Really happy with 8600m GT and XPS M1530

So I got my new laptop, the Dell XPS M1530 yesterday and I was so excited to finally get it (since I had been wating for about 3 weeks for it ). The only games I have installed so far are Call of Duty 2 and the Bioshock Demo. I have to say that I am very pleased with the performance for a laptop. Here are a few tests I've done so far.

The nvidia drivers I am using are the 177.83 ones from laptopvideo2go (are these drivers alright?)

Used FRAPS for FPS and HW monitor for temps.

CPU and GPU are stock.

Bioshock Demo 1280 x 800, High settings, Direct X 10

Avg. FPS of 35

Call of Duty 2, 1280 x 800, 2x AA, 16x AF, max everything

Avg. FPS of 30 although this is strange because I get the same performance whether it is 0x AA or 2x AA and the game still runs smooth and not lagging even when FRAPS is saying that I am getting only 10 FPS ... must be the game because it says that there is a known problem between Call of Duty 2 and Vista.

No lag or slow down at all during either of the games. I played the Bioshock demo all the way thru and CoD 2 for about an hour.

The best part is though that the highest my graphics card got was 80 C and the highest my CPU got was 58 C during all the testing. I am pretty pleased, especially after paying less than $1000 for this laptop.

 

I ordered almost the same configuration as you... minus 2 gigs of RAM. Pretty good at $999.

 

Congratulaciones.

 

Yeah the 8600M GT GDDR3 is not too shaby. Mine beats out the 9600M GT 512MB that is in the HP DV5T.

 

It also beats out the x850 XT PE that is in my desktop ... that is the part I was most happy about (well, except for the part where I paid $320 for that card 3 years ago ... )

 

How long can the m1530 stay on, unplugged? (with the 6 cell Bat)

 

I hear around 3-4 hours.

 

I'm still really happy with my DDR2 8600m GT XD

 

Thanks for the post. This is refreshing to hear other than the common whining about the "poor" performance of the 8600m GT.

I have been quite satisfied with my 8600m GT DDR2 in my Vostro 1500. Not the fastest but very reliable and can run every game out there. Overclocks nicely too. The GDDR3 versions are even better.

I wonder when a better general 15" GPU will be available (minus 8800 GTX in a select few expensive notebooks). I don't see anything surpassing the 8600m GT at the moment, unless ATI has something that I'm not aware of.

 

Asus has a 9700gt ddr3 in their 15.6 notebook.

 

Nice. What is performance of 9700m GT vs 8600m GT?

 

I like the 8600m gt in my 1720, but crave a little more performance. I got the M1530 mainly because it's more portable, so the nice video card is a bonus. I'll give you guys some side by side comparisons of the 8600m GT ddr2 and ddr3.

 

toshiba has the 9700gts in their 15.4" notebook, runs laps around the gt

 

runs laps around which card?

 

I'm extremely happy with my 9500 GS, though that might be because I was using a NVidia 6200 the past few years XD

 

BTW, ttime, is your processor (t8100) a lot more powerful than a T7250? Is there noticeable performance difference there? Thanks.

 

That had potential to be a brilliant laptop pun.

What kind of price ranges are the notebooks with 9700's in?

 

It is more powerful than the T7250, but I don't think that there would be a whole lot of difference.

Right now with Vista on High Performance Mode and my screen at max brightness I get about 2 1/2 hours with it unplugged. If I turn it to High Battery and tun the screen down a bit, it doubles the time roughly.

 

So far I am happy with mine... Playing CoD4 at max and Crysis at 1440*900 everything set to medium.

 

For Gaming, no difference at all, other tasks... Very Slim. 100mhz arent going to be your savior