Dell E1705 with 7800Go impressions

So, you know all the good things you've heard about this notebook? They're probably true. I waited for what seemed like months(turned out to be less than a week) from the time I ordered it to when it arrived at my door. I went to my room, unpacked everything, and turned on the machine. Here are the basic specs:

1.83Ghz Core Duo Processor
2 Gb RAM at 667 Mhz
60 GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
nVidia Geforce Go 7800 256Mb
Dell Truelife Ultrasharp Widescreen(native resolution 1920X1200)

The keyboard is one of the best I've used on a notebook. It has a solid feel and there's a satisfying resistance before the keys push down. The distance of the keyboard from the front of the laptop is nice and makes for a good wrist-rest. I feel more comfertable typing on this than on a desktop keyboard, and that's saying sommething. The touchpad is the same silver color as the panel, and on the bottom and right side there's a dark grey(they appear white in the photo, something to do with the flash I guess) track-bar line that you can use to scroll up/down and left/right on pages. The click buttons are easier to push down than on most laptops, and this was a welcome change for me. The speakers sound excellent for a mobile and the tracking buttons on the front will be useful for those watching DVD's and listening to CD's on their machine. The external volume control also resides there, and is a handy addition when running anything full-screen. Aesthetically, the combination of silver, white, and black on the machine give it a unique, friendly look, and make it seem more like a current product than a just plain silver/black layout would have.



Windows immeadiately detected my wireless network, and it took me less than a minute to connect. The dell wireless card is top notch for being included in the price. The USB works well, but I had to take out and plug back in my Intellimouse before the computer would detect it. My digital camera was detected first try, and it took me 10 seconds to transfer 4 hi-res photos to the hard drive.

The only complaint I could possibly make about this machine is that it comes installed with about 15 or so programs that I would not use, and about half of those are completely useless if you don't want to sign up for another ISP. It took me a while to uninstall the included resource-eating internet security program, along with the bloatware, and install my free gems like AVG, ZoneAlarm, CC Cleaner, Spybot, TuneXP, and a few other very useful ones, and transfer my music and photos from my desktop, but after all this was done(it took about 45 minutes) the rig was running great. I was able to browse the forums while installing Half-Life 2 and downloading a driver and the Riva Tuner, which went incredibly fast. The updates went much faster too, compared to my Dimension 4550 desktop, and I was able to start playing in less than an hour or so.

When I fired up the game, I noticed how fast the first screen loaded up. It was less than a minute compared to the Dimension which usually took at least three, and the level load screen went fast too. First, I ran the game at native resolution with 16X anisotropic filtering, 6x antialiasing, and all the details on high. On some of the indoor maps the framerate got as high as 160fps, but outdoors it would drop to below 30 with multiple explosions during firefights. I ended up using the lowest resolution(1280x800) with trilinear filteringa and 2x antialiasing with the details on high, and it rarely dropped below 30 and averaged around 45-55 outdoors. Definitely a capable GPU. The sound wasn't incredible but I chose not to get the $25 Sound Blaster upgrade, so I coulden't expect too much. It was still atmospheric and immersive, though. I don't think the sound in HL2 is really one of it's strong points, anyways.



After that, I opened up FL Studio, my audio sequencing program. There was no lag with the latency set to 39ms, and I was able to play a keyboard line through the computer keyboard extremely accurately. The sound was a tiny bit flat, but that actually sounded better with FL Studio, because with all the dimension it normally has, it sounds fake. I don't know if this would carry over to a final product after mixing/mastering/burning, but ill be happy if it does. The beats still had great lows, mids, and highs, and I coulden't ask for more, performance-wise. If you want extremely beefy sound, fork out $25 more for the Sound Blaster upgrade. If not, the onboard sound should work fine for even the most demanding musicians.

On to one of the biggest issues people have with this setup: The highly debated(as many have said, it's really a matter of preference) Truelife Ultrasharp widescreen. When I was first using the notebook, I was starting to regret this decision. I actually got a headache after using it for a half hour, and I was considering returning it. After I had used the computer for about an hour though, my eyes adjusted and there was no pain(this would be a necessity) and I could read everything with no trouble. Turning the dpi up to 120 also helped. I'm actually quite fond of it now, the extra space is nice and it doesent seem to affect the performance much. The picture is much sharper, and the glossy screen is beautiful. If you want the glossy screen(Truelife) without the Ultrasharp, you're out of luck. This option is availiable on the E1505, but when I ordered this setup, it was not available on the 1705. If you have vision problems I would reccomend the matte screen. It would also be slightly better for playing games, but with the current games it woulden't matter too much as the 7800 Go should power through any game on the market right now, and the graphics quality is not noticeably lower when playing at a lower resolution. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options, but I really enjoy the Ultrasharp.



I've heard many complaints about the heat generated from the CPU and GPU. Even with the 7800 overclocked to 350/860 it' still cool enough to have on my lap wearing only boxers, and it actually still seems cooler than a new Acer Travelmate I had the chance to use recently. You probably wouldent want to play a graphically-intense game for an hour or more with it on your lap, but it's hard to play those games anyways with no access to a mouse. Besides, the battery life isn't such that you would expect to do that anyways. With the core clock only upped to 300 and the memory clock at default, I got about an hour out of this thing before it was down to 10% battery life with a 6-cell battery. I can't see this being a take-with-you-everywhere notebook, unless you want to fork out for two or more 9-cells, and woulden't mind exchanging them on the go. I coulden't get Notebook Hardware Control(not the Dell app, this one used to be called Centrino Hardware Control) to work, the dialouge something about the .net framework, but I imagine if you didn't overclock, or maybe even underclocked the GPU and CPU you could get a fair amount of battery life out of this computer. This model is really geared towards power-users anyways, and most of the people who buy this will probably be using it with the AC adapter mostly.

If you're looking for an inexpensive, powerful, comfortable notebook with a gorgeous screen, and dont mind reduced battery life, I highly reccomend the E1705. It is also now available with the 7900 GS card, which would reasonably boost the graphics performance. I paid about $1500 after tax and shipping, and I think it was a great investment.

 

wow your laptop is good i can only get those good of fps with my anisotropic filtering, and antialiasing all the way down...and i ahve to say your picture quality looks much,much clearer then my crappy v4000t. and one mroe thing, doe sthis laptop overheat at all? im thinking of tryign to reutrn my laptop and get this one they seem like such a much better deal

EDIT: hmm i just checked here: http://www.notebookreview.com/price...brandID=4&productID=15368&productFamilyID=749
and it shows this laptop with ATI x1400 and the x1300, howd you get the nvidia7800go?

 

That link is for the E1505, he got the E1705 (The E1505 is a 15" while the E1705 is a 17").

 

Halo, if you can return your lappy and wanna play games, go for it. Like Unreal said, that review was the 1505. The 1705 now comes with the option of the 7900 gs, so you can get even better graphics than this rig.
Keep in mind the screenshot was taken with an overclock, but you could overclock the 7900 and get even better results. The areas with 160fps were rare, but thats 100 more than the human eye can detect(or so I've heard) so that shoulden't be a problem.

About the heat, I've been playing HL2 all day and there haven't been any problems. I can still set it on my lap, and it's only slightly warm. Maybe dell fixed something in their bios to help the heat problem, because I haven't had trouble with it like I've heard about on the forums. If you get it, you'll want to take all the bloatware off(alot of the dell utilities too) to free up space and speed. I'd be glad to answer any more questions.

 

2: nushmeow

.net framework is available for free from microsoft site. Do search in downloads section, for framework redistributable. For CHC (older NHC) you'll need framework 1.1, for NHC (newer) you'll need framework 2.0

 

To nushmeow;
My set up is core duo 1.6 ghrtz, 1920X1200 screen, geforce go 7800 1 gig ram at 533 megahertz and i can run half life 2 with all the settings turned up all the way (exept for wait for v sinc) at 1920 by 1200 and get a frame rate of about 40 outdoors or over, sometimes to 160 when i was not looking at much water on those same settings in the counterstrike stress test i got 68 average fps. what did you get?
How did you over clock the GPU? I have that same model and would LOVE to know how, i was disapointed that it came underclocked.

 

tangent, sorry it took me so long. you can use the onboard clock frequency settings in the nvidia control panel to overclock, or get a different driver like the xtremeG mobileforce. i'm actually about to reinstall the xtremeG and try to get a better overclock for oblivion.