Dell Studio 17 - For gaming?

[Zebsy]

Hi,

I was thinking about an XPS M1530 but then someone on here pointed me at the cheaper Studio 17.
It appears to have a similarly performing graphics card to the M1530.
Has anyone used this for gaming and can comment on framerates etc?

Cheers,

Zebs

PS Its Bioshock I finally want to get around to playing ;]

 

[philreid]

Hey,

I've ordered a Studio 17 but unfortunately I don't expect it to be very good for games - it doesn't come equipped with a high end graphics card (256 MB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3650) where the XPS M1530 comes with an NVIDIA GeForce™ Go 8600M GT. which I think is better.

It's not all down to the graphics card though, and I suspect that the XPS will be a quicker machine - though obviously it depends on the spec you choose!

Anyway I'll try out a couple of games when the machine arrives and tell you if I get decent FPS.

 

[philreid]

Here's an excellent review of the Studio 17, which has info on its gaming performance.

 

[ducattigezzer]

if its bioshock you are wanting to play

your pushing either laptop to play it unless its lower end settings

you want to be looking for something with the nvidia 88 to get a good frame rate and looking good.

 

[planetse]

I purchased a laptop especially for gaming, the Alien was just a little on the high side (over £3000) so opted for the XPS M1730. Still got good looks with the carbon effect and LED's lighting everything up, but more importantly was price for speck.

Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Processor X9000 (2.80GHz, 800MHz FSB, 6MB L2-cache)

8 GIG 800 MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM

Vista 64Bit

500GB Free Fall Sensor Raid 0 Stripe - 2 X 250GB (7200RPM) Hard Drive

NVIDIA® SLI™ Dual GeForce® 8800M GTX with 1GB GDDR3 Memory

At just over £2200 it plays new games as they should be played; over 1GIG of graphics is the key, backed up with a very good processer

Laptops for gaming will cost nearly twice as much as there desk top equivalent. The Studio is a great laptop but is by far from being suitable for playing modern games. As mentioned the XPS M1530 is better than the Studio, but again you must speck it up.

Notebooks can play games, but most struggle to play games with descent frame rates and settings. Only a small number can play new games and games that will come to us soon.

Take a look....

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4471

Could not find a review with my duel 512 cards, this is duel 256 with less RAM too, but still gives an idea.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4085

 

[Zebsy]

Thanks for the replies.

There is zero chance of me spending more than £1000 on a gaming laptop let alone > £2000!!
I can play it on my desktop + 8800 GTX at home, I just wanted something for more casual use on holidays really.

I am checking here to compare video cards, and those 2 mentioned seem very similar.
For XPS Bioshock performance see
here
(oo didnt expect it to inline it, spooky)

I have seen that review and it completely put me off the Studio, but wondered if anyone had actually tried some gaming on it, Bioshock in particular.

Cheers,

Zebs