New Dell XPS 2! 1920x1200 screen! - Page 2  

RAID does make a difference, just depends on what you use it for. My compile times and usage of VM's are significantly faster with the two 60 7200's on RAID 0 than what I had with just one (20-30% from my estimates).

It looks nice and has nice specs and benchmarks, but I might wait it out till AMD 64 laptops come out with PCI-E or until the 9860 with EM64T drops in price. Sager has more extras with the 9860 like TV tuners though the battery life on the XPS2 looks nice.

RAID-0 can make a huge difference, actually doubling effective read and write speed. A lot of times on this board, people think and speak in terms of performance only with regard to gaming. And in regard to gaming RAID-0 won't make much difference. But with regard to many other things it does. Looks like I'm leaning towards getting one of those new Dells, though, when the 9300 version is released. Doesn't look like a 4750 upgrade is going to be any time soon, which would have been my other option.

The 9200 was already a great notebook, but now that the XPS 2 has a glossy screen, is faster than the 9860, lighter than the 9860, 2x the battery life, and cheaper when comparably equiped, I can't see why anyone would be buying a 9860 right now.

I don't know about the GeForce 6800 Ultra Go appearing in the 9860. Read the article at anandtech, it basically says that the total heat in the 9860 is too much for a higher performance video card. The XPS2, thanks to the pentium M, can handle the heat generated by a freakishly fast graphics card since the GPU produces way more heat than the CPU. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with that 64-bit stuff, although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the 915pm chipset used in the XPS Gen 2 works with Pentium M's with EM64 technology.

basically the XPS2 is going to attract the serious gamers while people who need their laptop also for computing will probably stick to a P4 processor.

What about the total voltage on the 9860 with a 6800 Ultra and a 3.8Ghz Prescott Processor? Can the 9860 handle both of those energy hogs, and the heat produced like 007 said?

If by computing you mean general use, there is no way in hell that the P4 is going to seriously outperform a P-M. In addition, something tells me that people do not buy notebooks, especially dell notebooks , to do very CPU intensive things. That said, however, I'll probably be buying one.

I mean floating calculation, algebra with huge matrices. For all these calculations, the GPU doesn't really matter. I use an inspiron 5150 p4 3.06 GHz with 1 Gb of ram, when I put my code on a pentium M 1.6 GHz with a 1 Gb of ram, it was way slower. I need a laptop because I use the same computer at home and at work but I have to say that I wish that my laptop was better for games sometimes. May be I'll get the 7620 when it comes out but the XPS2 is not fast enough for me.

so far the 9860 cannot handle the 6800 ultra, it would get too hot.

Well i can tell you why i *was* going to go with the 9860... first, because of EMT64, but then after reading some reviews on 64bit performance, it just wasn't that impressive. And the complete industry move to 64bit will take at least a year, probably 2 anyways.

Second, 9860 allows MUCH more options. 4 ram slots, so i could get 1gb first, then later if i needed it, another gb. iXPS2 only has 2, so i would need to get rid of my current gb, and invest in expensive 1gb sticks. Also things like dual optical drives, RAID0 or dual HDDs, built in webcam, TV-turner. I'm not concern with a laptop weight, so that never bothered me. Multiple HDDs and 2gb ram is nice, but i don't plan on doing RAID anyways, and i was going to get 1gb. So to get a 9860 in case i decide to expand may have been a good idea, but i highly doubt i would have anyways. Webcam... bah,i would never use it. TV-turner, i wasn't going to get internal one anyways.

Another is the 9860 is 1680x1050, while the Dell is 1920x1200. I was worried that that resolution is just too high for a 17" screen (i have 1920x1200 at home on a 24" monitor).

But what finally won me over was the Ultra of course, and Dell's Complete Care. I know discountlaptops has Accidental Coverage, but i'm not familiar with that warranty company... but i have had experience with Dell's CC, and it's absolutely the best thing EVER!

hardcore76,

Have you ever had the chance to use the Dell's CC. If so, please give us the details. Thanks

Wait... all this commotion over a Dell that looks like a Mac?

*hugs 9860 and tries not to laugh*

it seems to be better for games, if you don't play that much you're right to hug your 9860

Only onE problem with Dell....you can't get one now...wait...wait...by the time you can get your hands on an XPS2, the 9860 will smoke it! WAIT AND SEE!!

Maybe if you ran the dell on top of the 9860 while it was at full load

No its faster than 3.4 Ghz P4 in gaming performance. To give you an idea of how fast it is in games, it typically matches an FX 55 desktop chip and we all know those blow away any P4 desktop chip. The P-M's are very good gaming chips but as others have pointed out, they're not as good for 3d rendering. Then again who cares, the XPS2 is a gaming laptop.

Smoke it as in producing the most heat? No doubt there.

Oh, I think I see what yu're getting at. You're probably right, the P4 has smoked the Dothan P-M when they were both in desktop boards being benched in Sandra and such. I still like the P-M more though for laptops.

And Lancelot, unless Sager puts watercooling in their laptops, the 9860 will never have the thermal capacity to smoke the XPS2 in any way but with the heat, as #38 said.

actually, the 9860 will smoke the dell in everything but gaming processor performance. also it would be interesting to see where the benchs r at when it has the Ultra also. the PM is better for memory wise because it has 10 clocks while the P4 6xx has 28. also, if you want to convice yourself that 32 bit is all you will want for the next few years, have at it. its you who will be stuck with it, not us.