How happy are you with your Dell M90?

Since work is ordering it for me, I had very limited options so I chose this configuration;

Dell Precision M90:
Intel(r) Core(tm) 2 Duo Processor T5600 (1.83GHz/667MHz/2MB)
Genuine Windows(r) XP Professional, SP2 with Media
17 inch Wide Screen WXGA+ LCD Panel
2 GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM, 2 DIMM
NVIDIA(r) Quadro FX 2500M, 512MB (dedicated), OpenGL
100GB Hard Drive (7200RPM)
8XDVD+/-RW
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card

I only had a budget of around $2k to buy and had to choose a "business" laptop, but since I work in IT and I'm a gamer, I wanted the best option I could get. No XPS option I'm afraid so I went with this one. I did read the reviews, both here and on other sites and it sounds like I make a pretty good choice.

Basically I'm just looking for some other gamers that have this laptop and how well it works for you and your gaming. I don't play a lot of games but I do go to an occasional LAN and enjoy some Q4 and HL2 so good performance now and the next few years is important to me. Are there any games I should avoid with it? I play a non-WoW MMORPG nearly nightly and want better performance. Any other tips I should know about this laptop? Already ordered and should be here in 2 weeks. Oh, price through our state contract was just a hair over $2k.

Also, I hate glare so I got the lower end screen. Some reviews haven't liked the screen very much, but those were reviews from last June. Are the screens any better now?

 

I've been running an M90 for the past week. Relevent specs are as follows:

C2D T7200
XP Pro
17" WUXGA screen
1GB DDR2-667 SDRAM
Quadro FX 1500M

I picked this up for £800 in the UK. It was a cancelled order, so I didn't have the option to change the specs. Otherwise I'd prolly have increased the RAM to 2GB. I actually run a desktop, so gaming isn't that important to me an the notebook. That said ...

Naturally the first thing I did was fire up 3dM05 (~6400) and 3dM06 (~3800). I then loaded up FarCry, Doom3, CS:S and Dark Messiah. I get decent, playable framerates for all games at the native resolution, in excess of 30 frames/sec at all times. I'm able to play CS:S and D3 at native res and Vsync without the frames rate dropping below 60. To achieve those framerates in D3 and Dark Messiah I have to drop the resolution a bit. I shoudl comment, though, that I'm not using any antialiasing. Don't really notice aliasing much on this screen because the pixels are so small.

I must say I'm pretty chuffed with the performance. I'm not planning to do much gaming on this machine, but it's nice to know I can have a sneeky blast of CS:S at top detail levels. I've seen a few comments that the Quadro FX cards are rubbish for games, although many others say otherwise. Based on reading around the subject, I would say that the 1500m performs pretty much exactly how you would expect a 7900GS to perform. I expect the 2500m will be significantly better.

My one gripe about the machine is that the screen has a somewhat uneven distribution and there is significant light bleed at the bottom edge of the screen. I don't notice these issues when I'm playing a game, but the uneven distribution is noticable with a Word doc open fullscreen. Doesn't bother me much, and I got the machine relatively cheap (+3 year warranty), so I'll live with it.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Ginga

 

Thanks for the reply. I will be using mine connected to my 20" LCD (which has it's own light bleeding issue, but is ok). I will be mostly using it for gaming however, and occasionally travel (to game or for business). Have you had good luck with your battery life? From what I've read here and elsewhere the 1500 card uses far less power than the 2500 and 3500 so you're results will probably be better than mine. Still, I'm curious how well it does on battery as well as how loud it is. My current Dell 9100 Inspiron is really loud when it gets hot during gaming so I'm hopeful the new one will be much better.

 

I've used the Dell XPS M1710 before and I found it to be whisper quiet. I think the Precision M90 is based on the same platform and should have the same cooling system. It will definitely be quieter than your 9100.

The QuadroFX 2500M is extremely powerful; it has a considerable lead in performance of the FX 1500M. The 2500M is based on the Go7900GTX and the 1500M the Go7900GS. You can find benchmarks of those in the forums and in reviews. Either way, you have a beast of a laptop for games.

 

Thank you very much for the reply Chaz. I've read all the review I could find and I'm very excited to get this new laptop.

I'm still debating on flashing the bios to unlock the overclocking sliders. Do you think it's worth the effort or should I just leave well enough alone?

I'll make sure to post my 3dMark scores as soon as I get it. I'll run those fresh from the box on the system first thing. Just wish Dell would update their drivers, I just checked and the only driver they list is from April, 2006.

 

Hi guys. This M90 does pretty well on the battery. I haven't really done any gaming on it, but I've worked on the machine for well over 2 hours and still had a decent amount of battery left (30%-ish). Regarding overclocking, I'd see how the machine performs. You might well be surprised at how well the machine performs, particularly at sub-WUXGA resolution. I had a quick look at overclocking and found that coobits enables auto-overclocking, so it seems I woldn't need to flash the BIOS to OC the 1500m. I keep having to tell myself, "This is a work machine!"

Ginga

 

OK I have the m90 with your same specs except the cpu, (yours is a little better) and it has played everything I have thrown at it maxed out. The fx 2500m is the same as a 7900gtx. Heres a list of the games I have played on max settings with no lag.
Supreme Commander
Stalker
Medieval 2 Total War
Half Life 2 Original & Ep 1
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Oblivion
FEAR
Prey
Need For Speed Carbon & Most wanted
Dark Messiah
And plenty of older games. But these are the most demanding games on the market so you have nothing to worry about. Congrats on the rig you will love it. And about the battery life dont expect much 2hrs on full brightness and 3hrs max with the brightness turned on lowest and no wifi or bt.

 

Cool, thx. I figured there had to be some other "business" types out there with this same laptop.

Should be here tomorrow, yay! First thing out of the box will be to remove all the Dell crap, defrag, and then benchmark. You guys still running the default video drivers or have you found a better one?

 

mine will come this week too, hopefully.

 

I'm running the same default drivers. Its kinda hard to find newer drivers bc they dont update them often. BUt they work just fine. Also the nice thing about the m90 is dell doesn't put much/any crap ware on it. But I still recommend a fresh install.

 

Can you use drivers from Nvidia or do you have to use the Dell drivers?

 

You can use any drivers that are compatible with the 2500m. Nvidia's, and anyother site's drivers will work. But for this card usually the most stable ones are the ones from the manufacturer.

 

That's what I was hoping. I'll run the benchmarks with the stock drivers when it arrives, then upgrade to the latest NVidia drivers and run them again for comparrison.

Not as concerned about stability as performance, primarily for gaming.

 

Results are in my sig now. Just need to search around for updated drivers (ones installed are from March 2006).

So far it works quite well. Fast and great graphics. I'm very happy, but only had it 1 day so will keep testing it and trying it out.

 

So which driver did you use? the one from dell or nvidia? I m getting my M90 this weekend! yay.

 

I ran the test with the stock drivers that came on the laptop. The I tried the drivers from Nvidia but they would not install, so I went to Dell and downloaded thier drivers for the laptop as the date listed was 4-15-06. Ran the tests again and got the same results (+/-20 points) and looked at the properties of the driver and I think it was the same one.

Still searching for a newer driver though. Might just keep the ones that came on it since they scored pretty well I think considering. With a better CPU the scores would have been higher I think.