Dell Xps M1640 (cpu Upgrade)

Hello everyone. I was wondering if my cpu could be upgraded to the latest chip in the P class (P9700). My laptop came with, (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P7350) at 2.0ghz. I can't even run the game Crysis and this machine is supposed to be meant for gaming.

 

The 1640 isn't really supposed to be a gaming machine. It's more of a "lifestyle" notebook, unlike the older XPS machines; Dell wants you to buy Alienware if you want to game.

That being said, you can indeed upgrade to the P9700, but it won't help your Crysis frames much. For that you'll probably want to get a machine with a faster GPU...

 

Do you have the 4670 or the 3670? What settings?

If you're running decently low/medium settings, a CPU upgrade could help the FPS quite a bit. But anything more and it'll be the GPU slowing you down, like Commander Wolf says.

CPU scaling with Crysis

~Ibrahim~

 

my XPS 1640 plays a BUNCH of games perfectly

 

first of all its 1640, not M1640, and it's Studio XPS, not XPS, so it's meant to be a "multimedia laptop", not a gaming laptop.
but yeah, if u have 4670, it has a pretty cool gpu and u can play a lot of cool games on pretty high settings (even on fullhd), but crysis (and gta4) is not one of them. there's barely even a desktop gaming pc which can run these on maxed settings, don't expect similar from a multimedia laptop.

 

I also have the ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3670 512mb. Fallout 3 looked amazing with it, but my cpu speed was not fast enough, when I used canyourunit.com. I think I was already told this by dell but I want to make sure, is it possible to upgrade the video card as well, or are they integrated?

 

It is not possible to upgrade the GPU on the 1640. At least, not without changing out the motherboard. Even if you change out the motherboard, the only other GPU you can get use is the 4670. The i7/i5 boards in the newer SXPS16s might fit, but I doubt it.

 

richy1986: u couldn't expect running crysis on decent settings even from 4670, but 3670 has about half of its performance so i really don't know what you intend to do.. yes, your cpu is not too powerful too but if u want to play games like crysis first of all u need a gamer laptop, with a hi-end graphics card. studio xps 16 is not a gamer laptop, and the 3670 is pretty obsolete even in this multimedia laptop compared to 4670.. even if u had 4670 there would be no other way to play this game on high settings but buying a new gamer laptop with a gpu like gtx 260m, hd5870, etc.

 

I play Crysis and hit optimize it places the settings on high and I can play just fine. So I don't think that's totally true about 4670. Framerate tanks in intense scenes but it plays just fine when I scale down to 720P.