbly cheaply? I've seen a few posts talking about upgrade discs but I just want to be sure I'm doing the right thing before taking the plunge. I haven't had a laptop for about 10 years so I want to get it right! Thanks.

 

just download it from.....

i cant believe the people dell employ to build these laptops.
the hinge is loose, the laptop clicks everytime i try to open it, my touchpad is vibrating(faulty HDD im guessing).

 

If I were you I would wait until you find one with the 64 bit if you can. To me it's the only option with the 1640 given it comes with 4 gig's of RAM at the least. Other than that I'm not sure, I've never bought from the outlet and don't know what the procedure is and if you can upgrade anything at all. It's not a major concern though and you can always put Win 7 RC x64 on it for free if you wanted to.

 

Please send them back, buy a Mac and post in that forum and irritate those people then. K, thanks, bye.

 

ur an idiot, k,thanks,bye

i aint my fault i got 3 messed laptops.
im pretty sure ur laptop doesnt feel/sound like its got a bee stuck in it, or when you open it the laptop clicks.

 

You have rarely had anything positive to say. I'm not the only one that is no longer enamored with your posts. I will leave it at that and will not stoop to name calling. You're right mine doesn't have that many problems, but I also don't get out a stethoscope and magnifying glass to look for problems with my stuff when I get it. I actually just enjoy it.

 

it doesnt take a stethoscope or magnifying glass to heat a very lous click everytime you open the laptop or to feel the touchpad buzzing/vibrating everytime i touch it.
its got other problems which idk about like the hinge and a dent on the case.

but if you had you laptop click loudly everytime you open it or a vibrating noise and a vibration when you touch the toucpad or the plamrest, im pretty sure you would notice it.
if you look at the forum, plenty of people have problems with the laptop, that SXPSFTW guy is on his 3rd/4th laptop which is broken too.
aint just me...

im justing saying 3 broken laptops in a row is enough for me, i dont want any more hassle.

its a nice laptop with the best laptop screen ever, i like 16:9, its quick, backlit is great etc. its a good laptop but those problems are pretty big and annoying and dell seems to give me a messed up laptop everytime which i cant handle

 

I'm not going to risk getting banned to sit and argue with you. You know what posts I'm talking about and I'm not going to go back and elaborate. I hope you figure it all out and your Macbook Pro brings you all the happiness my SXPS 16 has. Good luck.

 

Guys let's just talk about this nice laptop and how we can solve problems to have a godlike lapp!
(My SXPS 16 is currenty in a repaircenter for 2 weeks)

 

Personally I'd leave it with the 32-bit version. Yeah, you don't get to use quite all the RAM, but it's a lot more compatible, and everything uses less RAM, which pretty much balances things out unless you get more than 4GB. (And considering I only use around half my 4GB wtih 12 programs running, including 4 threads of Folding @ Home...)

 

OK guys, took it appart couldn't wait anymore!

I was a bit shocked at the thermal compounds used! I have had zero issues with heat but this might explain some of the problems people are having.

Notes:

- The chipset is cooled using an thermal pad!(room for future improvement if i have the time)
- The GFX Ram is also cooled using an thermal pad
- The compound used is HORRIBLE and should be replaced ASAP!

- The graphics card IS SOLDERED to the motherboard and CANNOT be replaced!

All attached pictures were taken before i cleaned this mess up and applied some AS.

I hope this cleared some of the confusion regarding the GPU. I will check my max temps in a couple of days when the AS has had a time to settle in. As of now i've been using the laptop for 15 minutes and the fan is yet to come on.

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=5apevl&s=5
http://i41.tinypic.com/29dddlk.jpg
http://i40.tinypic.com/241mqop.jpg

EDIT:

Just did a quick run of orthos. Temps are down about 4-5 degrees celsius all around. The fan is ALOT less aggressive now, hardly comes on and when it does it is at the lowest setting. This is a huge improvement already

 

Wolfpup still advocates 32 bit.

I advocate the world leaves 32 bit behind, it's holding back progress and enticing minimalistic driver writers to continue writing drivers without best practices of memory management.

I haven't come across anything that I need that I can't run on the 64 bit OS.

I still say the only reason to go 32 bit is because you have to, not the other way around.

Ultimately, I have to continue putting up with 32 bit because all people won't leave it behind.
If they all did, then there would zero issues to speak of.

 

Huh?

Then you don't run much software. I'm run across a ton of stuff that's not 64-bit compatible. Even Office is a bit flaky on 64-bit.

Why? How many people need more than 4GB during the life of a low/mid range computer?

 

What's "AS" if I may ask?

 

Wow that really looks like a mess!
My SXPS is now in a Dell repaircenter, also because of the heat problems. Hope they will clean that up for me!

 

It's arctic silver a thermal compound.

 

Does it void the warranty taking the thermal compound of and replacing it?

 

I don't believe so and DELL wouldn't probably notice that you did or care.

 

Ok I have a second eSata drive with Windows 7 on it, I'd love to be able to use the F12 boot menu and tell the laptop to boot off the eSata drive. HD drive show up with a + sign beside it but I can't figure out how to drill into it to select the specific HD.

Any ideas or is the + just representing the default boot device?

 

INTE QX9300 IS ONLY $400 ON EBAY NOW.
i found 2 sellers seling ES qx9300 for $400 and $399 respectively.
isnt it crazy?

 

First off, I don't think I would change your mind, but I will respond for others sake as well.

One problem with device support for 64 bit is first and foremost driver writers using unsafe practices for large addresses. So making a 64 bit driver takes those coders some time. If they just used safe practices it would work on 32 bit fine and 64 bit fine, after it was signed. I run into these issues with addresses beyond FFFFFFFF on 32 bit because these guys are living in their oblivious 32 bit world, although it is getting rarer. Some of these guys take shortcuts and continue to when they shouldn't. As 32 bit continues to flourish, these hacks continue. Where as if they properly coded it for large addresses in the first place, there would be no issue on 64 bit or 32 bit. I am speaking here specifically of the way memory addressing works, having nothing to do with how much RAM one consumes.

I didn't say I can't find anything, I said nothing I need. I run lots of software and have been a power user for many years. So I'm not talking about some guy writing some little piece of software that requires a driver that he cannot afford to get signed. Some early security software had issues due to 64 bits enhanced security, well tough for them better for us. 64 bit users. All mainstream software works quite fine, while some of it actually works quite better in 64 bit. The only limitation is old software or the developers that are still too focused on 32 bit and not 64, that's just a slight few living in a wooden hut. As for office, you won't convince me Microsoft doesn't know how to write software that works on their OS. Any flakiness with it is not due solely to 64 bit or wow64.

Why? Why should people stay 32 bit?
32 bit made sense when going up from DOS and Windows 3.1 but now the ceiling has been reached, infact many devs hit their head on it. I'm not saying you haven't had issues, I just don't believe they stem primarily from 64 bit unless you are trying to use some freeware that requires a driver but due to 64 bits enhanced security won't work because they don't want to get the driver signed. 64 bit is no more difficult than 32 bit to develop nor is the 64 bit OS more buggy. It doesn't mean that bugs don't appear for 32 bit and 64 bit alike. You strike me as someone that was against 64 bit from the onset so I doubt anything I would say could sway you.

You equate 64 bit with using more than 4GB RAM, that's not it at all. It's like saying why move to an automobile when there's mostly horses and buggies without paved roads which you cannot drive fast on. i'm sure that was a good argument at the time. But if everyone had autos then roads would be paved and built for speed. Developers these days have to be conscientious of the limitations of 32 bit addressing. It's not 4GB, it's 2GB. One single application can only use up to 2GB in address space, as well as all combined applications running are limited to a 2GB in addresses, so that means 2 apps using 1GB each is entering trouble territory. Any programmer who writes any Audio, Video, Picture software of any consequence hits his head on this limit and it effects the scalability of what they can design. The painting they paint has to be on a 4" x 4" canvas. All because they have to think in terms of supporting 32 bit and knowing full well the application cannot handle much content before a crash is imminent.

It has very little to do with using over 4GB of total RAM, nor does it have to do with email and web surfing, it has to do with the production of scaling apps available to mainstream and being able to stop supporting 32 bit and it's headaches.
To make the argument that some people don't need to address more than 2GB and holding everyone else back is like continuing to hold onto the horse and buggy. No doubt it has it's benefits, but when adoption was wide then the support came in gas stations and roads so one could use the car the way it was meant to be.

So my motivation in seeing wide adoption has much more to do with the poor memory management by drivers and the limits that applications have to be confined to today by developers and app design. Has nothing to do with the guy who checks email and does some web browsing and only needs a 1GHZ CPU with 2GB RAM. Sure he doesn't need 8GB RAM addressed in his app, but he would not suffer one iota in using 64 bit either. It's similar to people holding on to single core CPU's saying they don't need dual or quad. And it's true they don't need it, but once everyone has a quad then applications will be made to it's strengths and you wouldn't want to move back to single core after that time. Until adoption is wide enough you won't see great threading advances. The paved roads and gas stations of application development will appear when 64 bit is the defacto standard.

As I said, the only reason to move back to 32 bit or Windows 98 is because you have some outdated software or $1000 device that requires it, where the developer fell off the earth and doesn't want to make a 64 bit build. 99% of people will have no issue, especially the ones as you say that use low/middle tier machines.

Did I say 64 bit is snappier and more responsive, yes I did a while back, and it is due to the tweaked kernel. I wasn't looking for it but I noticed that when testing OS's long ago.

Like I said, I am not trying to change your mind, that would be foolish of me. But I work in the industry and cannot wait for 32 bit to fall away, there is very little reason to stay at 32 bit, and only the few people who already know they need to, are the ones that need to, that likely work in some legacy app business environment.
That's my opinion, as to it's value, let another judge.

 

Well to boot to another OS you don't choose a seperate hard drive in order to boot to it. Unless it has it's own boot loader and is marked active. For that to be true you must have pulled it out of another machine that was already running it as it's primary partition and c drive, but then you may run into some driver errors in running it on the laptop even if you can make it do so.

Normally, the proper way this is done is the MBR on the first drive handles boot loading for all additional drives wiht OS's loaded on them. You may be able to add a new BCD entry using bcdedit, google it. Ofcourse, that is done automatically for you if you were to install Windows 7 on the laptop with the esata drive attached. So the easiest way to make this work is to install it while connected. Then you could choose which OS too boot up with as you will have a menu on boot up to choose. But to do this manually you need to add a boot entry with bcdedit and then you can forget about playing in the BIOS.

 

Does anyone know why the little "bars" light to the far right in the activity block (down by the HDD, Wireless, BlueTooth lights), is never lit up on my system?

 

Guys...I have a question...I've been playing a lot of L4D lately...and I just replaced my old headset with Sennheiser PC 350's...would the performance of my headset be 'much' improved with a sound card add-in? I don't wanna waste another $100 if its only discernible by 1% of the population...

My 1640 just has the base HD 2.0 audio

 

No, it most certainly does not. I'm not going to sit around listing random things (again), but any power user will run into a significant number of incompatibilities with 64-bit Windows.

Almost all software for Windows is 32-bit. It's not "old", it just doesn't make sense to have a separate 64-bit version for many things. And "too focused"? Most people have 32-bit OSes, and most 32-bit software runs okay on 64-bit Windows, so it makes no sense to focus on 64-bit right now except for specialized programs.

Regardless of what you think, I haven't seen Office issues on NT until 64-bit. They're minor, but it's not as rock solid.

Why shouldn't they? You've given no reason. Most systems ship with 64-bit, which is fine, but for most people there's no reason to avoid 32-bit, and it may be preferable for power users (or people with a lot of software even if they're not).

Quite possibly not. I never said it was. It isn't however anywhere near as compatible.

Huh? I'm just being reasonable here. You haven't listed any reason anyone who doesn't need mroe than 4GB would need it, and you're pretending there aren't compatibility issues on 64-bit. It's comparable to running 16-bit code on 32-bit NT. It mostly works, but if you claim it's flawless, you're lying or don't know what you're talking about.

That's most of it. You've yet to give a real reason why normal users would need it. It's a trade off either way. For sure 64-bit is a trade off, though 32-bit *MIGHT* be during the life of the computer if you ever need more RAM.

Yes, which is why we're switching to 64-bit, but the vast majority of programs don't hit that limit yet. Again, that's why it's a trade off.

Which is completely irrelevant for the average user who isn't writing giant programs.

Yes, he will, when his DVD buring program doesn't work. When the game he buys won't work, etc., etc.

No, its nothing like that at all. There's virtually no downside to having more CPUs, while there's a very real downside to 64-bit Windows.

There's plenty of software that's new, not "outdated" that isn't compatible. Not to mention there are a lot of people and businesses who rely on older software. I can't claim to know what percent of people will have compatibility issues, but I know it's much higher than 1%. Among power users it has to be essentially 100%. The only reason you wouldn't is if you're someone who just uses built in programs, and the OEM didn't happen to give you something that's incompatible.

You'd have to define what that means, and give concrete benchmarks, as what you're really saying is either you didn't account for some other variable, or you're lying to support your bizarre pro-64-bit stance.

That has NOTHING to do with the decision a user should be making. You are doing a real disservice her with your claims by pushing your own desires ahead of what's actually best for an individual making a buying decision.

 

You would probably be better off getting a new (better) headset.

 

64bit isn't yet the standard, but it'll slowly and surely become the standard eventually. I mean, it took a full 7-8 years to transition from 16bit to 32bit OSes so don't expect all your software to turn 64bit tomorrow. I doubt many power users are stuck on 16bit... Same logic applies here, we're not yet to the point where we need to switch to 64bit, but it's coming and it isn't that far away either IMO.

As software progresses, they might become heavier, which in turn might require the extra efficiency and change in architecture of 64bit. Once we hit that point, having 64bit will become more widespread.

Really, compatibility of software & price are the sole and only reasons I can see why NOT to upgrade to 64bit. If neither of these are an issue, then there isn't any reason not to get 64bit since it is the way things are going and if you have no qualms with it, no reason not to get it. hat's like saying why should I get Windows 7 if I have Windows 98 and it works fine? Well heck, if the OS does everything you need and it's costing you nothing more, no reason not to get it unless you sincerely dislike the thing.

 

x64 is great, however, some companys still dont fully support 64 bit. adobe flash doesnt work in ie x64, iex64 is the fastest browser ever if adobe can solve that issue.
avermedia tv tuner bsodes in vista x64 only, it works on x32.

 

ok, to all the people that keep talking about upgrading the GPU. Both the GPU and the dedicated GPU memory are soldered directly to the motherboard. there is no discrete circuit board that can be removed or swapped with anyhthing else. you will need to replace the entire motherboard to replace the GPU, no other way.

 

I'm thinking of buying the studio xps 1640, but how portable is the lappy and how do source games run on it, say l4d?

 

L4D 1366x768 all high

 

My 1640 is mainly a desktop replacement for me, I was wondering if it is going to be sitting on my desk most of the time plugged in if I should leave the battery in or remove it so that it is not adversely effected by being plugged in all the time?

 

Remove the battery make sure its at 100%. Put it in a Ziplock baggy and put it in the fridge make sure its sealed so no mosture gets in. This will slow down the chemical reaction and make the battery last longer. Before you use it again take it out and let it sit and warm to room temperature

 

Just completed installing windows 7.

For some reason the latest NVIDIA geForce 9M series (notebooks) drivers dont work well. I coulnd't switch to hybrid w/ the modfied file from the location listed below

http://laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/win7x64/185.81

I decided to get the drivers from the windows update and now it works and I can switch from regular to hybrid mode with no problems.

Anyone know why?

Also I have two missing drivers.

Coprocessor and Unknow Device

Any ideas where I can get the missing drivers? Windows update wont find them.

Thanks....!

 

I think you have posted in the wrong thread. This is for XPS1640, it sounds like you have an XPS 13!

 

lol.. I was wondering when the SXPS 16 got a NVIDIA card in it

 

dont bother to argue with those who cling to old technology. he still yearns for 12 bit.