Dell XPS - Worh it?

gunn3rs

So I'm in the market for a gaming laptop and after hours of searching it looks like Dell has the best specs for the right price. I'm looking at one of their XPS 15 machines but not sure which one to get. I have narrowed it down to these two:

XPS 15 i3 Model - €649

Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit
XPS L501x (UK, FCG01) – i3-370M (2.40Ghz, 4Threads, 3M cache)
1 year Collect & Return Hardware Support included with your PC
320GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
Internal Keyboard
XPS L501x Resource DVD (Diagnostic & Drivers)
Intel® Core™ i3-370M (2.4Ghz, 4Threads, 3M cache)
3072MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [1x2048 + 1x1024]
Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 (EUR)
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420M Graphics Card
8x DVD+/-RW Optical Drive
1 Meter Power Cord
6-cell 56Whr Lithium Ion battery
Documentation
90W AC Adaptor
15.6 HD WLED TL (1366x768) 720p
XPS L501x Order - Ireland
N02XL510
No DataSafe Online Backup 2GB (Direct)






Studio XPS i5 model €739

Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English

Intel® Core™ i5-480M (2.66hz, 4Threads, 3MB cache)

OS Windows® Recovery Media Not included

Microsoft® Office Starter: reduced-functionality Word & Excel w/ads. No PowerPoint or Outlook

1 year of coverage included with your PC

No Accidental Damage Protection

DataSafe Online Backup 2GB - 1 year licence

McAfee® SecurityCenter 15 Month Subscription

TvTuner Not Included

15.6 HD WLED TL (1366x768) 720p with 2.0 Mega Pixel Integrated Camera

4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]

8x DVD+/-RW Optical Drive

500GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive

6-cell 56Whr Lithium Ion battery

1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420M Graphics Card

Metalloid Aluminum Cover

AccessoriesNo Carrying Case

Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 (EUR)


Also Includes
XPS L501x Order - Ireland
English Documentation
Datasafe Local 2.3 Basic
XPS L501x Resource DVD (Diagnostic & Drivers)
90W AC Adaptor
1 year Collect & Return Hardware Support included with your PC
1 Meter Power Cord (3 Wire) - European
Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Keyboard
N11XL503EPP
Mobile Broadband Not Included

Or there is also an i5 XPS (not studio) available for €799, identical to the Studio above..

I'm not a huge gamer but I'd like to be able to play from time to time. Do you think these machines are good enough to play modern games and what one is better value. I mean is it worth paying nearly 100 quid extra to go from i3 to i5?

Any advice is welcome.

Jo Satan

The i5 xps for €799 can be got for €690 via the EPP scheme.
Search boards for details on the EPP, there is a 2% EPP discount & with a 5% additional EPP discount code on the EPP home page...
http://ireland.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/emea/topics/epp/epp?c=ie&l=en&cs=ieepp1

You can also try saving the basket, close down the webpage, log on to dell via bethrifty.ie or fatcheese.ie and you might get 5% cashback.
Not sure if it works on EPP purchases.

This would bring the price down to €655.50, well worth it for 180g more hard drive, an extra gig of ram and a processor that has a cpu benchmark score of 2754 versus Intel Core i3 370M @ 2.40GHz with a score of 2221

gunn3rs

Nice, I never heard of that before. Thanks for that could save me a good few bob..

EGriff

I have the non studio i5 version. It's pretty good, games run fine. I've played crysis, the witcher, bulletstorm and they all run great on mid/high.

Speakers are very good on it, by far the best sound I've ever heard from a laptop.

The build quality isn't that great, the keys feel a bit cheap and crappy and the headphone port is a bit dodgy (could just be my one though).

Overall I'd recommend it, it's snappy and pretty good value considering the specs.

Sgt Pepper 64

EGriff wrote: »

I have the non studio i5 version. It's pretty good, games run fine. I've played crysis, the witcher, bulletstorm and they all run great on mid/high.

Speakers are very good on it, by far the best sound I've ever heard from a laptop.

The build quality isn't that great, the keys feel a bit cheap and crappy and the headphone port is a bit dodgy (could just be my one though).

Overall I'd recommend it, it's snappy and pretty good value considering the specs.

Whats the battery life like?

EGriff

Sgt Pepper 64 wrote: »

Whats the battery life like?

Pretty average. Haven't tested it out too much but set to high performance mode and using some engineering software in college today I had to plug it in after about 2 hours.

I keep it plugged in most of the time though so I can't really say. You can get a larger battery with it if you need one but it sticks out the bottom so the laptop is always tilted forwards.

BlastedGlute

Ok so obviously ignore the above post.... -_-

To be completely specific, what games do you want to play? FPS types? Have you seen the battlefield 3 trailer yet? When buying a gaming computer it's always best to look into the future in terms of releases and think, do I want to play that? If the answer is yes, then you need to think of your build with the required specs in mind.

Never leave yourself with a computer, much less a laptop, which can't be upgraded to suit your future needs. I'm packing a gainward phantom 570gtx in my machine. Hoping this card and a new CPU will power bf3 on full