Help with the 6400/E1505

Hi, I've been browsing a lot of forums and sites of late before I take the plunge and buy a laptop. For value the 6400, looks likely to be the notebook I'll get. Whilst looking at all this information I have a few questions maybe you out there can answer for me.

1) I've heard a lot of talk about the x1400 graphics card and updating its driver. Why do you update the driver? and how do you update the driver?

2) I read the notebook comes with a lot of crap on it, instead of doing a reinstall of XP can you just remove all the programs you don't want or will it work better if you just do a complete overhaul?

3)Will the x1400 be able to handle games like Hitman: Blood Money, Godfather and other similar games?

4) Is the notebook really that annoying/bulky to carry around the place or is it pretty portable?

5) The 9 cell battery is it worth investing in?

That's pretty much all the questions I can think of at the moment, thanks in advance for anyone who can give me some help

 

I pretty much bought the same notebook, and have the same questions. I cant wait for mine to come tho . I guess the one thing I can answer is the battery. A lot of people say the 9-cell is a lot better. Mine came with the free upgrade

 

hth

Mark

 

I'll answer what I can.

Okay, you probably want the E1505, not the 6400. They are basically the same machine but you can get $750 or 30% off of the E1505 with the coupons on this site.

ATI puts out new drivers for their cards about once a month (mostly to fix problems with the newer games). A lot of times if a game is not running properly, updating the driver will fix it - I've seen it happen lots of times over the years.

OTOH, I just updated my desktop machine from the 5.7 Catalyst's to the 6.5 Catalysts (they don't support my card - 9200 on 6.6 anymore) and I think the 2D (spreadsheets, letters) quality decreased (but not enough that I want to revert). Personally I wouldn't update the drivers unless I was having problems, but others install the latest driver as soon as it is available.

On a desktop, you basically remove the old driver and install the new one. Laptops can be tricky, but it's basically the same idea. See http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html for detailed info.

Yes and Yes. Seriously, you can (and I probably would) just uninstall the stuff you don't want. However, most programs leave behind files, .dll's, registry entries, etc. so you will get better performance with a complete overhaul. You can probably fix a lot of the issues by running RegSupreme, CrapCleaner (Issues Scan), SpyBot S&D, AdAware, and NTRegOPT (part of ERuNT) after you are done uninstalling stuff, though. (Oh, and DiskKeeper Lite Freeware to defrag the HD). (And AVG Free Anti-Virus if you want to be extra safe).

Dunno.

The better question is how portable do you need it to be? Will it be going class to class or just from the desk to the couch, etc? It is a 15.4 inch laptop with avg weight. Remember that you will also be toting around the power adapter, possibly cordless mouse, possibly spare battery, etc. etc.

Again, it's longer battery life (might help with the X1400) but more weight to carry around. More a guestion of how long you need to use the laptop with it unplugged.

 

You would probably save yourself time and trouble by doing a format. Even if all the junkware is unisntalled, problems will remain.

The X1400 can handle all games, however newer ones at medium settings. If you meet the requirements, you can play. Very simple.

 

Is there anyway to overclock the X1400?
I know 7900gs can be?

 

Yes, but I am not sure I would recommend it.

It is covered in the link I posted earlier at http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_12.html

However - 1st) you are adding heat to the system. In a desktop, not too much of a problem, but on a notebook . . .

2nd) I would expect results to be marginal at best. I.E. you might pick up a F/sec or two in a game, or be able to enable one higher setting, but don't expect to be able to play at 1280x1024 instead of 800x600 or to blow away an X1600 machine.

 

How much performance gain could I expect from OC comparing to the increase in heat? Is it worth it?
Other than the heat , are there any other side effects?

 

>How much performance gain could I expect from OC comparing to the >increase in heat?

Not much, IMHO.

>Is it worth it?

Wouldn't be to me, you could try it.

>Other than the heat , are there any other side effects?

Well, no but the heat has side effects on it's own. The graphics may freeze from oveheating - also that heat will go through the enclosure, so your CPU, RAM, HDD, are all also running hotter.

Over time, heat will reduce component life, although whether the components will fail before you would replace the laptop anyway is questionable.

It's similar to o/c'ing a desktop GPU or even a CPU for that matter. Your system will be less stable, but it's not like you are going to fry the graphics chip from testing it out. Feel free to experiment and see what happens.

Best case is the stock cooling is okay (or you get the fans to run more frequently) and you get much improved performance.

Likely case is you can't overclock much before heat is a factor, so you have a mild o/c and slightly better performance.

Worse case is it locks up as soon as you try it and you are no worse off than when you started - with a stock system.

 

I was just wondering if i reboot the entire e1505 laptop with the XP MCE CD will i have to put all the drivers for the X1400 ect. back on after the fresh XP is on there? How hard will it be and were can i get them? You could PM me if you like thanks in advance

 

Ati.com find the drivers download

 

But are there other drivers to download?

 

See SG's guide that I posted earlier. Those may not be the latest drivers, but they should be the ones you are using now, so they should work.

If you can't follow the guide then you don't need to be formatting the drive, get someone to walk you through it.

 

You cannot download the drivers from ATI's site, they will not install on a laptop. The Catalyst Mobility drivers also cannot be downloaded from ATI's site because the Dell will not pass the 'authentication'. Go to www.driverheaven.net and download the ATI Catalyst Mobility drivers from them.

 

Can anyone tell me or link me to a comparison of the 256MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory™ vs. the 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™Go 7300 TurboCache?

Also, is it worth 50 bucks to add bluetooth? Although my phone does have it, i have no use for the technology. Will i need the technology in the future? I could just spend ~50 on a USB dongle in the future.

What about ram? Is it cheaper to stick with the dual 512s and then upgrade later from newegg?

What is the max speed ram i can put in it? pc2-4200?

 

1.) i don't have a link
2.) if you don't use BT now, you probably won't in the future. Like you said, you can get a usb adapter for about 10 bucks at newegg
3.) yes it is cheaper. At newegg, you can get 1 stick of 1gb for about 80 bucks right now

 

The Go7300 is inferior to the X1400, opt for the latter for gaming. More information can be found in the Mobile Graphics Card Chart:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=39568

Get the RAM at Newegg, that is a good idea. I recommend Corsair or Crucial memory. The Dell E1505 takes DDR2-667 (PC5400) SO-DIMMs (200-pin).

 

are you positive about the ram's speed? On dell's website they offer DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz.

I selected the 1.83ghz cpu which has a 667mhz FSB, but they offer 533mhz ram....odd

 

It can take DDR2-667. Dell probably offers DDR2-533 because it is a budget system.

 

what about services? anyone recommend the warranty? or any other (what i think) b/s services dell offers?

 

it would be best to create a new thread about the warranties, so we don't hijack this orginial thread.

 

Thanks for all your help and advice, it's been really good. Another thing I read is that the x1400 is 256 hypermemory, which is different to a normal 256mb graphics card. Will it be able to play the games that need a 256mb graphics card in its specification or will it be hard pressed?

 

The "HyperMemory" is not dedicated memory, it is borrowed from the main system memory. The X1400 that comes in the E1505 is in fact 128MB dedicated + 128MB shared. It will not take all the shared memory to begin with, only as it needs it.
The X1400 is not powerful enough to 'use' 256MB of memory, so 128MB is fine. The extra 128MB will be borrowed if it needs more.
There aren't any games that need 256MB of memory, so I wouldn't worry about that. A lot of people still have 64-128MB video cards, so it would be silly for game designers to come out with a game that req. 256MB of memory - they would alienate themselves from the lesser-specification crowd.

 

Thread's been hijacked about three times already, horses have all left the barn, but point taken.

 

Yeah I know, but most of those issues seem to be related the E1505/6400 so i figured as long rog00 didn't mind, I wasn't going to force the issue.

Warranties are a completely seperate issue that deals with all of the inspirons.

 

Thanks for all your help its been great. I'm only a few days away from choosing my laptop and am still to make up my mind although reading the following from an Australia website about the 6400/e1505 is putting some doubts into my mind about whether to get it or not.

"Less flattering is the notebook's gaming performance; the unit struggled to run Serious Sam 2 smoothly -- a relatively dated (although still graphically intensive) game. Suffice it to say, the 6400 will crawl when running the latest games even under low detail settings."

I'm not going to use my laptop for hardcore gaming or anything but being able to play some newish games at medium settings would be great. Do people believe the 6400/e1505 gaming performance is crap? Any replies would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

You didn't provide a link to the review, but did the review unit have the ATI X1400 or the Intel 950 GPU? That would tell you a lot.

 

Sorry, the link is http://www.cnet.com.au/laptops/laptops/0,39035649,40060982,00.htm and the review unit had the x1400

 

I'm not into gaming enough to comment, but . . . the X1400 is a mid to low-level graphics card. It is a generation or so ahead of the GE 200M or the Intel 950, but also a generation behind the X1600, X1800, Go 7900GTX, etc.

I take "latest games" from that review to mean "games that require the X1600 or better.

You have to consider what you are using it for, but you probably aren't going to find anthor 15-inch with a better graphics card for less than $1300 . . . So you either pay the $1300 for whichever Asus is is with the X1600 or you use the Dell - btw, with most computers you can play loads of more intensive games if you can settle for reduced quality settings.

 

I purchased the E1505 last month (June 06) and I am quite happy with it's performance. The 7300go only has 64mb of onboard memory, the rest (196mb) is hypermemory (shared with laptop main memory). The X1300 also has 64mb onboard and the X1400 has 128mb onboard memory. I opted with the X1400 and the performance is fine for the games that I have run on it. Anarchy Online, Age of Empires 3, Doom 3, Everquest 1 and 2, and World of Warcraft all run very well with modest settings.

As far as the memory is conserned, I did get the 1.8GHz processor, and it does come with 533MHz DDR2 memory even though the system can support 667MHz modules. I just got it with the base 512mb and bought memory from Newegg.com which is way cheaper than Dell's memory prices (~$25 for 667MHz 512mb DDR2 SO at newegg).

The thing got ~1800 with 3dmark05 and ~700 with 3dmark06. Nothing staggering but it's respectable (it performed a bit better than my friend's desktop with a 9800 pro). I've read that the 7300go gets around 1500 with 3dmark05.

As for the warranty I only got the standard 1 yr mail-in. Most of the parts are user replaceable (CPU, hard drive, memory) leaving only the motherboard and display to really have to worry about. I figure if they last a year then they're probably going to last a good deal while longer.

The 9-cell battery is definitely worth the upgrade. On my system (9 cell, 1.8GHz, 7200rpm HD, x1400), I get around 6 hours using only basic 2d stuff (wi-fi, internet browsing, office). 3d games will kick the video processor into high gear and drain the battery in about 2 1/2-3 hours. I have no idea what the standard battery will last but I'm sure it's a good deal less than the 9 cell.

I also opted for the bluetooth add-on but I generally have it disabled in the bios since I rarely use bluetooth devices. From what I have used it works well. If you're just an occasional bluetooth user (like me) I would probably just use a dongle rather than have something else active to drain the battery.

The e1505 is a great system and I am very happy with it's performance. You really can't go wrong with this system. The only thing I would strongly discourage against is going with the GMA 950. The performance on this chipset is terrible with 3d and unless you plan on running NO 3d games at all, I would upgrade to at least the x1300.

 

I had my doubts about the 6400 too rog00. I was worried about my gaming performance seeing as I was trading my 6600GT desktop to my parents for this laptop. I can say though, I am very surprised with the performance. I can play with Oblivion @ 1280x800 and it runs very smoothly, and Source games work a treat. For such a cheap laptop, the performance is unbeatable.

However, recently a good deal showed up in Australia. (They are so few and far between!) And it's been discussed on Whirlpool.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=561143

If you can have the budget stretch to that, then I'd say go for it! The X1600 is the most powerful GPU currently fitted in a 15.4" notebook, and you would have no troubles playing any games.

 

That is very odd, because i can connect to the last two posts. I just recently got the laptop too, with 1.83 and 512mb ram which i plan on upgrading to 2gb very soon. I also got the 9 cell battery which i havent really used much because the laptop is plugged in most the time. As for the last post, I also replaced my previous computer (which had 6600gt) on it and it seems to run better. I played counter strike source on it with great results, and have been recently playing Hitman: Blood money on low settings. Overall, I love the laptop and am looking forward to the memory upgrade!

 

Read my answers in red.