Dell e1505 - 3dmark 2005 Results

I received my dell e1505 today... and while its going back for exchange due to a bad pixel row on the display Im taking the opportunity to run some benchmarks.

Machine Configuration
Dell e1505 - 2ghz, 100gb 5400rpm drive, 1gb ram, x1400 Video, 1680x1050 display.

x1400 Display
256mb Hypermemory (nowhere does it list physical vs system memory)
Core Clock: 432mhz
Memory Clock: 396mhz

3dmark 2005

1129 @ 1680x1050
1775 @ 1024x768
2095 @ 800x600
2317 @ 640x480

I can squeeze 1810 out at 1024x768 by doing the following.
- Disabling the icon tray bloatware Dell installs
- Setting the Catalyst Driver to 3d performance instead of quality
- Setting the Catalyst driver to not stretch video to fill the display.

I was hoping for a bit more, but still doesnt look like anything else in the price range compares.

Ive seen reference to overclocking or performance drivers but dont have a clue where to get them. if anyone wants to point the way ill give them a try and see if it helps.

 

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Please try it out - curious what you can get out of it! Don't overclock if you don't feel comfortable, although it should generally be safe (?)

EDIT: seems like the Omega drivers by themselves don't offer greater capabilities than with the Catalyst ones, but since they allow overclocking, who knows... maybe someone will come along and explain all of this to us

 

Im downloading the latest catalyst drivers now... ill try them first, then check out the omega... im really hoping to get 2k out of this thing.

 

At least it's better than integrated - my coworker got 449 on his 1.66 ghz E1505.

I don't like the X1400.

I'd say Intel and Nvidia are better when it comes to laptops, but I'm actually an AMD / ATI dektop fan!

 

Well your one of the lucky ones that got an nVidia 7800 before they pulled them. I mighta put up with the size of the e1705 if i could get that card... but without it the e1505 fit my needs better. I just wish I could squeeze a bit more out of the x1400.

 

sweeet, i was having doubts about my 6000 but i pull the same at 1680X1050 ~1200 with a 2ghz, 1 gb, 80gb 5400rpm hd, etc

 

Pardon my ignorance, but how does one interpret the 3dmark score? What would that mean in, say, frames per second on Doom3 or Half-Life?

 

my friends Pentium M 2ghz with anVidia 6600 gets 970 on 3dmark 2006
could you bench that?
also, the benefit of using omegas is they're always up to date!
most of the laptop drivers you get from websites don't get updated

 

3dmark provides a numeric rating that can be used in general to compare the power of different GPUs. For example, the best ive got out of the e1505 is 1805 @1024x768... while the lenovo got 2096. Their similar machines, with the same GPU.

GPUs in notebooks can have alot of variance from implementation to implementation... so you need to test individual machines to see how they perform... then only use the number as a guide. For example ive read that nVidia custom writes their drivers to perform well on 3dmark... schewing their real world performance. So its a guide nothing more.

On the plus side... I played with my e1505 for a few hours last night... and was quite impressed with the performance. Heres a few real world examples.

3d rendering - DAZ Studio
I loaded a scene with numberous models & props, complex lighting, etc. and was able to zip around in it in real time without skipping a beat. This scene would barely load and take hours to move around in due to all the delay and frame skip in my old 600m P-m 1.4ghz, Radeon 9000.

I also did some renders... normally on my 600m this would lock up the system until it was done... on the e1505 i can work on other things... and i monitored processor activity... neither CPU went more than 50% utilization. This is the performance I upgraded for, and the GPU + Core Duo delivers!

DOOM 3
Everyone talks abut how doom 3 is hard on hardware, takes alot of resources and is picky about what it runs well on. So, I downloaded the Doom 3 demo and checked it out.

It defaulted to medium settings at 640x480 resolution and played well. I did notice a couple times I had minor artifacting... but i decided to push it a bit and see what happened.

I upped it to 1280x1024 resolution at medium settings, and it continued to run fine. So i upped it to high quality and gave it another run... beautiful graphics, and maybe slightly slower... but still quite playable.

 

Could you tell us how it performs on a half life 2 demo? I m very quite interested. Also any other game test would be of great interest to me.

 

I would love to find out about Battlefield 2 and Fear

ftp://ftp.sierra.com/pub/sierra/fear/demo/fear_spdemo_en.exe

http://download.nvidia.com/downloads/nZone/demos/BF2Demo.zip

 

Ill see about downloading the half life 2 demo tonight... (didnt bring it with me to work today). In general though half life 2 should run better than Doom 3 on the same machine.

The game id really like to see on it is Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but I havent found a demo for that available at all. :-(

Btw... dells working overtime on getting me my replacement... talked to them yesterday and its already in boxing.

 

I know this isn't what you want but it is a Elder Scrolls:Oblivion game

http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/downloads_games.htm

 

Man I am so excited!! I just downloaded all the dell drivers I needed and have backed up all the progams on this computer that I will need on my E1505. I read all I needed to know about reinstalling Windows XP and keeping Media Direct. I am so prepared for my new DELL!!! All I need is the computer now and I will be the one providing all the information you could dream of for this computer .

 

I think we are in the same boat except I am still a like confused about Media Direct. But i can't wait either. [insert giggle like a little girl]

 

I was able to play HL2 comfortably on High settings with the x1400. I played the entire game through and I was pleasantly surprised at how it ran. It would stick every once in a while and load times were a little longer than I was used to but I think that this is due to the 5400 rpm drive. I would recommend getting the 7200 rpm drive if you can.

 

Thank you for replying cavicster, I was a bit concerned about that game because I heard it was very demanding. I know the x1400 is not supposed to be some incredible gaming card, but I still want to be able to play current and future games at medium settings at least. And from what I have read, x1400 is able to do that, so I am very pleased.

 

I just finished downloading and playing around with the Battlefield 2 demo... plays great. The game auto configured rather conservatively at 800x600 with most settings at low. Played fine at this setting.

I cranked it up a notch to 1280x1050, set all the quality settings to medium, 2x anti-aliasing, dynamic shadows, etc.

And guess what... it played BETTER! everything was smooth... I died alot though, wandering around looking at the pretty has its price.

Im noticing a trend or two... resolution doesnt seem to have alot to do with performance... and in general games ive tried work at significantly higher settings than the defaults.

 

Thank you so very much for doing that for me.

you just made me a very happy man

 

You made my day... thanks verymuch...
please post other result in the forum if you did more test. I would like to know how it perform in other games... try.. oblivion... for example..

 

Believe me, I would love to try oblivion... its a big one for me too... but I havent been able to find a demo... and I dont own the game as of yet... money went to machine Im downloading Fear now.

 

Just got finished running Fear through its paces... jacked it up to 1400x12xx and it ran fine.... not as pretty as battlefield 2 though. In any case so far every game that ive ran on this thing is easily playable.

 

i downloaded and installed the omega drivers and got a score of 1836 from 3dmark05

 

Did you all format then re-install the XP as suggested before bechmarking...
I wonder if that would do any good to the performance...

Also I wonder if someone already tried to oc the X1400 to see how much it gains...?
Please share...

sorry for asking too much.. I ordered E1505 myself but it wont arrived until the 17th...
I just want to know the true potential of my laptop....

thanks again everyone

 

Thank you so much Alchemist you have laied my fears to rest

 

The posted 3dmark scores are from a stock system. I have since uninstalled Mcaffey and alot of the dell bloatware and got my 3dmark up to 1808. Im not going to the trouble of wiping it as this machine is going back to Dell when my replacement arrives (bad column of pixels). Its possible you might be able to squeeze a bit more out of the unit by reinstalling the OS, and possibly using Fat32 instead of NTFS for your file system.

No problem at all running it through its paces... I figured I would do it when I got mine if someone else hadnt done it yet.

 

No problem... they were my fears too... I dont get a new machine too often and was really worried that the x1400 wasnt up to the job... but honestly im impressed with what ive seen... im sure the x1600 or x1800 are better cards, but the x1400 is a completely reasonable solution for todays games.

I just wish I could find an oblivion demo... thats the one I wanna see.

 

Once again, you have truly outdone yourself Alchemist. Thank you for setting us E1505 users at rest and taking the time of settling our frazzled nerves.
Thanks

 

Thanks Alchemist... I agree with AnimCreed..
You've done great job on setling the unrest...
Now i can wait my E1505 in peace...

 

alchemist, i'd like to reiterate what others have said. thanks for the benchmarking. i (as well as others) have been researching the capabilities of this gpu, but have not encountered any info on how it performs in the e1505.
no more worries. can't wait til it gets here.

on a side note, what drivers did you use for these tests? have you tried the omega drivers?

 

i did the stress test in counter strike source with 1024 x 768 with everything on medium settings and no AA and got an average of 50 fps. I also played enemy territory with 1024 X 768 and everything maxed out, no AA and got around 80 fps. Im happy with the x1400 since those are the two games i play the most and got good results.

 

Today I just realized that the e1505 is the right laptop for me and although graphics card processing power & gaming isn't the biggest point for me, you still want it. I heard the news of dell letting a good graphics card go, and its good to see that the x1400 is a good unit. Thanks for the reassuance.

 

1.83 GHz
Freshly installed XP MCE
1 GB (2x512 MB) RAM
100 GB 5400 drive

Using the drivers from Dell/Support as of now.

3DMark05 Score: 1851

Not bad for an x1400...but I'm going to mess around with Omega drivers and overclocking in the next month or so. Hoping to get it over 2000. Not that I play games much...it's just something to do. :/

 

2.0GHZ
Have my MCE disks but never reinstalled just cleaned up a bit.
1 GB(2x512MB) RAM
100GB 5400RPM

Using the updated driver from dell...

Still have not tried the Omega drivers, but it doesn't seem like they are doing much better to me.

1870 3D marks

 

Does the amount of memory (512MB vs. 1GB) affect the 3dmark05 scores? Or does it only stress test the GPU or CPU?

 

i'd say it would have some impact on it

1.83ghz core duo
1GB RAM
x1400 256mb

my scores
stock: 1893 (was 1153 but that seemed to be an error)
OC 540/430: 2105

 

Nice OC. What were the stock settings at?

 

1.83ghz core duo
1GB RAM
x1400 256mb

Is what I ordered. Wont be here till sometime soon.. mine as soon as I made a change to my order to go MCE2005 and all.. seems I picked the right options, already in knit phase.

Ill post results once I have it all going.

I do wanna know WHICH Omega driver people are using to make this better.. keep hearing about it, heard you needed to do something else too and all.. that or if we should stay with Catalysts drivers.

Also side question.. ordered 2 laptops since other person here isnt as 3d aholic as I am. Got her the X1300 which only diff is the 128 MB ram vs 256. Think this will be much of a difference in benchmarking or not too much?

Still wish people would post omega results and guides for it from the box. =p

 

From what I've seen, the Omega Driver increased the performance by about 100 pts over the Dell driver.

But, the Omega Driver has no official support from either ATI or Dell, I'm more interested in running my computer steadily than getting some extra performance out of it.

So my question is. For those who have tried the Omega Driver, is is stable at all?

 

Better question is.. is it WORTH it at all.. if its 100 points.. thats not worth going for and getting lack of support from game companies on their games when you send a dxdiag over.

 

stock clocks for me were 432/396

 

Has no one reported on the overclocking abilities of the Omega drivers with the X1400? I installed them once, on my E1505, and couldn't find any method to perform the OC'ing. The "tools" app would error when I tried to open it.

I would be interested if someone was able to tweak the clocks on the X1400 (and E1505).

 

Hey are you using the free 3dmark.. or ahem, the advanced for testing?
Once I get mine, Im more then willing to test things out, including the soundblaster that claims is the same as the XPS model.

 

Almost all of the 3dMark scores are done off the free version. Because everyone will have the same settings. 1024x768, etc. That way people have a way to compare the scores.

I am sure Futuremark would love if everyone who used it bought it.

 

Trying a version of "Pro"

Kinda curious if it gives a better show. Once I get my laptop, what do you all want me to test as? I mean if someone tells me which omega driver to go with that 100% works.. and what OC settings, Ill give it a shot.

 

Well...from what I have seen, the Omega Drivers still have quirks...so the differences could be 3dMark scores or Framerates in games. But they do vary a bit.

OC settings are an invidual case thing. If I OC to 450/550 you might only be able to get to 435/540 safely. So don't use other people clocks. You will have to do it yourself by upping it by a couple Mhz each time and testing to make sure it is okay. It is a kind of long process,.

 

2187 w/overclocking and stock Dell Drivers.


http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1981691

 

How did you overclock using stock Dell drivers?

 

Hi:
I'm new to this sort of thing......So please bear with me.
I am trying to decide between two laptop computers. Whichever laptop computer that I choose would be my only back-up to my desktop computer as well as occasionally coming with me on the road. Following are the two units that I am trying to choose between.
(1) Dell c840 (refurbished at approx. $600.00 USD) with the following configuration:
CPU: 2.4 Ghz
R.A.M.: 1 Ghz
Hard Drive: 60 Gig
O.S.: Windows XP Professional
(2) Dell e1505 (new) as running windows XP Professional. I am uncertain about the exact configuration. However, I was thinking about spending $800.00 USD.
After considering the two laptop computers on a comparison basis....Which laptop computer would you select. If you choose the Dell e1505...Please specify which configuration you would select as well as approximate pricing (after discounts/sale pricing/coupon codes) and exactly how you reached your conclusion.
Thank you.

 

Powerstrip 3.63 Build 540 works fine for me. The newest version (3.65) not.