XPS 15 for photoshop?

I am leaning towards this laptop (XPS 15) since I have heard great things about the RGB full HD screen. I am planning to get 8gb RAM and about 750gb hard-drive since it is within my budget. I use photoshop and Lightroom all the time and edit a bunch of 15mp RAW images. No gaming at all. Is the i7 2670qm a good processor?

I have seen one with the 2630QM with 525 1gb graphics OR
one with 2670QM with 540 2gb graphics for a $49 difference in total price. All other specs on the machines are the same. I've read different things on if the graphics make a difference or not in photoshop(I use CS5 if that makes any difference). So I would just like some feedback since I have only started researching this month.

Which would be better for tons of photoshop usage? How much faster would the 2670qm be vs the 2630qm?

Thanks so much for any help!! :]

 

First, I want to start off to say that I am not an expert so basically I will just be summarizing things I've read, which may or may not be entirely correct.

Now, with that out of the way, here is what I know:
cs5 and maybe cs4 benefit from CUDA. Simply put, an nvidia graphics card will probably show some performance benefits vs no graphics card.

for gt525 vs gt540, hardware wise the only difference is that the gt540 is clocked higher and has 2gb vram vs 1gb. Some people say that you can easily overclock the gt525 to gt540 speeds and save yourself the money. While this is true, don't forget that you can also overclock the gt540....

What I think about this is that identical cards are binned differently depending on how well they pass testing.... for example on a macro level the cards are the same, but on a micro level every single card is slightly different which will have a real effect on how much er.. stress it can take. I am not an expert on this so my terminology might be wrong. Imagine the situation like this: nvidia has a bunch of unnamed cards (identical on a macro level) with varying levels of performance/quality. So, for any given speed, some cards might reach temperatures as high as 90 or as low as 40. Now, instead of calling all the cards by the same name and making the process of buying them like a lottery, what nvidia has done is take all cards that reach temperatures of, for example, 40-60 and sell them at a higher price point. Then, the cards that reach 60-80 (which is due to some unavoidable manufacturing defects on a molecular level most likely) they can sell at a cheaper price point, and cards that reach 80+ they can sell at an even cheaper price. This makes sense both for nvidia (they don't have to throw away "defective" cards) and the consumer (the range of performance of each card is less of a random factor).

Anyway I'm starting to ramble, but my point is that the gt540, while being identical to the gt525 on paper, will almost undoubtedly be higher quality and, given the same speeds, will use less power / run cooler / be more stable. So waht I wanted to say is, get it if you feel that it is worth it. Personally, I would spend the $50 (it was $100 when i upgraded.....) and as a bonus you get a 130w power adaptor vs 90w.

2670 is a good processor.. if you get both 2670 + gt540 for $50 i would recommend that you take it. I'm not sure of the exact difference between 2630qm and 2670qm but on paper it looks like the 2670qm is just clocked a bit faster. If it helps, the first of the second-gen xps laptops came with a choice of (quad cores) 2630, 2720 and 2820 (maybe 2920?) while the refresh (the ones you can buy now?) come with a choice of maybe 2670, 2760 and 2860 (maybe 2960 lol).

8gb ram should be ok.. you can go 16gb (2x8gb) but it is a pretty big price jump so you have to decide if it's worth it for yourself (installing your own ram of course, 2x8gb from the factory would cost a lot more $$ if they even have that option)

As for the fhd screen, I've heard often that the normal xps 15 is complete garbage even when compared to other normal screens in budget laptops, so I would get it for sure. The extra screen space is good for working with large pictures too, and the wide gamut is nice for mroe accurate representation of colours. A note about the wide gamut: I've read that it is actually a drawback if you plan on doing web graphics.. not because it is 'bad' in any way but more because a majority of the people that will see your graphics online will probably be using low-gamut screens which might cause your pictuers to look different from what you had intended.. which is bad.

If you are thinking about upgrading the processor, I would recommend that you spend the money on a ssd and optical bay hard drive adaptor first. The 2630/2670 is powerful enough already and you will see more gains from an ssd than from a 2720/2760 processor.

Hope this helps! Remember, don't just take my word for it... try to use this as a starting point for your own research. And if you have to pick between something you really want (obviously if you've done some research already), and something someone on the internet tells you is better, always go for what you want. Sure, your choice might not be better but you will never know anyway. On the other hand, if you go with what someone else said, you will constantly be thinking about whether the supposed benefits were worth not getting what you wanted.

 

About RGBLED:
I have the same config, and must say that it have good screen, more contrast than xps16, not such good as my NEC 2190sxi, that i use for colour correction (TN via IPS) but it the best TN after 17 MACBOOK PRO.
After buying and several time screen works, you shuld calibrate them, dont use profile that was in nearest theme. Calibrate your oun display at you oun light in the room. Regard Andrew

 

Okay thanks for your help. Makes sense about the graphics cards and that's good to know about the screen. I am not sure what an optical bay is so I will have to research that a little more and see what I want to do from there. Thanks! I also didn't know the xps 15 could take more than 8gb ram, but just read on that a little more in these forums, so that is good to know!

 

If it helps, i've had my xps 15 for about a month now and use it primarily for lightroom/photoshop - working with 25mb raw files. My details are: i7 2760qm, 8gb ram, GT540, 750gb, rgbled. This setup is perfect for me and it flies. I honestly don't know how big a difference you'd see between the 2670 and the 2630, but for only $50, i'd without a doubt get the 2670 and gt540.

 

Optical bay is where the disk drive is.. That's goin to be your CD/DVD/Blueray drives.

For $50 jump all over the 2670/540m upgrade. Might spend some time watching the outlet. They're refurbish or scratch/dent, but you can sometimes fine new/returned ones. Either way, you can add whatever warranty you want so you're good to go. Tack on an outlet coupon and you could save some serious money, or get a higher spec'd machine for the the same price.

My advice would be to save some money, then buy a SSD with it. They're a great improvement to any machine.

I bought an xps15 with a 2820, 540m, 1080p, Blueray, 8gb ram and 3 year advanced warranty with a 20% off coupon from the outlet. I had a problem with it out of the box that tech support wasnt sure of how to fix so they offered a replacement refurb machine. they couldn't find an "equal or better" replacement in the outlet (I watched the outlet like a hawk for ~a month to find a maxed out xps15 lol). They were going to build me a new machine but they were back ordered on some parts so I ended up just opting for a refund..

 

I've ordered the machine in my sig for the exact same purpose as I wanted a powerful, portable photo editing solution with a high quality screen.
I canvassed some opinion before hand and the consensus is that it performs the roll perfectly. The only caveat I was shown was that 1080p on a 15" screen means that a lot of the tool buttons and sliders in photoshop will be very small.

I also think the cpu and video upgrade for $50 is a no brainer. The improvement may be marginal, but then so is the price to upgrade and you'll never regret having the faster machine in the long run.

 

Always buy the best hardware you can afford within your budget , every little helps and it will be litle bit more future proof.

 

Okay thanks everybody. I just took the plunge and went ahead and got the XPS L502x 2670qm 8GB 750GB with the 1080p screen blu ray player and the 2gb 540 graphics card. I can always add other things later if need be. I found a coupon for $100 off so I'm happy about it! Glad to hear that someone else has the same specs and it is working well!