Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 Review

<!-- Generated by XStandard version 1.7.1.0 on 2006-12-14T14:00:19 -->

by Ahmet Parlak, The Netherlands

Overview and Introduction

Following is a full review of the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 notebook. This desktop replacement notebook features a 17” glossy screen and a fast Core Duo processor with dedicated nVidia Go 7600 graphics. The Xi1526 has a great quality/performance ratio and is meant for gamers, people who want to use it as a multimedia notebook or those that just want a fast system.

Full picture of the Fujitsu Xi 1526 (view large image)

Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 specs:

• System: Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526
• Processor: Intel Core Duo T2300 (1.66 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2-cache)
• Memory: 1 GB (2 x 512 MB DDR2 533 MHz running in Dual Channel)
• Hard drive: 2 x 80 GB (5400 rpm, 8 MB cache running in RAID-0)
• Graphics card: nVidia GeForce Go 7600Go with 256 MB GDDR2 dedicated graphics
• Screen: 17&quot; WXGA+ Crystalview screen (1440 x 900 glossy screen)
• Optical drive: DVD ± RW Dual Layer
• Operating system: Microsoft Windows Home Edition SP2
• Wireless card: Intel 3945 54 mbps card (802.11a/b/g)
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0 connection
• Battery: 8-cell Lithium Ion rechargeable battery
• Ports / Slots: 4-in-1 card reader (SD/MS/MCC/MS pro), 4 x USB 2.0, 1 x IEEE 1394 (fire ware), 1 x S-video out, 1 x DVI-I, 1 x Modem / Fax, 1 x Gigabit Lan, 1 x ExpressCard slot, 1 x headphone-out with SPDIF, 1 x microphone-in
• Integrated subwoofer
• Weight with 2 hard drive configuration: 4.1 kg
• Price of this configuration with 1 year pick-up and return warranty: €1300,-.

Reasons for Buying:

As a full disclosure I want to say that this is not a notebook that I bought for myself. I received the notebook from Fujitsu Siemens as a review loan. Fujitsu Siemens gave us the permission to do this review because we (Notebook Solutions Company) are a partner of F&amp;S Computers.

Build &amp; Design:

The design of the Xi 1546 is simply great. Fujitsu Siemens is known for making great looking notebooks and this 17” notebook is not an exception. As you can see on the picture there is one line at the top of the notebook, adding style to its looks. The colour of the machine is totally silver and the notebook itself has a clean look. The indicators are blue and look good.

When we open the lid we see a full keyboard, a touchpad and nicely designed speakers and vertically placed buttons. The buttons may look nice when they are put vertically, but I find them harder to push with this orientation.

Vertically placed buttons (from left to right): Power Cinema, Internet, Mail, Silent function and Power On. Indicators (from left to right): Power On, Wireless Lan, Stand-by, Battery charge indicator, Load indicator, Num pad on, Caps-Lock on, Scroll lock and Silent function. (view large image)

The build of this notebook is very good. The construction is not of cheap plastic that bends, but of solid material which has no flex at all. There's no creaking to be heard when pressing at the corners of the notebook, something that my older Fujitsu M1437G does. The notebook does not scratch very easily and does not attract any fingerprints at all. There's no having to clean your notebook every time it's used. The hinges are tough and you get a confident closing sound when shutting the lid down. The weight of this notebook is very good for a 17” desktop replacement. It weighs 4.1 kg (8.2 lbs) when configured with 2 hard drives. If you add the adapter the weight is around 4.5 kg (9.0 lbs). The notebook is not very thick for a 17”. I still do not recommend you taking this notebook to college every day; it will hurt your back after a while.

The adapter is pretty big but normal for a desktop replacement like the Xi (view large image)

Screen:

The screen of this notebook is really something to be proud if you own it. Fujitsu Siemens was actually the first in Europe to introduce a 17” CrystalView screen (glossy screen) with its M3438G model. The screen of the Xi1546 is the same as the previous model, featuring a 1440x900 resolution widescreen with CrystalView technology. The screen has excellent viewing angles, so watching a DVD with your friends will be easy on this notebook.

The WXGA+ screen is beautiful, colours are vivid and very bright due to the Crystalview Technology (view large image)

The screen has minimal light leakage at the bottom, certainly not something that will bother you while playing a game or watching a DVD. I did not notice any ghosting while gaming which means that gaming is great on the Xi 1526. The screen also gives a great crisp picture and good contrast. Black is black and white is white, something which is very important for designers. The pictures that I took do not show the beauty of the screen.

Speakers:

This notebook has great sound as well as great speaker design. Fujitsu Siemens was one of the first companies that introduced subwoofers in their notebooks. The Xi1526 also has a subwoofer (diameter of 4 cm). The notebook has above average sound and it is very pleasant to listen to music or watch a DVD. However, for serious gaming I advise a good headset because you won’t hear subtle things like footsteps in a game with just the speakers.

Speakers located at the top of the keyboard (view large image) 

Performance, Benchmarks and Gaming

I have spent a lot of time benchmarking this notebook because I personally think that the Xi1526 is a great gaming machine for a great price. To prove this I have run three Futuremark tests and three gaming benchmarks. I want to prove that gaming on this notebook at native resolution with the latest games is possible. First of all, I want to post some screenshots of CPU-Z, that show the CPU information and DDR2 information.

Processor information

Memory information

A very interesting feature of the Xi is the ability to configure the two hard drives yourself to run in RAID 1 or RAID 0. Raid 1 will give you optimal security for your files but RAID 0 will give you the best performance in games. I configured the hard drives in RAID 0 for this review.

Setting up RAID 0 was very easy and I have regulated everything through the BIOS. Something that you must not forget is that all your files will be erased when configuring RAID.

The VIA driver configures RAID. At this screenshot you can see how the two drives are configured in RAID 0 (striping). (view large image)

* Note: all the benchmarks were performed with the stock drivers of Fujitsu Siemens at stock speeds. Wireless cards were on. No background programs were running. Driver version: nVidia Forceware 84.71.*

I had some problems installing Laptopvideo2Go drivers on the Xi1526. The driver could not recognize the video card. So I decided to stick with the Fujitsu Siemens drivers.

*Note: the scores of the Xi 1526 are in bold and also the scores of my M1437G. The reason I did this is to compare the two notebooks more closely with each other.*

Super Pi:

Super Pi is a program which uses your CPU power to calculate a very price value of pi. We usually calculate to 2-million digits. Here are the results of the T2300E running at full 1.66 GHz.

1 minute and 25 seconds is a good score with a 1.66GHz Core Duo. It is almost as fast as an AMD FX-60 in Super Pi. The Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz however outperforms the T2300E with 52% increase in performance, but do you think that is worth 600$ more?

Notebook	Time
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 GHz Core Duo)	1m 25s
Alienware M5550 (2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo)	0m 56s
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16 GHz Core Duo)	1m 07s
Alienware M770 (AMD 2.6 GHz FX-60)	1m 23s
IBM ThinkPad Z60m (2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 36s
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M1437G (1.73 GHz Pentium M)	1m 48s
Dell Inspiron 6000D (1.6 GHz Pentium M)	1m 52s
Asus V6Va (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 46s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0 GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s

 

Go to Page 2 &gt;&gt;

 

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3

 

3Dmark03

I really like the Futuremark tests and 3DMark03 is my favourite for single core processors. It not only tests the video performance, but also other interesting features like audio performance. Unfortunately it does not take full advantage of multi core processor capabilities.

(view large image)

Notebook	Score
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	7,995 3dmarks
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7900GTX 512 MB)	18,2873dmarks
Acer TravelMate 4400 (AMD Turion ML-30 1.6 GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon X700 64 MB)	4,348 3dmarks
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M1437G (1.73 GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon X700 128 MB)	5,555 3dmarks
LG LM70 (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI Mobility Radeon X600 64 MB)	3,011 3dmarks

3Dmark05:

3dmark05 is the benchmark of choice for notebooks reviewed on Notebookreview.com. A review without this test isn’t a good review! So here are the scores for the Xi 1526.

(view large image)

The score is very good compared to other 7600Go video cards. That is because the memory is not downclocked on the Xi 1526. You would expect more heat in the notebook but the temperatures are still around 66 degrees Celsius at full load, which is pretty good.

Noteboook	Score
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	3,454 3dmarks
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7900 GTX 512MB)	8,524 3dmarks
Apple MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB	2,866 3dmarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60 Nvidia GeForce Go7800 GTX)	7,078 3dmarks
ThinkPad T43 (1.86GHz, ATI X300 64MB graphics)	727 3dmarks
Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI Radeon Mobility x700 128 MB)	2,530 3dmarks
Fujitsu n6410 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,273 3dmarks
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M1437G (1.73 GHz Pentium M, ATI Mobility Radeon X700 128 MB)	2,640 3dmarks
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	4,157 3dmarks

3dmark06:

3Dmark06 is a good benchmark tool for this system because it takes full advantage of the dual core processor. I was very impressed with the score the 1526 received. I have seen a few reviews of the 7600 Go and their scores were all around 1800 3Dmarks. That makes this score very impressive, also if we realise that this notebook is configured with “just” 1 GB and a T2300E.

You may ask yourself what the error means under the score. Actually, I do not know, it says that the drivers are not approved but the drivers are officially from Fujitsu Siemens.

(view large image)

Notebook	Score
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	2,144 3dmarks
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7900 GTX 512MB)	4,744 3dmarks
Apple MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB	1,528 3dmarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	794 3dmarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60 Nvidia GeForce Go7800GTX)	4,085 3dmarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3dmarks

PCmark05

PCMark tests your notebook for general performance. The test ran great on the notebook and the score is nice. This notebook is ideal for office applications and other multimedia applications.

(view large image)

HD Tune

HD Tune is a program that tests your hard drive performance. When running this test the hard drives were configured in RAID 0. Here is the result.

(view large image)

Game tests:

Oblivion:

The Elder Scrolls had released Oblivion in April 2006. I still think that it is one of the best RPG’s ever. The downside of this game is that you need a very expensive system to run it at high settings. Here are my impressions of playing Oblivion on the Xi 1526.

Cheydinhall (view large image)	Boat (view large image)
Guard (view large image)	Kvatch guard (view large image)
Light tower (view large image)	Skingard (view large image)
Great temple (view large image)	Temple (view large image)
Cheydinhall temple (view large image)	Sneaking (view large image)

I travelled around the whole of Cyrodill to make the best pictures for the review. As you can see the screenshots are very impressive. The system was running Oblivion very well.

Here are the settings I played with. *Note: I also forced 8x AF trough Forceware drivers. AF is wonderful for this game. The screenshot of the light tower explain this.*

(view large image)	(view large image)
(view large image)	(view large image)
(view large image)	(view large image)
Without 8x AF	With 8x AF

The game ran nicely with these settings. The load times were especially great and that is due the two hard drives that run in RAID 0. You might find it strange why I have no grass distance on. The reason therefore is that with grass your fps drops significantly. Here are a few screenshots that explain this.

(view large image)	(view large image)
Without grass (0%)	With grass (100%)

You can see that full grass distance drops your fps from 20 to 7. I do not find grass a very important feature so that’s the reason I did not enable it. AF however really impacts the looks of the game. Check the stones on the light tower, there is much more detail thanks to AF.

Conclusion: game runs good on native resolution with high settings, 2x AA and 8x AF and Bloom enabled. I could not update the drivers, but I am confident that with the latest drivers the frame rates would be much higher. Indoor I had always above 20 fps, in caves and dungeons around 30 fps, outside around 15-20 fps and in combat around 15 fps.

But like I said before, updating drivers should have given better performance for sure.

Battlefield 2142:

Battlefield 2 was very popular and a great LAN-game. Battlefield 2142 is the successor of BF2. I ran this benchmark for FPS-fans.

BF 2142 Stats (view large image)

I used a fix to play it at 1440*900 so 1152*864 is not correct.

The game ran well at these settings, but I had some lag during several flights. The frame rates were always above 25 fps which is pretty playable. You might want to lower the settings for to play it more smoothly.

Battlefield is known for its long loading times, but running the hard drives in RAID 0 really helped a lot. Load times were almost 1.5 times faster then my ordinary 80 GB in my M1437G. As stated before, updating drivers would lead to a boost in fps. Here are some screenshots of the game.

(view large image)	(view large image)
(view large image)	(view large image)

Half Life 2:

This game is a real classic and the engine is the same as Counterstrike (this means that the performance of HL2 and CS is comparable). Here is a screen of the settings I played with.

(view large image)

(view large image)

The game played perfectly, I had no lag at all and the fps was higher then 50 fps all the time. Here are some screenshots I took while playing in the first 2 levels.

(view large image)	(view large image)
(view large image)	(view large image)

This game is just beautiful to play at these settings. The Source Engine gives great support for widescreen computers, so playing on a widescreen notebook is wonderful.

 

<!-- Generated by XStandard version 1.7.1.0 on 2006-12-14T12:27:38 -->

Heat and Noise:

When I received this notebook I was afraid that the notebook would overheat. A friend of mine owns a Core Duo notebook (same speeds) and when playing his temperatures were around 75 degrees Celsius!

But my worries were not necessary at all. While playing Oblivion for two hours the CPU temperature was 56 degrees maximum. This may sound very warm, but this temperature is very good for a notebook with Core Duo. The CPU of my M1437G can get up to 54 degrees which leads to a very hot palm area. I was also expecting this to happen with the Xi1526 but the right palm area was much cooler. You could notice some heat, but it was definitely nothing to worry about.

The left palm area (where the first hard drive is) is cool and noticeably less warm then the right palm (where the CPU is). Like stated before this temperature is not something that will bother you while gaming.

To prove that this notebook runs cool I have made a screenshot. As you can see the GPU temperature is 56 degrees after an hour of gaming. The hard drives (running in RAID means that it shows only one temperature) are 34 degrees which is a very good temperature. The CPU is 47 degrees. Note: this screenshot is made around 2 minutes after shutting down Oblivion.  

These temperatures are very good and the notebook stays cool even after playing for an hour (view large image)

 

One thing I always disliked about my M1437G is its fan noise. The small fan causes a very high tone that can be pretty annoying. The Xi1526 however has a much larger fan that runs at lower speeds and causes much less sound. The fan sound is noticeably but not annoying as the fan of the smaller 15.4” M1437G. The fans go on a few times for 10 seconds per minute while gaming. While normal use the fans go on every 5 minutes (for just 10 seconds).

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard of the Xi 1526 features a full size keyboard with num pad. This is very interesting because not all notebooks have a keyboard with a num pad. It can be very handy, especially for accountants and students who have to calculate something quickly.

The keyboard has no flex at all, and typing is great. A downside is that the buttons near the Enter key are all a bit shorter than normal. I was afraid that typing would make this more complicated. But after a few days I got used to it and it was no problem to write on it.

A closer look to the full size keyboard of the Xi 1526 (view large image)

 

Closer look at the num pad, notice the small shift button next to the enter (view large image)

Now let’s take a look at the touchpad. It looks great and a nice feature is that you can turn off the touchpad. This is nice because a lot of people hit the touchpad with their palm while gaming and that is really irritating. A downside however is that you have to push pretty hard on the touchpad buttons and it makes a loud noise when clicking it. It is not terribly loud, but not as silent and comfortable as IBM buttons.

A nice feature of the touchpad is the possibility to adjust the surface which you can scroll with. This is regulated by the Synaptics drivers. I really like this, because scrolling works great with the touchpad (vertically and horizontally).

The touchpad looks nice and the scroll function works perfect (view large image)

Input and Output Ports

The Xi 1526 is a multimedia notebook and has a lot of useful ports. The notebook has 4 USB 2.0 ports, 3 located at the right side of the notebook. There is also a DVI-port which means that you can easily connect your TFT with the notebook if you would wish to do that. It has a Fire wire (IEEE 1394) connection and also a card reader (SD, MS, MS pro and MC). The notebook also has a volume regulator at the left side.

This notebook has an Express Card slot that is normally occupied by the remote control. You can also connect your notebook with your TV using the S-video out.

The remote control works great and it small enough to fit in the Express card slot (view large image)

Wireless

This notebook features an Intel Wireless Lan 3945 which supports a/b/g standards. Setting up the network was very easy, I just needed to enter my password and I had set up the connection. The connection is good and fast.

The previous model of the 17” Fujitsu Siemens notebooks didn’t have Bluetooth which a lot of people complained about. Bluetooth is very popular in Europe and I really like it myself. Fujitsu Siemens has learned from this so the Xi 1526 features a Bluetooth 2.0 connection. The connection was perfect and transferring pictures that I took with my phone was very fast.

Battery

Another impressive thing about this notebook is its battery life. While surfing the web, writing the review and listening to music I managed to work offline for 2 hours. The wireless LAN was turned on, the screen was at the brightest setting and the CPU was running at 1 GHz (Speedstep technology enabled). The notebook has a ‘Silent fan’ function which means that the CPU is even further downclocked (to 800 MHz). I could also use this function and lower the brightness of the screen and I am sure that I could easily push 2 and half hours out of the full battery. This is very impressive for a 17” screen with a Core Duo and a powerful nVidia video card.

Operating system

A lot of people reading this review may wonder why Fujitsu Siemens has not added the XP Media Center OS edition instead of XP Home edition. Well the reason is very simple. Fujitsu Siemens has its own Media Center software so you do not need to pay more for an XP version. I think this is a smart move from the manufacturer.

The notebook comes with a lot of CD’s: XP Home Edition SP2 CD, Drivers and utility’s DVD, Power Cinema, Nero, Works 8.5, Norton Internet Security 2006. I really like this, because not all manufacturers include CD’s with their systems, check the pictures at the end of the review.

Power Cinema gives you the opportunity to watch movies and listen to music without booting Windows. You can control the program with your remote control that has a button to boot with Power Cinema. The remote works well, but you really need to sit in front of the notebook if you want the remote control to work 100% reliably. It has a range of only 2 metres, not very much.

Customer support

Fujitsu Siemens’ customer support is simple and effective. If you have a problem, you just call them and give your serial number. They will pick up your notebook at home and repair it and bring it back again after a week (2 or 3 weeks if the problem is not very easy to solve). We at Notebook Solutions have sent a few notebooks to the customer support center and have had no bad experiences with their support. All notebooks of FSC always come with 1 year pick-up and return warranty (standard configuration).

Conclusion

I truly believe that this notebook is the best gaming/multimedia notebook on the European market for the given price. As we can see this notebook gives good performance in the latest games and features great multimedia expansions (remote control, Power Cinema, widescreen display).

Pros:

• Core Duo, 1 GB and a 7600Go has a great price/performance ratio
• The 17” WXGA+ display is gorgeous.
• RAID 0 means great performance in games and other applications
• Good looks and very sleek design
• DVI-port and a lot of other ports, DVD writer is standard
• Full size keyboard with num pad
• Battery life is very impressive for such a desktop replacement (2.0-2.5 hours)
• Stays very cool compared to other notebooks, even after playing for hours
• F&amp;S includes all the software with CD’s
• No bloat ware installed, notebook comes with a fresh installation
• Great price in Europe

Cons:

• Small keys at the right side (where the num pad is), but you get used to it after a while
• Remote control doesn’t have a high range
• Vertically placed buttons are not very comfortable

More pictures of the Xi 1526:

 

The Xi 1526 comes with a lot of CD´s  (view large image)	The Xi, my 15.4” M1437G and on top my Dell X1 12” (view large image)
The top of the Xi 1526 (view large image)	The bottom of the Xi (notice the large fan intake and the subwoofer)(view large image)
The stickers indicate that this notebook is Vista ready.(view large image)	From left to right: The Xi 1526, my M1437G and the A3667G (same as M3438G but with AMD Turion) (view large image)
The 17" Xi compared to the ultra-portable 8.9" Fujitsu Siemens P1510. Also notice the Crystalview Technology which works like a mirror when the room is very highly lit. (view large image)

 

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3

 

Superb review! Very thorough! Stunning pictures as well!

 

Thanks Jetstar

Abaxter or Chaz, can you please edit the table of 3dmark03 (it has a few Enters which cause a bad lay-out.)

Thanks for posting it in 3 pages Andrew!

Charlie

 

Great Review Charlie. Well put together, and a very good mention of all the differents apects of the notebook. Amazing pictures, and lots of them too.

 

I'm amazed by the detail and time you put into the gaming benchmarks with pictures of the settings and gaming environment. It was a treat to read.

 

While the (disclosed) bias is noticeable, tests, pictures and expertise still make this an extremely good review. My compliments.

 

My friends Xi 1526 has almost identical specifications. By any means you can't rate the build quality as very good. You can actually lift the door of optical drive by 2 mm or something. In addition, after three months of usage, some panel paint is going off...

Anyway, the review is useful and interesting to read

 

thanks for the post , nice looking laptop