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

I can't answer your question, but you can probably find out for yourself. There are several gadgets out there that monitor the CPU useage. I use All CPU Meter which you can find on the Windows Live Gallery. Once installed just start XP mde and you will see clearly if one core is working harder than the rest.

I reality I suspect Windows will share out the workload of XP Mode like it does for all the other tasks, so there will not be one core doing the work exclusively.

 

Hey guys, anybody know what the way was to change the backlit-keyboard lighting settings? I knew how to do this a month back. I remember it was a few clicks in the System Tray or so? Anybody care to shed some light on how.

Thanks!

Edit:// Found it back. You can do it via the Windows Mobility Center

 

Also, Fn + -> i.e. (Right Direction Key) toggles the keyboard backlight between high brightness, low brightness and off.

 

the graphics card... the sxps feel.. and ofcourse the DROP DEAD GORGEOUS SCREEN!!!!!!!!!

 

yep, n also XPS means "Xtreme Performance System "(lol@though after throttling issue its hard to say). Its suppose to be a gaming computer unlike studio which is a multimedia machine.
Before acquiring Alienware , XPS was the only gaming line by Dell.

 

Thanks thats it.

 

You forgot the look and style, much better looking than the Studio 17 IMHO, and the options list is better. e.g. I upgraded to a 256Gbyte SSD for much less than the retail price of a Samsung SSD. This, and several other options are not available on the Studio 17.

 

Wish the xps had that second HDD bay.. Raid 0 x 2 256gb ssd would be sweet

 

Agreed, someone on here has replecd the optical drive with a docking bay for a second HDD, depends how much you use the optical I guess.

 

A question to all you SXPS owners, should i be optomistic that when AO7 and 130w adapter comes through than this laptop will be as great as it was meant to be? Because I ordered mine Friday and the next day learned about throttling with the 90w. My order is still in but now it has me thinking a whole lot.

 

The A07 bios isn't publicly available so we can't really say. We'll just have to wait and hope. If you haven't done so, you should check out some of the other threads to see what other issues we XPS owners have been able to work our way through.

 

Thanks Semblance, i've been reading about the crashing problems or various RAM issues. Most seem to get resolved, and most seem to be a crap shoot if you will be afflicted with it. I hope the new BIOS addresses atleast the obvious flaws. But i really want this laptop to be awesome. I should have checked forums before reviews from guys looking at it for like a couple of hours on a wonky website review.

 

Thermal paste FTW! The 70+C temperatures, though, were from the Sensor Test (small FFTs, P95) that I did with RealTemp.

And, admittedly, the laptop did go to sleep during the time frame, but that's a legit idle either way, lol.

~Ibrahim~

 

So its hot? lol

 

Can someone direct me on how to revert to A03 from A06? The throttling is much worse so I'd like to go back to A03 until A07 is released. I can't find the information I'm looking for in over 200+ pages. Thanks.

edit: Nevermind. I ran the A03 BIOS flash and it worked.

 

Wow, what thermal paste did you use? I applied AS5 and thought my temperatures were good idling in the high 40s.

You applied to the heat sink, the die, or both?

 

hello can somebody tell me how to turn the v-sync off in ATI control panel?? i did it before.. but sortof forgot.. some confusion with basic and advanced settings...

 

And those are your results after the thermal paste change ???

Mine don't look so good:



Nikolay

 

Methinks ikdajoon lives in a cold storage facility!

 

lol, maybe I should have bold'd the sleep statement.

The computer went to sleep, probably making my 1.6GHz processor run at like 80MHz. That's why it got so cold. As you can see, my true normal idle is closer to the mid-40's.

Tuniq TX-2. On the heatsink; temperatures were significantly higher when I put them on the die.

Yeah, after the change.

@paki

Google? It's under 3D, I think...

~Ibrahim~

 

ikjadoon,

How delicate is the laptop when applying the thermal compound? I have build quite a few pc's and use it all the time. But I have never attempted it on the laptop, hands to big and parts to small To scared to break something. Also does it void the warranty?

Thanks,
Marc

 

I have couple questions, and I really hope some of you guys could help me here.

I feel that my new xps 1645 (i7 720, 6g, ATI 4670 1g, RGB) is not that fast comparing to my old laptop, especially when I play games (even on battery, so not really because of the Throttling issue). Therefore, I want to do some tests to see if everything is ok. So here are my questions:

1. when I run Prime95, which torture test should I run? "blend" or "large FFT" or "Blend+small FFT for the other 3 cores"

2. I am also going to run Furmark. Anything else would you suggest besides these two?

3. If I plan to run each test seperately, do I need to wait for the A07 bios and the 130w adapter? I think the 90w adapter is enough for Prime95, right?

Thank you very much for your help!

 

The only part you'll need to be careful of is the wireless LAN (tiny wires that come loose easily; but easily put back on, too).

Other than that, just the regular stuff: don't lose your screws, don't forget to plug the fan in, don't get paste everywhere.

It takes about the same skill (even a bit less) to put the heatsink on this laptop as it does to put a CPU cooler on a desktop.

About the warranty: maybe, but maybe not. I don't know for sure. If you break something while you're putting it on, obviously that won't be covered, but the actual action? Not sure.

I don't mind too much because the technician who replaced my motherboard forgot to do it, so I'm just making up for his mistake....

~Ibrahim~

 

Quick heads up guys, posted this in the 1647 thread as well. It seems the new ATI cards are on the way! Check the latest inf!

 

Is there any indication of when this bad boy will be placed in the XPS? Because I placed an order on friday for a XPS, and now i hear of this new Graphic card!

 

I would suspect rather soon....within 1-2 weeks?



Try calling up a sales team to see if you can cancel the order. Tell them you're going to buy another when the GPUs are released, so they may waive the restocking fee. Here are the guys I used: dell's regular # + extension 2169174/2169173.

When I did that, though, I bought the new one as soon as I canceled the old one. IDK how lenient they'll be if you don't order another one immediately.

~Ibrahim~

 

So no one has the static sound at all? This leads me to believe it is the video causing the sound. I'll check it out and see if anyone could possibly reproduce what makes this happen.

 

Do you think we will be able to upgrade? I assume the upgrade will require the replacement of the entire mobo, am I right ?

Nikolay

 

can anybody get me on this soon please??

and one more query..
i observed that the sound quality of my sxps 1645 is too low(i mean low output even at 100% sound volume) compared to my batchmates sxps 1640.. any ideas or tweaks to get the max sound from my system??

 

Yeah i'll call today and find out if there will be any fees and what will be the price difference.

 

For those of you the re-installed W7 without creating the factory restore discs and retained the Recovery partition this is what you need to do to get the original image back and running.
Please note that you try this entirely at your own risk, I will not be help responsible for any loss of data or functionality.
Please read the entire post before you proceed, if you are not sure about any of the procedures envolved then please do not continue.

Firstly you need to find the dell factory.wim, this is the image that you will restore from and without locating please do not even think of continuing. Its usually found on the recovery partition \dell\image\factory.wim but it may be in a different location. The recovery partition is usually hidden but tools such as Paragon Partition Manager™ 10.0 Personal can un-hide the recovery partition.

You will need the Windows Automated Installation Kit available from this link
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=696dd665-9f76-4177-a811-39c26d3b3b34&displaylang=en
A host computer WXP will do and 1 writeable CD & 1 writeable DVD

Burn WAIK ISO and install WAIK.
CREATING the WAIK BOOT DISC
The following is what you need to do but those who are looking for further information on the command line please review the following Microsoft Technet article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd349348(WS.10).aspx#BKMK_3

Start the Deployment Tools Command Prompt and run the following commands I am assuming that you installed WAIK to C: here

1. copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86
2. copy c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim
3. copy "c:\program files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\imagex.exe" c:\winpe_x86\iso\
4. oscdimg -n -bc:\winpe_x86\etfsboot.com c:\winpe_x86\ISO c:\winpe_x86\winpe_x86.iso

Using the ISO burning tool of your choice burn the winpe_x86.iso that was created in item 4.

*** WARNING *** The next process will delete the current Windows partition, backup any data on your Windows partition first.

Boot the WAIK disc (you may need to F12 to select the optical drive to boot.
Once booted in the command box do the following

1. At the command prompt type diskpart
2. At the DISKPART> prompt type select disc 0
3. At the DISKPART> type list partition

You will probably have 3 partitions listed,
Partition 1 OEM 39MB
Partition 2 Primary 14GB
Partition 3 Primary 451GB

You need to be in the position that only the OEM and 14GB partition exists.
to delete partition 3 and re-create it do the following:-

1. At the DISKPART> prompt type select partition 3
2. At the DISKPART> prompt type delete
3. At the DISKPART> prompt type create partition primary
4. At the DISKPART> prompt type select partition 3
5. At the DISKPART> prompt type format FS=NTFS LABEL="OS" QUICK
6. At the DISKPART> prompt type exit

Next you need to locate where the Dell factory image is. It usually will appear on the C: or D: drive but you must check first. Assuming its on D: type the following:-
from the cdrom drive (usually E and not the unpacked WAIK (usually X type the following

1. e:
2. imagex /apply d:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:\

this will take some time but once complete you are nearly done
Restart the computer but boot again from the WAIK boot disc, one startup has completed you need to copy the bootmgr to the OS partition. The WAIK disc is usually E: so the command is

1. copy e:bootmgr c:\

Restart the computer from the hard disc and all should be good for you to create your own restore discs from the Dell datasafe local tool.

 

To anyone who may know. When they release the 5000 series graphic cards for the 1645 will it come with a new MOBO? I'm assuming so but is there a confirmation?

 

Does anybody know what I need to do to set laptop to charge battery to only 50-60% of capacity???

 

You can disable battery charging manually. Install QuickSet and start "C:\Program Files\Dell\QuickSet\battery.exe"
There you can disable battery charging.

But why do you want to stop at 50-60% ?

 

Because it helps extend battery life (battery doesn't deteriorate so fast). For example lenovo laptops have this function...

 

well, i think the meory effect is present to less extend in LI-ion battery.
anyways, on the left side in power option's there is Dell battery meter option. Dell battery meter has a option for extended battery life and disable charging.

The extended battery life is just a bit more re- enforced Power saver mode with no sidebar and audio theme disabled.

you could check wiki page here. I think sxps battery has self-discharge feature because i have seen battery drops to 98% after 2 days if left turned off.

 

can anybody get me on this soon please?? i have been posting this (already thrice now) since last 2 days..

 

Here you go.

 

lmfao my CCC doesn't look anything like that wonder why.

 

You need to choose a skin.

 

Has anyone ever had luck changing the shipping method on a laptop in pre-production? I just called about changing from 7-day to 2nd business day and was told that to do that I would have to cancel my order and place a new order with that option...

 

lol then again my CCC won't even open. It's such a pain in the . I'll have to use Revo then reinstall it.

 

Where do I change skins? I cannot find

Thanks

 

Under preferences.

 

My lappy's in production, no RGB so no delays. Any estimates on how long it stays in production before shipping?

 

I recieved my 2 weeks after ordering, I'd say a day or two in production.
that was with no RBG, SSD, or blu-ray though

 

I also have no RGB, SSD, and blue tooth? as well... So fingers crossed next friday because i oredered this past friday.

 

at the time blu-ray disk drive was an option but they now have major shortage, why its unavailable, probly why ppl had to wait so long too

 

Cool thanks, i just noticed on the website they are back on for ordering. But I didn't care for that option anyways.

 

Just got an XPS 1645 as a warranty replacement for my aging inspiron E1505.

See my sig.

I got the RGB screen, but it seems to flicker a bit a lower brightness. Oh well.

I am a bit concerned about gaming at such a high res. Does the 4650 have the umph to game decently?