Inspiron 9400 (benchmarks, opions)

nl

Has anyone bought a Dell Inspiron 9400 yet?

If you have please post your benchmark scores and also the playability of any of the recient games (Fear, CS:S, battlefield 2 etc..).
Iv heard that there has been some delays in other countries with the production and delievery of their laptops. I would'nt like to eagerly order mine only to realise that I wont get it for a number of weeks!!

Rags

Delivery was quick for me, ordered on the 05/02 and Got it yesterday. Was very surpriced at how quick it was. Was quoted estimated time 1st of March. Havent had time to do much testing yet. But it plays fear on 1440 x 900 (have to manually set that resolution in the settings file) on high high without any problems. Really impressed with it so far.

nl

Have you overclocked the 7800?? Dell ship them with much lower core and memory frequencies.

jesus_thats_gre

Is the lower speeds not something to do with the 90watt power block and insufficient cooling?

ThunderStorm

nl wrote:

Have you overclocked the 7800?? Dell ship them with much lower core and memory frequencies.

What are the underclocked setting used by DELL and the manufacturer settings?

Rags

No dont think I will overclock it. Dont wanna risk the warranty and mess something up.

nl

ThunderStorm wrote:

What are the underclocked setting used by DELL and the manufacturer settings?

I think Dell ship its 7800's with a 250MHz core frequency and im not sure what the memory frequency is.

Check out http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=36118&page=33

Its a long thread but its got some good reports. It seams that it can be upped to about 370Mhz or so.

Rags

Mine shipped 250/658. After downloading XTreme-G MobileForce drivers and detecting optimal settings it put it at something like 380/940. Would cause lot of overheating problems so i settled on 325 over 835. No prblems at all with it. Running fear on high high average of 59fps.

Very happy so far with this laptop.

nl

sounds great! Yea it seams that the Dell 7800's can reach nearly the same core and memory speeds of the standard 7800's.
Have you run any synthetic benchmarks like aquamark, 3dmark05,06?
Iv seen people nearly getting 6000 in 3dmark05.

ThunderStorm

Hi all,

Can you all please the list of the software CDs you get with your order. I didnt get any CDs for Windows XP Home edition and drivers. Weird !!!!

Rags

I didnt get xp disc either, only the restore disc, Think thats all they send out now a days.

ThunderStorm

yes you are right now a days they are sending very limited media with systems. In case you need media you call always call the customer service. They normally send it to you without any problem.

nl

Im just after ordering then 9400.

Specs are:

2.16GHz Duo processor
2x1024MB (677MHz) ram
Nvidia 7800 Go
80GB (7200RPM) hard drive
17" WUXGA 1920x1200 display
8x +/- dvd burner

Jasus cant wait to get her!! Should be a fast machine

Also just to point out to any potential buyers of the 9400. The two ram slots must be occupied in oreder for the computer to work. So the options are only (2x256), (2x512), and (2x1024).
I attemped to get 1 dimm of 1024MB ram installed (so as I could upgarde later) but was told that this was not possible. Something to do with the mainboard or something.

wingnut

Mine's due to arrive by the 6th. Not quite the top specced €1500 but reckon I'll be forking out again in a year and a half or so when vista/64 bit what not has settled.

€1471 from the outlet:
1.86 duo, 1Gb ram, 256mb 7800, 3 year warranty extension, XPS backpack

nl

Id be interested to see how much of a performance difference there is between the 2.13GHz processor and the 1.86GHz processor. And also between the 1GB and 2GB ram. Could you run a few benchmarks?

Have to say you seam to have gotten a great deal there wingnut. Id like to see if the extra 600 euro I spent on topping out the spec's was worth it.

wingnut

Will run benchmarks when I have it. Probably take a while, lappy will need to be wiped and rebuilt with a proper, clean install of XP. I am tempted to clock the 7800 up a bit read in notebook review most are doing it with success.

My first project will be dual booting with OS X. Theres a guy over on notebookreview forums who has his XPS triple booting OSX, XP and Ubuntu! Should be even easier on the 9400 because the Duo supports SS3.

From what I can see, same spec through the normal store clocks in at 2,380 so closer to €1000 off but not sure what the other guys payed here. Would have liked to add Bluetooth, but how bad.

I was dead chuffed to get the XPS backup thrown in in that price as it reatails for €140.

Im only buying the Dell because the DVDRW is gone on my Vaio S1XP. Bloody thing uses ultraslim dvdrw - 2mm shorter than other laptop drives and very expensive. Shame as I 'aquired' a Dell DVDRW which worked fine till I tried to put the vaio back together.

nl

I ordered mine on Monday afternoon and the expected delivery date was the 6th March. I just checked out the order status and its allready been dispatched as of today (Wednesday). Thats fast work by Dell. Hopefully ill have it tomorrow.

Firstly im going to do a nice clean install of XP Pro and then ill run a few benchmarks. Iv seen that there are people out there who are getting very close to breaking the 6K mark in 3dmark05 (they were running 2GHz Duo and 2GB 677MHz ram). Hopefully since I got the extra .16GHz advantage in the processor speed I might be able to break that 6K barrier.

But im not really sure which driver to use. Everyone seams to be using a different one. But I think ill try out the XTreme-G MobileForce drivers that Rags is using first. An overclock to 380/940 sounds pretty good using those drivers.

nl

Got 77K in Aquamark 3. 28secs to 1M and 1:10 to 2M digits in Superpi. Not bad at all. The optimum frequencies for my card was 370MHz core, 890MHz memory.