Advice - XPS 15 - 525m. v. 540m. - Good Deal or Not

Hi everybody, I wanted to get everybody's opinion of whether or not they think this is a good deal:

XPS 15
i7 - 2630 qm
Nvdia GeForce 525m
6 GB Ram
750 HD
Blu-Ray / DVD
Backlit Keyboard
1080p B+RGLED FHD Screen
3 Year Basic Warranty
9-Cell Battery

For $1,282.70.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. But most importantly, I wanted to know whether or not people think it is worth it to pay an extra $100 for the 540m. Other than watching DVDs / Blu-Rays, I suppose the most demanding game I play is Heroes of Might and Magic and other RPGs. Thanks!

 

i do not think it is worth is. I can guarantee your 525 will hit 540m speeds.

 

But the 540 would overclock by a similar amount and so be faster, surely?

 

I have had issues with my 540M graphics card if that means anything to you.

I infact had to get the updated control panel that many people use for overclocking their GPU and set it to downclock to about 80% of the stock factory settings before my games could play without lock up on my laptop.

Its a great laptop for watching movies and surfing the web I love the HD screen. But I had a lower end video card and motherboard on my last laptop I never had so many lock ups and conflicts as I have had with this XPS 15 with the 540M card when it comes to gaming.

Tested all the obvious things when my games (well mainly World of Warcraft) started freezing up the entire laptop, did memory leak tests, ran system monitors to check heat temperatures on CPU and GPU. Finally found it seems to be GPU fail safe shutting off/freezing my machine. Since I lowered the settings on the card I can play my game without freezing up the laptop but still not an optimal solution as I have to lower some of my settings on the game to do this.

Anecdotal evidence is not something to base your decision on but thats my personal experience when gaming with this machine.

 

That doesn't sound very good - or something you should have to accept. Have you spoken to Dell about it?

 

Yes and according to them its the software's issue they only recommend talking to the games developers since they cannot find any problem with my GPU or its operating status. The fact that it turns off/locks up the system is a safety feature that is working as intended according to them.

I have not pushed to get a manager or really escallate my complaint though as I am pretty satisfied with the laptop other than the above issue. I can prob argue my way to a replacement machine but I am not sure that would fix the issue as I am a fairly casual gamer dont know if its worth the time/fight with dell support.

 

Ok cool!

I pushed mine (with benchmark tools) and got the CPU up to 100C and the GPU close to it, and didn't get it to actually die as you have - which you'd expect if what you're seeing is a safety thing. Don't have WoW to try. Does the fan go nuts just before it does it?

Seems odd to me. I'm sure someone else here plays wow and could comment?

EDIT: Sorry to hijack, Janus!

 

I tried getting more feedback on these forums when the problem first occured about 2 months ago but most people here play FPS or RST games here it seems!

No the fan runs smoothly infact as soon as I turn the game on and the GPU takes over I get a nice steady louder hotter heat coming out of the vent which should be normal. When I did my temperature tests before lock up its usually between 66C to 88C but creeps up faster and faster at 20mins to 45mins. Possibly was varying the time it took to lock up based on how cold the room I was in was not sure about that since most of the heat transferr takes place internally.

I am tending to believe the dell reps that it is unique to WOW this game is a memory hog and sucks up more resources than it needs for what it is IMO. I play RIFT also and this other MMO I can over clock safely to play in full graphics settings and have sat and had 2+ hour sessions on that game with zero problems on my XPS 15.

One thing I do love about the Nvida control panel is I can set up profiles for each program/game I run and move the cards settings based on what the game needs save the information and not have to manually do it everytime.

 

No problem, all of this is actually very informative, it's one thing to read reviews and benchmarks, but I wanted to get real-world experience advice on whether the 540m upgrade is worth it. Thanks for everybody's input so far, keep them coming!

 

Thanks for the info, wow, it would suck to pay an extra $100 for a graphics card that does that.