**The Official Studio XPS 1645 Intel Core i7 "Owners Lounge" - Part 2

Hehe. Dell has a nack for doing weird stuff. 1-2 days delay will be alright, provided I order it right away, which I know I will not do (very lazy) . Has anyone had more delays than 1-2 days?

Now as I stated above, I haven't got the chance to look into retail stores right as of now and might not get a change for some few days. Are the discounts/'Final Dell prices' given online on the dell site also applicable in retail stores? Online, without customization, we donot get a i5-1080p combo. Can it be available in retail stores, by chance?

 

One more thing I forgot to ask. Is the i5 version still shipped with PM55 or does it come with the HM55 now?

 

Guys, please tell if the i5 version is shipped with HM55 or PM55. This is could be my last deciding factor between an i5 or an i7...

 

I think it's PM55.
Can I ask, why does the difference matter so much to make it a decisive factor?

 

If it's HM55 then there might be a future BIOS upgrade which might enable switching graphics. If it's a HM55 then I might turn over to i5 just for that 'slim' chance. Cause already I'm in a dilemma and almost 50/50 over i5 and i7.

 

As of april 2010 it was shipping with pm55... I highly doubt they have changed it since then.

 

Yeah, I think there was a discussion about this before. On the Dell site it says PM55/HM55, but as of now, nobody has reported having a HM55.

Plus, I think Dell said that they will not support switchable graphics on the XPS16, so it would be pointless for them to start using the HM just for the heck of it.

 

Yeah no switchable graphics in the foreseeable future of S-XPS 16 unfortunately!
Get the i5 if power saving is your concern, you should be good for 4 hours with WLED, i5 and 5730!

 

Off topic ... but I just got my Dell XPS 1645 today.

I am grinning from ear to ear ... though does anyone know when I can get the Dell XPS splash screen which is typically shown on the XPS Gallery (looks like splashes of water)

Okay ... In running Speccy, I am a little peeved. It seems I dont have a Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM HDD but rather a Hitachi Travelstar. Very disappointed.

 

yuley, you're a lucky man. Hitachi > Seagate in performance! Only one of three XPS's I ordered came with the Hitachi.
Seagate is still great and is 3rd best mobile drive in my book.

 

Ohhh ... now I feel better. Thanks anodize. As you can see ... I am very fickle.

 

Yep, Hitachi tops every review I've read so far. Enjoy your new machine.

 

Am I the only one that got a Toshiba drive in mine? It specifically said Seagate drive in my order specs. I was kinda peeved at first as well, but after looking at reviews, it's just as good if not better than the Seagate. I'd like to try out one of those new Seagate Momentus XT drives though.

 

Mine also said Seagate with Freefall Sensor but I got a Hitachi TravelStar

 

seeker, you have the xx56gsy? My old XPS had the toshiba and tom's hardware put it ahead of the Seagate. Hitachi, Toshiba, and Seagate are the best mechanical mobile drives.

 

Yeah, the mk5056gsyf. Can't complain about it

 

I beg to differ i find Toshiba drives have a higher failure rate. I had two go bad for me on my 1330

 

Mannn. I just got to know that if I ship my laptop to Las Vegas, it's gonna be levied with 100$ tax. What the hell is this!! Do they levy taxes on all states?

 

Not the same model and year. Toshiba recently took over Fujitsu and the rest is history. Their xx61gsy is the fastest 2.5 7200rpm mechanical drive in the market.

 

How much is NV tax? 8.75%? That's nothing compared to 9.75% + $16 environmental fee we have to pay in Cali.

 

try 12% + environmental fees on top] of the higher prices in Canada!

 

HST ( 13 % ) + like 20$ enviro fee for ontario = killer. Add on top of that already inflated prices ( 100 - 200$ usually for dell ). We pay about 30% more then our american counterparts

 

That's nuts. I thought 9.75% + $16 was harsh.. I really envy those who only pay like 6%. Mostly central US.

 

I want to perform a fresh install on my SXPS 1645, but the problem is I do not have the original windows 7 installer and dell do not provide one. What should I do?

 

This has been discussed a few times earlier in this thread. Try this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...intel-core-i7-owners-lounge-part-2-a-109.html The conversation starts on page 108, but most of the info is on 109.

 

To add to Seeker's post, check this one out

 

hahaha our environmental fee is something like $45. iguess that 1% HST difference, in the end, doesn't really make much of a difference!

 

Yeah, mine was $1161, plus about $58 in taxes. I was kinda mad about it too, I've gotten used to tax-free online purchasing. However, a retailer has to collect taxes for purchases in any state they operate in. Big online retailers like Amazon will concentrate all their assets in one state (in this case Washington) to avoid collecting taxes from most customers. However, as Dell has presence in all states (via the Dell technicians and customer reps) they have to collect tax from everybody. There are a lot of court challenges going on, so expect to start paying taxes on all online purchases within a few years anyway.

I can't really complain too much though. I lived in Germany for many years, and their sales tax is 19%.

 

I'd murder somebody

 

I was just guessing lol. Idk what the enviro fee for ontario is

 

They also make alot more per/hour. Cost of living all over Europe is higher but they make alot more so it makes up for it

 

Don't forget gas approaching $7/gallon (1.40 euro/liter current price today), and income taxes (including government health insurance and social security) that can approach 50%. Or the tax that you have to pay tax on every device that can play TV or radio, etc.

Yeah, and they get a lot more from their government, like free education, healthcare, higher unemployment benefits, beautifully maintained roads, lower crime, free basic satellite TV, etc. In the end they end up with the same amount of value for their work as we do, their government just decides on where a much larger portion of their money goes for them. In the end is it worth it? I don't think so, but it's a matter of politics, not laptops,

 

I just ordered a Dell XPS 16 with the following specs:

Core i7 - 720m
4GB RAM
1080P WLED
128gig SSD
4x Blu-Ray Burner

I did not get this machine soley for gaming but I would like to have that option available if needed. I'm a bit worried about all the throttling talk I've seen here. I really am not going to be happy with a laptop that overheats and is unable to utilize its abilities.

I dont currently own any modern games that will tax the CPU/GPU (switched over to console gaming). What can I do to test if my XPS16 has the throttling issue when it arrives? If it does throttle, what should I do? Send it back and get a refund?

 

Just thought I would add this about the OS CD ... You would not believe what I had to go through to convince Dell to send this out.

At first they were going to send out for a cost to cover delivery (>AU$50) but then gave me the option of waiting longer and having it delivered for free.

Hard work I tell you. I think I should have done what Seeker_moc recommended.

.....

On the subject of tax, its a flat 10% good and services tax in Australia. But refundable if purchased within 30 days of flying overseas.

 

My XPS 16 just shipped, and is scheduled to be delivered on 9/25...

i7 720qm
8gb DDR3 1333mhz ram
128gb ssd
Radeon 5370 graphics

I can't wait to get my hands on this beast of a laptop! Go Dell!

 

AHHHH I am waiting day 3 since it shipped ZZZ it's still in the U.S. Tansit -.- causing me to RAWR lol!!!

Specs:

Code:

i7 820QM 1.73GHz (3.06GHz, 8MB Cache)
8GB,DDR3,1333MHZ,2 DIMM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 - 1GB
15.6 1080P FULL HD WLED LCD, W/2.0 MP,IN
9-cell Battery
BLURAY COMBO,INSP
Obsidian Black High Gloss Finish
Soundblaster X-Fi HD Audio,SW Enabled
Dell Wireless 1501 for Canada and Latin
DW 370 (USB module)

I am very excited will be used for Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3(when it comes out!) and of course school (zzz).

Any way to test that they put the full 1920x1080 Full HD screen in my laptop instead of the 1440x one?

Also why does US Line haul take 3 days to get from Dallas to Toronto or Calgary that just annoys me, I am like a kid waiting for Christmas, and they told me it was going to be a day or two late -.-

Is there anything I should do first once I get my laptop? Some seemed to install directX 11 but I want all this crap software off my computer, it says its installing Roxio CD Crap like go away from my xps -.-

Oh and does the facial recognition lock work at all or is it lame?

 

Looks like SXPS16 is still going strong. It pains me to say farewell to mine.

 

Sorry to hear you faced this issue. I received my System on 21st Sep and It came with all the disc except for the windows disc.

I called on 22nd and simply told them I want my windows disc to do a clean installation. The tech put me on hold and created a dispatch. I received my Disc the next day. Thank god no hassles after 2 consecutive replacements

 

Just take a look at the screen; you should be able to tell the difference. Or you could right click on the desktop, click screen resolution, slide the slider all the way to the right, and see what it says.

 

I was recently playing Call of Duty: World at War on the laptop. It was on medium settings getting ~55 fps average, while it was plugged in. I then unplugged the laptop to see what would happen and my fps dropped to ~20. I thought that the balanced battery setting is what was giving me the drop in fps but high performance behaves the same way. I'm not alarmed at those results, I'm just curious as to why the fps rate drops substantially when running off battery only.

 

This is caused by lack of ATI Powerplay, lack of power (wattage), or both.

 

Like gpig mentioned, the power play setting in the CCC plays a part. Also, even though you're on 'high performance', you're still on battery high performance. All the power profiles have two different settings, on for when it's plugged in, and one for battery power. You'd have to manually go into power settings and adjust the battery settings to match the desktop ones.

Even then, you're still going to lose performance. There is no way that a battery can put out 130W (or even 90W) of constant power during a game. You'd drain your battery in 30 min for no real gain.

 

strange. i've played Burnout Paradise, on battery, for more than 30 minutes, and had smooth fps all above the 30-50 range. i easily played it out for a good hour, and still had around 50-60% of battery left.

i'm just using the default "Balanced" Windows 7 Power Plan (only changes made were when the machine sleeps/hibernates). my Power Play settings are set to go into "Maximum Battery" when not plugged in.

I know that Burnout isn't exactly the most demanding game, but I still thought it would be enough to put the GPU and CPU through their paces throughout gameplay.

 

Your GPU is always through its paces! It'll always work as hard as possible to max out your FPS in any game, in any settings, all the time! The only way to prevent it from doing so is to set an FPS limit-- 60 in most cases.

Your CPU on the other hand, is a different story-- not every game will stress the CPU.

I'd say Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Starcraft 2 are good games to test systems with. They're both heavily cpu-dependent I believe, and Battlefield I know for sure stresses all four cores.

 

Just some news from the Australian front. The i7-620 is now back and they are offering the Windows 7 OS CD as an optional extra (but at no additional cost). The quad core option is no longer even available.

That grates me ... ABout the OS CD that is.

 

Hey guys boy have i had a rough time dealing with dell im going to keep this as short as possible. Problems with screen when battery low(under 25 percent) when i plugged in power cable screen would turn a green blue or red tint which would only come off when i power down take out battery and power cable and hold power button for 20 seconds then replug and start up.

I rang them about this issue and they ramblee on about bios updates which i had already done and in the end they really tried to treat me like an idiot and said that this was how the laptop was designed. They got there answer on that theory pretty quick. So by the end of conversation they said they would replace rgb screen which they said would definetley fix screen(ya right) they took my laptop for 2 weeks and returned with a standard wled screen which is 250euro cheaper than the rgb i payed for. They probably thought i would not notice. Im guessing there is a problem with the config i got because i checked for the problem with the wled they put in and everything was working fine the problem was fixed. I rang dell and had an arguement they apologise for there MISTAKE and sent an engineer next day with rgb screen and put it in.

Then i tested again on low battery with rgb back in and a similar problem occurs. Whatever thay done now when the battery is low and i plug it in the screen blinks a few times and then goes blank(black).

So im assuming they messed with someting else and just tried to cover the problem up somehow. Anyway i rang them today and complained and now they said they will replace the screen again and also replace the motherboard because they think it might be a problem with graphics card.

I asked the tech to give me the model number of the new motherboard they are going to put in just in case they were going to replace it with the same board again which could not possble fix the problem.

Current mobo model number 0y517r
Replacement model number y507r

Can anyone here let me know if they have experienced any of the problems im having and if so can you let me know if dell acually fixed it or are they just giving me the runaround as i suspect.

Any info here would be really really appreciated guys. I know i said i would keep it short but i just wanted to give you the full story and thats as short as i could keep it : )

Cheers

 

Hi guys,

I'm a newly registered user here, but have experience working on computers. I have a Studio XPS 1645 notebook with the i7 820QM and ATI 5730 bought new in July. When I received it, I immediately reformatted and installed Windows 7 Ultimate. I installed the drivers from Dell's support page, and basically just gave up trying to find/reinstall the bundled 3rd party software. Since then, it's been working like a champ, with one persistent problem:

Occasionally when I put my notebook to sleep, the screen immediately dims (like it should), but the fan begins to rev to full speed as if the processor is working at 100%. The first time this happened, I was unaware of it, placed it in my bag and drove to work. When I pulled it out, it was still technically on and incredibly hot. My only option was to force a power off by holding the power button down. Fortunately, after letting the notebook cool down, everything seemed to function fine, but I was notified that it had suffered from a BSOD, but since the screen had dimmed, I couldn't tell. I'm now very cautious to verify that the notebook is actually sleeping before I place it in my bag for transport.

This series of events has happened about 6 times since then. I finally got tired of playing BSOD sleep roulette and ran the crash dump in WinDbg. The crash analysis of the dump file said the BSOD was caused by ndis.sys with a IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error. This at least told me it was the network interface driver. Since I had installed the latest driver on Dell's site, I went searching on Broadcom's support site and installed the latest driver from there. The problem still exists though. I have the Intel 5300 wireless card, but in addition I have several virtual interfaces set up through VMware and VPN software.

I'm hoping that someone can either tell me if this has happened to them before, or if I should just call up my Dell support rep. I'm attaching the WinDbg crash analysis if that helps.

Kudos to the active community here. I've read through the past 100 or so pages looking if this topic has been posted before, but I found myself learning quite a few new things about this notebook series. Thanks for already being such a great resource of info.

 

Hey... my old computer (ASUS G1S) just died and I'm looking for a replacement... I like the 1645 but I can only get the Ati 565v (renamed 4670) but I'll get the 130w power adapter... will this be a huge problem? I'm a casual gamer.. TF2 a couple of hours per week... I'm wondering if I'll get problems with this game.. also what's best with this throtling issue? WLED or RGB?

Thanks for reading and for you help in advance

 

HI Guys, I have Ordered a Studio XPS 16 for myself.. waiting for it to get delivered to me.
Is there anything that i should be knowing/Doing while i get the laptop ?

My Configuration is as given below , Please comment on the Configuration also

Studio XPS 1645 Base (Direct) 1
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-740QM (1.73GHz, 4Core/8Threads, turbo boost up to 2.93Ghz, 6M cache) 1

Internal 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet 1
15.6" Edge to Edge Full High Definition (1080p) Display with TrueLife(TM ) 1
Integrated 2.0 mega pixel web cam 1
4GB (2GBx2) 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM 1
500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive 1
Slot Load 8X DVD + /-RW Drive with double layer write capability 1
130W AC Adapter 1
9-cell (85WHr) Lithium Ion Primary Battery

1GB DDR3 ATI Mobility Radeon? HD 5730 1
CREATIVE Sound Blaster(R) X-Fi MB Software Kit 1
Dell 1520 Wireless-N card 1
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth 1
Dell(TM) Backlit Keyboard with Touchpad (English) 1
Genuine Windows(R) 7 Professional 64bit (English) 1
Ergonomic noise isolation in-ear earbud - Creative EP-630 1
WINDOWS-LIVE 1
WinRE software 1
1-year XPS Premier Service with 1-year CompleteCover 1

 

If you're only a causal gamer the 1645 will be great for you. The 4670 should have no problem smoking TF2, but you should really try to get a 5730 if possible. Even if it isn't listed on the website, a lot of times you can give Dell a call and they'll make you one.