Moving from XPS M1530 to XPS 1640

So I currently have a great XPS 1530 with a T9300. Dell was having 25% off over the weekend and I have a EPP code through my company giving me a total of 32% off. So I decided to make the move to the 1640. I was a little frustrated with my 1530 as I could not clock the RAM to 800 eventhough I had purchased it from dell AS AN UPGRADE!! haha. I was disapointed with the graphics card as well, 256mb of ram just isnt enough to get me through the day, I also ordered the 1080p screen which the 8600gt just couldnt really handle even when scrolling media loaded webpages.

I ordered my 1530 originally with the 256gb Samsung SSD. Let me tell you, lightning fast...

My question to you guys is... I ordered the RGBLED 1080p screen but while configuring my hard drive options for the 1640, I was unable to choose the 256gb SSD as an option, so im going to swap the 500gb 7200rpm drive with the SSD. Coupled with the T9900 and the 4670, 4gb ram.. Is this thing going to be a beast or just a little faster?

Here are the specs from my 1530:

Processor
Manufacturer Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz
Clock Speed 2.6GHz
L2 Cache Size 6144
Processor
Clock Speed 2.6GHz
Memory
Available Memory 47.56 %
Page File Size 3766.1Mb
Available Page File 102.4 %
Virtual Memory 7347.2Mb
Available Virtual Memory 75.44 %
Memory Slot 1 [DIMM_A] 2048Mb
Memory Slot 2 [DIMM_B] 2048Mb
Memory
Memory Slot 1 [DIMM_A] 2048Mb
Memory Slot 2 [DIMM_B] 2048Mb
Memory
Memory
Network Card
Adapters Dell Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card #4
Storage
Hardware
Type Description
DVD/CD-ROM Drives MATA DVD+-RW UJ-875S ATA Device
MagicISO Virtual DVD-ROM0000
Disk Drives SAMSUNG SSD PM800 Series 238.4Gb

Display Adapters NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256Mb
IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers Ricoh SD/MMC Host Controller
Ricoh Memory Stick Controller
Ricoh xD-Picture Card Controller
Intel(R) ICH8M Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 2850
IDE Channel
Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller
Keyboards USB Human Interface Device
Standard PS/2 Keyboard
Mice and Other Pointing Devices Logitech MX Revolution Bluetooth Mouse
HID-compliant Bluetooth Mouse
HID-compliant mouse
Dell Touchpad
Monitors Generic PnP Monitor - (Standard monitor types)

Type Description
DVD/CD-ROM Drives MATA DVD+-RW UJ-875S ATA Device
MagicISO Virtual DVD-ROM0000
Disk Drives SAMSUNG SSD PM800 Series 238.4Gb
Garmin nuvi Flash USB Device 1.892Gb
Garmin nuvi SD Card USB Device
Display Adapters NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256Mb
IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers Ricoh SD/MMC Host Controller
Ricoh Memory Stick Controller
Ricoh xD-Picture Card Controller
Intel(R) ICH8M Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 2850
IDE Channel
Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller
Keyboards USB Human Interface Device
Standard PS/2 Keyboard
Mice and Other Pointing Devices Logitech MX Revolution Bluetooth Mouse
HID-compliant Bluetooth Mouse
HID-compliant mouse
Dell Touchpad


Here is the 1640's configuration:

Quantity Item Number Description

1 224-6019 XPS 1640, Intel Core 2 Duo T9900 (3.06GHz/1066MHz FSB/6M L2 Cache)
1 320-8178 Obsidian Black High Gloss Finish XPS 1640
1 311-9487 4GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz 2 Dimm forXPS 1640
1 320-7329 16.0 inch Wide Screen 16:9 1080p FullHD RGBLED LCD W/2.0 MP, XPS 1640
1 330-4424 ATI Mobility RADEON M96XT - 1GB
1 341-8989 500GB 7200RPM Free Fall SensorSeagate Hard Drive
1 420-9319 Microsoft Windows Vista with SP1 Home Premium Edition 64-bit Edition English
1 330-1917 DELL RESOURCE DVD,BACK-UP XPS 1640
1 420-6576 DELL WELCOME,Software Dimension/Inspiron
1 420-9100 Dell Dock Consumer
1 463-2282 Dell Owners Manual installed on your system,click on icon after system set-up to access
1 420-6436 Vista, PC-Restore, Dim/Insp
1 420-7938 Dell Connect 2.1
1 421-0092 DELL-DOWNLOAD-FLAG
1 421-0323 Windows Live Search,Multiple User Interface
1 421-0187 Dell Support Center Software 64 Bit 2.0
1 420-9691 DataSafe Local BackUp 2.0 Basic
1 421-1193 Download Store Links
1 430-2600 Integrated 10/100 Network Card
1 410-1883 ADOBE READER 9.0 MULTI- LANGUAGE
1 313-7054 8X DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive for XPS1640
1 420-9850 Roxio 10.2 DE
1 420-9334 Cyberlink PowerDVD DX 8.2 for DVD
1 313-4783 Integrated High Definition Audio 2.2
1 430-3478 Intel 5100 Wireless-N (1x2) Half Mini-Card
1 410-2090 McAfee Sapphire MUI, 15-Month
1 312-0811 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion P Primary Battery, for XPS 1640
1 420-8051 Microsoft Works 9.0, English For Inspiron
1 950-3338 2 Year Limited Warranty
1 993-3488 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Extended Year(s)
1 993-3487 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year
1 986-0561 Third Party At HomeService, 24x7 TechnicalSupport, 1 Year Extended
1 992-4500 Third Party At HomeService, 24x7 TechnicalSupport, Initial Year
1 902-0941 Warranty Support,1 Year Extended
1 960-8710 Warranty Support,Initial Year
1 412-0360 Soft Contracts - Banctec
1 988-7717 5GB DATASAFE ONLINE 1.1 FOR SDO/DIM/INS/XPS
1 988-0099 To activate your online backupaccount, go to Start, Programs, DataSafe Online
1 420-9519 DATASAFE ONLINE 1.1 5GB
1 330-0171 S and P Drop-in-Box Marcom forDHS Notebooks
1 430-3206 Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Internal (2.0+Enhanced Data Rate)
1 320-0997 Premium FHD WLED Display Obsidian Black, 2.0 MP Webcam
1 420-8223 Dell Video Chat
1 420-9699 Facial Recognition Sensible Vision
1 421-0464 Dell Webcam,1.2
1 330-5122 Intel Centrino 2 Label
1 310-8628 You have chosen a Windows Vista Premium System

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Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks!

 

It might be a little faster due the faster processor, but regular usage probably won't be impacted very much.

Do you play games? If you do, then the 4670 will definitely help. The processor is basically maxed out for games (@ 2.6GHz) unless you play massive RTS games (like SupCom) or Crysis.

It should still be a very good system, but the actual performance will be pretty close when you put the SSD in. Games should have a hefty improvement, though.

~Ibrahim~

 

Really? Even with a FSB thats 200mhz faster, memory thats almost 50% faster and a proc that is 500mhz faster? I would think the gains would be astronomical.

I play Crysis and other graphically intense games, so im hoping for a night and day difference between video cards.

 

ikjadoon is right. The FSB doesnt make any difference, neither does the faster memory.
You will only notice a difference if you play games.

Cheers


by the way, you will notice quite a boost ingames, I went from a Vostro 1500 with a 8600m GT to the Studio XPS with a 4670 ATI

I used to get 15 FSP in Oblivion with everything maxed out, now I get around 35 FPS ( and that is with an even higher resulotion!)

 

Yes, I think you will only notice a difference in games.

By the way, saying the 8600GT can't handle 1080p is nonsense, mine handles 1200p. Many games will even run fine at that resolution including Call of Duty 4, Counter Strike Source, and Sims 3.

 

You must be doing some serious overclocking or something because everything i have seen, benchmarked and experienced has proven to me that the 8600 blows at 1920x1200 resolution. But it could also be because the card wasnt really designed for DX10 natively rather just forced to accept it...

But what your saying is that COD4 and Sims 3 can run it at 1920x1080? I tried COD4 at 1920x1200 and it was like watching the original Simpsons animation. Counter strike doesnt count cause my 386 can run it...

You must have everything turned off because there is no way that it can run at a playable frame rate.

What are your settings? What OS?

 

FSB/memory (the two are interlinked; if one's faster, the other almost always is faster, too) will only increase your memory bandwidth. Not too many programs are needing extra bandwidth. Games and some strenous applications (benchmarks, video encoding) welcome extra bandwidth, but almost everything else you do would run perceptibly at the same speed with even DDR-400.

The processor is a mixed-bag. There will be more applications that can benefit from it versus faster RAM, but, at the same time, few programs can take advantage of such a highly clocked Core 2 Duo. Again, there will be some choice applications that will benefit, but, for example, you won't notice your boot time decrease much, if any.

This is the reason that SSD's are amazing. Hard drives have been the bottleneck of computers for ages. These huge leaps in hard drives are thus very noticeable because traditional hard drives is so slow in comparison. But a 3GHz Core 2 Duo is nearly as fast as 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo in regular computing.

Sometimes even I "worry" about Crysis. I have an E6600 @ 3.5GHz and when I lowered it to 2.6GHz, I didn't see my FPS drop more than 2-3FPS.

I'm not saying this to burst your bubble or make you feel bad about the purchase; I'm just being realistic, at least I think so.

~Ibrahim~

 

Im still trying to grasp the fact that chrusti just said that FSB has no affect on normal use... How wouldnt it? Define normal use? If its just used for browsing the internet you should have your laptop taken away and be given a netbook...

For real performance you need to step outside the gaming world and take a look at large application performance, design, encoding, rendering and editing. I dont play games very often as my time is eaten up doing the things listed above.

FSB, Memory speed and CPU performance are the 3 most critical things inhibiting the majority of systems these days with the exception of hard drives, but that is no bother to me as the SSD is incredible. These are the components that handle your data. You can really feel it in a processor and memory when you are transcoding 1080p MKV's over tversity through a PS3. I tested and found that each part affected one of the other in one way, shape or form.

I design and build ESX boxes as well as many other servers, if you want speed with data transfers and high I/O you need the fastest FSB you can get with the fastest memory you can find. ESX boxes of course benefit much from multi cores but every core is worthless if it cant get its instruction due to bottlenecks.

I guess my regular computing differs from most. I use all my computers to integrate into my home or my life. Home theatre, Home control through Crestron linked through SQL backbones, Hooked up to my cars for logging on the tracks and multistreams through media encoder for security cameras. For all these I expect to see gains from everyday computing in my world.

In all I guess the common misconseption amungst most people is their definition of "Normal Computing"....

 

Well sure you can't max out the settings, but in Source engine games I have everything on High with 2x AA and it runs smooth. COD4, no AA, everything on Normal, Automatic textures. Latest drivers from Nvidia website running Windows 7 x64. No overclocking. Plugged into A/C power. Not to say it can play everything at 1920x1200, but COD4 and Source engine games are no problem. Also BF2 maxed out (except AA) at 1920x1200 with exe command line edit. Forget Crysis though. I think I can only play that at around 1280x800 to 1440x900 with medium settings. I actually haven't bothered installing Crysis on the laptop since it installing Windows 7.

 

Your last sentence grabs it. I don't mean this in a rude way, but the vagueness in the first post only let us assume that you're a regular computer. While netbooks have taken off, many people still use laptops for exactly that purpose: browsing the internet and reading emails. That's our mistake. You'd, however, be the first person I know who uses a laptop for such "heavy" uses. I don't mean this in a bad way, I'm actually kind of interested.

I, however, don't have experience with virtualization or "multistreams through media encoders" so I don't have any first-hand experience of how different FSBs, memory speeds, or CPU frequency affect that. I mean, the only thing I know about virtualization is that you want lots of RAM, lol.

Sorry...maybe someone more experienced than me can reply with some info. Only thing I can tell you: I've never seen FSB speed/memory speed have any discernible impact on any computing applications other than benchmarks and video encoding. But, of course, that doesn't mean there aren't any. I just don't know of any.

~Ibrahim~

 

Hmm interesting. What about audio production? With plenty of plug-ins and tracks etc. I would guess a faster processor with bigger cache would be an advantage. Or not!?!

Is there anywhere where you can read about this? I'm thinking properly researched articles written by people who know their stuff?

 

I actually own the system that you are bout to order... T9900, 4Gigs of Ram, 500 Gb 7200 RPM harddrive and the Full HD RGBLeg screen. Let me tell you from first hand that this thing indeed is a beast. I'm not really that much into games. I ordered the system with the 3670 a month ago, because at that time this was the only GPU that was available. I'll be getting the exact same system with the 4670 GPU by august 28, so the I'll be able to tell you more.

I've had this system for about a month now, and I am really impressed with the performance. I can render a 2 hour full HD (1080P) bluray movie with DD5.1 audio in Adobe Premiere 7 in about 4 to 5 hours! That is totally incredible, as previously it took me up to 2 days!!!

Also, the system remains totally responsive, no matter what you do. While rendering the before mentioned movie, I can browse the internet and go about my day-to-day business as usual. You don't notice that it's working hard. Same goes for running a stress test: While it's running, the system remains totally responsive!

Disadvantages:
Heat, heat and more heat in two different ways:
1. you cannot do challenging stuff with it while it's in your lap (it simply gets too hot)
2. While running a stresstest the system killed itself by overheating and shutting down as a result of that. I've posted elaborately on that in the XPS1640 copper mod thread. Read through that and you'll know a lot more.

In other word: This definately is the machine and config you want, but keep in mind that the T9900 may be a little too feisty for the 1640's internal cooling system. you may want to side-order a laptop cooler with it!

 

I completely hear what youre saying. Thing is, I purchase high end laptops so I can still work with the heavy apps that I use on my workstations (Precision's)... Some of the things I work with cannot effectively be managed by MSTSC nor VNC. So rather than having to sit in my basement or in my office's server room in front of a console, I do the work on here then transfer everything and test!

The beautiful thing about the laptops today is that they so powerful, they really arent that far behind desktop performance especially with the introduction of SLI video cards, SSD's, Quad Core performance and the 3ghz barrier being busted.

Reason I go with Dell's and not some of the ultra highend machines is due to A. I have an EPP code B. The 4 hour business turnaround warranty support and C. Im partial to the XPS line...

Im really anxious to see how the 1640 performs, Dell game me a delivery date of 9/10 but every machine I have ever ordered from them normally comes within a week of requesting.

 

Typically yes, but if you're into that kind of stuff I would imagine you have a XFI card to relieve the stress off the proc. XFI architecture acts the same as a video card does to video just with audio.

Traktor utilizes these cards, the external decks you use hit the proc. If youre working with the built in sound card, everything renders through the cpu.

 

Sweetness. Well, good luck with it and tell us your impressions. Yup: the speed of Dell's business warranty is the sole reason my father uses them almost exclusively in his practice.

Mine is set at a delivery date of 9/14, but I'm hopeful, too!

~Ibrahim~