Got my new Inspiron 1520

Can you also rebench with a clean system restart. After installs and everything, it can significantly impact the scores. I am assuming you didn't restart as you didn't know what rivatuner was.

 

Actually, I DID know what Rivatuner was; I just hadn't actually used it before. And I changed my performance settings. And I restarted. And I turned off the sidebar. And I closed all open windows. And an attitude like that doesn't make me feel like rerunning benchmarks.

 

Sorry didn't mean to say it that way, you asked which tab to go to, so I assumed wrong.

I apologize. Thanks for what you have provided so far

 

Yeah, I haven't really posted much in this thread, but I would like to thank Stella for giving us all of this information. Good job!

I'll be receiving my 1520 on Wednesday/Thursday, I hope its what I expect. I'm a little bummed about the DDR2, but whatever.

 

You're welcome--I don't qualify as a power user per se, but I am an experienced user . I'm actually going to defrag and run everything again tomorrow, but now I'm going to bed!

 

hi Stella, good work for letting us know all the info, thanks!

aside the video card, how would you rate the screen? which resolution is your 1520?


-Vaitte

 

Also remember that vista is alot slower than XP for benchmarking. I'd suggest adding an additional 800 points to whatever that 3dmark score is. Who benches in vista anyway?

Also vista will speed up over time.
Try this little tweak too, you should see a huge increase in start time and general performance (something secret I learnt)

All people with vista should do this too:

start -> control panel -> indexing options ->
Now select each one (should be two of them) hit advanced and restore defaults.

Restart and you should see a dramatic improvement right away.

 

Vista will be getting better over time, which will then result in better performance. Just wait for SP2 to come out for Vista , hopefully in a couple of months...

About that indexing tweak: Doing that will improve overall performance, but might slow up your search times and stuff depending on what you uncheck. All I know is that I will be doing that when I get my laptop for sure , so I'm not dissing (sp?) it or anything.

 

Who really does search that often? I did this tweak on my ex gf's 1505 and it made her computer boot a full 35 seconds faster!!! I was shocked! I'd sacrifice longer search times everysooften in place for a 35second increase in boot speed at the very least!

 

I'm just saying... also its not just search times, but as I said, it all depends on what you uncheck. It really isn't that big of a deal, so w/e.

EVERYBODY, DO IT!!! There, lol.

 

That's more like it. I'm off to bed too. I want to wake up and have more than 2 posts to read. Also...bed earlier = my 1520 faster

GAHHH anybody wanna send me their's til I get mine? Can't believe I ordered on 6/30 and it's estimated 7/30 ship. I hope I get it next week.

 

well thanks to stella and oxy, for putting up with everyone here, as well as what info you did give us, I still want to see some pics of this. I am curious though, I wonder if for whatever reason the gpu has to be engaged in active 3D process to bring speed up. Meaning I wonder if the clocks would go up if you had a game running in the background that would engage the 3D section of the video. Just a thought. Either way, this laptop is a hell of a performance upgrade to the 1505 which is what I originally ordered in may, and due to Dell delaying things, I am SUPPOSED to get my 1520 on the 19th (18th ship date + free next business day shipping for dell's screw ups). I hope we can get better performance out of the cards then that though. But if not, oh well, I can't afford better so I will be happy with it in the long run.

 

I hope your right about how the card might need to be 'engaged'. But I feel the same exact way as you, I will be happy with it in the long run also.

 

This can't be right, I score a 3200 in 3dmark06 with nvidia stock clocks on my 8600m gs, which is 600/700. Could a stock clock 8600m gs be on par with an underclocked 8600m GT? I would still say no.... because this is a synthetic benchmark, the real world results have to show some kind of discrepancy, no matter what the clock speeds (within reasonable limits) IMO. There hasn't been enough experiments to test the differences in the 400 mhz/700 mhz clock speeds in regards to games. I wonder what the actual gaming difference would be.

 

I think everyone should stop freaking out until more people get their laptops and find ways to tweak and figure things out. And give it some time. We will have answers soon enough.

 

Suicide is now my only option.

 

Just accept it it's ddr2. Dell just went with the low cost option from Nvidia

 

Well, if you want a comparison... my desktop is a 3.3ghz core2duo (overclocked obviously). What does rivatuner tell me I have? 8.5Ghz cpu w/ 4GHz DDR2 memory. So, don't trust rivatuner.

 

we all would accept that its ddr2 if we were told before hand. but we were shown ddr2 at ddr3 speeds so we assumed ddr3.

Its like showing you a Boeing 747 and telling u it can go at mach 5 its safe to assume that its not a Boeing if it goes at Mach 3+.

we just feel lied to cus we thought that we were getting the better deal.

Anyways for some reason i trust dell more than rivia tuner. at least we know where we stand with dell.

now then my 2 cents on this. The memory probably isnt underclocked. something is showing wrong. its probably rivia tuner which i dont trust. we know that its either dd2 @ 400mhz or DDr3@ 700mhz i highly doupt that dell would go through all the trouble just to underclock some memory.
If it is DDR3 then DO NOT OVERCLOCK IT WITH RIVIA TUNER. rivia tuner is broken on laptops but if it misses by 300mhz O.O overclocking it another 300 mhz could easyly fry your lap(top). rivia tuner is supposed to miss by a few mhz not hundreds. a margin of 15-30 i would assume.

 

People have used Ntune to verify the memory clock speeds as well, and they showed 400mhz. The only thing that rivatuner may be reporting wrong is that the GPU is ddr3 when it is not.

 

Give us new photos of the laptop! Please.

 

But your 8600M GS is clocked at 600/700 (as in your sig?).

 

Yeah please give us pics. I dont mind the 8600gt being lower clocked.


I have the 1280 x 800 screen anyway.

Please tell me also if you press the dell media direct button with the power off does it still work ?

 

Well, it was clocked at 500/700, but I "OC'ed" to the stock clock w/ no problems. This is the same as nvidia's listed stock.

 

im hopeing to overclock my notebook to at least 500/550.

hopefully that is going to get me at least somewhat decent preformance in something like crysis.

 

I'm going to assume both were tested at the same resolution (3D Mark 06 uses a 1280x1024 default resolution, but that can be affected by your display's max resolution).

If so, that only points out how big a performance impact the lower memory clock has. Your 600MHz core clock delivers less shader power than the GT's 475MHz clock (16 stream processors versus 32) yet you get a higher score, which can only be attributed to the memory clock difference, yours being a good 75% higher.

That is assuming both tests were run at the same resolution.

 

Vista will speed up over time???

Add 800 to the Vista benchmark?

Talk about wishful thinking.

 

Mine was run at 1280x800... and this is my max resolution. But judging by the 3dmark scores from the compal/sager/acer... Which were taken at 1280x800, it's only a difference of 200 points ish. So I don't get it... what does it mean exactly? Will there be a big difference in games or will it be similar? I'm hoping that theres a noticeable difference, cause then theres no point shelling out the bigger bucks for a card that performs similar to it's little brother.

 

ok, so its DDR2, can we overclock it at least another 150 mhz?

ive never overclocked GPUs (only CPUs).

 

Actually if they are like me and never looked at the compare thing then its not false advertising.

Also its not false advertising because this is at the bottom of the video card selection page

"Configuration, pricing, and monthly payment information above is estimated and presented for your convenience only. All pricing, shipping & handling and monthly payment information is subject to change without notice. Final order specifications and amounts, including tax and shipping & handling, will be communicated following receipt of your online order. Dell will not be responsible for typographical or other errors or omissions regarding prices or other information. Products displayed are available to US customers who take delivery in the 50 United States. All sales are subject to Dell's Term and Conditions of Sale.
"

 

Then it's false advertisement to people who actually read before they buy.

 

Unlike you the speed of the ram does not matter to me. The card is still faster then the 8400 that they offer.

Also dont get nasty. If you followed your own advice then you should have read the fine print at the bottom of the video card page and the bottom of the compare page.

Both state they are not responsible for typographical errors and reserve the right to cancel or not cancle your order.

So dont go saying about false advertising because they have that avenue covered.

 

I was wondering who produces the harddrives for Inspiron 1520?

I'm thinkning especially about the 7200 rpm harddrives.

And we are still waiting for the new pictures from lucky forumusers who has allerady got their hands on the 1520!

 

majortom, the thing is the bandwidth specified implies that we have 700 mhz gddr3 memory for the 8600gt. I dont know whether dell can be held responsible for this but it sure is misleading and very disappointing

 

Ummm, chill out guys...both of you, please.

 

well the most u can do is call them and say (calmly without yelling dont be angry) that there was a misleading error on thier site. Dont DEMAND anything, they might offer u something like a discount of your next purchace. You wont get a new laptop, nor will u get the funds back.

Personaly i bought this laptop for 3d modeling/animation so im kinda sad but not realy. all it means is that textures will load slower.

 

I think I'm going to try and do that (calmly ). But could someone first explain to me, what exactly does the 22.4 have in comparison to the RAM? I would like to touch up on this subject before I even try to call in so I know what I'm talking about.

I know that like the card we have has 400 mhz vRAM and what we were supposed to get was 700 mhz vRAM... I might have just figured it out by my self... you take the GPU ram speed multiply it by 2 (why?) and then multiply that by 1.6 (why?)... soo... 700mhz x 2 x 1.6 = 22.4 GB/s and 400mhz x 2 x 1.6 = 12.8 GB/s (that number looks really familiar from this thread so I think I'm right). So if I'm right, could someone just tell me why do we multiply the vRAM speed by 2 and 1.6?

 

07/10/2007 08:06:58AM Agent (KIM SINGSIT): "As I understand that you are upset with the advertisement on inspiring 1520. Can you brief me on the issue?"
07/10/2007 08:07:18AM Agent (KIM SINGSIT): "I'm sorry for the typo"
07/10/2007 08:07:39AM Chris: "It's about the nVidia geforce 8600m gt"
07/10/2007 08:07:52AM Chris: "In the help me section, it states that it has 22.4GB/s of memory bandwidth"
07/10/2007 08:08:02AM Chris: "this would correlate with memory clock speeds of 1400MHz on the 8600m GT"
07/10/2007 08:08:25AM Chris: "BUT, a bunch of people who have gotten their inspiron 1520 have recently discovered"
07/10/2007 08:08:32AM Chris: "that the memory is only clocked at 800MHz"
07/10/2007 08:08:36AM Chris: "(400 x 2)"
07/10/2007 08:08:46AM Chris: "Which means only 12.8GB/s of bandwidth"
07/10/2007 08:08:50AM Chris: "that is false advertisement."
07/10/2007 08:09:05AM Chris: "You're selling laptops, proming one thing, but delivering another."

Thar you go.

 

what was the rest of the conversation. what did the tech respond with.

 

07/10/2007 08:09:42AM Agent (KIM SINGSIT): "I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused."
07/10/2007 08:09:57AM Agent (KIM SINGSIT): "I will try my best to help you."
07/10/2007 08:10:09AM Agent (KIM SINGSIT): "While I pull up the information, may I have the contact name on the account?"
07/10/2007 08:10:25AM Chris: "Chris ******* or Donna *******"
07/10/2007 08:11:01AM Agent (KIM SINGSIT): "Thank you and your email address is ***************. Correct?"
07/10/2007 08:11:19AM Chris: "Yes"
07/10/2007 08:13:37AM Agent (KIM SINGSIT): "I apologize that I will not be able to assist you with this request as I am from customer care and not technically train to resolve the issue. Kindly contact the technical support team at 1 800 2843355"
07/10/2007 08:14:04AM Agent (KIM SINGSIT): "They will gladly assist you in resolving the issue."
07/10/2007 08:14:16AM Chris: "Thank you"

BTW, you end questions with a question mark, not a period.

 

But why multiply it by 2?

And have you tried calling that number yet?

 

DDR - Double Data Rate.

 

Ahhhhh, don't know why I didn't think about that... Now, once you multiply it by 2, so for ours... 400 mhz x 2 = 800 mhz, then how does that get to 12.8?

 

How does the higher latency of the gddr3 memory over the lower latency of the ddr2 memory factor into this?

 

You multiply it then by the memory bus width in bytes. So 800 x 16 = 12800 or 12.8GB/s.

 

Ok, thats what I thought, thanks guys.

 

Also, something that would have effected scores is that the computer has so much damn bloatware on it. I'm going to put a clean new Vista on mine, and search the web for some Vista tweaks (like the indexing one) and hopefully get my Vista to run a lot faster. THEN I'll run the benchmarks, and probably see a point difference in the benchmarks , maybe...

 

careful to make sure tat you have everything you need backed up. you dont want to deleat media direct only to find that u dont have a cd for it.

 

Yes you will see a difference.

If you right away instaled XP your 3dmark2006 score would be ~800 points higher.

If have read anything about XP, the indexing at first boot takes up a lot of CPU resources because it will start getting everything in it's right place with superfetch. If you watch your idle CPU usage now and in 3 weeks you will see a difference (probably 6-8% idle now, and 2-3% in a couple weeks)

It's the same on desktops. I have a X2 3600+ @ 2.9GHz and its plenty fast enough and thats the CPU usage I had in the beginning...and checking right now its doing..*pause all motion* 2% idle and peaks at 3%.

 

Yeah, I was gonna do that. But thanks for the reminder, because that would have been no good.