My 1520: Photos, review, some benchmarks

Hi all. I've had my 1520 for a few days now so I thought I'd share my findings, thoughts, photos and some of the gaming benchmarks and impressions i've had since receiving this great little laptop. This won't by any means be a complete review, nor does it explore every feature of the laptop. My initial findings are based on my experiences with Dual booting the 1520 with XP and what sort of game performance I could get out of it.

Lets start with the specs:
I'm sure you all know the base specs of the 1520 by now so I'll just tell you which upgrades I decided on.

- Intel core 2 duo t7500 2.2ghz 800MHZ FSB
- Upgrade to Ultrasharp WSXGA+ (1680x1050)
- Upgraded to 7200rpm 160GB performance HD
- Upgraded to 9-cell 85Whr Battery
- Jet black coloured case with Matte finish


INITIAL THOUGHTS
The 1520 is a beautiful looking machine. I chose the black colour simply because its sleek and looks mean Everything out of the box ran perfectly and I was in the Vista environment within minutes of opening the box with game dvd's at the ready. I may sound bias from here on in but I'm not one of those "Vista bashers" for the sake of being a Vista basher. I genuinely just believe XP is the better OS for gamers right now. That could obviously change as time progresses and MS releases service packs, but for the time being my first impulse was to get XP dual booting on my machine.

GAMING
Before I went researching about dual booting with Vista, I installed a few games to get a kind of gauge of how well the laptop performs out of the box. I installed Battlefield2, Stalker and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.
Each game played fine on default settings and I noticed hardly any frame loss. However, pushing the envelope a little and putting up the screen res and antialiasing really made the games chug.

DUAL BOOT
Well this was a somewhat frustrating little exercise. Vista has awesome partitioning software built in, but the limit on primary partitions in windows is of course 4. Dell already has 4 primary's out of the box so it made installing XP a little difficult. I went down the road of deleting the 2gig dell media direct partition as I would never use this feature anyway. So, I was back down to 3 partitions. I was able to merge the 2 gig partition (now empty space) back into the c: drive recovering the space. Then I split the c: drive in half, so I could use half for vista and half for a new partition for XP.

XP installed fine and after a little boot loader trickery i was able to get the boot screen to offer me the choice of which OS I wanted to use. At the time of writing this, the Dell support website does NOT have drivers for the video or sound card listed under the 1520. I grabbed the latest nvidia drivers and modded INF file from http://www/laptopvideo2go.com and also did a basic search at dell for some generic Inspiron Sigmatel STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio drivers. Each of which work fine on the 1520.

BENCHMARKS
So now that I had XP and Vista installed I was keen to see the game performace between each. First up was 3dmark06.

Under Windows XP I got the following score->


Under VISTA i got this score->


As you can see, XP performs a little better than Vista does.

GRAW2 (fraps benchmarking)


At the default settings, XP wins again, although both OS's get the same score when the resolution and AA is turned up which shows the 8600 can't handle too much in this dept.

Elder Scrolls Oblivion
1024x768 Under Windows XP
No AA (HDR Bloom enabled instead)
All distant rendering on
AVG of 46fps

Same settings except 1680x1050 ->
AVG of 28fps

Oblivion looks great at 1680x1050 and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the game still played really smoothly on this res I haven't done Vista benchmarks with Oblivion. I knew XP was pretty much going to always beat it.

Battlefield 2 under windows XP.
16 bots, Sharqi Peninsula

1024x768 All settings on High, No AA = AVG of 69fps
1024x768 All settings on High, 8x AA = AVG of 44fps
1280x960 All settings on high, 8x AA - AVG of 34fps

I was very pleased to find Bf2 runs very well on the 1520 Heres a screeny of the last settings above:
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/bf2_screeny.jpg

So as you can probably surmise, the 1520 while not an "elite" gaming laptop rig, still holds its own well and generally plays most current games on high setting if you're willing to keep the screen resolution around the middle range and also keep the AA low or off.

I haven't benchmarked Stalker under XP yet, but on vista it was a little stuttery on the games default video settings. I'm expecting it to be fine on XP though.

As you know I opted for the 7200 160gig HD. I did a quick performance test in XP and in Vista using HDtune.

The XP results->


The Vista results->


Vista is slightly better with its access time and average transfer rate. I'm hoping Dell release more XP drivers soon, but the over-all feel of XP is that it is much faster booting and operating than Vista is.

Well as I promised here's a bunch of pics of my black 1520. Excuse the low-light in my study, but i used a tripod to compensate.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/BackAngleView.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/BackLidOpen.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/BottomView.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/FrontLidOpen.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/FrontRightAngle.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/FrontView.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/FrontViewLidOpen.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/Keyboard.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/LeftHandSide.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/OpenFrontRight.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/OverheadRightLights.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/OverheadTopClosed.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/PowerButton.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/RightHandSide2.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/RightHandSide.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/TopViewLid1.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/TouchPad.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/Webcam.jpg

I hope this review has been helpful in some way to you guys I'm quite happy with the 1520 and it performs admirably as a medium range gaming laptop.

 

Thanks for this, although i feel that the high resolution screen is pushing the 8600 a bit too much in games. Then again if you're doing video/image editing you'll benefit from the sharper screen.

Also i think you made a mistake on the hd tune comment, you said xp has faster average transfer rates when vista has 42 MB/s and XP has 39 MB/s.

 

nice pics, dude... loved the screen though... just awesome !!!

 

Right you are! Oops. Hopefully there will be some good sata drivers for XP out soon from Dell.

 

Thanks for the pictures, and also nice to see some real gaming becnhies with lots of info about the settings. Thanks, and do enjoy it

 

are you going to OC?


can you also post some temp stats?

thx

 

Sweet, nice review. +rep for you!

Did you find any XP drivers in the Vostro section?

 

Nice review... What's battery life like? Thanks...

 

Nice! thanks for those pictures

 

very nice. have you tried the webcam yet?

 

Incredibly BEAUTIFUL machine!

REPPED!!!

 

Very nice review and pics! I really like the 1520. Is there an LED beside the webcam to show when its turned on?

 

Can you list the drivers you used for XP? When I looked for them I couldnt find most of the drivers (namely the video and audio drivers).

Mine will be here soon and I dont think Im gonna stick with Vista if I can switch to XP without losing driver support.

 

I'm really liking the 1520 and 1720 as well. I might wait a bit to see if they release an 8700m or 8800m sometime soon as an upgrade before I purchase. And hopefully add HDMI.

Other than that, it's an excellent laptop for sure.

Going to add that, regarding the 8600m, it's an excellent mid-range card as you stated. I think a lot of people expect it to beat all mobile cards, and hey, the 8700m reported does benchmark higher than all others, but the 8600m is a solid card given it's branding. I really look forward to the 8800m release.

 

Definitely repped. Great review. I was about to make a thread DEMANDING pics!

I have some questions to add the the bunch you have got already.

1. Did you have to slipstream SATA drivers to get XP installer to recognize your SATA hard drive? If so, which one of the Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers?

2. Since I plan to do the same thing, and since you have achieved very successful results, could you please add a short description of which drivers (specifically) you had to get for XP? I'm sure many others would like them too. Here I'll start you off with a list that I've got going already:

[?] Intel Matrix Storage Manager SATA AHCI
Intel GM965 Chipset
Broadcom 440x 10/100 Ethernet
Intel 3945ABG Wireless (or others, depending on your choice)
Sigmatel STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio
nVidia 8600M GT GPU

 

You may want to check your HDD stuff. Here's my results in XP:

 

i know im not the poster but yes it does have an LED light next to the lens to show when recording is taking place.

Dell for some odd reason have not made vista or xp drivers for download yet for video and some other devices, when they do especially for video then i would not downgrade to xp, stay with xp

 

That list I made:
[?] Intel Matrix Storage Manager SATA AHCI
Intel GM965 Chipset
Broadcom 440x 10/100 Ethernet
Intel 3945ABG Wireless (or others, depending on your choice)
Sigmatel STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio
nVidia 8600M GT GPU
...is pretty complete. I just need to know if the first one with the ? is neccessary. If it *IS*, most likely it's the Intel ICH8EM, the same as the HP dv6500t, which I am sure of. I've been looking for an answer to that question but nobody seems to have tried XP. OP is our hope!

 

kysterama, i noticed u have a WSXGA+ (1680x1050) screen.

was their notice any decrease in screen quality when u lowered resolution to play your games like graw?

 

Bump for great justice!

(If this isn't allowed on this forum plz delete this post.)

 

Great pics - nice work.

 

Wow, a lot of questions!

Screen
I found that if i played games at abnormal resolutions to my native resolution, then yes it was a little fuzzy, but playing at 1024x768 or 1680x1050 remedied this situation. If the game is too demanding on my system, then I just use 1024x768 which doesn't seem to degrade the quality of the picture much at all. Oblivion for example was running at 1680x1050 and it looked amazing!

Webcam
The webcam is excellent. It comes with some pretty cool software that allows you to draw on your own face in real time and through motion capture algorithms, whatever your draw on your face (a moustache for example, heh) it stays where you drew it, even when moving your head around. That was pretty fun. It also has a bunch of masks and video effects which are also a lot of fun. I haven't hooked up a video chat to anyone yet, but was very impressed with the quality of the camera. With any webcam, the higher the resolution the slower the update time on-screen and its pretty obvious that the higher resolutions are using digital zoom which of course doesn't mean more pixels, just the same size lower res capture simply blown up.

Also with webcams, you need plenty of light to get a less grainy picture. Here's some examples...ones in my study with the window open and lights on, the rest are at the front of my house in varying resolutions at mid-day. These are untouched jpg's, just simpy uploaded straight from the capture folder on my HD. As you can see the webcam can capture pics at 320x240, 640x480, 1280x1024, 1600x1200 and 3200x2400...although judging by the quality, I feel 640x480 is the "actual" resolution of the camera and anything above it is digital zoom. Also to answer the above question, yes there is a blue led that turns on, right next to the camera lens.

Don't get me wrong, the pictures are not amazing, but as a web chatting device, its perfectly ample for this use and the quality in this regard is quite good.

1280x1024 indoors ->
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/1280x1024.jpg

320x240 outdoors ->
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/320x240.jpg

640x480 outdoors ->
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/640x480.jpg

1280x1024 outdoors ->
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/1280x1024_a.jpg

1600x1200 outdoors ->
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/1600x1200.jpg

3200x2400 outdoors ->
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/3200x2400.jpg

Battery
I haven't had a chance to test battery life yet I'm sorry. I did get the 9-cell battery so I'm assuming that it will last a long time, but benchmarking a laptop battery in real-terms is a lenthy process so perhaps I'll get around to that soon. Perhaps under gaming conditions and a 2nd test under normal application conditions.

XP drivers
I'll say straight off the bat that I still have one yellow exclamation mark in my device manager, but nothing that impares my normal gaming or application usage. It's the internal modem audio driver which I'm never going to use anyway.

DUAL BOOT
There's plenty of info on how to actually install XP AFTER Vista is already on your system so I won't go into the semantics there. Here's the link I followed ->
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about88231.html

Now for the issues I ran into. I've already explained about trying to make a 5th primary partition for XP and that Vista wouldn't create the volume because of the 4x primary partition limit. There may be ways around this (I've read people using the Acronis partition software) but I'm not an expert so use caution and I can't be held responsible for anything that happens on your computer!
I was going to format the whole system and then install XP, but at the last minute thought, well if I'm going to do that, I may as well just delete the 2gig dell media direct partition and still keep vista on there for now which would save me installing 2 operating systems. Plus I wanted to keep Vista on there in case my XP experiments failed so I still had a usable OS to try again.

Okay, first Issue with installing XP was the sata drivers. I didn't have the drivers downloaded at the time so I went into the bios and switched my sata device from AHCI mode to ATA mode. XP installed fine after this switch. Vista also works fine in this mode btw. I ran into no other issues during the XP install process.

Using Nlite to create an XP install that includes the AHCI sata drivers
Why did I disable AHCI mode and not just install the dell sata drivers during install? Here's the problem with Microsoft and their infinite wisdom. If you try to hit f6 to install a 3rd party scsi or sata driver when first installing xp, it expects you to have an A: drive to have the drivers on. Hello??! Who the hell even has an a: drive anymore? I put the drivers on a cd, but the ONLY option in setup was a: drive. Duh!
Plan B: Making a slipstream XP ISO with the Dell sata drivers already in it. What a pain, but thank the "forward thinkers" at MS for not having the foresight to allow people to install 3rd party drivers from a bloody cd rom!
So, here's the info needed on creating the slipstreamed XP install using a handy utility called nlite.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

Okay, I'll just remind you that both XP and Vista run fine in normal ATA mode in the bios, so if you can't be bothered with all the slipsteam stuff, then you'll still have 2 perfectly working OS's using normal XP sata drivers which install automatically during XP setup. But, if you're like me and the whole exercise is about speed and fine tuning your system, then go through the nlite process to keep your system in AHCI mode.

The 2nd issue was getting the bootloader to work properly on boot. My initial problem was that XP wouldn't load when I selected it on boot. It came up with an /Ntdl error. It took me a few hours, but I finally found the solution was really simple. When using the VistaBootPro software in the above article link, I set my XP to the e: drive, which is the partition I actually installed it on. Makes sense right? XP is on e: so i set the bootloader to look for XP on e: ... Wrong! Apparently both OS's expect themselves to be on c: so make sure you set both Vista and XP in this program to be the c: drive. Don't worry, XP still loads as it should after this no matter what partition it's on.

Well, thats about everything i've gone through so far dual booting XP and installing drivers. Still a few kinks to iron out, but hopefully this article will be a moot point as soon as Dell release COMPLETE XP drivers on their website. Please Dell!

For your convenience, I've zipped up all the drivers I grabbed from Dell's website and the 3rd party drivers I have installed for 8600gt that I have confirmed to be working.

Download XP Driver pack I put together here -> (filefront 50mb)
http://files.filefront.com/Dell5120+XPdrivers+V1rar/;8057753;;/fileinfo.html

This package includes -> (green lines represent 3rd party drivers)
Drivers
- Dell 1520 - R137139 Internal Modem XP drivers
- Dell 1520 - R149798 ethernet XP drivers
- Dell 1520 - R153997 Intel Chipset XP drivers
- Dell 1520 - R154200 Matrix Sata XP drivers (read above about using nlite to prepare your XP install ISO to include these drivers)
- Dell 1520 - R155105 Webcam XP drivers
- Dell 1520 - R141246 Ricoh XP drivers
- Intel 3945ABG pro/wireless drivers - sourced from Intel's website
- Latest LaptopVideo2Go Nvidia drivers for 8600m gt
- Dell Latitude - R153908 Sound XP driver

(There is currently no 1520 Xp driver for sound, but I used this Latitude driver which has the exact same sound chipset as the 1520 and it works great) * Its important to note, that you need to install the Intel Chipset drivers FIRST, reboot, and then you can install the sound drivers.

Programs->
- VistaBootPro (for setting up bootloader screen to choose between XP or Vista at boot)
- Nlite program for inserting the sata drivers into your XP install

Also at the dell page is the webcam manager software for XP which is 145mb ->
http://support.dell.com/support/top...plash?c=us&l=en&s=gen&~mode=popup&file=214672


Righto, i'm off to do an XP repair install with my new nlite XP slipstreamed CD that now includes the AHCI sata drivers on it. Wish me luck!

 

Okay, sorry for dbl post, but I thought this would be important. A repair of my XP installation failed using the new slipstream disc I made. Got a blue screen for half a second during re-install at which point point it would reboot and cycle back to the blue screen and then reboot again indefinitely. So the lesson here is that when AHCI is involved, XP repairs do not work if you've already installed XP with the AHCI switched off in the bios.

So double checking my bios had the Sata device set on AHCI, I swallowed my pride and the hours i spent installing software already and I reinstalled a fresh XP with my nlite version of windows and to my delight everything installed correctly this time. So my advice to anyone trying to dual boot, is to make that nlite slipstream XP version (that includes the dell sata drivers) BEFORE trying anything.

Now i just have to reinstall the VistaBootPro again and redo the boot loader and all will be fine

 

thank you!! lol i wish i could rep again but it wants me to spread my rep around

 

Very welcome Update: All the XP drivers I used are in a package which I uploaded to filefront for your convenience. Check my post above for the download link

Another interesting benchmark after reinstalling XP and using the proper sata drivers. My 3dmark score rose slightly from last time in XP (Was 3193) ->


But the most important benchmark is the HD benchmark with these new Sata drivers. Check it out ->
The old XP score ->


The new XP score->


Nice improvement eh?

 

Does your screen have the grainy / grey feeling over it?

 

It is slightly grainy and it shows more when the screen is showing lighter colours so i keep my desktop wallpaper darkish to compensate. Its not really that bad and I don't notice it in games at all.

 

^Thanks a LOT man. I just have that ONE question about exactly which driver I should choose in the nLite slipstream menu for the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.

There are like 10 drivers listed when you choose to "integrate" that driver from nLite. Is it the HBM/HEM Intel ICH8EM? That's the one on the HP dv6500t (similar Santa Rosa laptop with same chipset, etc.).

Would appreciate a response.

EDIT: according to that SoftPedia guide, you should select ALL the drivers listed. Most of them are for desktops and not needed, but I guess it doesn't hurt to have them right? Is that what you did?

Thanks.

 

Yes I added every single one into the nlite build. I wasn't even prompted when installing Xp, it just chose the right one automatically

 

^Thanks. I just selected the three mobile ones. I like nLite's other features a lot too, let's me customize my Windows all the way down to the smallest detail.

I slipstreamed every driver except the graphics card ones 'cuz that's likely to change.

 

One bug I've noticed using XP so far is that If I close the lid which makes the laptop go into stand-by mode, the screen never wakes up again when i re-open the case. Thats a pain. It just stays black indefinitely no matter what I press.

 

hey thanks for answering my question regarding lowering resolutions in gaming.
i was wondering what exactly the webcam program is called that your talkin bout that you can draw on your faces real time. sounds fun =)

 

I think its just part of the creative webcam bundle you can download from the dell driver page.

 

I wanted to ask about the LEDs on the right side of the laptop. The 3 blue LEDs right below the status LEDs that are to the right of the keyboard - do they correspond to Power / HDD activity / Battery status, since they are probably in the same position as those for the LEDs above them?

I also think that those pictures from the camera are overexposed - the sky looks like its burning! Is that normal?

 

When taking pictures a little side window comes up with simple settings you can change like contrast and brightness. You can set these before taking the photos, but those pics i uploaded are just the default settings. You could probably get a better picture, but lets face it, webcams are not SLR's or even cheap digital camera replacements. Its never going to give you an awesome photo as its main purpose is compressed streaming video.

 

Well, I'm not going to argue but I would then conclude that the standard settings aren't that great then =[

 

wait a sec, where are the speakers?

 

they're on the bottom, on the underside. if you look at the under side pics you will see them.

 

any word on how stalker runs?

 

Ah, just installed Stalker again late last night. I'll get you a fraps benchmark within 24 hours at diferent video settings unless someone beats me to it

 

Okay, I am pleasantly surprised with Stalker running under XP. I first tried this under Vista when I first got the laptop and it was a little stuttery when i played and I was disapointed. I just played a little and ran a Fraps benchmark for about 10 minutes and my average FPS at 1680x1024 was 31.97FPS! I thought I would be WELL below this at that resolution but apart from the slightest mouse lag in the menus, the game itself played great! Keep in mind that I have the 2.2ghz CPU, the 7200rpm hard drive and running under XP so if you obviously have lower specs than me or are using Vista, the score is going to be significantly worse.

These are my ingame settings ->


And screenshots from the game playing at 30fps+
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/ss_kyron_07-16-07_21-02-14_l01_esca.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/ss_kyron_07-16-07_21-01-52_l01_esca.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/ss_kyron_07-16-07_21-00-04_l01_esca.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/ss_kyron_07-16-07_20-59-53_l01_esca.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/kysterama/dell/ss_kyron_07-16-07_20-59-38_l01_esca.jpg

 

Kysterama Thanks! thats pretty cool, Kinda wishing I went for the bigger rez now! lol got 1440x900 so really excited by this.

 

Hi there. Thank you for the post! I got all the drivers to work except for the audio driver. I am running Chinese version of Windows XP, the latitude driver does not work for unknown reason.

I installed a fresh copy of XP, then install the intel chipset drivers, then try the audio drivers, but it still does not install. In the control panel, I got "Legacy audio devices" showing up, but they are not properly installed.

Anyone running Chinese Windows XP (Taiwan version).

 

I really hope Dell releases all the drivers for XP, that would make me so happy. I produce music on sequencers and some vista drivers are still not available or any good for some of the programs that I use. Vista is pretty cool though, just too much for right now.

 

is there anyways to fix those fluctuations? referring to the transfer rate in hd tune. also whats burst rate and access time?
my desktop which is XP is pretty stable but has an occasional large spike.
my 1520 lappy which is vista is very dynamic but does not deviate far from average. i dont thing it ever whenbelow 35

 

kysterama, I dont' know why but I tried the sigmatel audio drivers for XP after installing the chipset and rebooting...it says that these drivers aren't designed for my system though (so basically they don't install). also, I have the same problem with you in terms of having a black screen after closing and then opening the lid of the laptop...did you figure out a fix for that by any chance?

thanks!

 

7200RPM have no impact on fps of a game, and a 2.2 would have very little impact as well.

 

Lightflux, with regards to the closing lid and get black screen, I ran in to the same problem, my solution (not a smart one), in power management, make the action for close lid to DO NOTHING, but everytime before you close the lid, hit FN+ESC (go to standby mode). To bring it back, open the lid, and hit power button.

 

wow....not a bad idea joeho! thanks! why do you think this issue is caused though? chipset? video driver?

 

lightflux, sorry I am not sure. see if there are anything that you did not install from the dell support page.