First Impressions:
Was a little underwhelmed when first opened the box, in part because it looks like a gray laptop - nothing special. Once hefted out (yes tis a bit on the heavy side) began to realise how solid this thing is. The base is one solid chunk of alloy - built like a tank where is the E1705 has a alloy base this is this is twice as thick. Booted it up and found they had a new installation of Vista Business 64 bit - had a bit of a play then thought time to play with Windows 7 64 bit.
Playing with unit.
OK so Windows 7 installed fine, ran the bench test and received a score of 5.9 - lowest mark was for data transfer rate - and this is with two 120gig 7200 drives in raid 0 - so will need to replace this with two 500 gig 7200rpm drives - which I have ordered, this gives me 1Tb of data storage which is massive - kind of overkill but what the hell.
Benches
OK if you have not checked the spec's this is a pretty well spec'ed unit with the exception of the display
Much prefer 1900 x 1200 so will swap this with my 9400's display which I have already had stripped down and found the inverter screwed into the display bottom with no jewelers driver small enough to detach this (kinda hoping this inverter will power the 1440 x 900 and vis versa).
so spec's are.....................
T9600 - 2.8gig
FX3700 1Gig card
8 gig ram (4 x 2gig 1066 DDR3)
2 x 120 gig (7200 rpm raid 0)
bluetooth
HSPA card (stolen from dell mini9)
AGN wireless card
and that is about it so what does this all mean.............
super pi - 1M 17.192
- 2M 44.54
3D mark 06 - 11231 - bog std no OC running std windows 7 drivers
OK so that's all I have run so far -
Overall:
Well I can confirm it's fast - everything is really snappy, but this may be windows 7 and the 8 gig of ram + raid 0 but this thing is designed for a 64 bit OS period.
In fact the slowest time is waiting for it to boot past the bios - windows starts up pretty darn fast. A bit of overkill for me as I did not really need this beast - brought it second hand from Grays online in Australia paid $2000 - delivered (ausi dollars = $1320US) so was pretty darn cheap.
(edit)
Well have had this now for a few days and can confirm the Dell 9400 display fits this like a glove so is now all up and running on 1900 x 1200 which has made a big difference to me. Just so much nicer with a true high def display. Would love to buy an RBG LED back light model but SWMBO controls the money and she is still not aware that I have purchased this yet!!!!!!
After using this I have found it to be really dam fast - nothing seems to bog it down played Bioshock with everything turned up @ 1900 x 1200 and ran as smooth as silk - don't know the frame rates as there is no test version on this like FEAR but there was absolutely no shudder or slowdown when the action kicked in.
The form factor is the real selling point - I consider the 9400 as just manageable for lugging it and the power supply around, I have gotten lazy and have brought a mini 9 for work (runcore 64gig SSD) just because it's so dam light but I'm now considering swapping over to this. IT must just love me!!!! - possibly won't do this as I think this will become my gaming and general house rig - has the power and 64bit support to keep me out of trouble for another 3 years.
This is really the best unit dell has (Waiting for all the XPS1730 lads to throw rocks
) It's solid with the same form factor as the old XPS1710/9400 the power supply is 150W and this is just slightly larger than the 130W which I am now using (unit says it will run in low power mode) but I have not really seem any problem - was running the 130W when testing Bioshock and the power supply was hot but not as hot as the 90W unit I had was when running the 7950GTX card. I guess the 130W pack can take the extra 20W under peak load, or the throttling back is only just slowing me down.
And the dell 5530 HSPA card works like a charm (thanks Vodafone!!!) am using this while at work to bypass the web filters - great!!!!!
Update (2) 24th May
OK so have had this unit now for around 4 months during this time have run it pretty much on either the beta windows 7 or now on the RC windows 7 (64 bit) OS. This unit is actually amassing for speed and comfort. The keyboard is pretty good, some people have complained about the flex while I admit there is some flex in the keyboard it has not been an issue for me.
The weight of the unit seems OK - but I am only lugging around the 150W brick on the 230W brick, I believe there is now a slimline 210W brick which I may try out. I am actually surprised how cold the unit runs - after running bioshock for 3 hours I peaked at 65Deg C - have installed readyboot to allow unsigned drivers to run which allows Ik8fanGUI to run but don't use it to actually control the fans as the bios seems to have this under pretty good control.
Also finally managed to get the fingerprint scanner to function has been a pain figuring out what drivers will run with windows 7 - so as of right now everything works - except the ability to OC the video card - still haven't cracked that one yet in a 64bit platform.
As far as upgrading is concerned I may change out to the LED RGB display but I think that will be all - the processor improvements are really not enough as the T9600 is a really decent CPU and I will only gain a small advantage moving to a faster processor.
Overall this is a really impressive unit - has great power with performance only just lower than that of the XPS1730 or Alienware 17x (assuming they are fitted with the SLI 8800 or 9800GTX cards) - while the ability to run 16gig ram will future proof this unit for another 2-3 years.
Update (2)
30th September - The unit is incredible, amazingly fast - heat is not an issue have been playing FEAR - the second version, anyway after spending 4 hours gaming with every option on max (res at 1900 x 1200) - the temp's only ever got to 65deg C, am running an 8deg offset on IK8FANgui, but not using it to actually control the fans just keep an eye on things. The idle temps are 55 deg for the GPU and around 30 for the CPU. Is rock steady with those temps, one of these days I'll OC the GPU and see what score I can acheive, but can't find any system which will allow me to OC on windows 7. Even with unsigned drivers it still won't OC may be locked in the bios
Still think this is the best performance system out there, the GPU is close to any current laptops GPU for performance and the ram is upgradable to 16gig, with 8 gig being actually affordable with 4 slots!!!
Update 3 - December 2009
so as you can see have owned the laptop since early 2009, almost 1 year with the 6400 - so to date I have swapped over the old 1440x900 for a CFL 1900x1200 taken from my 9400 and now replaced with my LEB RGB 1900x1200 display - have replaced the old hard drives with two new 500gig 7200 rpm samsung G shock protected HDD's and installed my dell 5530 (taken from my mini 9) am now running win 7 Ultimate 64 bit and to be honest have not looked back - have been playing Crysis & modern warfare 2 both games running at 1900 x 1200 with no problems in the rendering rate or the performance.
Yet this is not my work machine - actually use my 2 gig ram & runcore 64gig supported dell mini 9 as my 10/6 day a week work unit - this is kinda my play unit which I run when I want the bigger screen and gaming.
In my view you can't go past the 6400 - temps have never been a problem and I have not yet bothered about OCing the GPU - there has been no need as the gaming performance has been flawless. Don't evern run IK8FanGUI now as the temps have not actually stressed the GOU. The cooling on the 6400 is rock solid and I'm in Sydney where we have had temps around 40Deg C and Yes I have been gaming without AC running - It was hot dam hot but the laptop was not affected.
in my opinion - you can't go past the 6400 or now the 6500 - yes they are expensive - and they may not hit the performance levels of the 17x but by god they are reliable and they don't overheat or downclock. If you want honest performance then the 6400 is absolutely worth consideration.
It's the final update - 2nd October 2010
OK had this unit now for close to two years and it's still going strong, has a slight rattle in the LHS fan which is a tad annoying. This is the main house computer and does not travel anywhere. It's still as solid as a tank with no damage to anything. Only problem now is I'm loving my M11x which is now making the M6400 redundant, still a great gaming rig nothing will not play on it that I have tried overall a very good unit now getting long in the tooth performance lagging against the alienware and M6500 etc
Still won't be selling as this can still perform extremely well when compared to "new" performance laptops and I would still argue the M3700 is up there against modern GPU's admittedly the 3D mark 06 score now for a real gaming laptop is up around 20k, 11k for a 2 year old unit is still pretty good
OK -
Love:
back-light keys - brilliant
Speed - fast, real fast
cool - yes seems cooler than the 9400 but have yet to really stress the unit so this may not be the case - IK8fanGUI won't install in windows 7 so can't let anyone know the temps, other than to say it's on my lap right now is is only slightly warm.
separate keypad
calculator button - kinda handy need to add something up just press the button
Did I say the back-light keys?????
Form factor - almost identical to XPS1710/E1705
Con's
Heavy - yep is heavy, but not as massive as XPS1730 - which to be honest was the only thing I have against this unit.
Display - Just this unit being being 1440 x 900 - anyone want to swap a LED 1900 x 1200, anyone??????
Overall I'm impressed the unit is really fast, small for the power contained within and not so flashy. Kinda hid's the power contained rather than displaying it to the world.
Was a little underwhelmed when first opened the box, in part because it looks like a gray laptop - nothing special. Once hefted out (yes tis a bit on the heavy side) began to realise how solid this thing is. The base is one solid chunk of alloy - built like a tank where is the E1705 has a alloy base this is this is twice as thick. Booted it up and found they had a new installation of Vista Business 64 bit - had a bit of a play then thought time to play with Windows 7 64 bit.
Playing with unit.
OK so Windows 7 installed fine, ran the bench test and received a score of 5.9 - lowest mark was for data transfer rate - and this is with two 120gig 7200 drives in raid 0 - so will need to replace this with two 500 gig 7200rpm drives - which I have ordered, this gives me 1Tb of data storage which is massive - kind of overkill but what the hell.
Benches
OK if you have not checked the spec's this is a pretty well spec'ed unit with the exception of the display
Much prefer 1900 x 1200 so will swap this with my 9400's display which I have already had stripped down and found the inverter screwed into the display bottom with no jewelers driver small enough to detach this (kinda hoping this inverter will power the 1440 x 900 and vis versa).
so spec's are.....................
T9600 - 2.8gig
FX3700 1Gig card
8 gig ram (4 x 2gig 1066 DDR3)
2 x 120 gig (7200 rpm raid 0)
bluetooth
HSPA card (stolen from dell mini9)
AGN wireless card
and that is about it so what does this all mean.............
super pi - 1M 17.192
- 2M 44.54
3D mark 06 - 11231 - bog std no OC running std windows 7 drivers
OK so that's all I have run so far -
Overall:
Well I can confirm it's fast - everything is really snappy, but this may be windows 7 and the 8 gig of ram + raid 0 but this thing is designed for a 64 bit OS period.
In fact the slowest time is waiting for it to boot past the bios - windows starts up pretty darn fast. A bit of overkill for me as I did not really need this beast - brought it second hand from Grays online in Australia paid $2000 - delivered (ausi dollars = $1320US) so was pretty darn cheap.
(edit)
Well have had this now for a few days and can confirm the Dell 9400 display fits this like a glove so is now all up and running on 1900 x 1200 which has made a big difference to me. Just so much nicer with a true high def display. Would love to buy an RBG LED back light model but SWMBO controls the money and she is still not aware that I have purchased this yet!!!!!!
After using this I have found it to be really dam fast - nothing seems to bog it down played Bioshock with everything turned up @ 1900 x 1200 and ran as smooth as silk - don't know the frame rates as there is no test version on this like FEAR but there was absolutely no shudder or slowdown when the action kicked in.
The form factor is the real selling point - I consider the 9400 as just manageable for lugging it and the power supply around, I have gotten lazy and have brought a mini 9 for work (runcore 64gig SSD) just because it's so dam light but I'm now considering swapping over to this. IT must just love me!!!! - possibly won't do this as I think this will become my gaming and general house rig - has the power and 64bit support to keep me out of trouble for another 3 years.
This is really the best unit dell has (Waiting for all the XPS1730 lads to throw rocks
) It's solid with the same form factor as the old XPS1710/9400 the power supply is 150W and this is just slightly larger than the 130W which I am now using (unit says it will run in low power mode) but I have not really seem any problem - was running the 130W when testing Bioshock and the power supply was hot but not as hot as the 90W unit I had was when running the 7950GTX card. I guess the 130W pack can take the extra 20W under peak load, or the throttling back is only just slowing me down.And the dell 5530 HSPA card works like a charm (thanks Vodafone!!!) am using this while at work to bypass the web filters - great!!!!!
Update (2) 24th May
OK so have had this unit now for around 4 months during this time have run it pretty much on either the beta windows 7 or now on the RC windows 7 (64 bit) OS. This unit is actually amassing for speed and comfort. The keyboard is pretty good, some people have complained about the flex while I admit there is some flex in the keyboard it has not been an issue for me.
The weight of the unit seems OK - but I am only lugging around the 150W brick on the 230W brick, I believe there is now a slimline 210W brick which I may try out. I am actually surprised how cold the unit runs - after running bioshock for 3 hours I peaked at 65Deg C - have installed readyboot to allow unsigned drivers to run which allows Ik8fanGUI to run but don't use it to actually control the fans as the bios seems to have this under pretty good control.
Also finally managed to get the fingerprint scanner to function has been a pain figuring out what drivers will run with windows 7 - so as of right now everything works - except the ability to OC the video card - still haven't cracked that one yet in a 64bit platform.
As far as upgrading is concerned I may change out to the LED RGB display but I think that will be all - the processor improvements are really not enough as the T9600 is a really decent CPU and I will only gain a small advantage moving to a faster processor.
Overall this is a really impressive unit - has great power with performance only just lower than that of the XPS1730 or Alienware 17x (assuming they are fitted with the SLI 8800 or 9800GTX cards) - while the ability to run 16gig ram will future proof this unit for another 2-3 years.
Update (2)
30th September - The unit is incredible, amazingly fast - heat is not an issue have been playing FEAR - the second version, anyway after spending 4 hours gaming with every option on max (res at 1900 x 1200) - the temp's only ever got to 65deg C, am running an 8deg offset on IK8FANgui, but not using it to actually control the fans just keep an eye on things. The idle temps are 55 deg for the GPU and around 30 for the CPU. Is rock steady with those temps, one of these days I'll OC the GPU and see what score I can acheive, but can't find any system which will allow me to OC on windows 7. Even with unsigned drivers it still won't OC may be locked in the bios
Still think this is the best performance system out there, the GPU is close to any current laptops GPU for performance and the ram is upgradable to 16gig, with 8 gig being actually affordable with 4 slots!!!
Update 3 - December 2009
so as you can see have owned the laptop since early 2009, almost 1 year with the 6400 - so to date I have swapped over the old 1440x900 for a CFL 1900x1200 taken from my 9400 and now replaced with my LEB RGB 1900x1200 display - have replaced the old hard drives with two new 500gig 7200 rpm samsung G shock protected HDD's and installed my dell 5530 (taken from my mini 9) am now running win 7 Ultimate 64 bit and to be honest have not looked back - have been playing Crysis & modern warfare 2 both games running at 1900 x 1200 with no problems in the rendering rate or the performance.
Yet this is not my work machine - actually use my 2 gig ram & runcore 64gig supported dell mini 9 as my 10/6 day a week work unit - this is kinda my play unit which I run when I want the bigger screen and gaming.
In my view you can't go past the 6400 - temps have never been a problem and I have not yet bothered about OCing the GPU - there has been no need as the gaming performance has been flawless. Don't evern run IK8FanGUI now as the temps have not actually stressed the GOU. The cooling on the 6400 is rock solid and I'm in Sydney where we have had temps around 40Deg C and Yes I have been gaming without AC running - It was hot dam hot but the laptop was not affected.
in my opinion - you can't go past the 6400 or now the 6500 - yes they are expensive - and they may not hit the performance levels of the 17x but by god they are reliable and they don't overheat or downclock. If you want honest performance then the 6400 is absolutely worth consideration.
It's the final update - 2nd October 2010
OK had this unit now for close to two years and it's still going strong, has a slight rattle in the LHS fan which is a tad annoying. This is the main house computer and does not travel anywhere. It's still as solid as a tank with no damage to anything. Only problem now is I'm loving my M11x which is now making the M6400 redundant, still a great gaming rig nothing will not play on it that I have tried overall a very good unit now getting long in the tooth performance lagging against the alienware and M6500 etc
Still won't be selling as this can still perform extremely well when compared to "new" performance laptops and I would still argue the M3700 is up there against modern GPU's admittedly the 3D mark 06 score now for a real gaming laptop is up around 20k, 11k for a 2 year old unit is still pretty good
OK -
Love:
back-light keys - brilliant
Speed - fast, real fast
cool - yes seems cooler than the 9400 but have yet to really stress the unit so this may not be the case - IK8fanGUI won't install in windows 7 so can't let anyone know the temps, other than to say it's on my lap right now is is only slightly warm.
separate keypad
calculator button - kinda handy need to add something up just press the button
Did I say the back-light keys?????
Form factor - almost identical to XPS1710/E1705
Con's
Heavy - yep is heavy, but not as massive as XPS1730 - which to be honest was the only thing I have against this unit.
Display - Just this unit being being 1440 x 900 - anyone want to swap a LED 1900 x 1200, anyone??????
Overall I'm impressed the unit is really fast, small for the power contained within and not so flashy. Kinda hid's the power contained rather than displaying it to the world.
