1420 Is Here!! Pics Momentarily

Ok I found a beta version of ATITool that does work (0.27b2). It confirms 400 MHz GPU / 500 MHz RAM. Says the memory type is SDR though? Wuh oh...

It also says the Memory Bus is 0 bits wide.

 

I thought that's the one I tried but I'll try again just to be sure.

 

3.4a is what I had tried previously. When I select "Read BIOS..." it tells me "Cannot connect to service manager!"

 

Going to give this a shot (from the NiBiTor support forums):

 

Well that didn't work...

Ok I tried the F8 driver signing turn-off above and I also tried the bcdedit.exe command in the command prompt. Neither worked.

If anyone has any idea how to get NiBiTor working let me know...

 

Ok well...I had the bright idea to go and grab nTune from nVidia's website. Aside from allowing whole-system tuning on nForce based PCs it does GPU temperature, GPU speed, and graphics memory monitoring and overclocking...400 MHz GPU / 500 MHz RAM is confirmed through nTune...If any program is going to tell the right thing it's nVidia's own software.

 

Hey phobos, how do the built in speakers sound on the 1420? Sorry if you have covered that before. I don't remember anyone commenting on that yet.

 

I covered it in my review but not on the forum here.

Other than completely lacking bass, they sound pretty good for a set of laptop speakers in my opinion. Something that definitely helps is their location beneath the screen - it helps them project very well. The soundstage is of course quite limited given the distance they are apart being only about 11 inches but they definitely get plenty loud. My estimation was that they'd easily fill a medium size hotel room with sound. There's obviously no comparison to my desktop Klipsch 5.1 Ultras or even the Shure E2Cs I have but they are certainly adequate. The sound properties has options to basically apply a high pass filter to prevent damage to the speakers from low freq sound, which is not something I have seen before...I tried it out with the default setting and saw no difference, but that just means they weren't capable of producing sound at those frequencies anyway.

 

I just ran 3DMark06 again with the 162.13 drivers from LaptopVideo2Go. I also went ahead and killed everything I that seemed reasonable. I scored a 1444 (90 pts more than the first run).

I just restarted and am going this time to just run 3DMark06 without killing any processes or anything...This way we'll see how much of the performance increase was due to killing processes and how much was due to just upgrading the driver.

 

Ok and on the redo with just a fresh restart and not killing any processes I scored a 1419. Still 65 points better than the first run, so the new drivers do help out.

 

I joined this forum specifically for this thread. I ordered my 1420 on Jul1 and it's estimated for 08/02 Thanks for the tantilizing info Phobos.

 

Welcome aboard ViolentGreen. Glad I could be of some service!

 

Phobos fricken awsome details, very nice.

I am still waiting for mine.

I got a few questions sorry if it was asked already, did you get a remote with yours? and is there a spot for a security cable lock on there?

and congrats man!

 

Yeah, there is the standard slot for a security cable to the left of the power port on the left hand side. Totally forgot that was even there. Have to update my review now




No remote, didn't know about it. Not something I would probably use anyway, just something I'd lose. I'm planning on getting one of these when they become available: http://www.newtonperipherals.com/mogo_mouseX54pro.html

 

phobos512, I was wondering since the laptop is Vista and my desktop is XP will there be any problem using wireless? I have a Linksys WRT54G Ver2.
Thanks.

 

What do you want to do with wireless? Are you worried about file transfer between XP and Vista?

 

my 1420 is currently riding around somewhere in a DHL van... its been stuck at their depot all weekend and reading all this has made me even more excited .

I think you won't have any trouble with your wireless network if you only mean to connect both computers to that network goose.

 

I just surf the net and send emails from another room in the house.
No file transfer to worry about.

 

I know your anxious for that DHL van to stop in your driveway.

Just wasn't sure i could use the laptop in another part of the house using the router. Like i could my other Dell laptop, It was XP and the desktop XP, the router is connected to the desktop. This one being Vista, i didn't know.

 

The router has no dependence upon the desktop computer(s) it is connected to.

 

Thanks. Now i can relax.

 

hey phobos, i have the 1420 also and every time I minimize and maximize a window the vista aero effect is not as smooth as it should be. but if i just repeatedly minimize and maximize a window the effect will start to speed up and it becomes smooth. this happens all the time and i'm sure nothing is running in the background and my video drivers are up to date. are you getting the same problem?

 

It could be that if you're just chilling in Vista that Speedstepping is clocking down the processor, and when you start doing stuff (min/max which is GPU dependent) the system ramps up to speed.

 

i think that is the problem but i can't seem to find this "speedstepping" service in the service control panel. how do i go about disabling it.

 

You really shouldn't/can't. It's part of the mobile centrino platform to preserve battery life.

It's just as a guess as to what's causing it anyway.

 

i don't know much about computers, but i don't think you'd want your processor running at full capacity all the time anyway.

 

Why not? Desktop chips do it all the time, as did almost all laptop chips before the Pentium M.

It just costs more heat and power, something a desktop is not particularly concerned with, but are vital to laptop owners (well, most of them).

 

I dreamed about my 1420. It cradled me in its soft magnesium alloy arms I stroked its microsatin face with a love that others would never understand.

 

Yeah, I get this also. Also notice it when the items on the taskbar slide around.

It's about the only thing that isn't smooth as glass. Very curious to know what drives it.

 

thanks for answering...if you ever fix it PLEASE let me know!

 

thanks for this thread, phobos - it helped me decide to get one of my own

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2172640&postcount=561

 

You can disable speedstepping in the BIOS, I believe. At least on my old Latitude D600 w/ a Pentium M.

 

ahh thanks i did that but the problems still persists.

 

I think it relates to the graphics card. It only scores a 3.7 afterall. Maybe more RAM or a try at Readyboost will help. I'm planning on giving Readyboost a shot with a 2GB 133X SD card from Corsair if Newegg gets them back in stock soon...They are the fastest I have encountered in my searches online (they best even the Sandisk Extreme III SD cards).

You can disable speedstepping in Windows just be telling it in the power profile that the minimum processor speed is 100%.

 

Hey if I can help people open their wallets then I can sleep peacefully at night lol

 

hi guys

i just purchased my 1420 off the dell website less than 20 minutes ago and i am excited about this laptop

but off the top of my head i have a question about the core 2 duo processor
i hear you can limit its processing speed for those no-so-itensive processes to save the power...

is this true? and if so, how do you do it? id like to try it out when i recieve my notebook in the near future (around 8/3)

 

It's automatically throttled based on usage and battery life.

 

so does that mean

the lower battery life remaining the performance on high processing programs will perform at worse?

 

That means if you don't need it, and you're on battery, it'll use the lowest clock speed possible, automatically.

 

i'm not on battery and vista runs sluggish with this automatic throttle thing.

 

Actually...

You can set the limits yourself in the advanced options for the particular power scheme you are using in the power options control panel. One of the options lets you set percentage wise the maximum and minimum processor speed that is available for a particular scheme. So you essentially CAN set the processor speed to be whatever you want up to the speed the processor is rated for.

For example, the Battery Saver scheme by default lets the processor, when on battery, go from 5% to 50% of rated speed based on load.

Whereas the Maximum Performance scheme is set to 100% for max and min.

 

hey phobos, or anyone else for that matter, have you had any issues with your lappy as of yet? For instance, my 6 cell battery wiggles up and down a good amount.... there is no possible way that it will come loose or anything, it's just the "fit and finish" if you will, is not so great..... along with that, how is the wifi switch? when it's in the on position, it slides over fine, but if you go to the left (off), it feels janky, especially when going to turn it on...i have since installed a fresh copy of vista ultimate and now have been having problems with the sigmatel audio card..... my sound when listening to music will stutter, not always, but when it gets going it won't stop until a restart.... the battery indicator gives me the charging (blue led on) or not charging (no blue led) status only, don't know what happened to that amber light (lol).... bluetooth is gone.... i also randomly get samaphone timeouts for my wifi (i have the dell card, if i had to do it over again i would get the intel/pro...stupid stupid stupd....) i am not completely sure that this is all related to vista ultimate, but to rule it out, i am going to do a complete factory reset using dells discs....**sigh** i would love to hear if anyone has had anything even remotely close to this.... the loose battery thing is a little discomforting, but whatevs..

 

Haven't had any problems with the Wi-Fi switch but I've only used it once.

I occasionally get audio stutters in iTunes on my laptop but I also get them on my desktop under Vista Business. I know this relates to the new sound APIs in Vista, at least what I have experienced.

I don't know what amber light you are referring to? Do you mean the "My battery is extremely low please charge me" light?

Haven't had any Bluetooth problem but I've had it turned off since the 2nd boot for battery life (my phone doesn't sync with Vista over BT anyway, the drivers don't exist yet - Nokia E50). I have the Intel 4965 wireless card and haven't had any issues there.

I have noticed the battery thing - seems like they could have had better tolerances on the rails that the battery rides on but I'm sure there's a cost related to that.

 

to fix the sound stutter check "disable all enhancers" in audio settings. i had the same problem and it fixed it.

 

And here is the review I mentioned several times if you haven't run across it:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=143435

 

Sweet I will have to check that out when I get home. Thanks for the tip!

 

Great pics and info

 

Yeh, that's the light I am referring to. Like I said, mine no longer goes amber.. ever! Not a big deal, but I really like that really obvious type hey charge me soon I'm dying that the computer gives you if it needs it. Can't find a way to bring it back.

I found out the problem with the Bluetooth. If you ever uninstall and need to reinstall the system (at least in my case) will not recognize that there is a bluetooth device installed so when you go to install dell's driver it asks you to turn it on but there is no way to turn it on because the functions that it is requesting from you are not available so you can't finish the driver install. Through my own digging through the driver set, if you go into the extracted forlder there is a folder in there that is called win-32 or something and in there there are a couple of setup installers, the very last one is the one that will get it going, it will first install the bluetooth software and then go on about itself to install the neccessary drivers... nice...

As for the battery, I was IM'ing with a dell support yesterday to get these issues resolved, their solution did not work for me but I had to leave before I was able to move onto probably a different solution. Before I left I mentioned about the battery and didn't get an answer back in time. They called me on my phone as I left and the guy explained to me that "there is a latch on the bottom" of the laptop that the battery seats into... I got excited because I figured hey maybe I just missed something, so when I got back home I was expecting to find a "latch" of somekind that I like an idiot forgot to do (not remembering that the battery came installed).... no latch..... damn!

I am going to hit dell up again today. I will report back with my progress... Does anybody else have the "jiggly", "wobbly" whatever battery thing?

 

yea i have it on my 1420 as well. i think i will take the advice of a few people and use those felt sticky things to just make the battery a bit more snug and not so wobbly.

 

well, dell is sending me a replacement battery.... they say that it will resolve the fit of the battery (which i doubt) and the battery light issue (which again i doubt).... we will see.... oh yes, we will see