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

Never had an XPS 1530, but the heat on the XPS 1645 is fine. It gets warm at times, but you can live with it.

The surcharge might be for the RGBLED. I got the RGBLED and it's great. Most like the RGBLED over the WLED, but a few don't.

I'm not sure on the delay, but if you order today, mid to late January would not be an unrealistic delivery date.

 

Question, if Intel Matrix Manager is uninstalled will the eSata port still function with eSata cable to external eSata hand hard drive (I have doubts)?

 

You can see in the thread in my sig that this exact thing happened to me and how I corrected it. Scroll down to Post #2 and start reading..

 

Thanks for your help. Hopefully some has used a 1530.

If it's warm then that's not a problem, the 1530 was HOT.

£190 is quite a jump so I can live without it.

Any idea on how this laptop compares to the Sony FW?

 

I just completed the reinstall according to BuckZor's instructions. My 128 GB SSD went from scoring 5.9 (after my first attempt at a clean reinstall) to 6.9 now. BuckStor gets 7.1 with his 256GB SSD.

I have no idea just what the WEI is measuring anyway. Its the random read/write access that makes SSDs so compelling as boot drives. If WEI is just testing throughput then indeed, an SSD might not test much better than a large 7200 rpm drive. But you can feel the difference when you boot with this thing.

Anyway, I agree with the other commenter about removing those Matrix Storage drivers. Also hunt down the Intel chipset drivers that buckZor mentions in his post. I installed them before even letting windows updates run when I did my latest wipe/reformat of the system. I also reformatted the drive, but that may not make any difference (only took like 4 seconds anyway .

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=439838

 

I would not recommend the Matrix Manager for any SSD users. I have not tested the e-sata port on my 1645 so I cannot state with 100% certainty, but I would be very surprised if removing (or better yet not installing it at all) disabled the e-sata port.

 

I've never put any faith into the Windows Experience Index, simply because the testing isn't transparent. I'd much rather use something like Everest or CrystalDiskMark to benchmark performance.

 

This is a dumb question: How do you enable wireless N? I was at my father-in-laws house and could only connect on the G frequency. He has a Dlink wireless N router, btw.

 

Matrix manager is for NCQ and power management. You might want to keep it.

 

Vista/Win7 support NCQ out of the box and drive power management in general. I don't know if there's any specific power management feature supported by matrix manager, doubt it.

 

Dumb question, but lets start with the obvious. Was N enabled in the router, or just G/A/B?

 

Yes, his IBM connects fine to N freq.

 

You can enable it in device manager. But I think N mode is enabled by default.

 

You could check to make sure the 5ghz band is on. Which wireless card do you have?

 

If it has shipped you should get a tracking number by tonight. Mine still doesnt show that it has shipped.

 

Ya its enabled, but like I said it only connects to G

Its on, 5300AGN

 

Have you tried connecting to another N network? Is it set to auto 20/40mhz? If its a N network it might only use 40 on the 5ghz band.

 

i was looking at my 5300 settings and "802.11n Channel Width band 2.4" was set to 20MHz only. HERE it says default is auto.
Anyway aleiro, maybe you need to set it to auto to get access to 20 or 40MHz.

06voy beat me to it

 

I changed it and I will need to get over there and try it out. Thanks for all the replies!

 

BuckZor, cheers for pointing me to that thread. It is useful in other respects, but your big drop in WEI wasn't in hard drive (7.2 to 7.1). Mine went from 7.1 to 6.3, and I didn't have Intel Storage Manager installed anyway when I did that test, with or without it's the same.

I have since done everything else you mentioned but can still only get 6.3.

Here's my Crystal scores - can anyone else confirm they're on par for the 128GB? Even if this is more accurate, it still doesn't explain the whole point drop in WEI, unless I already filled the drive, and wouldn't have thought so...

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 210.753 MB/s
Sequential Write : 158.395 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 173.261 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 111.015 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 14.619 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 7.065 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2009/12/22 20:56:27

 

Do you have the 'turn off windows write cache buffer flushing' checked?

It can really help performance. Its in device manager>disk drives> double click on your drive and go to policies. Make sure both boxes are checked.

 

Run the WEI after the laptop has been on for like three hours (AC adapter). It may be that it is doing some background things with the hard drive.

~Ibrahim~

 

which touchpad driver is better?
13.2.2.2 - Dell's website
14.0.3 - Synaptics' website

 

Synaptics'....a lot more customization.

~Ibrahim~

 

Well my S-XPS 1645 seems to be acting up when i connect devices to it via the USB ports when its on battery.My Hard drive doesnt detect nor does my mp3 player through any of the USB ports.My hard drive's light actually stops blinking after like 10 seconds.If i connect the adapter it still doesnt get detected.Only if i restart the laptop with the Adapter connected,do the USB devices start functioning properly.
Anyone else faced this issue?

 

Order my DELL!

£1026 - OUCH!

Does this laptop come witha remote like the XPS 1530?

 

No, it doesn't.

 

Well that sucks, guess I'll have to nick the one from the 1530.

Turns out Dell have free shipping and 6 GB for £90 more!

 

Ikjadoon, I waited for 3 hours before re-testing, and my WEI did jump up to 6.8. Turning on or off write cache buffer flushing did not influence the result however, although I've now left it ticked anyway (for 'turn off'). So at least that's much closer to the original, although I was still getting 7.1 before the clean install

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

 

My 128gb ssd returns 6.6 for the drive and it always has.

The crystalmark figures you posted look about the same too.

 

It looks like if I turn-off hardware acceleration in the browser's flash add-on then my problem goes away.

 

I can now say I "belong" here. I just took delivery of my SXPS 1645

 

I suspected something might be running. Hard drive tests can vary wildly depending on usage.

Some crap may still be running...open Task Manager, Performance Tab, Resource Monitor, Disk Tab. Use these charts to help you deduce what's running.

Like everyone's said: WEI is a horrible benchmark. CrystalMark comparisons are best. WEI runs once, is short (and thus probably not even a good test), and has some built-in limitations that we have no idea about: sure, we could research, but no need to waste time on something that doesn't matter.

~Ibrahim~

 

So im selling my second XPS1645 ident to the one in my signature block. I had an email from a guy requesting the service tag so he can look it up with dell even though i gave him all the specs allready. what do you think? is there a security issue with providing it?

 

I've left my laptop on for several days, (not that I think this length of time is necessary!) and my HDD WEI jumped from 6.1 to 7.7.

 

Could it be that your HDD (I assume it's an SSD) was in the middle of doing TRIM either through Windows 7 or through Garbage Collection when you were running your WEI test?

I have read that Garbage Collection can cause very different performance test results until it's done. Once it's done, performance is fully restored. I haven't been fully keeping up with your setup, so I am unsure which HDD or SSD you have, but a score of 7.7 suggest to me you have a SSD as hardly any HDDs get up that high.

 

My 256GB SSD (the standard Samsung one) does a score of 7.4 on WEI, consistently. Initially right after I started up the computer for the first time it was somewhere around 6.5, then a day later 7.1, and a few hours later 7.4. (I think I posted about this in buckzors thread)

The initially jump I think was that I had the impression that after the first boot it makes the recovery partition and then the SSD is in use. The final jump I think might be due to updating my BIOS to A02 (though I'm using A03 at the moment).

 

Well I liked mine for the 15 min that it just lasted. I put a cd in the drive and it died and now it wont even try to turn on. If i pull the battery and plug it in the keyboard lights up but thats all it does. When i push the power button it does nothing.

 

Funny my M15x did the same thing so now there sending me another xps 1645. They wanted to send me another alienware but i didnt like the look of it anyways so i said send me another xps or just give me a refund.. they were good about it.

 

Try holding down the Fn key and hold the powerbutton with the battery in and plugged into the wall.

 

It wont do anything other than the lights come on for a second after opening the cover. Winks did yours die when you put something in the disk drive or just died?

 

You can see my full setup in my sig, but I have an Intel X25-M. It's sooo nice. Startups literally take 10-15 seconds from when I press the power button.

As for TRIM, I'm not sure. I was under the impression that W7 only TRIMed when you emptied the Recycle Bin. I suppose it does when the OS itself deletes temporary files, but that would be the worst luck to be WEIing while it was deleting temp files.

 

I thought on the Intel's TRIM was like an automatic thing? I don't think it depends on what you're exactly doing. There is a way to force it, too, with some application Intel has?

~Ibrahim~

 

TRIM is a way of telling the SSD that a certain file (or from the SSD's point of view, certain clusters/sectors) are no longer in use, and can thus be treated as blank space. With XP/Vista, you need Intel's SSD Tookit, which can send the TRIM signal to the SSD for all files which have been deleted since the last TRIM. Win7 TRIMs every time you empty the Recycle Bin, which is why the message changes from "Are you sure you want to delete these files?" to "Are you sure you want to permanently erase these files?" because once it TRIMs the files, they're gone, as the SSD could theoretically overwrite them in the next clock cycle of the controller. I'm assuming (but don't know for sure) that Win7 TRIMs temporary files that have been deleted, as well.

Also, while Intel was the first to implement TRIM (apparently Samsung has too, now?), it's part of the ATA spec.

 

Ohhh...OK, thanks for clarifying that for me.

I've been wanting an X25, too. But I legit need more than 160GB that Intel currently offers. I'm already at 115GB and I feel like I've only had for a few weeks.

~Ibrahim~

 

anyone having syncing problems with itunes with ipod and iphone?

 

The tech came out today with a replacement palmrest assembly and the replacement had the same distortions. He said it was normal manufacturing marks. Its only noticeable in the light so I'm not going to worry about it. My old HP laptop has the same thing.

 

no, it's better that on my last Asus G1S and Vista.
But the first synchro and the installation of the new 3.1 firmware was very very long.

 

I not sure if anyone can help here, I am going to order a XPS1645 today, it comes with the 1397 wireless card but really want the intel 5300 but is not listed as an option for the UK. I guess the question is which intell 5300 card do I need to order?

 

Intel Wifi Link 5300 Mini, you can google it or check ebay for "dell intel wifi link 5300 mini".