Dell Inspiron 9400 With Intel Duo Core Available (specs)

OK, I've been trying out all the various drivers for the 7800go:

Dell stock drivers (ver?), Mobileforce 83.60, Mobileforce 82.65, Mobileforce 81.97, Laptopvideo2go 83.60 desktop

I've narrowed down the two best drivers to either the mobileforce 81.97 or the laptopvideo2go 83.60 desktop drivers (with .inf). The 81.97 drivers keep the gpu temp between 70 and 82 at idle (fan comes on at 82, goes off at 70), whereas the 83.60 drivers keeps the gpu at 60-61 idle (fan always on). Both drivers give the exact same 3D scores.

Is it better to have the fan always on and gpu at a lower temp, or to have the gpu higher, but the fan mostly off? Which would you think reduces the life of the components more?

If they haven't thought of it yet, the gpu manufacturers should think of having a "speedstep" equivalent for gpu's (i.e. turn down/off the gpu speeds when doing 2D work).

P.S. another battery test: watching divx in windows, using headphones, play from HD, no wifi, no usb, gpu on stock speeds = 2h:10m

 

I have the fans on a slower speeds at a lower temps. Then raise them as the temperature rises. There is not time when my fan is not on.

 

My gpu-fan is also always on, idle temp about 60C. I use the Mobileforce 81.97 drivers.

Something i've been thinking about: my cpu is runnning 2GHz all the time, thought that it would "slow down" when i'm not doing anything demanding, or anything at all for that matter. From what i've heard that's what the Pentium M's did/does(clocks down)?

 

Yes the pentuim M downclocks itself to save on power and heat.

 

Kinda crappy that this doesn't then. Guess it would make some difference heatwise.

 

hi guys.

just wondering why i cannot wake up the 9400 using an external USB keyboard (wired). The problem is that all the USB Root Hubs in the hardware device manager are showing the "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" grayed out.

had an inspiron 8600 before, and everything worked like charm...

any ideas how can i bring the computer out of standby except pressing the power key?

The thing is that i mostly use my 9400 with an external screen and camera, and dont want to open the lid each time i have to wake it up.

kinda stupid from dell if the USB ports on 9400 doesn;t support "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby possibility"....

 

just wanted to add that neither the keyboard nor any other input HID device doesn't open the Power Management tab in the properties......

strange, huh?

 

one more question, guys.

i'm sure as many of you i reformatted the 9400 to get rid of all the crap that they have installed. I do not miss at all Dell Media Experience, but it i s a pity that my MediaDirect button points now to nowhere and says that it doesn't find the Dell Media Experience when pushed.

Any possibility to reassign it to another task?

thanks

 

Fredrik: The core duo cpu does throttle down when not at load. There are, however, only two states (full and half speed). My Core Duo runs at 1.83GHz or 987MHz. The Core Duo is just two Pentium M's slapped together.

Hamik: Although there is an option in the bios to wake on usb device, I also can't get an external keyboard to wake it up. There is no option to boot on password, or on keypress or something. The only thing I can think of, is if you get rid of your MediaDirect, maybe then pressing the play button on the front will load windows instead of the MediaDirect (can't vouche for that, tho).

EDIT: There IS a way to boot with the lid down! You need to set your bios to wake on usb, set your power savings in windows to standby when pushing the sleep button, then use a remote (with a usb infrared receiver). The media centre remote that I ordered with the laptop does the trick, but I now use my Harmony 880 to control my laptop. Anyone know if having the lid down all the time will affect the cooling (there are some air slots on the side of the keyboard that would be covered with the lid down)?

If that is not an option for you, there is a timer function in the bios that will turn the laptop on and off at a specified time.

 

I've try to locate this Bios caching and didnt see any place to set it

 

hamik

There is a thread in the Dell Inspiron forums that details how to assign the mediadirect key to another application. You have to change (or add) a registry key for DMX.exe. Mine is set to winamp and works perfectly.

 

could not find the thread ro reassign the mediadirect key to another app...

can anyone help?

thanx a lot..

 

Well, mine doesn't throttle down, it stays at 2GHz all the time as far as i can tell.

 

I'm looking forward to receiving my i9400 and doing a fresh WinXP reinstall.

Since I didn't order the OS, Driver and Utility Cd's (doh!), I'm doing the necessary downloads from support.dell.com. Any idea what's the purpose of these:

 

Those display devices serve no purpose as far as I can tell. I did a fresh install yesterday and did not install those and everything seems to be great. You need to install the following in this order:

Notebook System Software (reboot)

Intel Chipset (no reboot)
Ricoch (no reboot)
Video Driver (dell or other) (reboot)

Network drivers (no reboot)
Audio drivers (reboot)

I believe that was all I did and was instructed to do it this way by a Dell techy. Everything works great except the mediadirect which I'm saying the hell with it to. I'm not so lazy that I can't open my player from an icon or start menu to worry about trying to figure out how to make this work. I figure by my next rebuild in a half a year or so; detailed information will be available on how to make this friggin thing work.

The laptop shuts down and restarts to the windows desktop with the wireless connection established in about 28 seconds!!

rambling on here...

 

Hmmm. I find that it really just depends what GPU temperature I'm in. Sometimes I look and it's staying in the 60's other times in the 70's. Not for any reason that I can tell. As I type this I'm holding steady at 65 degrees and this laptop has been on all day basically doing nothing but occasional web browsing. (mind you this is my "broken" 9400 with the crapped out lcd and god knows what else)

How about a poll on which are the best drivers for the 9400? How do we do that?

 

Thanks for the valuable info, Flames.

Btw, did you get any unknown "Base System Devices" shown in the "Other Devices" category of the Device Manager?

 

I am currently using the 1900x1200 dell truelife screen and I was wondering, how on earth do I get pictures to display properly and not look like someone is censoring something or a kid using the resize tool in paint.The pictures look very pixelised (probably because of the big widescreen) Thanks.

 

Fredrik: Did you reinstall xp? Maybe you need the chipset drivers (for speedstep, or whatever it's called), if it's not a part of the xp install. You can see if it's working my going to the system properties (right click "My Computer"... properties), while nothing is running - it should say something like T2500 at 2GHz, and below the speed it's currently running (1GHz when throttled down).

Yeah, MediaDirect sounds like a good idea from the start, but I don't see the point in it, if it boots only slightly faster, and doesn't give us an increase in battery life or even let us play divx files. Maybe it's ideal for those who want media centre type functionality, but don't have the media centre os.

 

Hi everyone,

I just ordered Inspiron 9400 with 17" WUXGA...
Then I realized that the display had some pretty bad critics in the version that was used on 9300. Has anything changed in the quality of WUXGA display on 9400? Is anyone using it? What are the experiences?

Thanks!

 

Thei Dell Forum thread showing how to reassign the MediaDirect button is:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfo...ediaexp&message.id=2696&query.id=430264#M2696

Seems to be multiple forum systems on dell.com so it's hard to locate.

 

Fourm:
havent really found the answer beteen these two cards. when it come down to it which one is a better card for overall gamming?

ATI X1600 or the Nividia 7800 GO.

Tryign to decide to go with the Acer 8200 or the Dell E1705 for gamming? Same specs i want but just different cards in them.
Using it mostly for High end flight sims.
Can anybody help me out?

 

At stock speeds they both perform about the same. However, the 7800go overclocks easily - I don't know about the x1600. ATI does support custom resolutions better (like HDTV), and the AVIVO technology is awesome. That said, it all comes down to the games you play. Some games support a certain card better than others (i.e. I think doom 3 is happiest on an nvidia card). I personally like the quality of ATI better. If the x1600 can match the 7800's OC, then I suggest ATI.

 

Hi there,

Looks pretty good. I haven't had any movies on it yet but from what I've seen so far, I am at least satisfied.

Tony.

 

Well I just reformatted my laptop. Everything went really well, the format was easy, and installing the drivers with the resource cd was no problem. Now running smoothly (bloat free), with all drivers installed perfectly!

I ran a pi test, and the results were exactly the same...1:17 to caltulate to 2 million

 

Thanks for the response. How much faster can i over clock it with breing in safe paramaters?

FS2004 and Faclon 4.0 are the two major sims i will be using it for also the mulitasking to.
Thanks

 

I'm not sure what "safe" would be (apart from no OC), but mine runs fine at 350/850 (see my signature). That's about a 35% increase over stock speeds.

If gaming is your main bet, I also suggest the smaller res screen. The 7800 will have a harder time pushing 1920x1200 in games than 1440x900.

FYI, I play FS2004 on my 7800 at highest settings, at 1440x900, with 2xAA,4xAF, and it's as smooth as a freshly oiled baby's bottom...

 

sweet, yea thats waht im looking for.
I will be running it at 1600X1200 for resalution.
As long as i dont get any drag or hick ups i love it.
35% increase thats good since they underclock the card anyhow. With the overclocking does that means its running as quick as the GTX? and faster than the ATI X1600
Thanks

 

No the 7800go will never be as fast as the GTX. Yes, a 7800 at 350/850 is faster than the x1600 at stock (but again, if the x1600 can overclock, then they may still be equal). Note that 1600x1200 has 48% more pixels than 1440x900, therefore I can't say it'll run perfect at that res. Worst case, you may have to turn down an option or two. I'll have to see later how it runs on my 24" at 1920x1200.

 

i hear that the driver support is so much better than ATI when it come down to Nivida cards. does the 7800 share another 256 MB like the ATI card does?

 

No, 256mb dedicated vram only....it rocks though!

 

hi guys.....i just call dell today, and i was told by the courier service that it will be sent by tomorow!!
i am soo happy here

i had see like there are many problems in thr whole 79 page forum (i take almost 2 hours to read it all :S)
hopefully i wont have any trouble of it,especialy i am able to overclock it and get 3dmark 05 up to abt 5.6k
besides, do u guys advise me as a complete noob who never overclock a pc or notebook b4 to try this time?
isis easy or?

oh,another thing is, if dell din give me a copy of windows and driver, hw should am i posible to reinstall everything after i format?

 

btw, i forget which is the best driver to use for 7800 @.@
i remember that the 83.XX will cause blue screen,but which is the best?

the 81.97?or?

 

I'm gonna buy a i9400 (core duo 1,83, 7800go) and the only thing that worries me is battery life. How is it in normal everyday work (web, word, etc)? I'm gonna get it with the 9 cell battery.

I'd thank a fast response, as I want to order it today.

 

APOC,

It is around 2.5-3 hours with screen brightness on 5 (I believe) it is along the lines of the I9300.

 

what will that extra 256MB do for me?

 

hello ebry body...
im from spain and my new inspiron have arrived today to my hands...
someone know some program for the measure of temps?
moyher board monitor is not my notebooks friend, it dont run...
some alternativ
thanks and sorry, my english is very bad...!

 

I would suggest I9kfangui ( http://www.mckenziedev.com/index.php), but it seem to not work on the dual core platform. You could download Notebook Hardware Control and view temps through that. I would think that a new version of I9kfangui will be out in 2 to 3 weeks.

 

Can someone explain these stats to me? I have 1.83 ghz dual core, so why does it say CORE SPEED 997 MHZ??? In the SPECIFICATION it says YONAH 1.83 GHz.. Can someone also explain what L1 Data and Level 2 mean? What is a multiplier as well??

 

The core duo...also has speedstep which downclocks the processor to save battery. You need to get a program to run at 100% clock to get accurate readings.

If you look in your Specification box it tells you your processor type and speed

L1 is the cache in your processor. The Level 2 is your L2 cache which is near the processor, which acts kinda of like ram at 90nm (nano-meters) which is faster than RAM by a long shot.

 

so the fact that its at 997 is normal? I can choose the second proccessor and i get the same exact specs for that one as well.

 

Should be the case.

 

Great thanks for the info.

 

OK, just thought I'd post about the gaming on the i9400. I've hooked it up to a dell 2405fpw with 1920x1200 and have played some games:

The following play very nicely on max quality, 1920x1200:
FS2004, Live For Speed S2, Unreal Tournament 2004,

The following also play nice on max quality, but don't support 1920x1200:
Ultimate Trainz Collection, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Return to Castle Wolfenstein

And these ones support 1920x1200, but need to be dialed back a bit on quality to play smoothly:
Age of Empires 3, Civilization IV, Need For Speed Most Wanted (with tweak), The Sims 2, SimCity 4

 

Hey Garbuckle thanks for the game info post. For these games I assume you are using the 81.97 xtremeforce driver? Any blue screens? Have you got COD2 and if yes how does that run for you (any crashes)....cheers...

 

hei guys!
i just get my dell9400!!
i am soo hapy now!!

the startup is quite slow....loading many programs...@.@
but the shut down is fast....
hm.........

 

forget to mentioned, i did not hear a single sound (except from the speaker ) since i on my windows

although i din put it in any cds, but this is one of the most silent notebook i had seen man!!

 

I've just put a review of my i9400 up:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=41952

Tony.

 

Flames; I'm using the 83.60 drivers at 350/850. I get bad artifacts/graphics lockups with NFS:MW when I turn on AA. Some of the demos for other games don't run right (Xpand Rally, Richard Burns Rally, Colin McRae 05). I may just need to reinstall (I had to reinstall AOE3 because it wouldn't start at first). No, I don't have COD2 (I'm not a fan of military games).

I might try again with the 81.97 drivers, but am hesitant, because I now run with the lid closed, and the 83.60's keep my GPU at 60 degrees on idle.

P.S. The standby works great (shutdown in 4 seconds, startup in 14). I hope it doesn't affect the pc, being in standby instead of shut-down all the time.

 

ya...the shut down is supreme in this pc man!!
but the start up seems slow @.@
it takes quite some time to load all the programs,where i haven realy install anything yet

i din do a clean install after reading those difficulties face when installing dell direct media :S