Dell Studio 15 1536 AMD Review

So this is a review on my new (Scratch and Dent) Dell Studio 1536.
NOTE : THIS REVIEW WILL BE UPGRADED REGULARLY WITH PICTURES AND BENCHMARKS.

Specs:
AMD Turion 64 X2 RM-70 @ 2.0GHz
2x Hyinnx 2GB DDR2 800 SODIMM (total of 4GB)
Western Digital Caviar 320GB 5400 RPM SATA2
Optiarc Slotloading DVD Burner
ATI Radeon HD3200 (256 Dedicated and 1.2 shared)
Fingerprint Reader
Normal Keyboard (Buying Backlit ASAP)
Dell 1397 WiFi B/G (Dell WiFi cards are horrible)
Broadcom Bluetooth



Reason for buying:
I had an HP nc8230 and it became too slow for my standards.
The screen on my nc8230 was waaaaaay too dim for me.
I couldn't play some games without running them in windows.

How it was purchased:
Dell USA Oultet as a Scratch and Dent.

It has a collection of scratches on the lid in the upper left corner and sever scuffs on the lid. The only dent is on the button on the batter meter.

Performance :
To me this laptop seemed a bit sluggish out of the box but that was thanks to bloat ware. I installed a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit and things went much smoother and faster.

Screen :

This to me is the biggest dissapointment of the laptop. I had a WSXGA+ on my nc8230 and now I have a WXGA (1280x800) but I might/will upgrade it to a WXGA+ or WUXGA LED.

Keyboard, Touchpad and Fingerprint Reader:
The keys on the keyboard have good travel distance and sound a lot quieter than my Logitech Internet PRO keyboard from 4 years ago (woah long time).

The touch sensitive controlls work well except the DVD eject button which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, the same can be said for the Fn+F10 button which is supposed to serve the same purpose.

The touchpad is well textured, comes with Vertical and Horizontal scrolling and zoom (with the dell software). It is below the quality of the nc8230's and will sometimes skip when you are moving your finger around on it, it may be sensitivity but you do need to tap rather hard to get it to read a click.

The fingerprint reader works flawlessly and reads even dirty fingers (hehehe personal experience) and it does not require 200 tries to get it to read.

Gaming: Call of Duty 4 , TeamFortress 2 and CounterStrike Source.
CoD 4 -
Runs sorta well low 20 FPS average with 30-60 FPS bursts inside buildings. Firing your gun will lower FPS by 3-5. 1024x768 mostly off/low and textures set to auto.



TF2 -
Runs very well in the low 30 (30-35FPS) average and occasionally at 48-68 FPS when running around as scout. All settings are maxed except Vsync, AA (off) AF 2x (turing it off will gain you another 2 - 3 fps).



CS:S
Like TF2 runs very well in the the low 40's to high 50's (went as high as 69) on cs_office 24 player maxed with AA off and AF at 2x. Vsync was also off and like TF2 disabling the AF will gain you an extra frame of two.



Halo 2 Vista
It runs at a playable level (22-32FPS) on 1280x768 with medium details and no AA. Messing with the settings will not really get you a boost in frames unless you set the details to low and then it will look like crap.

Mirrors Edge
This game runs. That's it, it runs....at 1280x800 with everything on low/off and I get around 20-29 FPS. Playing it is kind of difficult because of the video lag I get. To me it is also kind of painful to play it on this laptop because I played it maxed out on my PC (see siggy) and it looked beautiful.





Heat:
This laptop managed to stay very cool while gaming on TF2 for 2 hours (plugged in). I dare say that the sides about 2 inches in towards the keyboard were cold and the palmrests were cool too. The touchpad was warm, but for a laptop being 120% and on a blanket, it is pretty dammed impressive. No more burn marks! Ha take that nc8230!

The exhaust seems to be well made and the intakes on the bottom actually work. When the unit is on, you can feel the air being sucked in.

A problem is that the fan is on 90% of the time at one of its 2 settings:

Loud
or
REAL ******* LOUD!!!!! (louder than an Xbox360)

Webcam :
Decent 2.0 Megapixel camera (according to dell it is a Creative brand).

The software makes it pretty cool with the allowing of "accecories to be added to the person in the picture in the correct area (Hats and wigs go on hair, moustaches go on mouth, glasses go on eyes). It seems to have a good facial tracking feature and auto zoom, going up close and far away will result in the camera adjusting to your location (zoom in or out).

Standard photo size (default) is 640x480 but it can go to 1600x1200 with extreeme lag when moving around.....

HDD:
The HDD in this unit is decent, 5400RPM and interestingly enough, the bios allows the option for Performance HDD (loud) or quiet (reduced performance for utmost silence).

Battery:
Under my custom performance plan it reads aas 2 hrs battery (100% screen, wifi on bt on, cpu speed step off (max perf) VPU max perf. 1hr 54 minutes.

Under the power saver plan that comes with Vista, it slaims 2 hous and 20 minutes with the screen at lowest setting and all things off minus wifi.

Power drains really fast though, within 10 minutes I lost 10% but that may be attributed to a a new battery that has been fully chargerd 2 times.

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Pictures coming soon!


I should also note that the wifi catcher does not seem to work.....
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BELOW WAS ADDED AND UPDATED JUNE 23 2009 @ 12:01 PST

So 4 weeks of ownership passed and my oppinions changed in various areas:

The performance of the laptop has fluctuated in terms of fast/slow with no change in apps running.
The WiFi has begun to be unable to connect at random periods, though other times it can.
The BlueTooth card could not be recognized and failed to start, today it fried for good.
The battery lost all charge and now takes upwards of 9 hours to charge.
The laptop occasionaly shuts down by its self with no warning while doing anything from gaming to email even when plugged in.
The processor gets to about 90-98 degress under 100% load.
Loud electrical squealing recently.
Sticky touch sensitve controlls, and sticky eject button - had to disable the DVD Drive in Device Manager to stop if from doing it every 4 seconds.
Card Reader doesn't work with and without drivers


I have already talked with Dell and asked for a refund, which they gladly denied me and requested me to send in my system for repair.....a long 2 hr battle landed me a BRAND NEW (not necessairly a built to order system - could be a previously ordered new = Fragilexx - I do agree with him) system and so as soon as I get it I will make a new review with my initial impressions and my thoughts about a week or two in after I get it.

Didnt update in a while so here goes:

After fighting with dell for some form of documentation that proves the system across the border is a replacement, we finally got it.

Out of the box, the laptop was failing in various areas and had chocolate stains and dirt all over the chasis - so much for a refurb, more like a joke.

The processor would idle anywhere between 50-100% and jump to 100% at 2 second intervals making the machine unusable. After talking to tech support and being asked to re format the system, it failed to find an OS, follwed by faliure to boot at all.

Got a refund, Got a G50VT-X5. End of story.

 

That's a good review.

That's actually very interesting...Another member and I have been having the exact same issue with the Intel-based 1535. Until now, it seemed that this only affected the 1535, not the 1536 or 1537. Looks like we've got more digging to do.

Also interesting; usually heat is the biggest complaint about AMD machines, particularly the Studio 1536. Several members here have exchanged their 1536's for the Intel-based 1535 or 1537. AMD mobile processors do tend to run hot compared to Intel, it's true. Good to hear you haven't been having heat issues, though.

 

I am glad someone wrote a review for this model. I am also glad you are enjoying it! Luckily I did not have the eject button problem with my 1536. My build was identical to yours. The media button/eject fiasco only started after I switched my mobo. As far as I know, you are the only member to report this issue with a Studio 1536. I was however, not impressed with the heat that the AMD processor put out, even with AS5. Considering that those processors are "too new" for AMD Overdrive and RMClock, undervolting isn't an option. I was not able to test the newest version of AMD Overdrive but I don't expect anything to change. My battery lasted over 3 hours, but, when my computer is on battery I am doing one of two things: Listening to music, or typing a paper. My fingerprint reader was finicky most of the time, I guess this is expected since I had the fingerprint reader software set to maximum security.

 

FastAccess facial recognition > fingerprint reader.

 

Is the Integrated Radeon 3200HD really that powerful? I know WEI scores are messed up but 4.3 for desktop performance and 4.0 for gaming performance is really high for an IGP. Just for reference, my Studio 1537 with the Mobile Radeon 3450HD is only getting 4.1 for desktop performance and 4.0 for gaming performance.

Also regarding actual game performance, I only play TF2, and I'm getting barely over 30 FPS (1280x800) with most settings at Medium/Low, no Vsync, no AA, no AF.

What's up with this ATI/AMD???

 

I'm guessing it is because the HD3450 is limited to 256MB of VRAM, whereas the HD3200 has that "1300MB Total available VRAM" thing going on.

 

Well, the 3450HD has 256MB dedicated video RAM + over 1200MB of shared/hyperMemory or whatever ATI calls that technology. The 3200HD, being integrated, should have no dedicated video RAM and rely only on hyperMemory. Either way, video RAM shouldn't be the deciding factor for graphics performance...I thought it was about the number of shaders and clockspeed and whatnot.

 

I thought that was only on the Hybrid crossfire configurations?

 

I don't know. Maybe. I just thought that the 3450 was better than the 3200.