Made A Buying Decision..New Dell Studio 15

I got great advice here last week concerning my purchase of the Dell XPSM1530 during a QVC promotion. Original thread here...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=377866

I'm posting my final decision and would like any feedback positive or negative.
I cancelled my QVC order and yesterday purchased a new Studio 15 directly from Dell during a great sell they were having.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/laptops_great_deals?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
Saved $200.00!! Here's what I got....
Quantity Item Description

1 Studio 15 Notebook

1 Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6400 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)

1 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz

1 Back-lit Keyboard

1 15.6” High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLife™ and Camera

1 Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD

1 Size: 320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)

1 Plum Purple

1 Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit

1 Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9, English/French/Spanish

1 8X Slot Load Super Multi (DL DVD+/-R Drive + RAM support)

1 High Definition Audio 2.0

1 Intel® WiFi Link 5100 802.11agn Half Mini-Card

1 Microsoft Works

1 McAfee Security Center with VirusScan, Firewall, Spyware Removal, 15-Months

1 56 Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)

1 2Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis

1 Intel® Centrino® Processor

1 Dell Remote Access, free basic service



Save $199 off this Dell Studio 15! - $0.00

Free 2nd Business Day Shipping! - $0.00

Save $199 off this Dell Studio 15! - $199.00

Free 2nd Business Day Shipping! - $0.00
Order Subtotal: $884.00
Shipping and Handling Total: $29.00

Shipping Discount: -$29.00

Tax Total: $52.43
Total Amount: $936.43


I'm not a gamer nor will I be doing business apts. Just wanted a new PC to replace my aging HP desktop. Something portable and faster. What do you all think? Thanks

 

Unfortunately, I prersonally think that is a rip off.
There are $750 laptops on Newegg that have better specs and a dedicated GPU. tisc tisc dell

 

Maybe its just me, but that doesn't seem like that great of a deal. I can get the Ideapad that I'm coveting for $746, and it has almost exactly the same specs, save it has DDR3 memory. Although I guess you did tack on some extras there.

In fact, when I go to customize mine, I can forgo the extras you put in and get a P8600 and a 7200 rpm drive for $829 before tax.

 

If you two will click on the Dell link I provided you'll see the Studio 15 I ordered is selling for a mere $679.00 (with free shipping) as of today. Not too shabby for a 64 bit system. I chose to add a color change, better wi-fi connection, back-lit keyboard and a two year warranty instead of one which added to the base price.

 

That looks like an excellent machine. It ought to keep you happy.

 

Hello, I just ordered the same deal Studio 15 as you yesterday, in the "Black Chainlink", adding only the backlit keyboard, 36 months McAfee and the Bluetooth, it came out to $749 including free shipping. I'm pretty happy with that deal so it really doesn't matter to me what anyone else thinks about it! What I’m interested to know is what's the difference between the High Definition Audio 2.0 vs the High Definition Audio 2.2 that I thought was supposed to be on the new Studio 1555? The system design review & tech specs on the Dell website boast “and when designing the new Studio 15, Dell was listening to you — and in return your ears will be amazed by the all-new surround sound audio, including a subwoofer for intense listening” , and in the specs, it is referred to as “High Definition Audio 2.2”. BUT, when configuring the system to order, it only says 2.0. What’s up with this? Is the new sound system in the Studio 15 available or what??? Are we getting the old sound system or the new one with the sub???

 

If you're ordering a 1535 or 1537, there's no sub. If it's a 1555, then it has the sub.

 

It's definitely a 1555, that's what they're selling now. So then, what is the "Intel High Definition Audio 2.2" referred to in the tech specs that is not coming through in the configuration? It's only coming through as "High Definition Audio 2.0". Isn't that what was in the 1535 & 1537? Does 2.0 vs 2.2 only refer to the software and not the speakers & sub? I'm not so sure anyone really knows the answer to this, not even Dell! After an hour on the phone with them, nobody could give me a clear answer, and only apologized with a promise that they are looking into it...

 

Even my rough conversion from dollars to pounds says $679 is quite a good price.

Its a good laptop for the price but i would seriously consider going for the newer P8400 OR P8600 CPU and a 7,200k HDD if the option is available. The P grade processors give better battery life / faster FSB too i think and i have two studio 15's, 1 with 5,400k hdd and the other with the 7,200k HDD and in my observation the 7,200k drive is noticeably faster, looking boot time / windows loading time and some application loading times.

 

In that case, I'm sure it's just a software thing. The 1555 does not come without the subwoofer.

The P series' main advantage is the 25W total drawn power, as opposed to the T series' 35W, and X series' 45W. The FSB just depends on the particular processor; there are T and X series processors with 1066MHz FSB as well.

 

DellsBells, congrats on the purchase decision.

These forums have been a big help in researching a new laptop, so I thought I'd add something too. I'm also about to pull the trigger on a 1555, but with slightly upgraded specs:

Midnight Blue
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz/1066Mhz FSB/3MB cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
2Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis
15.6” Full High Definition (1080p) High Brightness LED Display with TrueLife™ and Camera
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz
Size: 320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
6X Slot Load Bluray (BD) Combo Drive (BD Read Only)
Intel® WiFi Link 5100 802.11agn Half Mini-Card
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Internal (2.1)
85 WHr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell)
High Definition Audio 2.2
Back-lit Keyboard

Total damage: $1,400.51

I'm looking at this as a portable semi-desktop replacement with media and casual gaming capabilities to last me a while.

 

Don't get the 512MB HD4570 option. Your HD4570 would crap out well before it ever needs that much vRAM.

 

Great choice on the P8600. I was dealing with a tighter budget but I'm happy with what I ended up with. This will replace my six year old HP desktop. Can't wait to experience the difference. Hope Vista isn't too hard for me.
Glad I stumbled on this site. I'm sure I'll be back.
Good people and very knowledgeable.

 

Thanks for the tip! That was actually one of the things I was looking into before I made the final order.

 

Vista is easy enough to get used to. Since I started using it, the thought of going back to XP hasn't crossed my mind.

 

Thanks, that's very encouraging to hear. Most threads I've been reading whenever Vista is mentioned it is usually with distain. Not that I'm any expert even with XP. lol Sometimes ignorance is bliss!

 

I am sorry, but i didn't understand this statement.. I am curious because i have ordered a 512MB 4570 for my 1555 too.

 

I can personally guarantee you 80% of people who bash Vista are people who have never used it, or are running hardware far too old and weak to take advantage of it.

I had my own reservations about Vista when I had my previous XP-based system. The next desktop I built had a Vista Home Premium license bundled with some other hardware I bought (I think it was either the motherboard or CPU), so I figured I'd give it a try since it was a fresh build anyway.

I fell in love pretty much instantly.

The ATi 4570 is not powerful enough to take advantage of 512MB of VRAM. Its memory bus width is only 64-bit, which is a bottleneck to using all 512MB anyway. I actually think it was rather silly of Dell to even offer it as an option.

If the price difference is more than $10 or 20, there's really no reason to get the 512MB version over the 256MB.

 

Do you have a source for this? I'm only curious. How would memory bus width control how much VRAM is utilized?

I mean, what if there are drivers or actual programs that can utilize all VRAM? And games?

 

^^ Even i am curious about this bottleneck thingy since i had opted for a 512MB GPU

 

I too got a 512 MB GPU in my 1555. So do u mean 2 say that there won't be any performance difference between 256 MB & 512 MB GPU?

 

There will be a slight difference, but it will be minimal.

 

According to http://img25.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gpuz.gif the GPU in Dell 1555 has memory bus bandwidth of 128 bit.

So which is the real deal? 64-bit or 128-bit?

 

Not entirely correct on the memory bus thing. See this thread, post #9: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=355777

"The width of the bus is completely unrelated to the address space. The width of the bus simply means that, for a given clockrate, you have more bandwidth available. Think of it like a highway. Clockspeed is how fast the cars are going. Bus width is the number of lanes. So a 256-bit bus has 256 lanes all transferring data simultaneously.

The address space issue is completely different. I'll try to explain it in layman's terms without introducing too much technical stuff. Computers use numbers to "address" or "index" memory. A program tells a CPU to read memory at location [x], and the CPU will go ahead and read whatever was in byte [x]. CPUs can only deal with specific sizes of numbers. A 32-bit CPU can only deal with 32-bit numbers at most, and a 64-bit CPU can only deal with 64-bit numbers at most (I'm vastly oversimplifying here, but bear with me). Now, the largest number you can fit into 32-bits is 2^32-1, or 4,294,967,295.

Since that's the largest number a 32-bit CPU can handle, a program can only ask it to access memory locations up to that number. If a piece of memory sits at location 5,000,000,000 (the 5 billionth byte), then the program has no way of telling the CPU how to get that memory since the CPU doesn't understand numbers that big. The biggest number a 32-bit CPU understands is 4,294,967,295.

So on a 32-bit system, you can only address a maximum of 4GB. But some of that address space is taken up by the video memory. Let's say a program wants to write to video memory rather than system memory. How does it tell that to the CPU? The way it works is this: for example let's say you have 512MB of video memory. The CPU says, "all numbers from 0 to 512 million will access the video memory. All numbers from 512 million to 4 billion will access the system memory." So if a program wants to write to video memory, it gives the CPU a number between 0 and 512 million. And the CPU will access video memory. If the program wants to access system memory, it gives the CPU a number between 512 million and 4 billion.

But what happens when the program wants to access the system memory between locations 0 and 512 million? It can't, because the CPU has said that those numbers refer to video memory now, rather than system memory. So those bytes in system memory between 0 and 512 million will be completely inaccessible. This is where the 3-3.5GB limit in 32-bit operating systems come from.

If you still aren't convinced (or just don't understand), I leave you with this factoid: all system memory (that is, DDR, DDR2 and DDR3 RAM) have a 64-bit wide bus. That had absolutely nothing to do with the address space limitations in 32-bit OS's."

The ATI HD4570 is limited by its specs - all of them. For example, how far can 80 shaders take you? It gets to the point where it doesn't matter if you have an unlimited amount of RAM, because the rest of the components will never be able to take advantage of it.

 

Thanks for the sources. I was getting worried because I ordered the 512MB VRAM option with the 1555.

 

(Sorry for the double post. Thought I was in another thread.)

 

So by that logic, would it be safe to assume that there won't be much difference between 512MB and 256MB on the 4570 performance-wise?

Can anyone say with certainty by what margin the 2 VRAM options differ from each other in terms of gaming and HD playback?

 

In most cases, the naked eye will probably not notice any difference, especially not with HD video playback. Not that many games need more than 256MB of graphics RAM either.

 

Dell India has updated the config of 1555. Now the 1555 is being offered with 512 MB GPU instead of the 256 MB and the RAM has also been increased to 4 GB.

 

Regarding the 512MB 4570...

For what its worth, the 4570 on notebookcheck.com scores 7568 on 3DMark05

I checked my Dell Studio 15 with the 512MB 4570 and Intel Duo Core T9550 2.66 Ghz on Windows Vista 64bit and I got about 8000 on the 3DMark05.

 

You can get a lenovo t500 from the outlet for the same price with better ati3650 graphics. That's a rip off.

 

Graphics cards are not the only things that make one laptop definitively better than another. While the T500 may have a superior graphics option, the Studio 15 may excel in other areas.

 

Hi check this out, a information about the HD 4570

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4570.13885.0.html

"AMD specifies a slow 64 Bit memory bus, but in recent Notebooks (like the Dell Studio 15) a 128 Bit version has surfaced."

"Memory Bus Width 64/128 Bit" in notebookcheck

 

Wow! Does this mean it can finally take advantage of the 512MB option? Anyone know if the Studio 1555 is really using a 128bit card?

 

Holy crap. If this is true, I won't need to wait for DX11 40nm GPUs (& Arrandale). We seriously need some confirmation from Dell or ATI.

Btw, what kind of fps does the 4570 get when running Gears of War on medium/high?