XPS 1330 battery life/ gaming benchmarks

Anyone know the XPS 1330 battery life with the 6 cell battery? It looks soooo ugly with the 9 cell that I wanna see if you can get around with the 6 cell

DVD, browsing and stuff would be cool to know

Also, how does games work on the 8400 card? Not max quality of course, but still.

 

I can play CS:Source, 1280x800, medium quality on everything, no AA, at 50-60 FPS

the battery life is O.K., if you're browsing the web, downloading, at full brightness expect 1.5 - 2.5 hours of battery life. Not much IMO.

 

max 2h40m work in Windows (internet,word etc), DVD film about 2h.

 

Damn, not too long. Any 9 cell users? And any other games?

 

I'd beg to differ. I've found for brightness at 6/8 and browsing around the internet/word processing, I can do about 3:30 with the 6 cell, give or take 10 minutes, depending on what you're browsing. (Lots of flash, simple sites, etc)

 

Thats more like it . Any DVD thoughts on battery life? Or any benchmarks to get me to choose the XPS 1330 over the MBP?

 

I haven't timed it but I am sure that I'm getting at least 3 hours with brightness at 6/8 this is for emailing, web browsing etc. so I think that is pretty good

 

I picked up the 9 cell simply because I always want that extra bit of power available whether I need it or not.

I actually like the way it props the laptop up while on a solid surface too.....gives the keyboard a nice angle to type on.

 

Doesn't it look ugly when it's sticking out?

 

I hav a 9-cell and I love it .. I don't think it's ugly

 

Okay, im thinking about getting a 6 cell and a 9 cell.

 

That's the perfect combo. 6 cell when you want something that's light and sleek and 9 cell for max battery performance.

I'll be writing a thorough review shortly and battery life's definitely something that'll be well covered.

 

if u want something really light, get a battery dummy :laugh: W/o any batteries, 1330 feels light like a feather... but u need to stick something in there, since there are something exposed in the battery compartment.

 

Are these times for surfing, etc done using the wireless or cable connection?

 

Mine was on wireless.

 

You tested any games? And whats battery life on the 9 cell? And some DVD times?

 

I'll try to run some tests (games and DVD, well I don't have an actual DVD, but I can test movies from the hard drive, etc) tonight right after I get some food into me. Mmmmm food.

 

Warez monkey! No actual dvds means tons of illegally downloaded content! booo!!! :laugh: just kiddin

 

Cool, Im really just after which games can be run (not at highest quality but resolution pretty high). And how long u can watch a movie

 

Whatchu you talkin' about? I just rip them so I don't have to carry around the discs with me all the time.

I've got Oblivion and Rainbow Six: Vegas that I can test quickly here. Gotta install them first.

 

not that there's anything wrong with that or anything (my hd is up to 50gigs allready), but doesnt that defeat the whole purpose of dvd tests, since one of the main power suckers is the dvd drive?

 

True. I did some more digging and found that I have family guy on actual DVDs here, so I can give that a whirl.

 

OMG! he's a fan of Family Guy! :laugh: j/k

 

omg everyone is (except the pope)

anyone want to post which drivers/oc settings they are using while gaming on the 8400?

i'm looking for a video o/clocker that will automatically switch profiles when I plug/unplug the battery

 

I'm pretty sure there are many of those who are ambivalent toward Family Guy, if not hating it

 

Okay, I tried R6:Vegas with the stock drivers (101.xx) and 1280x800 using the widescreen hack - performance was garbage. I'm probably pushing it too far. The game looked great, but frame rates were around 9... I'm installing new drivers and tweaking the detail settings to see if I can get that above 30.

 

I'd rather have you test battery life while watching it from the HDD Cus that's what u usualy do.

And as for games, Oblivion would rock!

 

Nope.....I don't mind the look of it at all.

 

Me too. In fact, I like the way 1330 looks with a 9-cell, gives it a distinctive, unique look. With a 6-cell 1330 is kinda meh, a run-of-mill rectangular notebook 9-cell is actually giving 1330 a very cool shape and form. If only it didn't weigh a ton, it'd be ideal in all respects... If they made a 6-cell in 9-cell shape, I'd be all over it.

 

Okay, back with some numbers.

I installed the 162.22 drivers from laptopvideo2go. Rainbow Six: Vegas immediately jumped from average 9FPS to 16FPS. That's still at 1280x800 and not terribly playable, so when I try a different resolution, I'll let you know.

Someone was interested in Oblivion - I was only able to play through the dungeon area at the beginning (outside is more graphically intensive). I ran it at 848x480 with distant lands on, low-medium settings (bars ~1/3 the way to max) and bloom on. It was very playable in the dungeons ~40FPS, although in some of the areas with a lot of bloom, that dropped down closer to 20FPS. If you tweak with the settings I'm sure you could find a compromise. Overall pretty good for a lower-end card. Obviously not something you'll buy specifically for gaming, but a bit of gaming is fine, as long as you're willing to compromise graphics quality.

In terms of battery life here's what I found. I did 10 minute runs of each condition, taking the battery capacity at the beginning and subtracting it from the end, then multiplying by 6 to get the Watt power consumption. Another quick calculation and you can get the battery life. This is assuming the 6 cell, 56Whr battery.

Idle - Wifi enabled, webcam enabled - 12.9W = 4 hours 20 minutes
Idle - Wifi enabled, webcam disabled - 12.3W = 4 hours 33 minutes
Family Guy DVD - Wifi enabled - 23.8W = 2 hours 21 minutes
Video from *ahem* HD - 21.4W = 2 hours 37 minutes

Family Guy and the video were played full screen with the speaker volume at 75%.

 

those movie times are promising. That means that, if need be, you can watch an entire movie on battery power.

 

wait, so, were those numbers for the 6 cell or the 9 cell?

 

The numbers I posted are for the 6 cell. The 9 cell's Whr rating is 1.51X so, basically multiply my numbers by 1.5 to get an estimate for battery life with that battery.

 

Thanks man! The gaming things weren't THAT promising though, although the only game I played for the last 2 years is CS And that is rarely. But I dunno, I like being able to do anything with my computer

And since the MBP isnt that much bigger than the XPS 1330 I cannot decide which 1 I want

The Dell batterylife seems pretty good though

 

Oh, you'll be able to play CS or even Source fine. Oblivion and R6:Vegas are two of the more graphically intensive games available.

 

Yeah, I know The only problem for me is that I will not have any desktop computer, so Im thinking, WHAT IF I wanna load up some game in the future? And on the other hand im gonna carry to computer to school every day, so I want a light and small one too. It's hard

 

Haha, yeah, I guess I'm lucky that I have a more powerful desktop should I ever want to play any games - well, you'll have to decide for yourself on this one. I know which I'd choose, but for slightly different reasons mind you.

 

Hmm, yeah I know. I just dunno if I the MBP will be to large to bring to school every day

Hows the Dell build quality, Apple's usaly great. But I heard loads of problems with the XPS 1330, with gaps and CPU whine and such.

 

n what was brightness at?

 

Oh sorry, I forgot to mention that. It was set at 6/8 on the Quickset scale.

 

Thx, almost certain ill take a XPS 1330 now Cheaper, lighter, smaller and got HDMI and stuff. Im just worried about the build quality

Just gotta wait for Dell to start delivering to Sweden

 

Keep in mind that the T7100 I got and the 5400RPM drive may contribute to lower power consumption, so if you're looking for a higher performance system, your results may vary a bit.

 

What clock freq does the T7100 have?

And another thing, want to post a nice picture of you black laptop? Gotta choose between red and black

 

The T7100 is 1.8GHz. I'll post a couple pictures in a little bit.

I also did some more tests last night of web browsing. Brightness was again at 6/8, and browsing was done on Wifi.

Power consumption 15.6W
Battery life on 56W 6 cell - 3:35

 

Nice, im looking to get the 1.8 Ghz, or the 2.0 if they give me a good price when I phone in my order.

 

chuck, howd you install the 162.22 drivers? when I try to dl the modded inf from laptopvideo2go, it dissappears instantly from my desktop...

help please!

 

I attached some pictures as per Drolug's request. Had to get a few glamour ones in there.

danishh - What do you mean it disappears instantly? Save the file somewhere on your hard drive and then copy it over to the extracted driver installation files to overwrite the old one.

 

how were you able to get the 6 cell and 9 cell battery combination? i tried doing that on the phone when i ordered, but the lady who was helping me told me i couldnt do it.

 

I wanted that combo at first first too and was told the same as you. So I ordered the 4 and 9 cell. However, there's some issues (apparently) with the 4 cell and the NVIDIA graphics card so they've been upgrading many people to 6 cells free of charge. It was a nice surprise.

 

Just a note on the power consumption differences between the T7100 versus T7300 and above CPUs - the T7100's max vcore is 1.175V while the T7300 and above' max is 1.3V. If you get stuck with one that requires 1.3V, that'll definitely make a difference versus the T7100.