Dell 17r N7720 SE - user review

@OC-Freak
Could you test some games with OC and without it? Something like Fifa 12, BF3 maybe and what you want I would like to know how many fps OC gets. Thanks ^^

 

That is quite easy. Download nvidiaInspector (from guru3d.com for example), start it --> show overclocking --> confirm --> drag the sliders for core and memory (+135MHz is max for core) +200MHz on the memory actually gives +100MHz actual clockspeed. (shows 2200MHZ, actually is 1100MHz). Click apply clocks & voltage.

There you go!

 

Only games I play is strategy, RPG or MMO, probably won't be a very good test. But I'll see. In general you only gain like 5fps from overclocking in most situations, not a huge deal, there are some exceptions though, some cards responds better to overclocking than others.

 

OK, thank. Overlay, do you recommend this laptop?

 

Depends on price. If it's noticeably cheaper than the competitors (for example asus N76VZ or Samsung 700Z7C), go for it. It has very good screen and decent performance for the money.

But the other two is generally better. Sure all has their weak points which might be a deal breaker (samsung has horrible wifi, asus has horrible touchpad - some minor issues with throttling and popping sounds in speakers etc).

 

just remember, a GT650 card is not cheap, if you fries it


ps...you forgot to mention something..........DELL support is light years better then both Asus (which is completely rubbish) and Samsung.

my friend has N76 and i think the screen is very mediocre (also very bulky in the back).

 

Well, the N76 often use the same matte panel as found in this computer (ChiMei and LG), so the quality should be close, there will always be individual panel differences though.

Edit: I've yet to fry anything, and I've been pushing components a little extra since Pentium 150MHz days. First successful overclock was to get my Pentium 150MHZ to run at 166MHz. Next project was Pentium 2 300MHz @ 450MHz (50% overclock! That's hard to reach nowadays with only air cooling). And so on

But there is always a risk, and you will loose warranty - at least for laptops.

 

So if you OC the 650M and it throttles down, do you lose to OC as well as the boost clock, or just the boost?

 

Did anyone ever do a full video review on this?

 

Both. It drops to 745MHz no matter if you have overclocked it or not.

 

video review OCing nvidia laptop cards ???? there is millions on youtube

i dont know which screen he has on his N76....but i can you tell one thing, the LG Philip on 7720 is better. easily.

 

I am looking to get this 17r SE laptop as it seems to be an excellent deal and fits my needs and wants almost perfectly.

Where I live, I cannot get a mSATA drive factory installed.

I have a reasonably large (128gb) mSATA drive that I'd like to use in this laptop, and since it is so large, I'd like to use it as a boot drive.
The other 2 drives are 1tb each and I'm quite enamored with the idea of being able to back up 1tb of data within my laptop itself so I don't really want to uninstall these drives...


Do all 17R SE laptops have a) the necessary hardware to support a mSATA drive and b) is it possible to use it as a boot drive?

 

I'm not sure, but a: yes seems so, but looks like Dell might have bios limitations to prevent you from using other mSATA drives than those delivered by DELL. b: Not sure, didn't find anything in the BIOS, but I do not have mSATA SSD installed.

 

Temps and GPU clock while playing diablo 3. As you can see temps are fine, but GPU turbo boost is not working, it's stuck at 745MHz.

 

i get great scores in 3dmark11 and very very good gaming flow with cpu at 99%.........thinks its the best way so far. (my gt650 runs fine in 835Mhz that way)

 

..............----------..................

 

DELL support is the best i had (had acer, asus, hp, FS, etc before) and DELL support has always been best....so thats good.

a. if you not buying the 7720 with msata3 inside, you NOT have "tech support (next businesses day)" on the msata3.

b. yes...... you can use your msata to have your win7 installed on it............

If you would like to install Windows on the mSATA SSD, you must first change it to a basic disk otherwise you won't even see it in the list of partitions while the Windows setup intitializes.

To do this:
1- Go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Disk Management
2- Find the mSATA GB SSD, you would know which one it is from the size
3- Right click on the part where it says Disk 0, then choose convert to basic disk, if that option wasn't available, choose convert to Dynamic Disk, then try right clicking again until you see convert to basic disk
4- Once it is a basic disk, you would see it in the partitions list when you are trying to install Windows!

 

Finally pulled the trigger on a 17R SE laptop. I saved $200 on the laptop with these coupons below. If you are looking for the 17R SE laptop and are looking for a great price on them, now is the right time. Check out these coupons and deals below.

1) In the USA, Dell just came out with the $50 promo gift card when you buy a $300 gift card
Dell - Free $50 Gift Card with purchase of $300 Gift Card - Slickdeals.net

2) $150 off coupon for Inspiron 7520 and Inspiron 7720 models with coupon code: VXR688LTJGKQC$
Dell Inspiron 15R Laptop: i7-3612QM 2.1GHz CPU, 8GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, 15.6" (1920x1080) LCD, Radeon HD 7730M, 6-cell, Win 7 Prem, Backlit Keyboard $850 + Free Shipping - Slickdeals.net

 

Thanks for the coupon info! I was on the fence about this one, but the $150 coupon brought the one with the i7 and the mSata SSD down to $950, which was too good a deal to pass up.

Also, Notebookcheck came out with their review today if anyone is curious: Review Dell Inspiron 17R-SE-7720 Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

Exactly. I was already content with just the $50 off for the promo GC but when i read someone who posted teh $150 coupon code in the Slickdeals thread, it was just too hard to pass up and had to get it before the redemption uses are all out.

Make sure you have Dell Advantage so you can get 2 day free shipping vs. the 7 day standard shipping.

 

Oh crap. I already ordered before I knew about Dell Advantage. No biggie probably- I doubt the shipping actually takes 7 days.

 

Grr no Belgian coupon codes for the 17R SE, only for the 15R SE

 

Hi,
I had read all the pages on this laptop and finally I think I will pull the trigger...
A question through, you guys all focused on gaming, I will be more focus on photo editing.
Is there a major difference between the 3D version and non 3D version? I just checked the review on notebookcheck, it is nice but still on the non 3D version.
On past post I have seen that the 3D screen seems to have a better contrast ratio.

Does anyone made some measurement (black point, contrast ration...) on the 3D screen?

 

Thanks for this tutorial!
One question: Are you sure that the mSATA is connected via SATA3 or is it just guessing? Did you test it?

 

i use my laptop for (mostly) 3 things...games, photo viewing/editing and movies.

thats why i went for the True life screen, sure it cost, but for me, it was a easy choice.....
........the standard, matt screen is also good, but this screen have better viewing angles, colours & sharpness.

here you have the exact screen on 7720 (3D true life)....DELL use exact same screen on 7720 as Alienware M17X R3

enjoy....
View Angles - Alienware M17x R3 (3D Screen) - YouTube

 

there are also belgian coupons for the 17R SE. always minimum 5% and once a month 10%

Belgische Dell kortingsbon 2012|Dell.be

 

I have a very strange issue with my inspiron and can't figure out what's causing it.

Every once in a while it will almost freeze, sound gets distorted and picture lags/almost freeze for about 2-3 seconds, and then it's fine again. I'm quite puzzled, I can't see how it should be an hardware issue as the computer is completely stable and never crash. Things I've tried:

*Reinstall OS.
*Do a clean install of OS.
*Checked to make sure it's not the HDD that goes into hibernation.
*Updated drivers.
*Changed and checked power plans.

So I can't see how it's a software issue either, very odd.

What I do on the computer doesn't matter, if I surf the web, listen to music or game, it still happens randomly, could be every 5 mins, could be once in a hr etc.

If anyone got a clue, please share. If not I'll call Dell, but I guess they'll be as puzzled as I am and probably just replace mainboard or something to see if that fix the issue.

 

Reinstall the BIOS or wait for the new one. I never had this.

If this is very common, I would use a Linux live session to see what exactly happens. Ubuntu or Mint should be OK.

What I can tell you is that the past couple of months I had a dozen or so of different laptops. None was a perfect machine.

 

i had exact same issue first day...then after some google looking i found 4 other guys with exact same issue.

erase the awful MCafee antivirus who comes pre-installed............guess one time....the freezes went away for good.
...............(i found out it came in same intervals over & over, and by removing mcafee crap software it worked).....it was because mcafee did something so the cpu jammed a blink of a second in same interval.

i was going to remove crappy mcafee anyway...i use Nod32 (5) of course.

 

Hm never thought of that, I'll give it a go immediately! Was thinking to take benefit of the 15 months prepaid

Edit: So far so good, think you were spot on with mcafee being the devil!

+rep

 

Sometimes I forget I do a clean install on every laptop. Thus I have very few software problems.

I use Comodo Internet Security for years.

 

Well, I did a clean install too, but I did install mcafee afterwards, since the dell came with 15months license. Turned out to be a very bad decision

 

I highly recommend Norton antivirus 2012.I've been using it for a month on my 7720 and it's great.

You can a get a free 6 months license here: Facebook Web Page Dual

 

mcafee is totally bloody CRAP. never liked it before, and will never like it now.
a tip.......use new (or older) Nod32......it use least Ram & CPU of all anti virus software's ive tried (and thats pretty much of all them).......it made for gamers/PC-nerds....he he


a small reply about my experience with Norton.....

long time ago (before i knew) a bit about computers...everyone said...use NORTON...its the best....well, i bought Norton and used it.....after some time i thought my laptop run quite slow/hard..........i started to look it up...well, NORTON was eating my RAM quite much in intervals.

newer NORTON is better....(they have reduced background programs a bit).
....BUT it still WAY to "large" (way to many unnecessary features you NEVER have use for)

a PC with 8GB Ram & i7 handle NORTON fine......but if you have a standard PC....dont use NORTON.
-------------------------------------------------------

ps...AVG is OK for a free software...............but still way beyond ESET, etc.

ever heard about TORRENTs ?????

 

Or just use a free antivirus software like Avira Free or AVG or Avast!. I don't know why you'd pay for anti-virus software to be honest. If you're just smart enough about how you use the internet you'll never get them. I never get viruses and I spend about 10-12 hours a day on a PC. (Edit: I'm a software developer, it's not that I don't have a life)

 

Hi!
I have a question about this notebook.
1. This notebook have SATA II or SATA III ?
2. When computer is in idle mode (without loading), we can turn off the fan to have total silence?
3. Can you take a photo with backlit keyboard ? I would like to see, how does it look.

Greetings!
Sorry for my English...

 

1. what i understand it works with both, because of the latest chip by Intel.
2. no.....but the fan runs VERY rarely under idle load, (right now i sitting here, the fan have not starts during the whole morning)......you can install 3-part software and control if you like. for ex; I8kfanGUI
3. yes i can..upload later..........or just write Backlit Vostro 3750 in youtube and you have many backlit videos (exact same chiclet keyboard as 7720)

 

Crystal disk mark for crucial m4 SSD installed in inspiron 17R SE. Speeds exceeds the specs of 500Mb/s read and 260Mb/s write, which is very good. The SSD even performs slightly better than it did in samsung 700Z7C, don't know why, but I aint complaining!

 

Even the included 1Tb Seagate/Samsung spinpoint 5400rpm HDD performs very good, actually better than any 7200rpm laptop HDD I've seen! Pretty impressive.

Still it's only a fraction as fast as the SSD of course

 

3dmark11 score when boost works, and when it doesn't. As you can see the GPU boost bug will make you loose 10% performance roughly.

 

Has anyone run Microsoft FSX with an i5 CPU on this laptop yet.? I am interested to have your impressions.

 

What SSD do you guys recommend me to use?

 

I just bought a 128 GB Samsung 830 SSD. Its got great reviews on it and I read a lot people recommending that drive and plus I got a pretty good price on it.

 

Perfectly happy with my crucial m4. At least here it's one of the most affordable non-sandforce SSD's. But if samsung were cheaper than crucial m4, I'd go with that.

 

okay.. any read and write speeds?

 

How about jumping one page back in this thread and check my crucial m4 results vs internal HDD results?

 

I know, but I'd like to know Samsung's speed as well

 

KSMB
Thanks for answer!
I found on youtube Backlit Vostro 3750, it seems good

 

Then jump to the first page

Don't worry, it's fast. But most important, see this SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm

 

so let's say I buy the Crucial M4.. and I just bought my 7720, how can I install W7 easily on it? because of some shizzle with the firmware that might needs getting updated...