New Vostro Lineup (3350, 3450..)

Well, the speaker is also located on the bottom, near the front. The loudness is decent, but the sound gets easily distorted. Overall quality is poor - OK for voice messaging, etc., but not so much for music. Sorry...

 

Oh, that's a shame. :/ I was expecting more of it.
What about watching shows and movies online (so Hulu and Neftlix and such)? Are you able to hear the sound well and understand what's being said and such?
Thanks.

 

It seems 6630M and 6650M,6730M using the same core and all of them are 1g ddr3 memory. Only difference between them is the core/shader speed. Has anyone tried to use RBE to modify the bios file and overclock the 6630m ?

 

It's a business-class laptop, so speaker quality isn't important. Besides, even better quality laptops speakers still suck, generally speaking. If you want good sound, get good headphones or external speakers.

 

Hi all! I am considering getting Vostro 3550 i5-2410m/6630. Is it possible to manually switch between intel and amd graphics on this laptop? There are folks on dell forums complaining about poor switchable graphics performance IdeaStorm | Update Vostro 3550 AMD 6630/Intel HD 3000 Switchable Drivers
Vostro 3550 with Switchable AMD Radeon HD3550M - Laptop Video Forum - Laptop - Dell Community
Can somebody comment on this please? I am really concerned about it. :/

 

Hello, first post here. I read a bit of this thread prior to my purchase of a Vostro 3350, so I thought I would come back and give some input that will maybe help others.

I went for the basic spec, no backlit keyboard model, with the HD 6490M, 320GB HD and specced the processor up to the i5.

After purchase I installed an extra 4GB of RAM and put in an OCZ Vertex 2 SSD which I had previously been using in my desktop.

First to answer the last question. Yes, it is possible to manually switch between the integrated and discrete graphics adapters. It is not a physical switch however. You choose via a menu whether you want an application to run in either "Power Saving" (HD 3000) or "High Performance" (HD 6490M) modes.

The laptop itself is well made and attractive, there were a few cosmetic blemishes on mine upon arrival. This is annoying but I chose to put up with them.

The screen is better than expected, being bright and usable. Colours are perhaps, a little pale, but the quality far exceeds many other notebook screens I have used and my expectations.

Battery life is great, mine has the eight cell and it's a bit bulky (not sure how I am going to get a sleeve to fit) but that's the price you pay I guess.

Prior to some reports, mine came with a standard 9.5mm 320GB HD, so no problems swapping it out for another.

The wireless reception is poor. I can only get a good signal within about three metres of my router. No chance through walls or floors! My previous laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1525 had no such issues and could pick up a strong signal pretty much anywhere in my home. I will be contacting Dell's support lines to try and get some resolution to this issue when I can bring myself to face call center hell.

Now the contentious issue, the graphics... There is very little appreciable difference between the Intel GMA HD 3000 and the ATI 6490M. For general day to day use, including graphics intensive applications I would suggest sticking with the Intel graphics. Even for those who would like to do some light gaming, I would suggest going with the HD 3000 but upgrading the RAM.

The following graph shows my results in 3DMark03. I have shown results from before and after the upgrade to 8GB RAM. The benchmarks I have included were run on the standard settings and I have graphed just the results which were comparable in this format. Units are FPS.



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As you can see, with 4GB of ram there is an appreciable difference but with 8GB available, the gap is closed considerably.

Whether or not the slight performance increase justifies the large price difference, well, that's all down to the individual, I haven't made my mind up yet...

I also ran 3DMark11 but the results were all but identical.

Well, I hope this will be helpful to some. If anyone has any questions I will try my best to answer them. Thanks.

 

I recently order a 3450, is the ram difficult to install? Did you need yo update bios for it to be recognized? Did you go with Samsung ram which I believe is included in the first 4 gigs? Thanks!

 

I just got a 3550. It's only 3 screws to remove the bottom panel to access the RAM, but it takes quite a bit of prying to get the panel loose (almost feels as though you're going to break it). RAM replacement was super easy. I actually replaced the RAM before I had even fired up the machine for the first time, and just went with whatever I found that was on sale at the time (I believe it was Kingston brand). The computer automatically recognized the new RAM, no issues whatsoever.

 

Great, thanks!

 

Did you check whether the AMD GPU was active with "Performance" mode enabled? My Vostro does not activate the GPU, although I choose the "Performance" mode with some games (Command&Conquer:Generals and SimCity4 for example). I used HWMonitor to checked which GPU is active.
This could also explain, why the 3DMark11 results are the same.