new D620 owner!

i just ordered a D620 from my college. I will be a marketing major (yeah, i know we are pricks), and it seemed to fit well. I went with the 256 quadro and t2400 duo processor, 9 cell battery, 1 1gb 667 dimm, 80 GB 7200rpm. Anything i should know, any tips or tricks? ive been in these forums a while so i know the people in the brand forums no every detail of their notebooks! Any help is greatly appriciated!

Samuel

p.s. i know everyone says gaming isn't good with this card, but will a casual gamer be better off with this than the nvidia 6150 integrated?

 

let's see... I'm not exactly sure what all you are wanting to know, but here are my suggestions.

biggest thing that i have to say is of course reformat and then optimize your laptop. You should receive a retail version of XP, not OEM.

Another thing is to verify that you have the correct hardware that you ordered as well as everything works properly. Inspect for light leakage, dead pixels etc.

Is there anything specific that you are wanting to be advised on?

I was going to suggest to go to the gaming forum and ask them on the nVidia question, but you've already done that

 

Reformating may not be necessary on the D620. Aside from Google Desktop, there wasn't much unecessary software on board.

 

true. I forgot that the latitudes don't get the junkware. Personally, I'm one of those that likes to have my laptop set up a certain way, so even if it doesn't have junkware on it, i still reformat it for partitions and all of that mess.

 

the nvidia quadro card performs around the 7300go level...probably slightly less, so it should perform better.

 

thanks, i plan to reformat for sure. Im the same way, its gotta be perfect. In terms of ram, im going to add one more dimm, what brand should i go with? Also, is the 9 cell battery going to bother me sticking out? the weight doesn't bother me at all.

thanks for your help!
Samuel

 

oh, one other thing, how are the temperature sensors in the notebook? i know HP notebooks are terrible but i have no idea about dells... thanks guys!

Samuel

 

I can answer your RAM question. Usually Corsair and Kingston are the better known manufacturers, but usually they are more expensive. I would try looking at newegg.com because they generally have good brands of memory on sale.

I'm not sure about the battery since i don't have one. They only thing I can tell you is if you don't like, you have 21 days from your shipment date to decide if you want to return your laptop for something that doesn't have a battery sticking out.

Another possibility is to go with the media bay battery so you don't have the battery sticking. It is only a 6 cell but in combination with your other battery, you should get a fiarly longbattery life, and you wouldn't have anything sticking out.

 

how do you feel about transcend? when i look on dell's site it says 533mhz but o nthe invoice they gave me it says 667... so do you know what type is use in the d620?

On the battery, could i just return the 9 cell if it bothers me and get a 6 cell without returning the entire computer? ive never dealt with dell before..

Thanks!
Samuel

 

I personally like Transcend. It is Samsung, but renamed and I haven't had any problems with it. This is one brand that several of the Inspiron owners go with cause we can get 1 stick of 1gb for about $80 from newegg.com. Here is the link if you are interested in it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820208024

Kingston and Corsair both have a memory selector that will tell you what type of memory for your laptop. Kingston said that you use the same as what most of us do which is the 200pin DDR2-SO DIMM .

Dell does offers both 533mhz and 667 sticks on the D620. I'm not sure what option you selected, but you might verify that the option that you choose did say 533, and not 667. If your invoice says 667, then you probably got 667. If that is true and if you want to use the dual feature, you'll need to get another stick of 667mhz, and it needs to be the same size as what you have in your laptop.

I'm not 100% sure on the battery. I would assume that you can send the battery back and get a different one. Especially with small business, dell is a lot nicer than what they are with the Home section. You'll just need to talk to Dell's Tech Support and see if you can get a battery replacement. I'm sure if you explain to them that you just want to send the battery back and not the laptop, they will work with you on it.

 

wow, EXTREMELY helpful. Thank you so much southerngirl! I called dell and it is 667 they put in so im gunna order that ram! they also said that i cna try out the 9 cell and if i don't like it they will send me a 6 cell and a prepaid box to send it back. So far im VERY impressed with dell's support.

Thanks again!
Samuel

 

The battery sticking out on mine doesn't bother me at all, it has a nice feel to it. Although I never really touch it that much as my wrists end up wresting on the sides next to the touchpad anyway, I get nearly 6 hours with light use on my 9 cell on a med to low brightness level and we have nearly the same specs(I went with T2300 and 5200 RPM), I love it and I hope you do also.

 

that is extremely reassuring, thanks! im going to give it a try, if worse comes to worse i will just swap it for a 6 cell, but it sounds like it will be fine. Thanks for calming my nerves!

Samuel

 

does anyone know how the temperature sensors are on the D620? im used to terrible hp's.. also, have you played any games on it? how does it perform in general?

 

My old hp was ridiculously hot compared to my E1705 (it kept me warm in the winter). Your D620 has better build quality and probably more time spent on testing it (maybe not). However, I am assuming that it should not get too hot, definetley tolerable. Your card is not a gaming card, however, it should not have a problem playing some games at regular settings.

 

Don't know about how accurate the temperature sensors are on the machine, but I say, if its not crashing on you or giving you any trouble, I wouldnt worry about it too much. When I checked mine with Speedfan, idle I got readings about mid 35C, didn't check anything under load though.

As for games, I am more than pleased with this card even though it isnt meant for them. Half life 2 and mods on the same engine I just scale it down to 1280x800(theres a nifty little fn key that allows you to play in a black box so you don't have to worry about your screen trying to scale it to fit the whole screen) and with mostly med, some high settings I have yet to see any lag(except in maybe some extreme firefights in DoD.

I wouldn't go trying Fear or Oblivion on it though as you would probably be dissapointed by the visuals. So if you are like me and you have just that favorite game (CoD:Heat of Battle for me , hopefully soon to be HoB:S ) and its not groundbreakingly recent. It should last through quite a bit of gaming.

Ah, and one thing that surprised me, even while gaming and pushing the notebook to its limits, the fan still runs pretty quietly at full tilt and the notebook doesn't get too hot, althought I do prop it up some on old disc cases to get some extra airflow. Heh, on second thought, maybe I should test the temperature on full load, just to be safe.

Edit: This guy ran a few graphics and heat tests on his, seems the card gets pretty warm, thought I could not find the temp for my card in speedfan, maybe I'll try rivatuner like he did. Under normal usage though my system stays pretty cool to the touch.
http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=150745

 

well, in terms of gaming that is WAY more than what i expected... so thats always nice suprise! do you have 2 gb of 667 ram? Also, have you played BF2, thats pry the only game i would ever play on it, maybe some sports games but nothing that is real demanding.

In terms of heat, i may get a cooler, so that would be more than sufficient. This makes me a whole lot more comfortable about my purchase. if you do give rivatuner a try post your findings!

Thanks again,
Samuel

 

I am only running my system on 1 gig, which is pretty nice considering the card shares memory, it was highly recomended in the other forum that I linked to to have 2 gigs for BF2, but that game didn't really catch my eye, so unfortunately I havent tested it.

Edit: also noticed you went with the 7200RPM drive, that may drive up the heat a little bit, but it should cut down on the slightly longer load times I've been experiencing in HL2 from my desktop, definately should help the uber long BF2 map loading from what I saw in the Demo.

Edit 2: used the included nvidia software to monitor the temps, and the card looks like it sits at a constant few degrees below 80 C during some rough gaming, it has an automatic slowdown feature at 99 C and considering how cramped it is inside the laptop I think its a pretty cool running card. Just remember to take a compressed air can to the vents once a month and it should be fine heatwise.

 

yeah, 80C is not bad in a laptop. Im really excited to try out BF2 on this lappy!