UNSOLVED
Closed
E1705 GPU
I'm in the market for my first laptop and have been considering tthe E1705 (very heavily) as my primary choice. My primary uses will be for downloading music/movies, burning cd's/dvd's, surfing the web, and gaming. I'm sort of hellbent on getting something with a dual core processor so I can multitask as I foresee it being something that's going to be happening quite a bit in the upcoming months. I've been researching my choices and going over reviews and found that with the Go 7800 this machine would be quite suitable to all of my needs especially gaming. However, quite recently Dell has dropped the Nvidia option and replaced it with the ATI Mobility X1400 256mb card. I can't find much information on the card other than it is comparable to the 7600 model from Nvidia which is a 128mb card. How much will I suffer with this card? I'm still pretty sure I'm going to purchase the E1705 still but I want some general feedback from those who have had experience with this computer and/or the graphics card as I am not very computer savvy at all. Helpful opinions are very appreciated.
Here are the basics of the configuration I'd like to go with:
Ultrasharp display with TrueLife
2.0ghz Dual Core Processor
60gb 7200 rpm SATA hard drive
2gb 667mhz ram
ATI Moblity X1400 256mb gpu
- I looked at the specs between the 7800 Go and the 7600 and yes, it's about half the card the 7800 is. I've been doing some reading on the ability (er, inability) to swap gpu's in/out of notebooks and was wondering if Dell would offer the service to upgrade to a better gpu in the future.
- I ordered E1705 with 7800 on March 3rd 2006, there was Nvidia 7800 option at that time. However the order status is still 'in production', estimated ship date is April 4th. Is this due to 7800 shortage?
I don't know if 7800 and x1400 are swapable. But my Inspiron 8100 (year 2002) does support multiple video cards: Nvidia Geforce 4 Go, and Nvidia Geforce 2 Go. I have both cards. I ordered 8100 with Geforce 2 Go. Later purchased Geforce 4 Go card from Dell and installed by myself. - I also ordered this system with the 7800. They state it will not ship until 4/4. My concern is if it will ship with the Nvidia or if they will switch cards without notice. If they intend to swap cards I would cancel my order, however I cannot get a straight answer from Dell at all.
Well, I fixed my problem. Sadly to say, I'm no longer getting the notebook. The reason I wanted one was because I am active military (Air Force if you wanted to know) and am currently deployed, and having the notebook here would have been nice for downtime, however, by the time I was able to order it shipping would take too long to get to the location I am at, so instead I'm opting for a desktop. If you would like to know the setup I'm going with I'm listing it below.
XPS 400
Dual Core 3.0ghz processor
4gb dual channel ddr2 ram
500gb RAID 0 hard drive
Dual 16x dvd drives
Nvidia Geforce 7800gtx (as if there's really any other choice!- My father bought an E1705 last week. Unfortunately it came with the ATI X1400 video card and we have been LESS THAN THRILLED with it's performance. I've read where lots of people have been disabling once of the CPU cores in the bios to get performance. My point is, if I wanted to disable a core, i would have bought a single-core cpu laptop. Well Dad just got off the phone with Dell. It appears that they now have some GeForce Go 7900 cards, but not many. They expect more next week. These cards are expected to be $500+ US. The lady he spoke with said that this card does work fine with the E1705 and that not only is it faster than the 7800 it also fixes some of the issues that were found with the Go 7800 as well. We are supposed to get a call back next week when they come avalible for purchase. I think they have the bios and drivers ready for this as well. Atleast early drivers. Will post updates when we get the card and see what kind of performance increase we get.
@MrFaust wrote:
My father bought an E1705 last week. Unfortunately it came with the ATI X1400 video card and we have been LESS THAN THRILLED with it's performance. I've read where lots of people have been disabling once of the CPU cores in the bios to get performance. My point is, if I wanted to disable a core, i would have bought a single-core cpu laptop. Well Dad just got off the phone with Dell. It appears that they now have some GeForce Go 7900 cards, but not many. They expect more next week. These cards are expected to be $500+ US. The lady he spoke with said that this card does work fine with the E1705 and that not only is it faster than the 7800 it also fixes some of the issues that were found with the Go 7800 as well. We are supposed to get a call back next week when they come avalible for purchase. I think they have the bios and drivers ready for this as well. Atleast early drivers. Will post updates when we get the card and see what kind of performance increase we get.
There is only one person who has needed to disable the second core in BIOS on the E1705, and that is myself. This wasn't for performance reasons but due to the fact that core 2 on my CPU is simply broken. I have seen plenty of other reports of systems with both cores working fine. In short there is *ONE* case of a defective CPU which needed the second core disabled in BIOS.
There were performance issues with CPUs that had dual cores and power management (such as the AMD Athlon 64 X2s and now the Core Duo) in the past, but there are software fixes for that which do not require disabling the second core. That is a well known issue with all SMP systems that are capable of clock scaling (Basically all dual-core chips on the market from any manufacturer), and there IS a fix that does not require disabling any cores, one which has been out since before the Core Duo's release.
Unfortunately the GeForce 7800 shortage is causing my replacement system to take forever. :(
Maverikva
121 Posts
298
0
Posted March 14th, 2006 00:00
I'm not too familiar with this card but from what little I've read, I'd think it'd be significantly slower than the 7800go.
Wonder if anyone knows why Dell did this? Too competitive to the XPS line? Less heat, better battery life?