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

@alemaker
congrats for the bug free system..
in ur signature u hav mentioned 900p...can u share how u managed that...
I m lookin for any resolution between 720p and 1080p (but without black blank area)
my system config is identical to urs.
awaiting reply..thnx in advance

 

parthchaudhari: 1600x900 (900p) should work

 

Hi fellas... got my replacement system yesterday{DELL was superfast this time!! } and ran a few benchmarks and

>> i gotta say i'm pretty disappointed by this system compared to the original one.. this system THROTTLES and THROTTLES moderately..

>> while plugged in AC (90 WATTS ADAPTER), battery doesn charge while playing ASSASSINS CREED on 1080p (But the good thing is it doesn discharge either... i have played for 2 hrs and the battery was stuck on 68%) and

>> i noticed that while on Battery the game stuttered but when Plugged in AC power it worked awesome.. and i also got Multiple Freezing of the GAme ASSASSINS CREED while playing it.. so i had to go to task manager end process and start the game back again play for a few minutes until it freezes again and start this process all over..
(RElated info: I have the Latest ATI catalyst drivers)

>> Like my previous system i cant find any subwoofers externally below this system (dont tell me Dell hid the subwoofer below the panel.., thats disgusting) so the sound quality is about average from the speakers from the Grill...

>> Has anyone tried installing Objectdock Pro? i have the original licence but somehow the win7 allows me to install it but i cant run it..

>> I gotta admit that i'm an IDIOT who blew up a gem of a LAPTOP and got stuck with this Underperformer

>> anybody can help me out with these issues..??

 

Yeah i installed it and its working fine for me

 

can you be a bit specific...
i know it should work but theres no option of it in the screen resolution menu..
options are
1280/720
1280/1024
1900/1080

so i m askin how you got it workin at 900p..
can anyone help me on this...
1440/900 or 1600/900 would be fine..

 

Guys, how does the i7 turbo mode really work?
Does it speed up by itself when it needed to? or do we need to turn it on somewhere?

I'm not into gaming, but tried some games and experienced slow downs most of the time after 30-60 minutes of gameplay, almost regardless what the games are.
I noticed the machine is running quite hot during the slow downs.

 

I have 900p as well but that is the native resolution of my screen, i didn't buy any screen upgrades.

 

Hi people!

I have been following this forum for 1645 reviews since a long time. It was encouraging to see the positive feedback from owners and hence, I decided to order this laptop. Ordered on 30-Dec-2009, and recieved it on 11-Jan-2010 (I ordered it in India).

Was delighted to see the laptop. But the problems started soon! The laptop froze randomly many a times when using it initially. Called the Dell representative, who walked me through the factory image reinstallation process. Unfortunately, the dell factory image on my HDD was corrupt. Then he asked me to use the Reinstallation CDs to reinstall the OS. But again, the Reinstallation CD was damaged (They will be sending a replacement CD shortly).

Luckily, I found out an option to reinstall the image without using the CDs (Using some option in Dell DataSafe). The laptop seems to be working fine now. But, I see that it heats quite a lot. I ran Stress tests using Prim95, and saw that the CPU core temperatures reported by HWMonitor were of the order of 80-85 deg C (The room temperature must be around 22-25 deg C). The underside of the laptop heats quite a lot. The palm of the hand can bear it, but dorsum cannot bear the heat. I mean its pretty hot. Someone please let me know whether this is normal!

Thanks a lottt!

 

Hi Kaushik,
Did you buy your laptop in India? Did Dell replace your machine instead of repairing it??

 

is there any way by which 900p can be made possible on my machine too???...
pls help guys..really need 900p res...
720p is too large and 1080p is too small(have spects, so it hurts)
any method absolutely welcome..

 

the core i7 adjusts speed automatically...
the machine can run hot after abt an hr of play,its normal...

still to be on d safer side try temp monitor software and post back the findings, that'll make things more clear.also note down cpu clocks..

 

The LCD screens do not perform well on non-native resolutions. The images appear hazy on non-native resolutions. Even I face problems when reading text on my laptop due to the extremely high resolution. I guess the only alternative is to adjust the DPI instead of tweaking the screen resolution!

 

oh ok...seems legit..
thnx mate..

 

Sorry to hear about your laptop still not fixed. Let me clarify this, you are saying that the laptop stutters when on battery but not when on AC adapter? I thought the XPS was the other way around- runs fine on battery and stutters on AC. Can you confirm plz?

 

Hi all, have been browsing through this thread the past couple of days. I have ordered the spec in my signature which I should receive within the next 4 days (got the email confirming shipment this morning).

Reading through this thread has given me a lot of concerns over what I may have bought! I plan to use the machine for mainly development on Windows 7 Ultimate, i.e: running Visual Studio along with my multitude of development applications for testing, profiling, VM's etc. Of course, web browsing, playing the occasional movie, accessing iTunes collection will also be regular tasks for the machine to perform.

I have a fairly juicy desktop machine which I use for gaming so I don't anticipate playing many games on the laptop.

My chief concern is the reports of crashing/lock-ups. On that basis the first thing I will do is wipe the SSD and install from fresh. Is there any reason I need to download and use the Dell provided drivers rather than individually obtained drivers direct from ATi etc?

 

Xiderpunk, the best practice is to format your drive, and then install Windows and the drivers from Dell. The video driver may be obtained from ATI, but you need to use the Mobility Mob utility for that. The system shouldn't crash if you are careful with your installation of software.

 

(They just keep on coming) Anyone tried to sync their Iphones or iPod touch with this laptop "successfully"? Saw many forums and tried all the fixes that they said, and none of them have worked for me. Any new info on the BIOS release? Someone suggested running iTunes in Vista Compatibility Mode, and it will work once or twice. But my question is: Is it successfully syncing everytime you connect?

 

Thanks Jeffyen, yes hoping that with a fresh install I can avoid this reported problem. Of course if it doesn't behave it will be returned.

 

I purchased a new iPhone 3Gs last week. It syncs fine with iTunes. I didn't do anything special. I know this doesn't help those who are having problems, but my experience shows that it can work. I am using Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (as received, not upgraded).

 

(And another one) When playing some of the older games like NFSMW and so on. The max resolution i can play in is :1280x1024. And when in-game only the center part of the screen is used with the sides having stripes of blackness. How do i stretch the frame and make it FULLSCREEN. Tried the Catalyst software which came by default and there are no options for enabling this. Help me guys!!!
P.S : I have not installed updated graphics drivers or the latest Catalyst (just the default drivers and Catalyst).

New to forums and I'm Lovin it.

 

Hi Xiderpunk,

I use the machine for programming only. I used to use a mac book dual core 1.6Ghz and use a desktop quad core zeon 1.6 ghz at work and this labtop smokes them both when I use delphi or VS2008 within a VM on the laptop. So it is fast. I do notice slow downs when the VM is first loaded but after 5 minutes I could not even tell I was running in a VM. I am not sure how much I am affected by the throttling issue but so far I can live with it and hope that when it is fixed it will be like getting a new laptop again.

I also have not formatted the computer....yet, but do not have any freezing issues.

Marc

 

yep....... its the other way round for me.. i dunno y..
3dmark06 on ac power plugged in - ~7100
3dmark06 on battery - ~6450

anybody can tell me y its happening??

 

yeah i did buy it in India {through my brother who is ALIENWARE SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER for USA.. so got DELL employee discount too..}

i informed him that i blew my system up so he gladly contacted the appropriate personnel regarding this.. they called me up and said they wud send rep to check the status.. the rep confirmed problem with mothrboard.. so i requested a replacement to my bro who they conveyed it to the personnel who gladly obliged!! so here i'm stuck with this UNDERPERFORMING REPLACEMENT

 

i have the same problem and i beleive everybody playing NFSMW & NFSC does have it too,,.. i guess because they r the maximum resolution that the game supports (1280x1024) because they were the highest resolution when the games were developed..

 

I think you are lucky to get a replacement instead of a repaired system. As per Indian standards, I feel they will always repair the systems instead of giving a replacement! Be Happy!!!

 

@kaushi

Sub is below panel. Mess with IDT to turn it up/down.

Not sure on your throttling. What BIOS are you running? Can you run P95+FurMark with ThrottleStop or i7 Turbo to test?

Some games can be hacked to run widescreen/larger resolutions. Look up the forums called Widescreen Gaming and there might be one for NFS.

 

aLcH3m!sT, I've had a similar problem, but not with my SXPS16. When I installed Win7Ultimate on my desktop, which is hooked up to my old plasma TV via HDMI, I had big trouble getting the correct resolution (1024x768 for the plasma) to fill the entire screen and get rid of those black stripes. All I can tell you is that the settings are in the ATI Catalyst Control, but they're kinda buried. For whatever reason, CCC doesn't default to the best settings and you have to do it yourself. Not sure if this is a Win7 or latest CCC version issue. Take a good look around CCC. I think the setting was something like "fill entire screen", or something like that.

 

I have an Iphone 3G and cannot sync it with my SXPS 16. The phone always loses its connection and sometimes when I connect it itunes treats it as a new iphone.
Way more annoying than the throttling issue as I cannot sync my music that I listen to at work everyday. I'm not a big gamer but the throttling issue pisses me off just thinking about it.

 

Anyone know a cheaper cooler to buy? I just picked up a 130 watt adapter and I'm worried about overheating. I don't really want to break $50 on the Zalman NC2000.

 

There is no 1657 thread?

 

As of now, no. Perhaps a one will be created, or perhaps they'll merge all 3 versions of the sxps 16 into 1 thread Time'll tell.

 

There is one out that's called the 1657?!

~Ibrahim~

 

Yea, isn't the i5 series called the 1647? err 1647 ahahah

 

Hey guys,

My 1645 is working nicely. I've got the A01 bios, do I want to upgrade it or leave it?

How can I check if my Samsung PM800 128GB SSD does garbage collection and/or TRIM?

Thanks!

 

Yeah, A03 gives you a little more brightness control, among other things (just one extra option). Can if you want to.

Crystal Disk Info should tell you about TRIM.

 

I'm having a few problems. My system boots extremely slow. It hangs on the file classpnp.sys I have googled the issues and found lots of people discussing it but no solution. I am using a fresh install of windows 7. I also cant reinstall the sound-blaster software. I got a code and downloaded the software but after I install it it says the audio device supported by this software is not found and closes.

 

wats IDT? can u explain a bit pls??

I'm running the A01 Bios.. and i don wanna upgrade to A03.. because i dont see the need to.. can anyone explain the merits and demerts of upgrading to A03 BIOS??

and abt p95+furmark+ throtttlestop/i7 turrbo.. i'm not running it.. because i'm not intent on ruining this one too..

 

IDT is the sound control panel. Look in Control Panel.

Read the update notes on A03. I think A02 had some weird ones, can't remember them. Nothing big, so you don't have to.

haha, that's fine.

 

Guys found out the solution. Thanks a lot for the replies. All you have to do are the following steps:

1. Change the resolution of the screen to 1280 x 1024 or anyother resolution that gives you the black stripes on both the ends.
2. Now open CCC. Select the "BASIC" option. There in QUICK settings-> Notebook Panel Properties. And select the option: RESIZE TO FIT THE DISPLAY option and finish.

Now if you change your resolution back to 1080p also, when you play games with 1280x1024 or anyother resolution, you can play in widescreen!!!

Remember, the same option remains greyed out if you are having the 1080p resolution.

That's that. Happy NFSMW!!!!

 

Guys.... I am planning to buy a Notebook Cooler but am not that sure on what to get. Wanted to get the NC Zalman 2000 but freaks dont sell it in INDIA. So the only good option i have is Cooler Master. Can you tell me which is better?
Notepal Color Infinite (or) Notepal U2

Got to purchase it by today or tomorrow. So your reviews ll help.

 

Hi .. Can someone please share the CPU temperatures under stress test. I am wondering if 80 deg C (with room temperature around 25 deg C) is normal! Under normal loads, the temperature hovers around 45-50 deg C. But, the laptop fan turns on every few minutes even under normal loads! Is this the expected behavior?

 

i dont think theres any need to buy cooler for your laptop because i game heavily continuously and my system hardly gets warm... you will probably need the cooler for your 90 WATTs adapter.. (if you have the 90 watts.. i dono abt other higher wattage adapters) i cant even touch it after continuous heavy (lAptop) usage.. it feels like its on fire..

 

If I'm getting an additional ddr3 memory, is it PC-10600 1333mhz? Not PC-8500 1066mhz right?

 

Yes, It should be PC-10600 1333 Mhz.

 

Fan usually on: normal for me
Idle: 50 C for CPU and GPU, lower for everything else
Stress: Up to 67 C for CPU, lower for GPU
Room temp: Heater up to max ... No thermostat, just a rotating dial labeled from 1-5 for heat.

If you're really annoyed by the fan I suppose you can put the laptop near an open window and prop it up with a book.

 

Thanks a lot for your reply fred2028 .. Seeing your laptop CPU temperatures, I feel that this laptop is built to be used in cold countries, not tropical countries! Here, the CPU core temperature is reaching 80 deg C, which is, I suppose, due to the higher ambient temperature. I hope it does not damage the laptop! (Currently I am in Norway, and the temperature readings here are pretty decent, i.e. around 70 deg C)

 

i've the same problem!!!
dell replace my old screen 2 weeks ago. and now.. from 3 days.. sometimes got this bug..

note that i've 1640 with rgbled and 4670 1gb.. and updated to the latest a12 bios version..

screen flashing while windows load.. and become pink, red, or green.. and than.. screen become almost black.. i can see a little image in the dark.. but sims to be off..

how can explain that??

solve by off the xps.. plug the ac.. and then reboot..

this happened with the battery low.. on almost 14%...

thanks a lot

 

Hi Kaushik,

Can you please share your laptops CPU core temperatures under normal use and under stress tests? Do specify the ambient temperatures as well! I guess snapshots of HWMonitor under both the conditions would help everyone ..

Thanks!

 

Is that using a 130 w psu + TS?

 

hi i have included hardware monitor txt files in stress mode.. hope this helps.. i was also including screenshots but dono the sites not lettin me.. i guess the files r too big