Dell 17r N7720 SE - user review

LE:

Top resume

Pros:

- good package for the money:

» big enough FHD screen for a lot of activities, power to match from i7-3610QM processor (6M Cache, up to 3.30 GHz) and nVIDIA GT 650M 2GB DDR5,
» up to 16GB RAM,
» 7200rpm HDD,
» 2 drives capable and one mSATA cache, all with easy access,
» 4x USB 3.0 (one is PowerShare USB to charge your phone without starting the laptop),
» HDMI,
» WIDI,
» card reader,
» illuminated keyboard and so on;

- well built;
- good cooling system even when room temperature is above 30°C (86°F);
- Optimus active;
- screen well above average;
- speakers well above average;
- good battery life for a 6 cell.


Cons:

- touchpad could have been better;
- pad's buttons not so good;
- Space key not so good;
- not lap friendly;
- a bit of a software chaos from Dell's site;
- no ExpressCard;
- no FireWire;
- no Gigabit.


As it turns out I have little time for this, but let's see how it goes. A promise is a promise.

Since English is not my native language (I know, it's not an excuse), I'm sorry for any mistakes you will find.


I will skip the product pictures in here, most of you know how it looks any way. Maybe over the week-end I'll shoot some hi-res stuff and post it.

Let's see how this middle range workstation/entertaiment/gaming laptop performs.

All the test you will see here are an average choice with no special tweaks and programs running normal. Room temperature was +30°C, quite hot. I did this to show a normal behaviour, it's not about scoring big. I don't care about that.

Case

I had Inspiron and XPS Dell laptops before, I have an idea about build quality on both. I've been looking at 7720 quite a bit. I find it very well built.

Feels solid, it's not bulky, cooling seems to do a decent job, does not get very hot, to flex the keyboard you need to apply unnecessary pressure.

The aluminium part is only the chassis and the hinges from what I could find. It's not all aluminium itself, but mostly very good plastic.

Palmrest (and other areas, but this matters the most I think) is coated with some soft of rubber. It's pleasant to touch and I hope it will not wear out in time. Fingerprints are not all gone, but it's far from some laptops that drive me crazy with this.

At a total weight of around 4kg (the laptop has about 3.4kg), I find it very close to 15" ones, so this is not an issue if you want to carry one around.

Well, if you put it right next to the 15" and pick them both, it feels big, but if you just pick this one up, it's OK.

Is it portable? I'd say it is. As portable as carrying few kg with you can be anyway. Sometimes I find even my phone to be quite heavy.

Keyboard

It has num pad and mine is backlit (with control in 2 stages or off). I don't find it very noisy, but not dead quiet either. It is in between. I don't need to apply much preassure and I find the layout very easy to use. I hardly miss letters (I hope ). It is one keyboard I like.

Touchpad

The touchpad is big, but I don't find it very easy to use. There is too much friction. Buttons are very noisy, very noisy (not a typo) and I need to apply too much pressure for them to work. No, I do not like it at all. One might say there is a feature in this since the buttons are very wide and when you push close to the middle zone they make noise, but toward extrems they tend to get quiet. I find myself pushing the middle every time.

Speakers

I have a 2.1 set-up Skullcandy speakers. I have tested them with Melody Gardot and Pink Martini (stuff I like) using PotPlayer.

Clean rich sound up to 70-80%, I don't think they can do full volume with best quality possible. At this rate there is plenty of sound to fill a normal room and raise your voice a little for others to hear you.

Do they beat the JBLs? No.

Display

I have seen a report for this already with a Chi Mei display in a 7720 SE. But mine is different.

I have the LGD02DA panel.



From what I could find out, this panel is used in the latest Alienware 17", with ATi 7970, as glossy. Mine is not glossy. I have tested it and it behaves like a matte one. I think on Dell it might have a non-reflective coating of some sort. On notebookcheck they said this was the biggest problem with it on AW, the lack of a non-reflective surface.

It is almost sRGB. It also passed Lagom's test for sRGB, almost spot on.



But like I said before (in another topic, not here), in some areas it will go over sRGB space. So this has a decent gamut, not a common thing among non-wide gamut laptops.

For photo editing in sRGB space it will work. I do a bit of this myself.

Colors are good, contrast is good, viewing angles are OK, brightness is more than enough. I keep mine at under half and it's perfect indoors.

I have tried to find some info on Chi Mei one, to compare, but with no luck. All I got was a parallel between similar products and it seems like the CM ones have less gamut and contrast. But until I have a positive confirmation on the exact model, it's hard to say how it really performs. From the Lagom report some one posted, things tend to look like stated. That is all I have right now.

Someone asked if the letters are small. This is the UK Dell site under IE9, zoom 100%, full screen.



For me there is no effort to see very well.

LE:

If you have screen flickr when using the battery, this looks like the solution for it.

If do not want to entirely disable it, you could try using a setting closer to Maximum quality until the flickring is not an issue anymore. I was able to get a good balance around middle.




Processor

3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3610QM processor (6M Cache, up to 3.30 GHz)

LE:

Turbo frequency

3300 MHz (1 core)
3200 MHz (2 cores)
3100 MHz (3 or 4 cores)

All that was tested was the stability of this, pushing CPU and GPU hard will hit +90°C.

This is a very unlikely scenario for both of them, but it's good to know. Normal temps are much lower.



I guess the performance itself does not matter that much, should be OK for most tasks.

A real life scenario (with quite a few things working) looks like this:



It is for you to compare, I don't care that much about it.

Memory

I have 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz auto-overclocking (no bios configuration required) modules. Yes, you can use 16GB of RAM. I do not know if any memory will do, I only had these.



They have been tested quite a lot, system is stable. They work.

Drives

System drive is a 128 GB Samsung 830 Series SSD with Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64bit on it.

As you may know, you can use 2 x 2.5" drives (even in RAID) and one mSATA cache.

What you might not know is that it was impossible to just put the SSD in and get to work. The unit had only the Seagate in it. The Seagate had to be moved to the empty bay and replaced with the SSD for the laptop to boot and work OK. Boot order did nothing.

mSATA was not tested since I find it useless in this set-up.

With all my programs on it, Boot takes under 10s and Shut down under 5s. These are the only numbers I have. To be honest, I don't care for tests that much. If it runs well, does it matter if it's 200 or 500 writing speed? Do I really need that much? No.

But I did some tests for you. Again, this is real use scenario with other things running.



Write not supported. I did not let it end, soooory, it's more than OK for me.

Almost anything is instant. I went for Samsung since they are the most reliable ones I've seen. Not that fast, but will work good in time.

Things I did to protect the SSD:
- No Page file - I know some say it does not matter, but I don't need it. If i'll get a BSOD from this, I'll consider 1GB for it.
- No Super fetch.
- No Defragmentation.
- No Indexing.
- No power off for it, even when on battery.
- No System restore.
Most of the above can be done by Samsung Magician, a very handy utility.

Storage drive is a Seagate 750 GB 7200rpm HDD. Very nice unit.

Read



Write not supported.

Optical drive is one WORD THE FORUM KEEPS DELETING DVD+-RW UJ8C1, noisy as hell when I put my Windows DVD in it. But should be a decent drive in time, with no optical failure.

Graphics

Dell has Optimus active and seems to work OK. Almost OK anyway.

For example 3DMark Vantage only worked with option "Run with ..." or it would go non-responsive in the middle of the test. And I did that a lot of times just to be sure.

Drivers used are from Dell.

The first card is Intel HD 4000.



Nothing much to say here.

The second is the nVIDIA GT 650M 2 GB DDR5. Seems like it has auto-OC, but no app I had ever got anything above base 745Mhz.



3DMARK 11



3DMARK VANTAGE



The GPU results are average for 650M. The CPU score is a bit low I'm afraid.

Some of you want the Windows scores, so here they are.



Gaming

I do not have BF3 or Skyrim HD.

I have The Witcher2 and did a little run on it. Works well, maybe too well or I am missing something since this is my first play ever. I know nothing about it. I set it to 1080 High spec, I get low fps, but the game runs just perfect. Hm.. Quality is very good.

That's all I have right now. I'll post some feed back on more games later if I have the time for it.

Noise

I find noise level to be OK even under high demand. On normal use I barely hear it. I do not have anything to measure, so it's a subjective matter.

Temperature

Under normal load, palmrest on the left gets a little warm, but barely. On the right things tend to stay cooler.

Under heavy load, everything starts heating up. It's not unpleasant, but some might not like it.

I think the cooling system works well for this kind of machine.

Lap usage might not be the best idea or might not be even possible since the under left will get quite warm under heavy load.

This is quite common with the type of cooling used. laptops should have a middle back exhaust and everything built around that.

Battery life

I have a 6 cell Sanyo battery.

Software used was BatteryBar.

One thing I could not test was the wireless. I do not have one. Using broadband cable with screen 100% I got about 3-3.5h, but it's not really something to consider. Time may vary a lot from user to user.

Under heavy load, battery will only last for about 1h.

Software problems

About the wireless. Dell does not have a driver for it. On my laptop I should have Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 2230 Card (802.11n + BT 4.0).

On Dell driver options, there is none for this. Windows 7 does not recognize it as well.

I got the driver from Intel, for that card and it worked or at least I see some connections in my area now. I can't test it.



In fact there is nothing about 2230 in any network driver for N7720. Maybe Dell can clear this up.

LE: USB problem and custom button functions solved, just driver issues.


This is just about it. I hope it will help people make a choice. I also had an Asus G55VW in mind, but I like this more.

LE:

A few more test for you. Do keep in mind that they are done in real usage situations. If you close everything, you might get higher scores. Remember I have changed the RAM completly, please read above about it.

To compare use AIDA64 2.50.2000.

 

Very nice review!

Only thing I'd say is that some of your benchmark scores do seem particularly low - On a similar specced 17r SE I just ran cinebench and while the CPU score was similar (6.04), I got over 40 fps on OpenGL.

All my 3DMark GPU scores were about 5-10% higher too, except the 3DMark Vantage score seems very low too (I got about 50% higher).

Did you have background stuff running for some of these tests?

 

USB problem solved with a driver from other files in Dell drivers.
This one Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

 

Indeed, very very nice review. Just awaiting mine also so i can do the same.

 

i ordered one today. PS...(easily)....go for the highest configuration.....(the one with TRUE LIFE 3D screen)......its way better then the WLED screen. (my friend has the AG (anti glare) WLED 1080p without true life and its good, but not very good). colours & sharpness is way better on the 3G true life screen.

i put a full photo review when its arrive.........

spec: (Price: £.1100 = 12000 SEK)
---------------------------------------
1 N0517S20 9.592,00 9.592,00 SR
Inspiron 7720 Basee 1 SR
Processor : Intel Core i7-3610 (up to 3.3 GHz) 1 SR
Display : 17.3in 3D Full High Definition (1080p) LED Display
with TrueLife
1 SR
LCD Back Cover : Aluminium 3D 1 SR
Ship Accessory : EMEA1 MUI Docs - Nordics (Eng, Swe, Fin,
Dan, Nor)
1 SR
Resource DVD : Inspiron 7720 Diagnostics and Drivers 1 SR
Memory : 8192MB (2x4096) 1600MHz DDR3 1 SR
Hard Drive : 750GB Serial ATA (7200RPM) 1 SR
Hard Drive : 750GB Serial ATA (7200RPM) 1 SR
32

 

I saw that. I'll try to re-run them with as much programs off as I can and see what happens.

What about Witcher 2? Does the game changes anything to keep it going even in low fps? I know nothing about how this game works.

I don't have that option here

Thank you! I wonder how they compare.

 

I think he refers to the TRUE LIFE 3D screen, the optional screen... which i obviously didn't order as gaming with 3D glasses on a 17 inch monitor for me is kinda not a go for.

The Corsair Force GT is what i will be adding in the 2nd drive bay, and i will try to get the mSata 32gb drive only to cache things from the 1TB 5400 drive and let the Main OS on the SSD. Will see once i receive the laptop.

And i would say also that your benchmarks for the graphics card are off... i had an Alienware M11x with an nvidia 335 GT and an i7-640UM and it ran comparable benchmarks. It was a 2 year old laptop... and this new 17R SE has a way better CPU and GPU... so it should run way better than what you did.

 

So, it should be moore like this. It's possible.

I did took some middle values like I said, but not by that much. Programs off and I got the above.

But those things will always run anyway and numbers in tests are not really my thing. If something does not run OK, then I try to make it work by closing stuff and so on.

 

@c-man...strange you should have the option for true life 3d screen

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@Rassal..............(i did not buy the 3d glasses, glasses is optional)...i just bought the true life 3d screen.


why did you not bought the true life screen ??...its both sharper & have better colour rendition. (the anti glare wled is good, but not super-good when it comes to gaming/movies)

 

Where I live we can not customize any laptop. We must do that after purchase. I'm not going to change the panel on mine. Screen is OK for me.

OK, Max Payne 3 works. I get a decent fps in HD on high quality.

 

Thanks a lot for writing that review!

Could you maybe take some photos of the screen, if possible with another screen besides it? just to compare.
how do you feel the screen yourself? "ok" doesn't sound very convinced

Dell made some special offers today, I could now get the 15R for 40 Euros less than the 17R (normally the 15R costs 20 Euros more than the 17R), which really made me re-consider my decision....
a better screen is the only reason I'd go for the 17R.

thanks in advance.

 

C-man.....JUST WAIT after Nvidia has release their new KePler gt650 drivers. It will increase the FPS with ~10%. THE GT650 is a bit to new yet. New drivers will make this GPU even better then the Gtx 560. No doubt about it.

C-man.....JUST WAIT until Nvidia release their new KePler gt650 drivers. It will easily increase the FPS with ~10%. THE GT650 is a bit to new yet. New drivers will make this GPU even better then the Gtx 560. No doubt about it.

 

I didn't get the 3D screen, because here in Canada, it was 200$ for that option, and i didn't needed it...

 

That's strange. I found 15r cheaper, but just barely not to get the 17r.

If you want to know more about the panel, my panel, read this Alienware M17x R4 Notebook Review - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

All I need it to have is very close sRGB colors, good angles, brightness, contrast, matte. And mine has all of these. That is about it.

Do consider there are other panels used, not only this LG.

 

thank you!

of course, the cheapest version of the 15R is also cheaper than the cheapest 17R, but I defenitely want a FHD Panel, and the cheapest FHD in the 15R includes an i7, so... it's a bit more expensive (15R: 764 EUR, 17R w/i5: 746 EUR)
it would be 719 EUR (i7, FHD 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD) for the 15R and 764 EUR (i7, FHD, 6GB RAM, 1TB HDD) for the 17R.
[without discount: 849 and 899 EUR]

anyway, Dell took away that discount of 50 EUR today, although I still got it in the morning, saying "valid until July 5 2012"... I'm trying to contact them about this now....
and as everybody tells me to go for the 17R, I'll just do that

 

I found this problem http://forum.notebookreview.com/8422568-post26.html

I have it and now at least I know what the problem is and how to fix it if needed. It seems to work.

@Ambicja - good luck!

 

thanks but I didn't get it back
just i5 then

reading that, it sounds like the laptop will do the opposite of saving energy... if I have that problem too, I'll try finding a different way to fix it...

 

I have updated the first post.

I found a middle ground for this problem, after doing some tests.

Mine works well with the Display Power Saving Technology setting like this:

 

Im so waiting to pick up the call from DHL that my new super sweet 17R SE is coming ( one week still).

 

That's great. I think this is one of the best choices right now.

I am impressed with the quality of the sound over the headphones. And looks like there is plenty of power left.

 

The million dollar questiom is (still) how good does BF3 1080p, medium settings or MW3 1080p high settings running with this rig.

 

I do not have any of these. Witcher 2 and Max Payne 3 both play well. Maybe, just maybe I'll be able to find BF3. I'll see what I can do.

Till then, some more tests in the first post.

 

I'm very interested in this laptop. It seems to have everything I want:
- GT 650M 2GB GDDR5 (not DDR3!)
- Option for i5-3210M. I do not care too much about quad core, but I'm not going to turn a laptop with the i7-3610QM down if it's cheap of course.
- 2x 2.5" SSD/HDD slot. Perfect. Chances are I will get a cheaper configuration with only 1 HDD, but then I could buy a SSD, move it to the first bay and reinstall Windows 7 on it.
- Full HD screen, nice colors
- 17,3 inch
- No super crazy temperatures/noise
- No really bad flaws
- Decent price!

The GT 650M, certainly the GDDR5 version, is a very capable GPU. The GTX 660M is barely 10% faster. In some games you won't see any difference. If you say the Witcher 2 and Max Payne 3 both play well, that is a good sign. It will probably run all games (maybe not on max settings, but who cares).

(Dumb) question: Is it possible to replace the RAM?
(Dumb) question #2: In the different configurations it says the following about the GPU
2 GB nVidia GeForce GT 650M 90W (for the cheaper i5 configurations)
2 GB nVidia GeForce GT 650M 230W (for the more expensive i7 configurations)
What does that mean? I guess it has something to do with dual/quad core?

 

After some rather, erm, 'interesting', troubleshooting involving a re-flash of the bios, I've been experimenting with a little overclocking of the 7720.

I'm still testing, but it seems that you can indeed stably replicate the performance of a GTX660M (3DMark11 Overall P2533 and GPU P2306) by overclocking the GPU so it hits 920MHz after boost (830MHz before boost).

3DMark results scale closely with core clock speed.

Increasing memory speed seems to have little effect (about 0.4% performance increase for a 5% clock increase).

Temperature-wise, under burn-in conditions, you hit 85C after 10 minutes at 900MHz and 6.5 minutes at 920MHz (which gives you the 660M-like performance).

Tomorrow I'll see how things go above +85...

 

Yes, you can, i read that you can install up to 16gb on it, in a with 2 SODIMM of 8GB each.

I guess it refers to the power supply that you will get with your laptop, if you get the i5 the power supply will be a 90w, and with the i7 it would be a 230w.

I read somewhere that there is 3 type of power supply, 90w, 120w and 230w.

 

hello, i just received my n7720 today as well and learning it..just wondering how does one access the 32gb msata hd?? i dont see it but on my dell order it says it was shipped with it

 

Rassal. Thats not right, there is just 2 different chargers. 90w (pa-10) or 130w (pa-13). i7 rig uses pa-13 and i5 rig uses pa-10

Its the same on older xps vs inspiron (130w vs 90w)


@doulik3..... Either you install Everest (there you see all your hardware).

The32gb ssd(msata) is for the startup. Therefore should Windows lays on that HD (its most logic)

 

I think I was the first to put 16GB on 7720. In my original post I wrote what mems I have. At the end of it you will find some mem test for them.

It is very easy to replace RAM. BUT it only has 2 slots for it so you need 8GB modules to reach 16. Dell does not support 16GB officially.

Could be the need for i7 juice.

Some details on this please. Programs used? At some point it should reduce values to keep temps down.

 

Use for example 2 dvd cases under the back of the laptop. Its increase the air flow way better

And if you want to monitor your temps(again) Everest do that for you

A little tips for you OCing people. Be really carefully with OCing your mobile GPUs. I have been OCing all my Dell laptops and i have also fried 2 cards which result in quite expensive replacing. Its not just higher temps you get, you also get higher Current which after some months, mostly result in weaker circuitry on the chip.

 

The MBP 650M comes already clocked at 900MHz, so I'm fairly sure that you can safely take the card up to that level or maybe a little bit higher. You're absolutely right that it's going to fry the thing at some speed / duration.

Using the Kombustor burn-in test the default 835 MHz clocking pretty much stabilises at 84-85C in the 7720. Coincidentally, 85C is also the temperature either the GPU or the burn-in program (I haven't verified which yet) begins to reduce the GPU load slightly. Of course, most applications don't stretch the GPU this much, but it does suggest there's not much point doing a massive overclock in this model as the internal fan can't handle much more.

In terms of programs, I've successfully used Nvidia Inspector and MSI Afterburner. They'll take you up to a maximum +135, which quite frankly is probably more than you want for anything other than vanity benchmark scores. Realistically, you can probably only expect to safely get a 10% performance increase.

I'm currently undecided whether to leave the card at the default 835 MHz or go for a 900-920 MHz overclock.

 

Hehe.... Why do you want/need to overclock your g650? Its really good enough as it is

 

Talking of Vanity Scores, using a +135MHz oc (970MHz) and +200 on the memory I got the following results:

3D Vantage P11411
3D Vantage GPU P9873
3D Mark11 Overall P2652
3D Mark11 GPU P2417

This is as high as I'm going to take it, and puts it on a par with a 570M. I'm going to play a few games on it now at 900MHz and see how hot it gets...

 

I think I've said it before. OC is plan B in case one ever want some extra fps to play a game. I do not recommend keeping the card OC if unnecessary. 650 is a 660, it will perform the task. The gaming I've done so far never got the 650 above 65°C I think, with room temperature at +30°C. There should be room for some improvement if needed.

I was just curious what programs were used in general.

 

You're absolutely right it really is a sweet card. Even with a small problem that locked it at the base 745 frequency (I think a hard drive firmware upgrade might have somehow locked the vbios) it was fast enough for everything I've thrown at it. In all likelihood once I've finished 'playing' with it I'll just return it to default, at least until I find something where the extra 10% would make all the differenec.

 

I get a stock of +2100 in 3DMark 11.

With Vantage I got some problems. It won't run if started in a normal way, only works if I do Run with 650. Also CPU score looks very low on my Vantage, beats me why.

What drivers do you use?

 

OK, so I originally got overall P2300, then something 'happened' that prevented the boost working, so I started getting P2050. I monitored the GPU clock using GPU-Z to discover this problem. The solution, if this is also happening to yours, is to reflash the bios with the 'same' version from the dell site (A01). While troubleshooting, I also upgraded to the 304.79 drivers, these didn't significantly affect benchmarks though.

CPU-wise, you should be getting around 7500 in '11' and 21500 in Vantage. Make sure you close as many running processes as possible before running. I'd guess it's possible AV software may be interfering too - I uninstalled McAffee and replaced with Microsoft's free one.

 

niblet........what do you mean with "the base 745 frequency ??????


and like i said before........soon Nvidia will release their new Kepler 650m drivers which will make quite big difference



I HOPE IM NOT HAVE TO REMIND EVERYBODY TO MAKE A CLEAN WINDOWS INSTALL (first time you get your new laptop....otherwise your blootware is not erased (it doesn't matter if your erase it under "remove programs"...it still remains)

 

Sorry, the 'base' speed of the 650M is 745MHz, it just boosts up to 835MHz.

 

aahh...it normally boost to 900mhz ??? or ???


Core Speed * 735 - 850 MHz
Shader Speed * 735 - 850 MHz
Memory Speed * 900 MHz
..........................................thats the clock for gt650m

 

The GDDR5 version has a core speed of 745MHz and boosts to 835MHz under load. Memory seems to be 2000 MHz. Essentially, it is an underclocked, undervolted 660M. (Base clock 835MHz, slightly higher voltage, 5W higher TDP)

The DDR3 version core speed starts at 835MHz, the same as the 660M, but I don't know what it boosts to. The memory is a lot slower though.

Basically, it looks like the GDDR5 650M is actually 'underclocked' by Nvidia to fit it into a lower TDP since the GDDR5 takes more power than DDR3. Whether they are also lower-binned chips, so might struggle at the 'normal' speed, or simply just underclocked is another matter.

 

I have read about this before. Could be 1 of 3 things:

1. A protection in vBIOS if you try to OC, at some point it will enter a safe mode of some sort and stick with it;
2. A bug somewhere, maybe still in vBIOS as even if safe mode is triggered, it should perform normal after a restart;
3. Driver problem.

Since everything is so new, we have to wait and see what happens and if someone will fix it.

I know some guys got around 2900-3000 out of 650. The card itself can do it.

From my tests, 650 will top at 91°C and start down clock at that point (the stock will go from 835 to 790, I did not see it go any lower).

If you can keep it under 90, you can OC it nicely.

In games I see it tops around 65°C. But maybe I did not play that much. In fact I just did it for ~30min. to see how it works.

 

Where can you see the panel name in the laptop?

 

Has anyone installed Win 7 from a USB 3 flash drive? For some reason my 17R SE either hangs or does not work properly with USB 3.0 boot devices e.g. Win 7 setup, Ghost System Recovery. The problems only occur at startup, once into Win 7, they work as expected.

 

Please use this program EnTech Taiwan | Utilities | Monitor Asset Manager, I see it is the fastest.

Or if you already have AIDA64, info is under Display/Monitor section.

I have tried it and it does not work. I guess it's due to the lack of USB3 driver or I don't know. I had a bit of trouble with that driver even in W7.

 

Thank you! Mine is like yours

 

And how do you like it?

I got tired after gaming for about 45min. to test some possible settings on different screen resolutions.

I was happy with this:


View image in full size

Is it good, is it bad ... I have no idea.

It got my 650M working real hard. First time I see it reaching 80°C and staying there. Room temp 32°C.

Maybe some settings can go higher, I've stopped here. Feels like a nice balance. With every setting going up, temperature goes up as well.

You guys tell me how this looks.

PS. On my machine FRAPS does not work very well and keeps crashing my driver. I have tried both Dell's and Nvidia's drivers.

 

thank you............thats really nice to see.

ps....turn off MSAA and set effects to medium (then just overall quality to high)......better fps, stunning image quality

ps....did you play BF3 with OCing ????


he he he, i love it.....we are owner of $1000 Inspiron laptops and still beats both Xps & Envy Rigs in gaming........WOW

 

No OC, you can see on the right window in runs at 835. Why OC if it runs OK.

Like this?



Feels kinda strange, don't know why. I was happy with my original setting. But I'll give it a try.

 

Splendid.....( i didnt notice that image before , thats why i asked)

MSAA eats fps bigtime, thats why i told you so. Just use the settings you like yourself,Gt650 is great in shader tight games so its no problems

 

What was the average FPS at that resolution/settings in BF3?