I'm returning my 1720 - personally find it underperforming

I don't know and I need advice here, and I having a little stuck up attitude.

Call me over demanding but...

It's been less than 30 days since my purchase of my 1720. Maybe it's me, but I find the system "under performing" as in, gaming, 3ds Rendering and processing power even with T9300. I expected more from it, but unfortunately, it doesn't meet up to my needs. There is nothing wrong with system, many users tried it, they say it was really fast which I don't think it really is. I defrag its system every week including virus scans and disk clean ups...

Is it me with my psychological attitude? Or am I just expecting too much from a machine?

My reason is also the fact that it uses an 8600m GT DDR2 card, which I think it's just really low-end, though I expected it to be an GDDR3 or 8700M on a 17" laptop. I just find game performance isn't as good as I seen it.

With the new Montevina Penryns coming up, it's finally using a 1066Mhz FSB at last, bottlnecking is lesser and as soon as I find a laptop with that processor and a decent graphics card (say like 8800M or Quadro 3600M), I don't mind buying it. Though its crappy that they do not sell these kind of beasts in Singapore. Sucks to live here.

I need enlightenment... Should I keep or return? I need your point of view. Please don't hit me.

 

just return it if you're not happy with it

 

In my honest opinion, with the exception of the 8800, the 8 series is a really bad time to buy a laptop. Since you're within the 30 days, and if you're really not happy with it, than I'd say return it.
As you said, montevina is up next, so it might be a better time to buy then (updated graphics cards as well).
It sounds like you have thought this through, and really answered your own question.

 

If you are really dissatisfied by the 1720, none of us here are in any position to tell you to keep your system, the final decision is your's.

However I must point out that the 1720 is an Inspiron system and that you shouldn't expect much from it to begin with. For true performance on a 17" screen, the XPS m1730 would be your best bet but it might be beyond your budget.

 

did your machine freeze at times? No.
does it do what you commanded it to do? Yes.
it still works, doesn't it? Yes.
You friends didnt complain about it being slow? No.
gaming? If you say it isn't that good, then don't bother playing it on your 1720! It can't get simplier than that.

Judging from your SIG you got yourserlf a pretty darn powerful desktop machine to play with. So what are you complaining about?

However if you really want to replace your machine, by all means. You can buy a decent workstation machine like HP's 8710w since you do alot of 3ds Maxing. Just use modified drivers from LV2G.com for your 1600M Quadro and you should be able game better off than what you have.

In respect dude, chill out man. Technology changes every 6 months or a year or so. It's no point trying to keep up with the growing trend like this - You'll never be happy at all. If I were you, I'd say keep it to what you have and just be contented. You're lucky that you own a machine that some others don't, and have that kind of opportunity.

 

I thought all 8600GTs @ 256mb used DDR3? Is that not the case?

 

The XPS laptops do however the Inspiron's still use DDR2 Gfx cards.

 

As said, if you're not happy with it, return it.

You kinda sound as though you expect it to be close to performance as the machine in your sig. That's where you're fooling yourself. The tradeoff for portability is performance, pure and simple.

If you were "upgrading", like I did (Athlon 2600+, 512MB RAM, R9500SE, up to the laptop in my sig), then you'd probably notice a definite increase in power. But you're effectively downgrading, so any lessening of performance is going to be immediately noticable to you.

Mind you, what software do you have loaded? You're not using a bloated AV are you? How about perfomance settings on Vista? A bit of tweaking might help it a bit (Though I still hate how laggy it can be at times)

 

If you havent done a clean install and still on the factory bloatware, im not suprised that your dissapointed with the performance.

The bloatware seriously hinders the notebooks full potential

 

I don't think a clean install will help him much.

The fact is my friend.... you didn't buy a high end GAMING machine. When I play games I stay a year or more behind the curve. That way I am not dissapointed in my machines performance. You will spend a fortune keeping up with the jones only to be dissatisfied in 6 months or so time.

As I am sure you note I have a 1720 also and I am fine with the way it performs and plays the games I want to play.

Your expectations are higher than mine.

Your choices:

1. Fork out over 2K for a high end gaming machine that can keep up with desktop performance.

2. Buy a new desktop for less than half the money and game on that to your hearts consent and upgrade is way easier.

3. Keep the 1720 and be unhappy with your purchse.

Honestly, I do not understand why so many people buy laptops and expect them to be their high end gaming machine. Just how often to we not game at home? Just how often is it not more convienient to be in a closed room by ourselves with quiet and the game? I don't know about you guys but I don't game at work, or on a bus or a plane so much so.... The only reason I could see it being of real value is if you regularly take the laptop some where and play with others in a LAN environment. In that case you could save a ton and just buy extra mouse, KB and monitor and just travel with the case. Assuming that is that you play at the same place and can park your extra stuff there.

 

I think with your config, the laptop should be flying. I don't see what hard drive your running, but if it's a 5400 rpm drive Montevina won't do squat for you. As someone else said, unless you have an 8800m, don't expect much from the 8 series. I wouldn't even expect much from the 9 series just yet.

But it comes down to your happiness - if your not happy, don't waste your hard earned money keeping a system that doesn't do it for you.

 

I can tell you from personal experience... I bought a 7200 RPM drive and tried it out. The Hitachi - Travelstar 200GB Internal Hard Drive for Laptops to be precise. It specs off the charts.

Unfortunately the 1720 has GEN 1 architecture so 1.5 Gb/second rather than 3. Can't use that on the new drive. That just leaves the 7200 RPM performance gain.

I ran HD Tune and was seing about 15MB/s performance over the fujitsu that came with it. I then did some "Real world" tests with a stopwatch. Boot times was SLOWER by 2 seconds with the new drive. Hibernate resume was identical time. I then copied some files both internally and over the network. I only gained like 2 to 3 seconds performance. I took the drive back. It wasn't worth nearly $200 for 2 or 3 seconds. Especially when I didn't need it. I will only get a new drive if I want a bigger one or if the one in it craps out.

 

I've been noticing your name around here ever since the day I registered, mr. human.

Additionally, I read from somewhere else that your machine has a startup time of 22 seconds??! Now that is very decently fast startup time for a fully loaded Inspiron machine especially with vista and with dell's crappy bloatyware stuff installed. Here is your thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=243202&page=2

And I quote: "My 1720 has a startup time of just 22 secs from the push of the power button to a fully loaded GUI desktop and every program is ready to be launched without any form of delay or short system freeze at all - Yes, without the use of readyboost."

If that's the case mr. human, how does that really justify your laptop as "underperforming" if you say so in this thread? ANd I assume your inspiron is using a 5400rpm harddive, am I right?

i admit my alienware machine has a sloewr startup time than yours did you know that? 40 secs for me. My other Dell XPS 1530 has the same 40 sec startup time too.

 

Good Catch Notebooka.

Cold Start I am at 61 seconds. Hibernate resume is 30 seconds. Granted I don't have his processor but at boot time I don't see the processor as the bottleneck but rather the drive.

 

On Vista, 22 seconds to desktop isnt possible even with a SSD drive.

 

he might have modded his msconfig or startup items to the bare minimum.... Maybe at least 30 secs but who knows. But yes, possible. I've seen a copuple of folks who's vista has the same cold boot timing as his.

Whoa I just looooove the search feature in this forum, I'm such a nw member and i'm getting used to the way things work. There's more parchment lines to mr. human's past threads!! this thingi could probably pinpoint to the root of the problem of his "underperforming" 'puter as he put it.

"User from Singapore needing a multitasking lappy: Both Gaming and Workstation/Graphic Design Architecture work."
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=233921

scroll down and stare at question Number 5 and look at the number of things he does.... WTF He's torturing his machine!

 

I for one not thanking you to try reading at my past threads, thank you. **Snatches papers away from Notebooka**

Yes yes, I've made up my mind, to send it back to Dell and I thank you for all your help. I'm in no way comparing my machine against my desktop. No one in the right mind will do that. I'm just trying to find a decent machine that is quite available in the market and I'm just saying that this Inspiron machine doesn't do much for me. No muss no fuss. I'm a man of a few words people, I'm a small petty man in some way... Sigh*

So... Any more "Digging-up-my-past" questions notebooka?

 

Alright, now that's just rude; yes he was going through stuff, but this is an open forum so it technically isn't *your* stuff.