9600m GT coming soon?

When will the Dell m1530 have a 9600 card instead of the 8600? I heard the 9600 will slightly outperform, as well as have better power consumption (less heat and noise is a nice bonus for me)

Also, is the hard-drive noise really that bad? Hard drive noises can sometimes drive me nuts. I'm using a HP laptop, and I dread it when the HD is constantly blurting out "brrr brr brr brrrrrrrr" noises. I get so happy when the laptop isn't making that sound while surfing the interbutts and stuff.

 

The video card in the 1530 won't be updated. It looks like the m1630 will come out in november but I don't know which video card it'll use.

 

There is no indication a m1630 will come out. Dell already said they will phase out their XPS line and rumors already indicate it will be the Studio XPS. As for the card well although no one knows what it will be it currently looks like it might be an ATI card as the studio laptops already are ATI and it looks like dell might make the switch after nvidia wasn't so forthcoming about their defectiveness. Who knows though.

 

Are there much problems with the 8600 in the XPS?

 

It probably won't be called the 1630 - that would imply it had a 16" screen. More likely to be the m1540.

Could you give any sources backing those statements?

 

I'm pretty sure the replacement for the m1530 will in fact use a 16" screen just like HP's HDX 16 and other newer laptops. Obviously at this point it's all just speculation though.

 

I am also waiting for dell to refresh XPS15 and I am very scared that they will go with 16' full HD, as that is not for me... I want to play some older games so I am scared that full HD won't be supported...

 

Chances are the next XPS will be integrated with the Studio line and be the Studio XPS 16 w/ 16" 16:9 aspect ratio screen.

 

It's possible, but I do hope that's not the case. I find the usefulness of a 16" screen debatable, particularly for gaming machine. I can see how they might do it but it wouldn't seem sensible to me.

I do hope not.

 

im hoping for a 3850 or maybe a 3870 in the studio 17 refresh.

 

The XPS m1530 is awesome. A 9600 over an 8600 wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. 9700 or 9800, now your talking, but anything x600 is not going to do much. As always, if you can wait, wait. If you wait until 2010, they'll have mobile 280 GTX cards

 

Based on recent models introduced by Acer, Sony & HP, the trend is toward 16.4" 16:9 displays. The Studio XPS 16 is coming.

 

That seems to be the trend but I hope that just because there is 16" 16:9 model they don't forget that people still want 15.4 16:10 xps... with montevina

Edit: not that much montevina as better graphics such as 9650 GT or something..

 

Same here, that would be good

Of course, but a 280GTX will then be out-of-date and something new will come out.

That is a shame, there are those of us who still want a 15.4". I really don't see the point in 16.4" 16:9 displays, it ruins the portability and IMHO is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist for anything which isn't a media system.

 

I think the trend is to keep switching sizes. Used to have 3:4 ... not it's almost impossible to get a 3:4 laptop.

 

There's never been any 3:4 laptops, but there has been 4:3 ones, maybe 5:4 ones too.

 

All these size wars....

15.4" is about as large as a mobile PC can get without being too uncomfortable.

 

100% agree with that.
You can say that the 16" is only 1" larger, but next will be 17, 18,...
For me best should be 13-14" big laptop with dedicated graphics with power of 9600m GT and WXGA+ resolution. Don't need some ultra-high-super definition screen with resolution 19200x18000 or something like that.

 

Exactly, you can say "It's only an extra inch" but there's only 2" between my Laptop and notebook and that makes the difference between "portable" and "ultraportable" and it's 2" difference between "mainstream" and "desktop replacement".