Dell Studio 1557

Did you do a clean install of Windows 7 when you got it?
I had weird issues like that when I was using mine before my clean install.

If you did do it.Did you install all of your drivers for the system?
Intel has a newer chipset driver then what comes with Windows 7
here http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18494&ProdId=3172&lang=eng

Its worth a try.

 

1st question. I have REALLY pushed this laptop hard and have had NO issues with the power being supplied through the standard 90watt psu.
My revision number on the PSU is REV:A01

2nd Question.Yes I have been overclocking the 4570 for a few weeks now.
I followed this guide and it works very well for me http://twisted-reviews.com/overclocking-ati-mobility-radeon-hd4570-hd4650-hd4670/

3rd Question. Its a dual channel setup.2 dimms = 2 channels

 

You can use Windows 7 to magnify your entire computers font if you want?

In the control panel under Font's.

 

I'm using the dell's drivers, but I'm downloading the Mobility Modder tool right now and will give it a try.

 

I've been reading through this thread going back and forth about the 1557. While for the most part it seems like a great machine, I'm a bit concerned about the heating issues, noise, and screen resolution. I've been thinking about going instead for a Lenovo T510 with a Core i5-620M instead. Any thoughts on how the two machines might stack up?

Thanks!

 

I bought mine less then a month ago, and in my case i have had no issues of overheating, and my laptop is virtually noiseless.

 

After a month+ of having this machine I have serious buyers remorse!

It runs way too hot - it is almost not possible to put it on your lap for extended periods of time - this is in the winter - I can just imagine what happens in the summer.

I have had endless problems with the video - it basically dies every time I maximize a video on CNN or youtube. I do have the 1080P display maybe this problem is less with 720P/900P.

With the last BIOS update my iPhone will no longer sync with the iTunes on this machine - I gave up on iTunes on this machine and am using an older desktop.

The reports are that under stress the CPU is running at less than the 1600Mhz or whatever is the base frequency! What is the point of all this quad core then?

I think most people will be better off with the newer i3/i5/i7 chips that only have 2 cores - though I would wait to see if they have all these BIOS/Video problems as well.

On the plus side - I do like the general size/weight of this machine - 15.6" is a nice sized laptop and it is < 6lbs in weight and Windows 7 seems like a bit of an improvement over Vista.

 

Have you tried updating to the latest chipset driver from Intel?
I dont know if it will work but it would be worth a try.

I agree it does run hot but I dont use it on my lap.

 

Yes - I tried that as well - this is a basic problem with the laptop - it just does not seem to dissipate the heat generated by the CPU/GPU - basically no full screen video!

I have tried various versions of the graphics drivers - also made no difference.

But this iPhone not syncing is the last straw - I may just have to call Dell and return it!

 

you should read this topic on dell community :

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19306534/19603564.aspx?PageIndex=1

 

Yeah its a pm55 chipset thing not just a Studio 1557.

There should be a BIOS update soon to fix it as the 1747 just got one.

 

I was wondering, since I don't have a backlight on my keyboard, the F6 key doesn't have an alternative function. Would it be possible to bind an Fn lock key to it? It's a shame Dell hasn't included an Fn lock key really.

 

You can change the default Fn behavior in the BIOS setup, but to remap it, you will need AutoHotkey.

Look here.

 

Adding to the ing - The battery last hardly 2 hours - to me this is way too little. My daughter has a 15" macbook pro and it last > 5 hours. This changes the way you use the laptop - you charge it at night and it is good for moderate use all day - she does not need to take the brick to school.

Sorry - just frustrated - it crapped out on me again today when I was viewing some videos from Haiti.

 

Also you can change it on the fly. As long as you have quickset installed (I think it's part of quickset), press windows key + X to bring up the windows mobility centre - there should be an option in there to switch the function key behaviour. This means you do not need to restart your notebook and fuss around within the BIOS.

 

I had a Studio 15 for about 3 days before I called to return it. I didn't like the fan constantly going on and was not impressed for the performance to price ratio (i7, 4GB, 4570) when my 2 year old Inspiron 1520 was almost as good.

Also, the design on the Studio 15 is flawed because the vents blow air onto the screen on the left side, heating it up. Dell should really look at the design and redo it.

 

Hi all, great thread with lots of good information.
I have just received my 1557 and am contemplating carrying out a clean win7 install but I have a question.
My 500 GB HD shows 3 partitions, (39Mb OEM partition), (14.65 GB recovery partition), (451.07 GB OS partition) After the fresh install I would still like to be able to press F12 at boot and select the diagnostics option. I am assuming that the diagnostics program and applications are stored in the recovery partition. Can someone confirm ? If this is the case I guess it would be best to just format the 451.07 GB partition and not touch the other two. Right ?

 

Man i see blogs or throttling issues with the core i7 on many laptop models (that have the i7). I'm kinda surprised hardly anyone is talking about it here. It is an issue the 1557 is also facing. The random freezing and internet explorer and firefox freezing once in a while is one of thoes symptoms that previous users have already talked about in this thread.

 

I have never had issues with Internet Explorer or Firefox freezing on my 1557.Thats with videos,flash games or multiple tabs being open.With that said theres no way IE or FF can cause this laptop to throttle because they just dont use enough resources.

As for the throttling issues other laptops are having is do to the other hardware paired with the i7.More power hungry graphics cards,bigger brighter RGBled screens, etc.. I have tried to find out if the 1557 throttles by using the same process and programs they are using and I just dont see it.Im not sayin the 1557 doesnt throttle because it does but NOT because of the power brick is only 90watts but do to the GPU getting to its TDP of 100c and throttling back.When it does throttle back the i7 will drop to 10x (1.3ghz) but it will jump right back to 12x (1.6ghz).
The biggest problem with this laptop is HEAT not lack of power.

 

Regarding heat, I have not pushed my new laptop yet but I was thinking about applying some half decent thermal compound (Arctic Silver 5) to the CPU/GPU.
What do you think? Is it a difficult job, does the heat sink part from the processors without to much force I would not want to ruin the CPU/GPU. I know that you have carried out a copper shim mod to your machine.
By the way any thoughts on my previous question regarding Win 7 clean install partitions.

 

Does the Studio 1557 support extended desktop across two external monitors using the HDMI and VGA ports? I looked through this thread a bit and could confirm people saying it supported extended desktop, but didn't find anyone definitively saying it would drive both the external ports at the same time. Also, if anyone can confirm this works, do you know what maximum resolution the external ports will support?

Thanks

 

Its alittle bit of work and alot of little screws to get there but its not hard to take this laptop apart.
I used as5 on the cpu and it does help the load temps,idle temps not so much.You cant use it on the gpu unless you shim it with copper or aluminum.The gpu has a small gap between the heatsink and gpu core and they used a thermal pad to cover the gap.
As for the partition question.If it was me I would delete all of them,format the entire hardrive,do a fresh install of Win7.After you get EVERYTHING done and installed (Drivers,programs,music ect..)Use Windows7 disk image creator and make a image of the hardrive and save it to a external drive somewhere.If you do have a problem down the road just reload that image and your ready to go.

 

Received my 1557 earlier in the week and I'm pretty happy with it. Performance seems good compared to my old Inspiron (sig) and it runs silent and cool for me.

I only wish Blu-Ray was available when I bought it, although The Dark Knight DVD looked pretty good on my 15.6" 1080p screen...


All that said, I'm experiencing the following issues with it:

1. I clean installed the OS, to get rid of all that Dell bloatware. How do I turn Bluetooth on, to connect a BT mouse?

2. The trackpad is very sluggish, any fixes?

 

Thanks OneCool. Ok, I understand now why you shimmed the gpu. I did not realize that there is a gap between the core and heatsink. I assumed that the heatsink would be pressed down onto the gpu core via spring loaded screws if you know what I mean. If I just used as5 on the cpu would I be able to reuse the thermal pad on the gpu? Where did get the shim or did you make yourself?
Regarding partitioning, I think I will take your advice and format the entire drive. As you know if you press F12 at boot up you can select to run some pre-boot system assessment diagnostics which could be useful but I think I would loose this option if I formatted the whole drive. Having said that I do have my original dell drivers and utilities disk which contain diagnostics. Thanks for confirming that I will be able to use win 7 to create an image of my drive. That was going to be my next question, my laptop shipped with dells datasafe local backup pre installed but I cannot obtain a copy to reinstall.

 

Happy with mine at the moment but I am about to carry out a clean install soon, hopefully things will work ok after.

1 Others may confirm but I think you can manually turn on Bluetooth in the bios menu. Also, have you reinstalled dells Quickset utility which I understand is required to configure the function keys. (F2)
2 Dell are showing new Synaptics touchpad drivers dated 27/12/2009 have you tried them?

 

I installed the drivers directly from Synaptics:

http://www.synaptics.com/support/drivers

This made a big improvement on the touchpad functionality. With the older Dell drivers, it was definitely sluggish and sometimes had a mind of its own!

 

Quickset is not required to enable the function keys, but it is required to have the on screen display, and also to be able to "hot swap" between multimedia keys / function keys as a primary function of those keys (do this via windows mobility center (windows key + X)).

 

Fragilexx, thanks for the explanation I am learning at lot from this thread. Thanks for the advice dougbee, I will use the Synaptics drivers as you suggest. I seem to be able to get most of the drivers but does any one know if there are updated firmware/drivers for the dvd/cd drive? My drive is showing as a PLDS DVD+- RW DL-8ATS but dell do not appear to have any updated firmware/drivers listed.

 

So, does anyone have an idea why the graphics card crashes whenever YouTube is maximized to full screen? It's not just YouTube, other websites with fullscreen HD movies tend to crash the system. I believe I have the most updated graphics card drivers, and I don't believe my system is teeming with malware yet....I'm very confused about this issue.

Unsurprisingly, Dell Tech Support has been pretty much useless.

Other than that one catch, I'm very satisfied with my Studio 1557.

 

It's a problem with the flash h.264 decoder...my solution was to experiment with different versions of the drivers (in my case, the latest ones were too unstable, I'm using version 8.671.0.0 - assuming you have the ATi card).

 

I am using the one from Dell - don't remember the version #. Things are a little more stable when the laptop is connected to the power - on batteries it still crashes very often.

 

Try using the desktop version of the drivers...look here. I'm using the Catalyst 9.11 (9.12 were too unstable).

 

Hey guys just reporting that after a week of getting my 1557 it gave me a "Could not write error" and shutdown and then I keept getting blue screen in repair or normal boot, I have just take it to the service center.
Has anyone suffered of a similar problem?

Also I did notice the noisy fans even wen idle?
And most importantly do any of you have a hissing problem on their headphones ? Say while plugged but no music playing? It seems to be when the sound card is turned on but not in use.
Any solutions? I seems to also do some sort of beep noise when it turns on, and then the hiss comes.

 

Here.
Pic1:
-Graphics card is underclocked
-Wireless is off
-Lowest Brightness
-Disabled battery Charging
-CPU is torchered via Prime95. Running 100%

In other words most of power going to cpu

Results: CPU: 1729.0MHz x 13.0 (constant)

Pic2:
-Graphics card is overclocked
-Graphics card is torchered via FurMark
-Wiress is on
-Highest brightness
-Battery is charging
-Cpu is torchered via Prime 95. Running 100%

Results: CPU: 1330.0MHz x10.0 (constant)


Regardless of if its only a 400MHz x3 difference, the cpu running 100% while only at x13 shows that turboboost cannot achieve x21 (which is what i7 is suppose to be running at when fully loaded. This shows that 90watt power adapter doesn't give enough juice to cpu. And when graphics is fuly loaded much power is diverted to the graphics making cpu lower.


Pic1




Pic2

 

So despite everything, does everyone recommend buying 1557 laptop ? Will it cause me a lot of problems ?

 

I would recommend it yeah. for its price and horsepower (and then not to mention the financing of dell) its pretty quiet amazing. I'm just used to complaining to make things work better than theyre sopose to lol. as im sure most of the people here who deal with overclocking.

 

havokxz what were your GPU temps when you were testing.

I cant see the pics because there to small

edit: for the record the i7 720qm runs at 1.6ghz under 100% load.Turbo doesnt work then.

 

Actually, whe utilizing all cores it can still overclock by one multiplier. The Turbo Boost multipliers are 1/6/9, which means using all 4 cores it will overclock by +133MHz (to 1.73GHz), for 2 cores it will overclock by +800MHz (to 2.4GHz), and for 1 core it will overclock by +1200MHz (to 2.8GHz).

 

Even with hyper threading enabled and being stressed 100%?


Edit: Im getting screwed then!!

 

The 90 watts psu is definitely not enough. We all know that already. Old news, but what about the arrandales. Will they submit to throttling or will their smaller die give them enough power efficiency to keep things below 90 watt?

Notebookcheck tested some arrandale cpu's with the following notebook config (model = mySN MB6):

• Windows 7 Home Prem. 64-bit
• Intel HM55 Chipset
• Intel Core i3/i5/i7
• Intel GMA HD GPU
• 15.6” HD TFT Glare Type
• 4096MB DDR3 1333MHz
• 640GB HDD WD6400BEVT

They've measured the power consumption under different circumstances (idle min, idle max and cpu load max). Even if all tested cpu's (in this graph) have a tdp of 35 watt according to Intel, the i7 (arrandale!) need much more juice than the i5 and i3.



If you count the ati 4570 (12-15 watt) and other (hdd, dvd drive) you're getting close to 90 watts with the i7-620M! So if I would buy a arrandale studio 15, I would not risk to get the i7-620M (when available) and definitely get an i5. Maybe a bit less power, but it uses much less juice!

 

I got mine today, and I'm not sure, if I will keep it.

Because of this discussion, I did some extreme stress testing:

Prime95, 64 bit with 8 threads and Furmark in extreme heating mode. The result was, that the CPU throttled back to 1.37-1.47 GHz. I am not shure, that this happened because of an undedimensioned power supply unit.
I rather had the impression, that the Bios tried to keep CPU temperature under 70°C. I think this is relatively hot. I just can't be sure without having a stronger PSU.

The good news is, that I did not manage to bring the GPU over 81°C. I don't think this is way to hot. During normal gaming it is more like 65-70°C.

Now I'm not shure what to do with this machine. On the one hand I like its design and lightness.
On the other hand it is extreme loud because of the constantly spinning fan (Maybe a bios update could solve this?), and not as fast as I hoped, as long as no solution for the throttling is found.

Is someone out there with this machine and a stronger Dell PSU? If someone could confirm the throttling is gone with this, we all could call Dell and make them replace our PSU...

 

I think that's a given that I'll work this way when 100% stressed (because that's the point of multi-core systems, right?!), but I don't know how the hyper-threading modify this numbers...good question.

 

Which BIOS version are you using? Mine came with A01, and after I upgraded to the A03, it runs a little hotter, but much faster...I'll run some benchmarks and let you know.

 

I've had my machine for a week now, and two major issues stick out for me:

1. It doesn't seem to like syncing with the iPhone 3GS, getting constant error messages and it's bricking my apps and iPod functions, what to do?

2. I bought a Dell-branded Logitech Bluetooth Travel Mouse with my laptop. And when I connect it and load drivers, it works for maybe a few seconds/minutes then just stops working

These two issues are really bugging me because otherwise I'm very happy with my new laptop so far, but I'd really like a solution to the above. Thank you.

 

I dont know about the bluetooth.

But the iphone issue is with the pm55 chipset and dell needs to update the bios for it.
With that said ive seen a few people fix the issue by right clicking the itunes shortcut,choosing run in compatibility mode,running it in Vista SP2 mode.I cant confirm this but I have seen others that say it works

 

Regarding various psu comments.
If the battery is fully charged then most of the demands of the laptop will be met by the battery and the psu will only supply a minimum amount of power to keep the battery charged. 19.5 volts at 1or 2 Watts at most. In this situation my psu runs cool. The only time that the psu could struggle is when the battery is almost fully discharged and the machine is being stressed. This causes my psu to run very HOT. In this situation the psu is having to supply power to charge the battery and also meet the demands of the machine. This could possibly exceed 90 Watts thereby possibly causing the psu voltage to drop below 19.5 volts under load which could cause performance issues.

 

I did some further testings now:

Running Prime 95 with a different number of threads:


1 Thread: One core up to 2,6-7 GHz or something around that. (Used TMonitor, which does not display the max frequency. If anyone knows a better tool, please tell) The unused cores remain at ~900 MHz
7-2 Threads: The used cores up to 1,6 GHz, while the others remain at ~900 Mhz. (Interestingly it is not like some cores remain constantly throttled while the others do the work. In fact they are all dynamicly going up and down. Seems like the works is always sent to the core, that has less to do.)
8 Threads: All Cores constantly at 1,6 GHz. No throttling.

So far so good. As long, as you don't stress your graphics card, you will always havve the full power of the CPU. That means e.g. while encoding a movie, you will be able to run 8 threads which constantly fully load your CPU without throttling.

It feels also great to have Prime running with 8 Threads now and typing this without any lag.

The Bad news is that as soon as I add GPU stressing with Furmark, with 8 Prime threads, it does throttle down to 1,25-1,5 GHz. I will investigate further about this and post again...

 

lol you pretty much did the same tests i just did a couple of posts back, but im glad someone is noticing the problem too. I have a question though. the XPS department with their 1645 is of course having the same problem. But they have a popular suggested 'fix' in that to buy a 130watt adapter and using a program to disable throttling (while still having temperature control). do you think there is something like this for our 1557? so far i dont see any power adapter more than 90watt though =[.

 

Have you overclocked ur gpu? if so whats your stable clocks and stable temperature, if you will please.

 

Are Dell Power Supplies not standardized? Can you compare your throttling while switching between the internal Screen an an external Device? The Guys in the XPS-Thread report, this would disable the throttling. If It does on our machine too, this would be the proof, that throttling is caused by an underpowered PSU. I have none here, or I would do it by myself.

It came with the latest (A03) preloaded.