Dell Studio 1555 (15.6" 720p) and gaming

Hiya, how many of you have used this laptop to play fairly demanding games like Counter-Strike Source or Call of Duty 4 at 720p? Have you had any issues with it?

I recently returned a refurbished Studio 1555 because I was unhappy with the severe screen tearing issues I experienced. I know the refresh rate of the monitor is only 60 Hz, but I've used a 60 Hz screen before and never had I witnessed screen tearing so bad. At one point I turned on V-Sync in CS: Source, and my FPS fell to 30. With a 60 Hz screen, the lowest it should go is 60 FPS.

I'm currently looking at other Dell Studios and before I buy one I want to certify that it was just a faulty screen that I received with the laptop. Your feedback would be much appreciated.

 

Mine works great. You will have no problems with those games. The HD4570 can even be overclocked if you like.

 

"Fairly demanding games like Counter-Strike Source"

I literally rofl'd.

In all seriousness, though, the Studio 15 (even with the Intel 4500MHD) will destroy Counter-Strike at pretty much any resolution. You just had a faulty display; I have the 720p as well and it has no ghosting issues whatsoever, and I play a lot of CS:S and CoD4, plus others.

Personally, I would just do without Vsync. It tends to cause more problems than it fixes.

Overclock the 4570? Do tell, the last time I tried, the OC utility just froze up my entire system.

 

Dude I know it performs well on CS:S FPS wise - but my screen tearing was messed up! Lolz, I don't blame you for rofling, truth is my old PC from 2003 ran CS:S between 30 and 50, so to me it was "fairly demanding."

I don't care about other PC games though, all I need is the classics. As long as you can confirm that my screen was messed up then I'm cool.

Just out of curiosity though, have you tried the following games on it?

Team Fortress 2
Half Life 2: Episode 2
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4
Gears of War
Crysis

how did those badboys perform FPS wise at resolutions between 1024by768 and 720p, between low and medium settings? Mastershroom, you've got the exact laptop I had and the one I'm hoping to pick up again.

 

Oh, I haven't overclocked mine, but I could have sworn other people have overclocked the 4570?

9800pro? P4? Athlon XP?

 

Uh when I originally got it, it was a

P4 2.8 Ghz
512 RAM
Geforce FX 5800

Heehee... but I upgraded the card to a Geforce 7900 GTKO when the old motherboard decided to fry. Then I learnt of the horrors of being bottleknecked and decided to go back to consoles.

Yes it was very silly of me to call CS:S a "fairly demanding game" in 2009!

Anyway, how do you think MasterShroom's sig laptop performs on the games I mentioned?

 

I haven't played the games in question, but here is a list of the games I have played on mine. They all play incredibly well.

Arkham Asylum
Medal of Honor 10th aniversary collection
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Prince of Persia
The Sims 2

 

I am the person you need to be asking these questions helpmeoutplz. I own the same laptop screen etc. Infact, your processor on 1555 was better and you had MORE memory on your 4570. The games I've tried so far include

Assassins Creed - More demanding game than Far Cry 2 easily. Runs well maxed out on modest resolutions.. I turn the details down to play atleast on 1280*720.

Far Cry 2 - I was AMAZED how well this game ran on the 4570. Around 50fps on each setting high(shadows medium) but on a very modest resolution of 1024*600. I play on 1280*720 and turn the other settings down.

PES2010 demo - Maxed out - Max resolution - NO ISSUES

I installed CSS just to see were you talking about.. Max Resolution - Max details - 4x Anisotropic filtering - 4xAA.. OVER 200FPS avg... Yes.. No issues..

 

and my CSS is set to fps_max 300.. I bet it could hit 400 easily if settings were higher but no point.. our eyes can't tell the difference b/w 200fps and 300fps.

 

also btw.. when I say "I turn the details down", I say because I need atleast 40fps, else it bothers me to the max. And not every detail. For example, I need terrain, textures etc. HIGH to enjoy

 

I have played COD4 and am currently trying out NFS Shift on my S1555 with 720p display. No problems at all..

 

With details down low and only 720p you should be able to do fine. I can do multiplayer farcry 2 just dandy with the exact same setup as mastershroom. On an Inspiron 1545 with the only difference being the 4330 and 900p it is unplayable though, but not too far off.

 

I've played all of those except Bioshock on this computer.

TF2 runs pretty much perfectly at native 720p (1366x768) with everything but AA and AF all the way up.

HL2 Ep 2, pretty much the same deal. It only lags when there are a LOT of particle effects (like, huge explosions with tons of smoke)

CoD4 runs great at 1366x768 if your turn most of the settings to medium and disable things like shadows and depth of field. And it still looks excellent, too, especially if you leave specular on.

Gears of War is the worst performer out of the bunch, although I attribute it more to the fact that it's a crappy port from the Xbox 360, rather than the Studio's performance. For instance, I play Unreal Tournament 3, based on the Gears engine, and it runs just fine. Basically, expect some stuttering during intense moments at native res. I didn't try other resolutions yet.

Crysis runs way better than I expected. At the native resolution, it runs very smoothly with all settings on minimum except textures (high) and volumetric effects (medium, needed to not make lighting look all glitchy). And even on the bare minimum settings, the game looks so good.

Unfortunately I don't have any frame-per-second benchmarks for you; I never bother with those, I just make sure a game looks and plays well enough for me without worrying about numbers.

Hope ya find this helpful.

 

Assassins Creed AND Gears of War are possibly the worst ports from the Xbox.. When I said AC is more demanding than FC2, I meant when you look at AC it doesn't look as good as FC2 or I don't see a single reason why it might need more GPU/CPU power yet it needs more..

 

Coooool thank you all very much. Sounds like a real beast of a laptop for great value

Can't wait to get this badboy.

Another question: Does using a 64 or 32 bit version of Windows Vista make a difference in game performance? I'm gonna be ordering my laptop from Dell's factory outlet - it will again be a refurbished model, but this time it comes directly from Dell with their warranty so I'm not worried - and unfortunately I can't specify what bit version of Windows they'll send me. It just says Vista Home Premium on all the models.

For a game like Crysis, what would be the main limiting factor in this laptop on performance? I ask because I'm wondering if it's really necessary for me to pay more money for a P8600 when the game may perform just as well on say a T6500. How about other games in general like the ones mentioned in this thread? I know the graphics card is lower middle class so do I really need to pay more money for a P8600 when another processor would be just as good?

 

Niiiice. I've been wanting to play Crysis for so long.

Wow how'd you pull that off? Do you have some special settings (overclocking etc.) turned on?

I was getting around 100+ with all settings on max but without AA or AF. I turned some AA on and it still stayed above a 100 (but when I went into smoke it would take a big hit down to 60).

Does the Windows version (64 bit vs 32 bit) make a difference? Just to be sure I had my battery/laptop set to high performance and it was always plugged in when I'd play videogames.

 

@above.. CSS is an old game. I wasn't surprised at all looking at those fps. btw, I have no real intentions of installing crysis because I don't want to play on bare minimum settings. It would just look crap COMPARED to the real thing and that I can't handle