Intro
I’m always on the lookout for the latest compact, but powerful notebooks. The Studio XPS 13 with its GeForce G210m hybrid SLI graphic cards is a welcomed member to my laptop family.
Specs:
XPS 1340, Intel Core 2 Duo P8800 (2.66GHz/1066MHz FSB/3M L2 Cache)
Merlot Red High Gloss Finish with Leather XPS 1340
4GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz 2 Dimm forXPS 1340
13.3 Inch Wide Screen WXGA WLED Backlit LCD with 1.3 MP Camera, XPS 1340
NVIDIA GeForce N10M-GS 512MB
90 WATT AC ADPTR, NB ST
500GB 7200RPM Free Fall SensorSeagate Hard Drive
8X DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive for XPS1340
Dell Wireless 1510 802.11n Half Mini Card
56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion P Primary Battery
Windows Performance
This review was done using Windows 7 Professional x64
I’ll take it! Impressive CPU and GPU scores
GPU
G210M
According to notebookcheck.com this card can be set with Core Speed: 625MHz and Memory 800MHz. As you can see Dell didn’t downclock it much.
Hybrid SLI is great; simply changing your Windows power scheme adjusts the GPU’s as follows:
(plugged in)
Power Saver: SLI Disabled
Balanced: SLI Enabled
High Performance: SLI Enabled
(battery)
Power Saver: SLI Disabled
Balanced: SLI Disabled after 15 minutes of inactivity.
High Performance: SLI Enabled
CPU
The C2D P8800 2.66GHz automatically scales its frequencies from 1.6GHz /w a 6x multiplier up too 2.6GHz /w a 10x multiplier. This behavior is seen in all power schemes, on AC power or battery.
Benchmarking
On to the good stuff
At the time I ordered, and currently as I write this review, there are no reliable benchmarks on the GeForce G210M. You cant even search for it on furturemark.com, notebookcheck.com only has a guess, and I found nothing in the popular notebook forums.
I’m glad to report the G210M performs extreamly well! Stock setting and my 3DMark06 is 4751.
(lol its labeled as Generic VGA)
And with a push: 5231!
Now that’s hot, and on a 13” notebook. It’s only 10% lower then the GT 240M, the top “performance” notebook GPU according to NVIDIA
I’ve read other XPS 13 reviews with the GeForce 9500M and a common complaint was Hybrid SLI did not give a significant performance boost when gaming. The G210M certainly does.
Crysis is still a GPU killing game; I used their GPU benchmark (@1280x720) with the following results.
9400M G – SLI disabled: Max: 34.92 Min: 17.15 Average: 25.34 FPS
G210M – SLI enabled: Max: 61.87 Min: 29.60 Average: 43.02 FPS
That’s a 70% performance increase with a real game example!
Conclusion
If you want a small notebook with high performance 3D gaming capability the Studio XPS13 is your next laptop!
cheers ...
Was that the leather trim I saw in the second photo? I am so tempted to buy one of these. I love small wanted a 13 but my 14 at the time had better GPU.
+rep!
Thanks
Can you do me a favor and check if the Ethernet works correctly after the system resumes from sleep/standby?
When mine wakes, the ethernet does not work. Ever after repairing the connection, disabling/enabling the adapter, uninstalling the driver, the ethernet will not work. It will work beautifully once again after a system restart. Another user reported the same issue.
Thanks in advance.
Great review. I'm planning to buy the same laptop with the same configuration within the next few days (only black, not red... the red is beautiful, just too much attention :P; WXGA screen, smaller hard drive/same speed). Anyway... there are some questions and I'd really appreciate it if you could answer them:
1) I'm not a big gamer, but I do like playing occasionally. Big fan of COD 4 and the NFS series. (Can't wait to try Shift, since my current laptop is a piece of crap) You think I'll face problems with the above mentioned games? Also, while playing the above games... do I HAVE to use a cooler? (VERY tight budget) I'm going to use a desk while playing anyway. My only worry is something going wrong as a result of too much heat
2) In future, once the G210m becomes outdated (hopefully not soon), can I replace it with a better card? Is this possible?
3) Since I'm getting almost the same model, any particular problems? something I should know about?
Thanks!
P.S. I'm not a computer geek, so I apologize if I said something that didn't make any sense.