Question regarding dell studio 15

[prakash.gourav]

I am ordering this laptop on monday. If anybody could answer some questions of mine it will be a gr8 help...
1. Is it advisable to go for 512 mb ati hd 4570 instead of 256 mb. Means will it have any performance boost?
2. Should upgrade hard drive to 7200 rpm from 5400 rpm? What type of boost this upgrade will have?
3. And finally this one is the most confusing, should i go for intel wifi link 5300 (802.11) half-mini card instead of intel wifi link 5100. I only connect to my college wifi which is 50-60 mbps lan network.
Also any colour suggestions..?

[The Sorcerer]

1. Depends which one is ddr3 and which one is ddr2.
2. Personally, I havent seen much different between drives unless its something like a raptor or SSD drives. Stick to 5400rpm to save extra cash.
3. Laptops do have inbuilt wifi adapters. I think the one for dell is either broadcomm or intel. The speed is more depending on the ISP/router/settings. wifi adapters are just receivers. But the ones dell sends (and some older ones) do support 802.11 a/b/g/n.
I work for Dell U.S. so we give a hardware warranty and if customers want software warranty, then Dell on call tech support charges $239 which covers 4 major incidences wityh 72 hour of grace period for each issue with a validity of 1 year. I am not sure how Dell India works, but the point is get information and confirm if the warranty they are giving is only for hardware or does it cover software.

[izzikio_rage]

what is the cost of the this laptop and where are you buying it ?

just checked the site ......it does not say weather the graphics card RAM is ddr 2 or 3 ......any suggestions on how to find out

[mike ming]

finally found some body buying studio 15!! m getting my studio 15 on tuesday!
1. go for 512 if ur a hardcore gamer or else settle for 256mb
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI...0.13885.0.html
2. 7200 rpm will eat up ur battery. if ur not concerned with this then go for it.
3. 5100 is more than enough for the requirements u have.

the GPU is available in GDDR3, DDR3, DDR2. check the above site for ur graphics related queries.

[prakash.gourav]

It is 50k unconfigured without taxes and i will order it online.
Yes i like playing games a lot... So i would like to go for 512 mb vram if it offers even 10% performance gain. I dont know if it is gddr2 or gddr3. Is there any way to find out?

Does 7200 rpm hard disk gives better performance gains in games? I am not concerned about battery.

So if u people say that intel 5300 will not give any performance gains, i will go for a backlit keyboard.

[The Sorcerer]

Best if you confirm via calling Dell India and ask them personally. If your city needs to pay octroi, then that will be included later. Just as an FYI- 256MB ddr3 is better than 512MB DDR2. As I said- I haven't seen any much difference between 7200RPM and 5400RPM- its more depending on how many platters are there on the hard drive and sequential read speed, ram read speed and average transfer rate. For a 50k, one can go for a desktop and this way you can enjoy better games. Other than that, its the pointers I gave you.

[Cool G5]

If your sole purpose is gaming then better get a Desktop instead.

[rajhot]

1. Go for 256 MB card

[izzikio_rage]

256 mb ddr 3 is cheaper than the 512 MB ddr2???? the dell site is adding 1600 bucks to upgrade from the 256 to 512.....can someone please check if it really is a ddr3 card....

[prakash.gourav]

I will upgrade my desky later. Right Now i need to have this laptop and want to maximize the gaming performance on this configuration.

I am willing to spend 1.6k for 512 mb vram. Addition 0.5 for red colour and near 1k for backlit keyboard. That way it shall cost near 54k with taxes. But i will get an additional 5% discount for being an iit student. Henceforth it will cost 52k. Is it allright guys?
I am not going for 7200rpm hdd and intel wifi 5300 as u guys suggested...

[prateek_san]

Originally Posted by The Sorcerer

1.
I work for Dell U.S.

dude which site ?
cuz Im also In Dell USCTS ...

[The Sorcerer]

^^ Dell on call tech.

[prakash.gourav]

By the way, i also play a lot of games on wifi. Usually there is lag. Will intel 5300 give greater performance?

[The Sorcerer]

Its more on the router and the connection when it comes to lag. However, many gamers still prefer the good old fashioned but more reliable rj45 cable over wifi for gaming. As for onboard wif you just need to make sure it works on 802.11b/g/n which all new ones will.

[mike ming]

Go for the xps gaming laptop.
http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/prod...hs1&l=en&s=dhs

[izzikio_rage]

how do you get a discount for being an IIT student? and what other colleges are there in that list ....? any chance of ISM dhanbad being there?

BTW is the graphics ram ddr 2 or ddr3 ?

[abhisheksohal]

Yea...plz let us know how to get that student discount..coz im in PEC,chandigarh..and i also wanna know that is this laptop available in retail stores like some other models of dell are available??

[izzikio_rage]

@prakash.gaurav ...dude ....how do we get that student discount???????

[foruamit2004]

@ thread starter

faster harddrive will only reduce the loading time etc. , their will be no performance gain in games..

regarding gfx card, configure the system and submit, when they call you and send the final quotation, most probably they will mention if it is ddr2 or ddr3, or ask them before payment.. also any wifi card will be sufficient for ur requirement..

[izzikio_rage]

even the final statement does not tell whether the card is ddr2 or ddr 3 ....and the ATI 4570 is so new that there are no reviews available for it..

[prakash.gourav]

Sorry guys for replying late. I am waiting for the draft to be sent to dell.

The quotation doesn't say whether gfx card is ddr2 or ddr3... I think it must be ddr2 otherwise they would have surely highlighted the feature on the site.

And about discount-
when i asked about it, the call centre guy confirmed it and said that i will have to send the quotation to him so that he can verify me. However, in end he just sent the final quotation to me instead with all the discount. So i think, the extra discount is availaible if you upgrade the configuration a little bit.
Just ask them and ask.
Otherwise i can send the quotation for you using my iit id. No problem.

Thanks for all the help guys.

[MetalheadGautham]

HD4570 can't really use 512MB of RAM and give a huge performance boost.
See the second (48K) config in Dell website of Studio 15.
In that, change HDD to 7200RPM and upgrade to 9Cell battery.

[abhisheksohal]

I wanna ask ..is this laptop available at the Dell retail stores, (With the Ati radeon 4570)??? And one more thing..im plannin to buy Zenith director plus ultra...if i buy that then i'll have a P8400 2.26 ghz ,3mb cache,1066Mhz Fsb processor with Geforce 9600M GS(512 mb ddr2) nd 4gb ram ..and if i go for dell studio 15 then I will only be able to afford T6400 2ghz ,2mb cache,800Mhz fsb processor and Ati radeon 4570 and 3gb ram...so i wanna know that which will have better gaming performance?? Coz in the comparisons on the notebookcheck.net site...P8400 processor is ranked at 34 while T6400 is ranked at 58..and the Ati radeon is shown to be better than 9600M GS...so which laptop will run games better???

[izzikio_rage]

I got some feedbacks about the zenith service....its not too good....for home users having desktops they take forever to come and repair things ...same for corporate customers...plus the quality of their stuff is nowhere near that of MNCs ...so long term reliability is a big question ....I checked with friends in Jaipur , ujjain , and Delhi....

All in all I guess the extra money that dell is asking is worth it considering that there are no other options in this range ....specially with good graphics solutions...

[MetalheadGautham]

Originally Posted by abhisheksohal

I wanna ask ..is this laptop available at the Dell retail stores, (With the Ati radeon 4570)??? And one more thing..im plannin to buy Zenith director plus ultra...if i buy that then i'll have a P8400 2.26 ghz ,3mb cache,1066Mhz Fsb processor with Geforce 9600M GS(512 mb ddr2) nd 4gb ram ..and if i go for dell studio 15 then I will only be able to afford T6400 2ghz ,2mb cache,800Mhz fsb processor and Ati radeon 4570 and 3gb ram...so i wanna know that which will have better gaming performance?? Coz in the comparisons on the notebookcheck.net site...P8400 processor is ranked at 34 while T6400 is ranked at 58..and the Ati radeon is shown to be better than 9600M GS...so which laptop will run games better???

Zenith.

9600M GS is better than HD4570. Remember that 9600M GS is the lower end mid-range model from nVidia while HD4570 is the highest RV710 (low end) GPU from ATI.

And yeah, since the resolution of Studio 15 is higher than Director Ultra Plus, it will have lesser frame rate.

[abhisheksohal]

I got a call from the dell support today in response to my mail that i had sent them. They told me that it;ll cost me 46k final for the dell studio 15..wid T6400 2 ghz processor,ati radeon 4570,3gb ram etc. It'll be totally out of my budget even then...so im goin for zenith only...besides i personally feel tha nvidia cards are better in performance and also the regular driver support..

[MetalheadGautham]

Originally Posted by abhisheksohal

I got a call from the dell support today in response to my mail that i had sent them. They told me that it;ll cost me 46k final for the dell studio 15..wid T6400 2 ghz processor,ati radeon 4570,3gb ram etc. It'll be totally out of my budget even then...so im goin for zenith only...

Good.

besides i personally feel tha nvidia cards are better in performance and also the regular driver support..

Lol, the brand does not determine the performance.
You should look at the model number, core clock, vram, shader count, vram clock, power consumption, etc instead.
And no, drivers from AMD are not that bad. They just have longer release cycles, but that doesn't affect performance.

Having said that, 9600GS is ANYDAY better than HD4570

[izzikio_rage]

hey there are no benchmarks for the 4570 yet....and the sites have tentatively rated it as better than the 9600 ......Its still anyones game... ...

[foruamit2004]

@ abhi, if i were yuo and havn't seen the new dell then i wud have bought the zenith one, but after seeing the new dell studio, i wud rather wait for some days untill some benchmarks are out for ati 4570...but for 10k difference wud always prefer dell, offcourse with backlit keyboard, also 15.6" 16:9 led screen is really good for movies/tv shows..

[abhisheksohal]

I saw this video on youtube..where this guy has an Asus F6Ve-B1 laptop with HD4570 512 mb ddr2 ,C2D T9550(2.66ghz) ,4gb ddr2 ram! And hes shown the benchmarks on 3dmark 06 ...its just 3521 on 1024x768!! while geforce 9600M gs easily goes above 4000 on 1024x768 on 3dmark 06 and even more depending on the processor..like its 4622 at 1024x768 withT9400(2.53 ghz) processor !!
Heres the video..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9MMpraU71g
So its zenith for me no questions asked!