Dell Studio XPS 1340/1640 now available for purchase on Dell's site !!!

It's in the same class, but a little worse. (Plus Nvidia has official drivers you can get for notebooks, and the drivers are usually better.)

 

Please list all the reasons you gave up on XPS 13, in bullet point form please Just kidding. What other alternatives do we have? Besides, Adamo is a different class of notebooks, ultrathin whatever, otherwise Dell wouldn't release them. Most likely it won't even have an optical drive and of course no dedicated video card.

 

So it is looking like the Studio XPS 1340's listing of a 9500M (without the G or GS) is not a typo but a deliberate convention. Apparently, when you combine a 9100M G (integrated) with a 9200M GS or 9300M GS (discrete) you get a 9400M (without the G or GS).

Forgive me if this is old news, but for nvidia, the first number is the Series (9), the next three refer to the performance level within the series (400) - although loosely, the M means "Mobile", and then if there is a G or GS it means that the GPU can be used as a standalone graphics solution. When there is no letter after the M, it means that the GPU is actually a combination of two difference GPUs (a discrete and a standalone), which using nvidia math adds up to a different performance level.

Since in the 1340 manual the optional 9500M is listed as 9400M G + 9200M GS, I am thinking that the 9400M G is being used as the integrated GPU and the 9200M GS comes in when in performance mode. There is currently no listing of this combination on the nvidia website, but it seems plausable to me. Comments?

If this truly is the case, then the graphics power of the 1340 is less than initially thought.

 

I like your theory

1+ rep

 

Weeeeeeird. That's too bad if that's the case, though it might explain why it almost has a semi-decent GPU Does it actually use an Nvidia chipset though?

I just wish the 1640 used an Nvidia GPU though. I'm almost certain I'd get one in that case, since it would for sure have updated drivers. I *think* you can force install ATi's reference drivers on that 3670, but I still hate gambling over $1000 on it.

 

So, in this particular case, when Sony Z lists 9300M and XPS 13 says 9500M, I still think that Dell's solution is a little bit better?

 

Thanks Muscle Master.

Wolfpup: The chipset is listed as nvidia in the specs section of the Dell 1340 setup guide.

 

I guess the "can't use more then 2x interface [MB]" is blown then, so let's focus on the performance - using your scenario 256 MB textures loaded to the first part of memory and 256 MB of other textures uploaded to the other part. Since the interface is still faster in terms of bandwidth and access time, how can this not improve performance?

 

I still want to know where on Earth this idea that the amount of video RAM you could address was somehow connected to the width of the data connection It's such a weird, random idea. It's like someone made that up, and then it's somehow started propagating out there of late.

Thanks, yeah it didn't occur to me to check before I posted that Kind of funny that uses an Nvidia chipset and GPU, and the 1640 doesn't even offer a GPU. Really wish it offered a 9600GT...and of course something with 48+ processors would be better still

 

Where are all the Studio XPS 1340 reviews/hand-ons? And what about the 9500M graphic card? Is it 9500M G, 9500M GS, 9400M G + 9200M GS or another card?
Something is fishy here...

I'm not going to push the buy button until this is clarified.

 

Well, i'm not gonna push the Buy button for the next 2 months or so

 

Hey Guys,

I didn't see http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338324,00.asp in this thread. Nice review saying about the 1640:

"The XPS 16's score of 3:06 is more than 30 percent better [than HP HDX16t], and that's with the 56-Wh battery. With the 85-Wh battery, the XPS16 delivered a score of 4:20"

Thats more than I'd thought.

 

Me too, but if I had a clear answer on this I would pick up the phone now and buy it

 

There is no information to back up the truth because the original idea is so ludicrous that it's not really useful to argue against it. Basic knowledge of how chips work backs this up.

But consider this: How much ram can your PC / Notebook use? 1GB ? 2GB ? 4GB ?
And how does it do that, since PC ram is only connected on a 64bit interface (or two 64bit links in case of double channel, which is not exactly the same as 1x128 but somewhat similiar).

The idea that bus width limits ram size is hilariously flawed. Let's please give it up finally.

There is no "first part" and no "second part". If there really were two "parts" and each would be connected by it's own 128bit link, THEN it would be faster once both links were in use (performance similiar to 1x256). But that's "dual channel" and not the case with graphics cards and not really important because you can just use 1x256 if you really need this kind of bandwidth.

Basic Information on Ram Performance:
The performance of the Ram is determined by the speed of the ram (MHz) multiplied by the bandwidth in bit (for example 128) multiplied by the DDR factor (usually two, since it's called double data rate, so it's two even for DDR3).
Example: 700MHz * DDR * 128Bit (divide by 8 for byte)
Example: => 700.000.000 * 2 * 16 = 22.400.000.000 = 22,4GB/s

For random access, also the latency plays a role, but that's not very important in graphics cards.
To make it faster you can increase the MHz slightly, or double the bus width. The latter provides much more speed, but also increases costs significantly, so many midrange cards use only 128bit.

---

And here's reasoning behind why 512MB in an 8600GT/9600GT is not THAT much better than 256MB:
A 8600GT has a memory bandwidth of 22.4GB/s
A 8800 Ultra has a memory bandwidth of 103.7GB/s
No matter how much memory you give the 8600GT, it's memory bandwidth will ALWAYS be 22.4GB/s. If your 8600GT now were to have 32GB of memory, you can now start putting LOT AND LOTS of highres textures it that memory. No problem. But the performance would suck because you still can only read from that memory at 22.4GB/s. And to create 60 frames/second you need to read LOTS of stuff 60 times a second (at least).

In some rare cases, a program (game or application) may need a lot of memory for texture storage but may not demand much bandwidth for its processing. In this case, a 8600GT with much ram will be significantly faster that a 8600GT with normal amounts of ram. But this just isn't the case for 99,5% of the games that are on the market.

My personal opinion on what makes sense based some of the graphics cards currently available:
Having 512MB in a 8600GT/9600GT/Radeon46xx doesn't hurt, but having only 256MB does it most cases not affect the performance by a lot. More than 512MB is useless for 99,9% of games/apps.
Having 512MB in a 9200/9300/9400/Radeon43xx is plain useless. All the games/applications that really need 512MB or more will not run on this low-end-solution well enough that you could profit from the additional ram.

 

The tag under my name says 'notebook guru'. LOL. Far from it. I feel like a blind man trying to find something in the dark. I'd be totally lost w/o you guys. I have no idea what to expect from the Adamo but I do have a fair grasp on what I want and I don't think it exists right now in anything but the Vaio Z. I've been told for my application (movies,surfing), I don't need a fancy GPU. The Adamo is thin but not THAT thin. There are some great pics here

 

What do you guys usually do about the warranty? Buy an extra 2 years? 3 years? Straight from dell?

Do they offer any accidental coverage? I did not see any on the lap config pages.

 

i'll buy at least 3 years of warranty...is the best u can do. And yeah the offer accidental damage,,,look for it somewhere.

 

What do you mean "not THAT thin"? What thinness are you comparing it against? It's below 1", so it's very thin. Here are some nice pictures of white/silver Adamo.

If you want a computer only for movies and surfing, then most any 13" notebook will do. If the price doesn't scare you, get a Sony Z, or cheaper LG. If you are going to watch high definition movies, make sure the video card is 9-series, as GPU handles video and CPU is free for other tasks.

 

I went ahead and ordered the new 1340. I'm not SUPER-psyched about it. But I am happy/excited about quite a few things.

THe thing is supposed to ship on or by 1/26 -- in case anyone is curious as to when Dell is saying they are shipping.

When I originally configured, the gift card was in the cart. But by the next day, it disappeared. A quick call to Dell got the gift card back in my cart.

1) I'm semi-concerned about the looks. The leather might work, it might not. At the very least it'll make the thing have some grip when carrying it around. I may have to get a pink belt to accessorize with it, maybe some lipstick, too. Who knows?

2) I've been waiting a long time for a new laptop. I've been waiting a long time for my IDEAL laptop that still, as of this time, has not come along. I have a Dell 700m right now. It's almost 4 years old. 1.6 processor. It's my main work laptop that I use for a lot of software engineering. It's actually quite amazing how well this thing runs Visual Studio 2008 and Eclipse, Flex Builder and even Flash CS3, etc. I LOVE this machine. I just want it be faster. However, I'm scared of new machines to not being as reliable as this thing has been. We've got an amazing history together and it never let me down.

3) Though all I want is a faster machine, I've been waiting for a 13" form factor that has both VGA, HDMI, displayport. At work, I use their VGA monitors; at home it'll be nice to watch some movies through the HDMI, and even some european cycling television that I subscribe to. I like the idea of displayport for hooking up a massive external monitor that I hope to get someday.

4) Everyone's really concerned about this new 16x9, and there's been a lot of discussion. For me this doesn't matter. I almost ALWAY use an extra monitor for my main workspace and just use the laptop monitor for secondary windows where I display documentation, my email, a webpage displayed. I almost only use the laptop monitor exclusively only when on trains or airplanes.

5) I had a Lenovo T400 for a few weeks, but it was a big-time lemon for me (yeah, I know all PC manufacturers build the occasional lemon). I hated the fact that it was limited only to VGA output, though. Everything else about that computer pretty-much rocked.

6) I'm really hoping that the overheating nvidia card problem has been taken care of in this revision. I find it hard to believe that Dell will release this new machine with the same faulty problems the previous generation suffered. I had a friend that just got a XPS 1330 and he's already having problems.

7) In comparison to other machines I've looked at. There's a lot of ASUS machines I've been interested in, but I've never really been able to see the ones I wanted locally. And then there were some LG laptops I liked, but were never released in the US. I also liked the Sony SRs, and the Sony Z, but I'm hesitant to their customer service. The Lenovo U330 I like, but wish it came with a better processor and I got tired of waiting. I like the Dell Latitude e4300, but it's too expensive, and I belive no discrete graphics. I really like the MacBooks, but don't like OSX, and can't justify the extra cost and possible headache to run windows as primary O.S., especially when it comes to connecting to my various fortune 500 clients VPNs and such.

One thing you can say about Dell is that they deliver so many machines, they do a pretty good job of updating and fixing drivers, and then there's the 3rd party support -- for example, I just replaced the keyboard on my 700m for $20.

8) I'm not really concerned how the thing will game; I'm more interested in how the discrete graphics help the operations of the new Photoshop CS4, which uses hardware acceleration for some tasks.

9) Blu-ray...meeh. I only need a DVD drive built-in for me to watch the occasional Netflix movie on the go. Otherwise, I'd prefer to just have a BluRay at home that I plug-in to...and really, who knows how long until it's even financially feasible to backup data to BluRay or whatever.

10) Weight. I find it interesting that the 1340 weighs so dang much. I'm not sure how this will bother me. Half the time I'm using the laptop in bed, or on my couch, so I don't know if I'll feel the weight or not. It also made me think twice about getting the large 16" version for only 1.5 pounds more. That gave me pause. But then I remembered riding the trains and planes, and you can't use a large 16" laptop on a plane these days unless you're a midget. I also didn't mind that some Macs weighed a lot. I'm more of a fan of the compressed form-factor, than actual weight.

Anyway, after months of needing a new machine and waiting for my ideal, I had to finally order one. Yeah, it'll be outdated in a few months, and it's not my ideal, and I'll start dreaming about my new machine upon hearing the new announcements. But then in a couple years, I'll be able to upgrade to the 3rd revision of the-next-best-thing...and in the meantime, I'll be working with a computer that has a PCMark05 score of better than 5500 (hopefully around 6000), which is quite the upgrade from the laptop I'm using now with a PCMark05 of 1500.

Still, in the back of my brain, I still think I should have ordered one of the current XPS 1330 with 2.4 proc and 4 gigs for about $1050.

Ok, I'm done. I figured I'd try to change the tone of the conversation from the usefulness of 512/256 meg video ram intellectual Olympics.

 

The 9500m graphics is definately 9400M G + 9200M GS.

 

@Mr D: For the warranty, I start with the one-year warranty. Dell will let you extend it at a future date. In fact, you'll be getting offer letters from them in the future to extend it.

 

Exactly! sometime they will include other offers in the letter as well

 

If i get the 16, can i rip out the graphics card (to sell) and will the unit still run? Im not a gamer or running external monitor, so cant imagine ever needing that.

 

hehe, tell me about it! So true

 

I meant not too thin that it is impossible to accomodate and optical drive. Or is it? As I said, this is all still new to me.

 

About the new 4xxx series from Radeon:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338478,00.asp

So we might see in the near future ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 and 4650's in the new XPS 16.

 

Is it more safer to buy notebook with ATI over GeForce because GeForce has more defective video card?

I wouldn't surprised if GeForce 9, including new 9650m GT would be defective in after 1 year.

 

No, not at all. The system would be inoperable. That's not how notebooks work.

Doubtful. I mean they could have launched with those, and I'd be nice, but Dell hasn't seemed very interested in performance for the past year. I'd assume the GPU is sodered on too, so even if Dell did offer one, you couldn't upgrade to it, save for replacing the entire board (and even if you could it would cost a fortune).

 

I expect an updated Studio 17 line in late April when Intel refreshes its Montevniea line with new CPU's

I can see the Studio 17 getting DDR3 RAM and an ATI 4650 graphics card

 

Completely irrelevant how many people agree with him. Do you not understand that "128-bit" is a WIDTH, not an ADDRESS SPACE? If it *was* an address space, it would be able to address that insane number I quoted above-apparently something similar to 1 trillion terrabytes. It's more space than all the hard drives on Earth put together. It is also slightly more than 256MB. But it IS NOT AN ADDRESS SPACE, it's just a width.

 

OK - Seriously people, this thread is about 1340 vs 1640 - NOT your computer science class debate.

Make a new thread and discuss it there. You guys back and forth making this not only convoluted but completely off topic!

 

1. What is the transfer rate of the eSATA interface on the XPS 1640?
2. Can the XPS 1640 boot from a connected drive using the eSATA port?

 

http://www.engadget.com/photos/dell-studio-xps-13-and-16-hands-on/
New gallery!

 

Looks awesome and sleek but I don't know if the leather will last long...

 

I plan on applying leather shields and probably a film over the glossy half. If it all turns out all messed up, atleast it'll look better than my inspiron e1505 still. Haha.

 

I have to second this:

I know there is a huge validity to what you are saying and its all very educational but I personally really don’t give a flying fiddlers f*** about bits bytes 16:9 or any of that.

I would just like to know what sort of games I can play on relatively high spec 1340!

I know it’s not a games machine I would just like to know BEFORE I fork out nearly 2 grand on it.

Is that too much to ask???

Thanks in advance
Tony

 

I think the third picture definitely shows how attracted fingerprints are. (I think I would carry around a microfiber cloth with it)

 

this laptop is beautiful..

 

Hmmm, I'm wondering if I'm going to be expected to match both my belt and shoes (to be expected), as well as my laptop now?

 

Has anyone seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUDzR7Pfyr0

Feel free to thank me!

 

I guess you can pick any color you want as long as it is black.
EDIT: Obsidian Black*

 

Good point. Hadn't thought of that. I'm kind of disturbed that they used real leather.

 

That's pretty nice overall, and I really like the leather addition to it.

 

Totally agree. I prefer the m1330 cover, so pleasant to touch, while the top part of this one is a fingerprint magnet... and if they indeed used genuine leather, well, i don't get it then... don't wanna carry a part of a dead animal lol

 

Yeah, I didn't really think about it at first, and then it's like...wait.

Of course I'm a hypocrite, I wear leather shoes, and have a leather belt, but I"m not sure what else I can wear, and this is totally unnecessary.

 

Leather should be an option not obligatory,,,, =(

Hehehe anyway Im waiting a couple of months to see what else is new in those models...

 

the more i look the 1640 over the more i keep flip flopping between the 1640 and the m1530. to try and get an idea on the current laptop resolutions, i went to the local bestbuy and played around with the display models. i found a sony with what would be the in between offering of the 1640 if it was availible(1600x900) and that seemed perfect. i found another laptop with the 1366x768 and it just seemed like it wasnt enough. they had a m1530 on display with the base screen and i can see where the 1440x900 screen would be best on it. i dont know if i should wait to see if dell offers another resolution for the 1640 or bite the bullet on a m1530. does anyone know if you get the m1530 with the base 4gb of ram running at 667mhz can u upgrade to the 800mhz ram later? ive been watching the refurb site the last few days and have seen some serious deals come and go.

 

IMO I wouldn't take a 16" laptop at 1366 x 768. That resolution is barely larger than a 13" (1280 x 800). They should've given it 1600 x 900 for the base model and 1920 x 1080 for the higher end like the Sony Vaio FW.

 

I know. Just using that example agains their point.

It of course depends on how long do you plan to use the laptop. I myself don't need a warranty longer then 1 year since will exchange system faster then that.

 

What I really like is how the Hinge changes colours as the Battery runs out.

My Acer's hinge just glows a really bright neon blue that gets annoying as it can't be turned off.