Soulburner
12-02-2007, 07:14 PM
Some of you may not consider this extreme...but here at Xtremesystems we overclock and benchmark anything made of silicon and metal :cool:. That, and my girlfriend just upgraded and got a new laptop, taking advantage of Dell's smoking deals during the holiday season (after my advice, of course).
Configuration:
Dell Inspiron 1520
15.4" with 1440x900 glossy screen
Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 200x10, 2.0Ghz, 2MB Cache
2x1GB DDR2-667 @ 5-5-5-13 (actually DDR2-800 but the system uses 200fsb and a 3:5 divider to get 333mhz)
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB
Windows XP Professional SP2
Forceware 169.09 (modded by laptopvideo2go)
DirectX 9.0c w/November 2007 Redistributable
3DMark2001
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Default 475/950/800
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/15203DMark01Default.jpg
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Overclocked 600/1200/1000
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/15203DMark01Overclocked.jpg
3DMark06
1280x854 (I have no control over the resolution in the free version)
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Default 475/950/800
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/15203DMark06Default.jpg
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Overclocked 600/1200/1000
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/15203DMark06Overclocked.jpg
This card had a lot of room for overclocking. I only changed the Performance 3D clocks to not affect the battery life in low-power modes. I was able to raise the core from 475 to 600, and the shaders then followed from 950 to 1200 since they are run at 2x the core clock. The memory allowed me to take it from 800 to 1000 (DDR).
An interesting thing I noticed when overclocking the card was that the bump from 400 to 500 on the memory produced a 500 point gain in 3DMark06, but then taking the core and shader from 475/950 to 600/1200 produced only an additional 300 points. I suspect this is due to laptop video cards being limited to a 128-bit memory bus. Since the card is essentially crippled for thermal reasons, the card just cannot get enough memory bandwidth and it will take anything you can give it and show great gains. I also saw very little temperature increase after overclocking, despite how high I was able to take it. We are talking about an 8800GT series core clock but the GPU only gained 1-2c over stock.
Crysis
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Overclocked 600/1200/1000
CPU Benchmark - 1440x900 Low Detail - 42fps
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/CrysisCPULow.jpg
CPU Benchmark - 1440x900 Medium Detail - 17fps
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/CrysisCPUMedium.jpg
GPU Benchmark - 1440x900 Low Detail - 48fps
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/CrysisGPULow.jpg
GPU Benchmark - 1440x900 Medium Detail - 20fps
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/CrysisGPUMedium.jpg
Surprisingly, Crysis is very playable on low detail settings, with gameplay in the 35-45fps range and even though you miss out on some of the details the image you see is still remarkable for a single GPU 15.4" laptop. Crysis was not able to get the CPU over 57c and the GPU over 60c even overclocked.
Lightsmark 2007 v1.3
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Default 475/950/800
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/1520LightmarkDefault.jpg
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Overclocked 600/1200/1000
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/1520LightmarkOverclocked.jpg
1280x1024 wasn't selectable for me in 1.3...making it hard to compare to other results.
HD Tune 2.54
Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS 250GB
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/WD2500BEVS.jpg
2x125GB platters
8MB Cache
5400RPM
2.5"
http://www.storagereview.com/WD2500BEVS.sr
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Western_Digital_Scorpio_WD2500BEVS_25inch_SATA_HDD/
Definetely not bad for a notebook hard drive. It's fast because of its size (platter density) despite being only 5400 RPM. Access time could definetely use some help though.
It is equipped with a Dell Wireless-N Mini-card. I don't have any formal benchmarks but what I can say is that it matches all of my desktop's corded 100Mbps ethernet performance, without the wire attached. Speakeasy.net's Chicago server showed 12,000Kbps download speeds which is phenomenal and saturates the whole "10mbit" connection that I have here. It can pull in over 1 megabyte per second (1,000KB/s) from fast servers which is great and leaves me with little reason to ever use the ethernet cable again. Judging by the numbers I would guess that there is even more power that isn't being tapped, but I have the fastest internet connection available in my area so I may not know the real potential of it.
The highest temperature I saw on the CPU was 57c which seems to be where the system says "that's enough" and brings it down with the fans. The fan is incredibly quiet - you will likely never hear it during normal operation and even at full blast its still the quietest laptop i've ever heard. It exhausts air out the side very efficiently and has no trouble keeping things cool even with the overclocked 8600M GT in there. The GPU reached as high as 68c during my Titan Quest test. I have no framerates for that but it seems to be a great test for artifacts and GPU stability. It gets the GPU hotter than any other benchmark or game I have tried, even Crysis which only hit 60c after an hour. The hard drive runs very cool, in the 35-42c range during use. This is also cooler than our previous Dell Inspiron 1505 with a 60GB Samsung drive which ran between 50-55c.
I opted for the 85Whr Lithium Ion Battery which gets you between 4-5 hours of light work and 2.5-3.5 hours of intensive (but non-gaming) work which is exceptional. If you were to game on the battery you would expect considerably less battery time, and although I did try it out, Powermizer limited my 3D performance enough to not want to even bother.
Overall I am very impressed with this system. Everything about it is high quality and it packs a lot of punch for little money, especially considering the $500 off $1499 coupon I used making this the best $999 laptop buy around. Despite the hardware inside the whole thing has very efficient cooling and does not get nearly as hot as other laptops I have used in the past.
One of the only things that bothers me about it is the fact that DDR2-800 isn't supported yet, although it is an 800fsb CPU. If I could change the divider to use a 1:2 ratio I could get the perfect 400fsb on the memory, but I doubt the difference would be huge. By default a 3:5 divider is used for 333mhz, or DDR2-667. I removed the 2x512MB modules and replaced them with my own OCZ 2x1GB because it was much cheaper. Dell wanted $125 to go from 1GB to 2GB which is more than 2x markup.
So that concludes my initial testing. Thanks for reading my little review. If there are any other benchmarks you guys want to see, I can take requests :cool:
Configuration:
Dell Inspiron 1520
15.4" with 1440x900 glossy screen
Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 200x10, 2.0Ghz, 2MB Cache
2x1GB DDR2-667 @ 5-5-5-13 (actually DDR2-800 but the system uses 200fsb and a 3:5 divider to get 333mhz)
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB
Windows XP Professional SP2
Forceware 169.09 (modded by laptopvideo2go)
DirectX 9.0c w/November 2007 Redistributable
3DMark2001
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Default 475/950/800
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/15203DMark01Default.jpg
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Overclocked 600/1200/1000
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/15203DMark01Overclocked.jpg
3DMark06
1280x854 (I have no control over the resolution in the free version)
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Default 475/950/800
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/15203DMark06Default.jpg
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Overclocked 600/1200/1000
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/15203DMark06Overclocked.jpg
This card had a lot of room for overclocking. I only changed the Performance 3D clocks to not affect the battery life in low-power modes. I was able to raise the core from 475 to 600, and the shaders then followed from 950 to 1200 since they are run at 2x the core clock. The memory allowed me to take it from 800 to 1000 (DDR).
An interesting thing I noticed when overclocking the card was that the bump from 400 to 500 on the memory produced a 500 point gain in 3DMark06, but then taking the core and shader from 475/950 to 600/1200 produced only an additional 300 points. I suspect this is due to laptop video cards being limited to a 128-bit memory bus. Since the card is essentially crippled for thermal reasons, the card just cannot get enough memory bandwidth and it will take anything you can give it and show great gains. I also saw very little temperature increase after overclocking, despite how high I was able to take it. We are talking about an 8800GT series core clock but the GPU only gained 1-2c over stock.
Crysis
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Overclocked 600/1200/1000
CPU Benchmark - 1440x900 Low Detail - 42fps
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/CrysisCPULow.jpg
CPU Benchmark - 1440x900 Medium Detail - 17fps
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/CrysisCPUMedium.jpg
GPU Benchmark - 1440x900 Low Detail - 48fps
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/CrysisGPULow.jpg
GPU Benchmark - 1440x900 Medium Detail - 20fps
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/CrysisGPUMedium.jpg
Surprisingly, Crysis is very playable on low detail settings, with gameplay in the 35-45fps range and even though you miss out on some of the details the image you see is still remarkable for a single GPU 15.4" laptop. Crysis was not able to get the CPU over 57c and the GPU over 60c even overclocked.
Lightsmark 2007 v1.3
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Default 475/950/800
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/1520LightmarkDefault.jpg
GeForce 8600M GT 256MB @ Overclocked 600/1200/1000
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/1520LightmarkOverclocked.jpg
1280x1024 wasn't selectable for me in 1.3...making it hard to compare to other results.
HD Tune 2.54
Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS 250GB
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k245/BlackHawk2k6/Computers/Benchmarks/WD2500BEVS.jpg
2x125GB platters
8MB Cache
5400RPM
2.5"
http://www.storagereview.com/WD2500BEVS.sr
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Western_Digital_Scorpio_WD2500BEVS_25inch_SATA_HDD/
Definetely not bad for a notebook hard drive. It's fast because of its size (platter density) despite being only 5400 RPM. Access time could definetely use some help though.
It is equipped with a Dell Wireless-N Mini-card. I don't have any formal benchmarks but what I can say is that it matches all of my desktop's corded 100Mbps ethernet performance, without the wire attached. Speakeasy.net's Chicago server showed 12,000Kbps download speeds which is phenomenal and saturates the whole "10mbit" connection that I have here. It can pull in over 1 megabyte per second (1,000KB/s) from fast servers which is great and leaves me with little reason to ever use the ethernet cable again. Judging by the numbers I would guess that there is even more power that isn't being tapped, but I have the fastest internet connection available in my area so I may not know the real potential of it.
The highest temperature I saw on the CPU was 57c which seems to be where the system says "that's enough" and brings it down with the fans. The fan is incredibly quiet - you will likely never hear it during normal operation and even at full blast its still the quietest laptop i've ever heard. It exhausts air out the side very efficiently and has no trouble keeping things cool even with the overclocked 8600M GT in there. The GPU reached as high as 68c during my Titan Quest test. I have no framerates for that but it seems to be a great test for artifacts and GPU stability. It gets the GPU hotter than any other benchmark or game I have tried, even Crysis which only hit 60c after an hour. The hard drive runs very cool, in the 35-42c range during use. This is also cooler than our previous Dell Inspiron 1505 with a 60GB Samsung drive which ran between 50-55c.
I opted for the 85Whr Lithium Ion Battery which gets you between 4-5 hours of light work and 2.5-3.5 hours of intensive (but non-gaming) work which is exceptional. If you were to game on the battery you would expect considerably less battery time, and although I did try it out, Powermizer limited my 3D performance enough to not want to even bother.
Overall I am very impressed with this system. Everything about it is high quality and it packs a lot of punch for little money, especially considering the $500 off $1499 coupon I used making this the best $999 laptop buy around. Despite the hardware inside the whole thing has very efficient cooling and does not get nearly as hot as other laptops I have used in the past.
One of the only things that bothers me about it is the fact that DDR2-800 isn't supported yet, although it is an 800fsb CPU. If I could change the divider to use a 1:2 ratio I could get the perfect 400fsb on the memory, but I doubt the difference would be huge. By default a 3:5 divider is used for 333mhz, or DDR2-667. I removed the 2x512MB modules and replaced them with my own OCZ 2x1GB because it was much cheaper. Dell wanted $125 to go from 1GB to 2GB which is more than 2x markup.
So that concludes my initial testing. Thanks for reading my little review. If there are any other benchmarks you guys want to see, I can take requests :cool: