Compatibility hardware for XPS 14 .. Urgent help

Hi,

I am planning to order Dell XPS 14 with:

Processor:
- Intel® Core™ i7-740QM Processor(1.73GHz,4Core/8Threads,turbo boost up to 2.93Ghz,6M cache)

- 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2 x 4G) (operates at 1066MHZ for Core i5 processors)

- 2GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 425


My questions is this:
1. How compatible are the above 3 hardwares when put together?
2. How is the performance of the laptop with these 3
3. What are the drawbacks of this laptop overall.

Please help , as I am planning to order in a couple of days time.

Thanks.

 

1) You shouldn't have a hardware incompatibility issues with those specs
2) Performance pertaining to what? Rendering? Gaming? That machine should be competent for gaming, though not at the highest resolution/quality
3) If you can call this a drawback, the XPS line is getting refreshed soon with Sandy Bridge, if you can I would wait it out.

 

Thanks Tsunade_Hime for your post.

I am concerned about both gaming and rendering..

What is sandy bridge? When is it coming to India if you have any idea..?

 

The GT425 is only a mid-range card. The i7-740QM is should be good for rendering.

Sandy Bridge is the latest architecture from Intel, offering faster speeds, more potent IGP, better battery life for around the same prices today. I did not notice your location, Sandy Bridge may take longer to get to India.

 

1- There's absolutely no problems with that config. The only way you would run into a problem is if you wanted a i5/425m or i7/420m combo as Dell won't let you for some reason.

2-Performance is awesome, I've run a 9500pt 3DMark06 score with that exact config, can play SC2 on High-Ultra at native res with very very few drops below 30-40fps, play L4D2 on max settings, FO:NV on High/Native Res, etc. It's a very capable rig especially when overclocked. As far as rendering I can't say for certain, I've done graphic work on it but no rendering.

3-No major drawbacks so far the only gripe I've had is the screen but it's still a decent screen, as Hime said SB may be out in it in a few months. There have been no dead set time frames, configs, prices etc for the XPS 14 with SB but it's bound to happen within a few months or less. It's probably likely that it will be a bit longer for an XPS 14 with SB in India though, US/UK markets tend to get things before other markets with Dell.

 

ok.

I am not sure what you mean by mid-range card..

Which is a better one? And I dont think I will have a choice in selecting the graphics card, when it comes to laptop isnt it?


Do you have any suggestions?

 

You do have a choice in the XPS 14 of 2 different GPU's the GT420m with Optimus and the i5, or the GT425m without Optimus(switchable graphics) and an i7. The 425m is a better card overall, they are both esentially the same card with different clock settings at stock levels.

 

9500 3DMark06 points!!! That's amazing! Is it OCed? How much does the 8 gb RAM contribute to that? I wonder why nobody has reported such high scores with the i7/435m combination!

 

1. I don't have any problems with this combination of hardware. I doubt they would package it together if it had problems. I have reloaded the OS a couple of times and even tried an SSD drive. I pulled the SSD drive due to the fact that the speed increase was not as great as I expected. The 640 GB is plenty of space and fast enough.

I also have my machine dual booting with Ubuntu. Both work like a champ and the battery life is much better than I expected with the 9cell.

2. I went with 6GB of memory. I will be running a VM or two but I have not at this point. If I need to go up to the 8GB I will buy it after market as it is only $20 more than what Dell charges for the upgrade. I think 6 is plenty for running the OS and a game or two.

3. I have not had any problems with the video card. I have been running Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 and Civ 5 without any problems. Ubuntu needed an updated drive but then it worked like a champ. The only problem is the screen. While it is not the best it is better than people make it out to be. I am in Panera with a window behind me and I do see the reflection but the screen is bright enough that I dont notice. The viewing angles are not good at all. I ordered the replacement screen to fix this and give me a higher resolution. It seemed like a good deal for $85.

Not sure about waiting for Sandy Bridge but I thought that was really going to help with lower end machines and not have as big of an impact on high end machines. I am not 100% certain but hopefully someone on here with more knowledge can comment on that.

 

Thanks harvardbmw, it is pretty heavily overclocked with pretty much everything disabled other than 3Dmark06 itself and I mean everything. The ram doesn't contribute at all, keeping it very cool with additional airflow and aftermarket paste/pads and doing very fine tune tweaking with drivers and overclock levels helps though. The 435m is basically the same card as the 425m and 420m, the physical cards are the exact same just with different tollerances. Some people get lucky and get cards that handle a lot more than others like the 5850 I had in my M15x that would stomp even OC'd 5870's lol. I think I just got lucky as my 425m will run 760/1520/960(or 1920@ dual rate) with absolutely no instability with 266.44 drivers I modded myself.

 

Dane,

I been "out of the market" for a long time - when I OCed it was done just from BIOS or even changing some jumpers in the board - and just for CPU.

How can I raise the frequencies of my board (i mean VGA) ? There is any syncronism issue I must be aware about?

I don´t want to use any modded driver, just push the edge a little bit.

Thanks if you can teach me some of your "magic".

 

To Overclock the card you can use Nvidia system tools, or MSI afterburner, or EVGA Precision (the last two both being based on Riva tuner).

There shouldn't be much need to modify the driver soon. The 400 series in the XPS laptops are currently supported in the latest beta from Nvidia. The only modding that was really done was to add a line to a text file to identify the cards in older drivers. Nothing crazy like back in the day.

 

I don't know about the 435m, but I got around 12200 with i7/8GB RAM/445m OCed.

Actually, there is no i7/435m. Dell only lets you get i5/435m on the 17.

 

I was talking about the 15 inch XPS

 

Oh, I guess I read things wrong, I checked and 15s come with i5/420m or i7/435m.

 

The overclocking is no longer done through the bios on the GPU/VGA. There are a few ways to do it but the ways I would recommend if you've been out of the game for a while would be either MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision. You can try Nvidia System Tools but it's a bit more complicated to get working the right way. The overclocking has nothing to do with the board anymore, you change the clocks of the card itself and nothing more, everything you change is right on the GPU's mxm board. If you don't want to use a modded driver I'd suggest running the 266.35 that is compatible right off the bat from Nvidia's website. Dell's drivers in one word suck. Just remember that the same rules apply to overclocking now as they did before:

1-go slow, change the clock of only one component at a time(Core, Shader, VRam), and stress test in between every change you make to ensure that the clock is stable

2-Monitor temps at all times, I can't tell you how important this one is as the possibility of fried hardware goes up quite a bit when overclocking a laptop.

If you have any more questions just shoot me a pm or ask on here.

NoAirBanding- there's a little more involved with making a killer desktop driver package mod than just changing the id strings in the .inf file

 

WOW, I remember jumpers and devices that were not plug and play.

 

Yeap guys, I was out but now I am back in.

Try to do as you advised, but I think I will have to repaste the system in other to get it estable. Or I will have the most expensive tea machine ever...

Those are the drawbacks of trying to do "fine tunning" in a system in Brazil. We have a lot of trouble to get parts (my screen from hootoo took 43 days to arrive), they are very expensive (my rig cost equilvalent to 3.340 USD) and the nice weather we have (today we have 38C and it is a cloudy day) is an additional challenge for the OC.

Thanks for the tips and as long I do my mods I keep you guys posted for "advices".

Do you remember when programing was made in cardboards? I do my friend. I am a proud "dinosaur".

Regards

 

You mean punchcards? I think I saw some once, but I never did anything with them.

 

LOL that's awesome, all but the $3340 part You shouldn't "need" to do a repaste unless you're looking at running extremely high overclocks.