Dell's Studio XPS 13's NVidia 9500M GE Tested & Reviewed

The review is based off a translation on the Studio XPS 13, which can be found here:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Studio-XPS-13-Notebook.14081.0.html

However, if you want to skip the notebook part and head on to the extensive and thorough review of the somewhat confusing 9500M GE gpu performance, here are the excerpts of it:


Regarding the graphics card not that much choices are available. You can either select the integrated chipset graphics from nVidia, the Geforce 9400M G, or a combination with dedicated Geforce 9200M GS graphics card via nVidia Hybrid SLI (Geforce 9500M G). The later costs about 80.- Euro more.

Thanks to the nVidia Hybrid Power & Boost technology this combination of integrated graphics chip and additional dedicated graphics card can reach the performance of the middle-class of comparable multimedia notebooks. In the test the XPS 13 achieved, e.g., 3442 points in the 3D Mark 2006 benchmark test, which is very good. Therewith it is about equally powerful than various multimedia notebooks, e.g., the MSI GX620 with Geforce 8600M GT graphics or the Asus M50S with ATI HD3650 graphics. The huge difference between integrated graphics chip and active hybrid SLI graphics card gets also clearly apparent.



We can also give a positive summary conerning the results of the PC Mark 2005 benchmark test. With 6690 points the Studio XPS 13 clearly tops various other comparable multimedia specialists. Another important aspect are the premium RAM equipment and the brilliant SSD of this system. We will describe this a little later.

A striking detail in the PC Mark 2005 benchmark test is that the system is marginally better with chipset graphics (9400M) than with dedicated graphics card.



Gaming Performance

Because of the good result in the 3D Mark 2006 benchmark, one question arises: Can the gaming performance of the Studio XPS 13 be compared with system with 8600M GT, or is the 3D Mark score only nice to look at?

In the meanwhile somewhat old games, Doom 3 and FEAR, the Geforce 9500 graphics solution turned out to be rather gaming-friendly. E.g., in Doom3 it achieved a rather playable frame rate of 44.1 fps. Even solely with the chipset graphics (9400M) 44.0 fps were possible. Thereby the nVidia Hybrid SLI does not seem to be better. Furthermore, system with similar 3D Mark score, e.g., the MSI GX600 with Geforce 8600M GT clearly exceed these results(87.9 Fps bei ultra).

The lead of the 8600M GT is not that big in, e.g., the driver-sensitive shooter FEAR, a DX9 based game. But, here you can especially with high details detect differences between 9400M and 9500M graphics.





We chose Crysis with a resolution of 1024x768 as representative of demanding games. From the very beginning it was clear that it does not make any sense to try detail level high. Even gaming notebooks like the M17 from Alienware are not capable of this. However, at least for the sake of comparison the detail levels medium and low are of interest.

This gives a clear advantage for the Geforce 9500M graphics card over the integrated 9400M graphics card of about 20%. This can, e.g., on low details be essential for playability or not.
Furthermore, it gets once again obvious in comparison that a Geforce 8600M GT is indeed clearly more powerful and able to get the lead over the Geforce 9500.
Current multimedia hardware like, e.g., a Geforce 9600M GT, are definitely outside the scope of this graphics solution.



We gave it another try and tested the popular multi-player shooter Call of Duty 4 in practice. The key question was, whether this game can be played to some degree with Geforce 9500 graphics solution?

The recorded frame rate when playing part of the first single player mission led to the following conclusion: The difference between or more precisely the advantage of the Geforce 9500 graphics card increases with the demands on graphics (resolution, anti-aliasing, ...).
The frame rate won't get to some extent reasonable, before activating the 9500 graphics cards, reducing the resolution to 800x600 pixels and deactivating anti-aliasing. Once we did, we recorded frame rates, which mostly exceeded 30 Fps. Deactivating further graphical options, could lead to further improvements, and so might result in Call of Duty being playable to some extent with this hardware




As mentioned, do not be mislead with the 3Dmark06 score of around 3,500 points, which is somewhat comparable to a 8600GT DDR2. Apart from that, performance wise, 8600GT DDR2 scores much better than the 9500M GE in terms of frame rates - on ultra settings for DOOM 3 / FEAR, 9500 scored 44 fps while 8600GT scored double at 88 fps.

With that, however, at 44 fps, the 9500M GE is relatively an above average card and is a GPU to be reckoned with in a 13' book.

Now I wonder how will it fare with more recent games like Dawn of War 2, or the upcoming Starcraft 2. Anybody with screenshots on games like DoW2 is very much welcomed.

Your thoughts on this. Thanks.

 

hmm. the 3dmark06 numbers are definitely wrong. a 8600m gt paired with 2.5ghz c2d should get more than 3500 at 1280*1024. i get better scores with a 86gs and a 1.8ghz c2d at the same res.

 

Benchmarks are pretty impressive(tho I never trust notebookcheck ).This makes this notebook a good performer and gives it impressive price/performance ratio...just 1 thing is bothering me:everything looks too good...

 

i only get a 3700 with my 9500M GS and a 1.8GHz C2D at whatever the default resolution is (1024x768?)

 

So far anybody with this notebook can grab a couple of screenshots on the latest games?

Would love to see how far high detail it can push before it drops below 25 fps on more recent games. Medium my best bet.

 

according to what i read this ONLY works in vista and it doesnt work in XP i found that to be kind of odd.