I'm the owner of this laptop (thanks to Dell's Holiday contest :D ) and can definately attest to the speed of this laptop.
There were a couple people asking about battery life, though. In this, the Dell seems to fail.
Now, I've never owned a laptop before, so I can't really compare, but the battery is VERY quick to run out. Even just running windows media and surfing the web wirelessly, it sucks through the battery in less than two hours (down to 5%). Without wireless enabled, it lasts about an hour more (give or take).
It plays all the games I have (NFS U2, GTA SA, couple others) at GREAT framerates, with all the goodies turned on, resolution turned WAY up (19something x something).
The big hit, though, as seen in the tests, comes with anti aliasing. The games become almost unplayable with AA on at higher resolutions, and a bit dissapointing at lower resolutions (still playable, though).
The other thing I saw questioned was the heat. During intense, long term gaming (NFS U2 being the test dog here), the lower area (keyboard, mouse pad, wrist resting areas) are damn near cold. Room temp at worst.
Up near the screen, things get REAL hot, as well as around the GPU and processor fans. It seems the keyboard vents are almost useless at drawing out heat, as I can hardly ever feel air coming out of them.
If you guys want anymore information on the laptop, I'll have it for a while. I also have a much weaker desktop that I can compare to if need be, though it only has an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (horrible card by todays standards).
Whoa... But yes, there's so many variables, it's nothing more really then saying "this laptop is fast".
Now what bothers me is those heat numbers... There's just noooo way Nvidia got it so low... Think about it... It's like what? 120W+ for a desktop 6800 Ultra? They'd have to lower the fab, or gotten really lucky with a batch... Me thinks Nvidia used some type of reference formula, such as "for every "xx" hours of gaming, "xx" hours will be in low power mode.
The Pent M doesn't have much of a heat problem, nor as much of a performance delta compared to the AMD solutions in the mobile arena. I think Dell going with that chip instead of the P4 was a good idea.
Maybe NVIDIA will finally gain some ground in the notebook sector... Hopefully we'll see AMD in the DTR field soon, because these big-time manufacturers like Dell are having heat problems, and voila, AMD runs cooler, faster, better.
As for the people saying that battery life will be impacted during DVD watching because of the PureVideo - I submit the following: software decoding - beggars can't be choosers at 35,000 feet.
Now when they put Yonah into this machine, it'll be time to own one :) Thanks much was great to see the review. I for one am about ready for a DTR notebook pc - and so this was a good article to see. Right direction for Nvidia too.
Side note: Quite a few articles show the P-M coming out quite well in gaming as you ramp the clockspeed up. Might be nice to see one of these machines with 1-2gb of good low latency DDR2 but hard to say if that would change things much.
Yonah, with SSE improvements and a clockspeed boost should be the machine to get. 6800 GO ultra is quite the beast and the right kinds of improvements. Now if they drop that to 65nm and bring a bit more speed and lower power useage and it will be a monster :)
A comparison is not quite possible given all the variables involved, so though the Go 6800U may be fast, we can't really say much about it versus ATI's current X800 mobile offerings until there's a test with identical specs -- the best case being a modular setup to accept either option.
Regardless of specs, that thing would still cost nearly twice as much as my top of the line SFF and you'd sacrifice on hard drive space/speeds. There's just no point to a gaming laptop *shrug*. At least those specs are finally starting getting me to look at them! Now if only the price would come down about a grand...
Exactly #35. I know the Ultra will be faster but I'd like to see exactly how much faster in a graph in order to make a decision if I think I should go out and buy a new DTR.
I have to agree with #22, I am an owner of a Dell XPS system with mobiliy 9800. Until now, the 9800 (Really X800 based) is the fastest available mobile solution and it would have been nice to see some comparisons with the 9800. (Didn't AT do some benches on the 9800??)
I still have no idea how my system compares with this new graphic option.
#30 There are not too many variables to say it is fast. This test shows that it IS fast, especially for a DTR laptop.
I think what you are trying to express is that there is not enough information to determine it is the fastest. It does not matter if the new drivers make the other cards go faster.
#26, if you've seen the review that anandtech did on desktop use of the dothan core, you would know that it is actually pretty weak when it comes to gaming. It still uses the exectution core of the PIII, etc. Pairing it with DDR2 seems to break the bandwidth issue.
Packing that much performance in to a >10lbs package is simply amazing. That machine pwns my A64. when I win the lottery I just might have to pick one up...
I'm sorry to say, but IMO this test is simply invalid. There are too many variables to draw any conclusion but that this thing is quite fast.
I guess the newer nVidia drivers support the new render mode in Far Cry patch 1.3 much better than the old drivers did. That would explain the Go being faster here.
Why does does this review leave the impression that the Pentium M 2.13Ghz is weak?
From benchmarks I've seen here and there, it's actually out there with the top lot in performance, sometimes beating the most powerful Pentium 4 EE!
First off...you could have put the previous M28 benchies with this article from November along with the original GeForce 6800 Go. Looks like this new nVidia card might be competitive. If I were nVidia, I would have been worried after the November article. Second, I would like to see the Star Wars and BattleField: Vietnam benchies. It looks to be the one that shows ATI dominating.
Oh ya..if forgot to mention in my previous post..Tom's Hardware has just posted a reiview on this system also...they did it right. Compared it to other high end gaming laptops.
Dissapointing review...if i want a Gaming Laptop I want a review to compare it to other Gaming Latop's. Comparing it to desktops sure doesnt answer any questions of mine!! I think you missed the boat.
Since when did they make DDR2 for the P-M? I would think its high latency would rather offset the M's best strength - low latency; although, it does retain its cache I suppose.
So is the mobile 6800 ultra a 12 or 16 pipe card? By the looks of it it must be 16, or else that extra 50MHz is doing a lot of work.
#18, I doubt they much choice - they had to use whatever drivers came with the laptop 9and those would obviously be optimized for the new moobile GPU). It would be interesting to see if the drivers help out desktop cpu's, though.
I could be wrong, but I'd bet the picture would look a little different if all the cards were using the same drivers. The difference between 69.xx and 75.xx drivers for recent dx9 games could be significant.
Its a shame Dell didnt give more time with the system, it would have been really interesting to probe the Alviso platform in all of its glory and compare against current systems... especially in the arena of the DDR2.
If the max output is 65W assuming you have the laptop loaded 100% the entire time the standard battery (what is it? 70W/h?) would barely last an hour. Just... ok... I imagine you can get beffier batteries or use a second one.
"NVIDIA informed us that the TDP for the chassis is 65W."
If we assume that Pentium M takes about 25W, this would leave 40W for system memory, chipset, hard drive, GPU and graphic memory. Wow, nVidia managed to pull miracle here. Gone are the days of 100W power consumption for high end Geforce 6800 cards.
If im not mistaken, the only difference between the GT and Ultra are their clock speeds #7. These benchmarks are baffling. I'm having a hard time believing them. How on earth did they pull it out?
Is this a prelude to what's to in the next generation of desk top cards? I'm think, if they can make a mobile card this fast, they should surely make a faster desk top counterpart with less heat, space, and power restraints.
Odd how a 12pipe / 5 vs @ 450mhz can out pace a desktop 16pipe 6vs @425. What optimisations have been done? I can understand it beating a 6800gt due to greater vertex/pixel shading power (450 x 5 vs 350 x 6) but it shouldnt beat an ultra.
Is the nv41m on 0.13 or 0.11um ? the die seems quite large any idea on transistor count?
The base price of the computer is $2249 with:
P-M 760 (2GHz)
512MB DDR2 dual channel
17" WUXGA (1920x1200)
256MB go 6800 Ultra
combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM
60GB HD
9 Cell battery (80WHr)
WinXP
etc
You can configure one now. $2745 for a well equiped system. Intenal Audigy, 6800 Go Ultra, 2.0Ghz P4 "760," cdrw/dvd drive, 1GB ddr2. Not bad for what it can do.
Amazing, just a few years ago the idea of gaming on a laptop was laughable. Now you can get a DTR that can pretty much keep up with the latest desktops - wow!
Not just battery life... but cost. This has got to be a $3k+ machine :(
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48 Comments
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jays83gsl - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I'm the owner of this laptop (thanks to Dell's Holiday contest :D ) and can definately attest to the speed of this laptop.There were a couple people asking about battery life, though. In this, the Dell seems to fail.
Now, I've never owned a laptop before, so I can't really compare, but the battery is VERY quick to run out. Even just running windows media and surfing the web wirelessly, it sucks through the battery in less than two hours (down to 5%). Without wireless enabled, it lasts about an hour more (give or take).
It plays all the games I have (NFS U2, GTA SA, couple others) at GREAT framerates, with all the goodies turned on, resolution turned WAY up (19something x something).
The big hit, though, as seen in the tests, comes with anti aliasing. The games become almost unplayable with AA on at higher resolutions, and a bit dissapointing at lower resolutions (still playable, though).
The other thing I saw questioned was the heat. During intense, long term gaming (NFS U2 being the test dog here), the lower area (keyboard, mouse pad, wrist resting areas) are damn near cold. Room temp at worst.
Up near the screen, things get REAL hot, as well as around the GPU and processor fans. It seems the keyboard vents are almost useless at drawing out heat, as I can hardly ever feel air coming out of them.
If you guys want anymore information on the laptop, I'll have it for a while. I also have a much weaker desktop that I can compare to if need be, though it only has an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (horrible card by todays standards).
Jay
firemachine69 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Whoa... But yes, there's so many variables, it's nothing more really then saying "this laptop is fast".Now what bothers me is those heat numbers... There's just noooo way Nvidia got it so low... Think about it... It's like what? 120W+ for a desktop 6800 Ultra? They'd have to lower the fab, or gotten really lucky with a batch... Me thinks Nvidia used some type of reference formula, such as "for every "xx" hours of gaming, "xx" hours will be in low power mode.
Now we only need batteries to catch up. :D
coldpower27 - Saturday, February 26, 2005 - link
Would there be a need for a third version of the Geforce 6800 GO Series?I mean, that would make them have 3 different models all with the same Quad/VS Configuration of NV41M's 12x1/6 style.
This generation it seems like Nvidia wants to maintain a maximum of 2 models per configuration style.
Anemone - Saturday, February 26, 2005 - link
The Pent M doesn't have much of a heat problem, nor as much of a performance delta compared to the AMD solutions in the mobile arena. I think Dell going with that chip instead of the P4 was a good idea.Interesting read:
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=lpc...
BOLt - Saturday, February 26, 2005 - link
Maybe NVIDIA will finally gain some ground in the notebook sector... Hopefully we'll see AMD in the DTR field soon, because these big-time manufacturers like Dell are having heat problems, and voila, AMD runs cooler, faster, better.On with the revolution!
DestruyaUR - Saturday, February 26, 2005 - link
Also, why the hell didn't they simultaneously launch a GT version for those who can live with 10-15 less FPS and less cost?DestruyaUR - Saturday, February 26, 2005 - link
As for the people saying that battery life will be impacted during DVD watching because of the PureVideo - I submit the following: software decoding - beggars can't be choosers at 35,000 feet.Anemone - Saturday, February 26, 2005 - link
Now when they put Yonah into this machine, it'll be time to own one :) Thanks much was great to see the review. I for one am about ready for a DTR notebook pc - and so this was a good article to see. Right direction for Nvidia too.Side note: Quite a few articles show the P-M coming out quite well in gaming as you ramp the clockspeed up. Might be nice to see one of these machines with 1-2gb of good low latency DDR2 but hard to say if that would change things much.
Yonah, with SSE improvements and a clockspeed boost should be the machine to get. 6800 GO ultra is quite the beast and the right kinds of improvements. Now if they drop that to 65nm and bring a bit more speed and lower power useage and it will be a monster :)
$.02
Howard - Saturday, February 26, 2005 - link
Inspirion, eh?trikster2 - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
34/35/36 I think this may have been already posted but here you go again:http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050224/dell_x...
If toms can be believed, the 6800 ultra is two to three times faster than your antique model-T 9800....
abakshi - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
A comparison is not quite possible given all the variables involved, so though the Go 6800U may be fast, we can't really say much about it versus ATI's current X800 mobile offerings until there's a test with identical specs -- the best case being a modular setup to accept either option.sleepeeg3 - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
Regardless of specs, that thing would still cost nearly twice as much as my top of the line SFF and you'd sacrifice on hard drive space/speeds. There's just no point to a gaming laptop *shrug*. At least those specs are finally starting getting me to look at them! Now if only the price would come down about a grand...timmiser - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
Exactly #35. I know the Ultra will be faster but I'd like to see exactly how much faster in a graph in order to make a decision if I think I should go out and buy a new DTR.Optimummind - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
timmiser, I think you need to see graphs and numbers to know that this Geforce Go 6800 Ultra will totally put the 9800 Pro Mobility on its knees. :)timmiser - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
I have to agree with #22, I am an owner of a Dell XPS system with mobiliy 9800. Until now, the 9800 (Really X800 based) is the fastest available mobile solution and it would have been nice to see some comparisons with the 9800. (Didn't AT do some benches on the 9800??)I still have no idea how my system compares with this new graphic option.
-Tim
mickyb - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
#30 There are not too many variables to say it is fast. This test shows that it IS fast, especially for a DTR laptop.I think what you are trying to express is that there is not enough information to determine it is the fastest. It does not matter if the new drivers make the other cards go faster.
ElFenix - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
#26what part of "Creative Audigy 2NX External USB [add $100 or $3/month1] Product details" do you not understand?
or maybe you could go here:
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy2NX/
and see that yes, this really is an external unit.
L3p3rM355i4h - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
#26, if you've seen the review that anandtech did on desktop use of the dothan core, you would know that it is actually pretty weak when it comes to gaming. It still uses the exectution core of the PIII, etc. Pairing it with DDR2 seems to break the bandwidth issue.Packing that much performance in to a >10lbs package is simply amazing. That machine pwns my A64. when I win the lottery I just might have to pick one up...
Da DvD - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
I'm sorry to say, but IMO this test is simply invalid. There are too many variables to draw any conclusion but that this thing is quite fast.I guess the newer nVidia drivers support the new render mode in Far Cry patch 1.3 much better than the old drivers did. That would explain the Go being faster here.
Hikari - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
#28 256MB video card.http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productde...
And lowest base memory for the notebook itself is 512.
sbuckler - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
How much memory has it got - from the drop off at high res I suspect 128mb, it might have been nice to mention that in the article.#16 - you can get a audigy 2 card for laptops now.
whooosh - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
how about comparing to other Geforce GO chipsets?ZoZo - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
Why does does this review leave the impression that the Pentium M 2.13Ghz is weak?From benchmarks I've seen here and there, it's actually out there with the top lot in performance, sometimes beating the most powerful Pentium 4 EE!
mickyb - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
First off...you could have put the previous M28 benchies with this article from November along with the original GeForce 6800 Go. Looks like this new nVidia card might be competitive. If I were nVidia, I would have been worried after the November article. Second, I would like to see the Star Wars and BattleField: Vietnam benchies. It looks to be the one that shows ATI dominating.This will look messed up with prop fonts.
Game ATI M28 6800Go 6800GoUltra
Doom3 47.6 51.4 83.2
HL-2 88.4 77.8 101.9
UT2004 48 45.8 57.5
Halo 52.9 46.8 55.6
Wolf 74.1 76.5 N/A
FarCry 87.4 65.3 88.5
Sims2 41 39 N/A
Battle:Viet 152 127 N/A
StarWars 63 33 N/A
DerekWilson - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
deathwalker --We haven't had any comparable gaming laptops in our labs.
Also, the review is of the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra, not of the Dell Inspirion XPS Gen 2.
...
I'm sure the notebook was using the higher speed HD, but that generally doesn't make a difference in the gaming experience except in load times.
The Pentium M should be more resilient to DDR2 than the P4. The low latency cache is what counts.
deathwalker - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Oh ya..if forgot to mention in my previous post..Tom's Hardware has just posted a reiview on this system also...they did it right. Compared it to other high end gaming laptops.deathwalker - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Dissapointing review...if i want a Gaming Laptop I want a review to compare it to other Gaming Latop's. Comparing it to desktops sure doesnt answer any questions of mine!! I think you missed the boat.bobsmith1492 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Wow, that's an amazing sounding machine; pics???Since when did they make DDR2 for the P-M? I would think its high latency would rather offset the M's best strength - low latency; although, it does retain its cache I suppose.
So is the mobile 6800 ultra a 12 or 16 pipe card? By the looks of it it must be 16, or else that extra 50MHz is doing a lot of work.
kmmatney - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Tom's Hardware showed the system running Forceware 75.80. You can get 75.90 from here:http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=999
I can't find 75.80 anywhere...
kmmatney - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#18, I doubt they much choice - they had to use whatever drivers came with the laptop 9and those would obviously be optimized for the new moobile GPU). It would be interesting to see if the drivers help out desktop cpu's, though.dougSF30 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Different nVidia drivers? That's kinda bad, methodology-wise.JustAnAverageGuy - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
It's too bad we don't get to see pictures of the laptop :)Even if it was a video card review.
ElFenix - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#5the audigy is an external USB unit
bob661 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#5The CPU offered in this laptop is a Pentium M.
SLIM - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
I could be wrong, but I'd bet the picture would look a little different if all the cards were using the same drivers. The difference between 69.xx and 75.xx drivers for recent dx9 games could be significant.Cygni - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Its a shame Dell didnt give more time with the system, it would have been really interesting to probe the Alviso platform in all of its glory and compare against current systems... especially in the arena of the DDR2.bamacre - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#10, not sure about the cpu, but the Dell XPS notebook does offer a 7200rpm hdd, I'd bet it was used in the test.segagenesis - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
If the max output is 65W assuming you have the laptop loaded 100% the entire time the standard battery (what is it? 70W/h?) would barely last an hour. Just... ok... I imagine you can get beffier batteries or use a second one.sri2000 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Referring to a couple of differences in the test machine specs:---
Intel Pentium M 2.13GHz
1GB DDR2 533 4-4-4-10
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
1GB OCZ DDR400 3-3-3-10
---
How much of a boost are we seeing from the use of DDR2533 RAM and from the highest clocked Pentium M to date?
The PCMag review shows it with a 4200 RPM drive - the typical speed for most notebooks, but that should be slowing things down, in this test right?
This review doesn't say if the test unit had an optional 7200RPM HD
defter - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
"NVIDIA informed us that the TDP for the chassis is 65W."If we assume that Pentium M takes about 25W, this would leave 40W for system memory, chipset, hard drive, GPU and graphic memory. Wow, nVidia managed to pull miracle here. Gone are the days of 100W power consumption for high end Geforce 6800 cards.
Regs - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
If im not mistaken, the only difference between the GT and Ultra are their clock speeds #7. These benchmarks are baffling. I'm having a hard time believing them. How on earth did they pull it out?Is this a prelude to what's to in the next generation of desk top cards? I'm think, if they can make a mobile card this fast, they should surely make a faster desk top counterpart with less heat, space, and power restraints.
Mingon - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Odd how a 12pipe / 5 vs @ 450mhz can out pace a desktop 16pipe 6vs @425. What optimisations have been done? I can understand it beating a 6800gt due to greater vertex/pixel shading power (450 x 5 vs 350 x 6) but it shouldnt beat an ultra.Is the nv41m on 0.13 or 0.11um ? the die seems quite large any idea on transistor count?
pxc - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1769520,00.as... batterymark 2 hours 13 minutes with the P-M 2.13GHz, WiFi, 1GB and 80GB hard drive.The base price of the computer is $2249 with:
P-M 760 (2GHz)
512MB DDR2 dual channel
17" WUXGA (1920x1200)
256MB go 6800 Ultra
combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM
60GB HD
9 Cell battery (80WHr)
WinXP
etc
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx...
It's about the cheapest go 6800 laptop, but it includes the fastest version.
total.ownage
bamacre - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
You can configure one now. $2745 for a well equiped system. Intenal Audigy, 6800 Go Ultra, 2.0Ghz P4 "760," cdrw/dvd drive, 1GB ddr2. Not bad for what it can do.Icehawk - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Amazing, just a few years ago the idea of gaming on a laptop was laughable. Now you can get a DTR that can pretty much keep up with the latest desktops - wow!Not just battery life... but cost. This has got to be a $3k+ machine :(
seanp789 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
For a laptop to come even come to close to desktop performance is simply amazing. so be on par with? Wow, just wow.they manage to do all this with a laptop battery and cooling?
I would really like to see that go card translate into a desktop part. It would make running SLI a little easier.
DerekWilson - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
We would too :-/We just didn't have time to perform any battery life or power tests as we had to spend all the time we had with the system benchmarking games.
dvinnen - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
I would love to see the battery life for this thing.