Dell Studio XPS 16 with core i7 or i5 for gaming?

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i think this is a good mobile rig but cant decide between the core i7 or the core i5...i think im going to get it in white with the rgbled screen and 256 ssd hard drive. Does know the comparative gaming performance/benchmark scores for the i7 720 and i5 540?
 
i think this is a good mobile rig but cant decide between the core i7 or the core i5...i think im going to get it in white with the rgbled screen and 256 ssd hard drive. Does know the comparative gaming performance/benchmark scores for the i7 720 and i5 540?

Dont know the figures, but don't forget the 540 isactually due core, and 720 is the real quad core... so there should be a significant difference, if not now, further down the line...
 
cheers, i think the core i5 750Q is quad core as well, the Q means quad apparently...I've also read that the i5 is more advanced tech, i.e newer
Does anyone have a laptop with these processors that they use for gaming? how do they cope? e.g frame rate playing crysis on high settings?
 
cheers, i think the core i5 750Q is quad core as well, the Q means quad apparently...I've also read that the i5 is more advanced tech, i.e newer
Does anyone have a laptop with these processors that they use for gaming? how do they cope? e.g frame rate playing crysis on high settings?

Some of the desktop i5's are quad, the mobile versions of the i5 are dual core hyperthreaded.
 
The i7 and i5s are both based on the Lynnfield architecture, so the difference is minimal. I have an HP Pavilion with an i7-720 and it's pretty good. Runs at 1.6ghz when all four cores are being used but can turbo boost up to 2.8. Gaming is OK - but that's more down to the graphics card.

I haven't seen any throttling, but that depends on the laptop and the cooling I guess. The main downside to my machine is the battery life, which is about an hour :( Again, this will vary depending on the machine but for use on the go I would suggest an i5 I think.
 
also i've heard the i7 runs very very hot in a laptop and throttles itself....true?

that is true, on certain dell models, i think the xps suffers that.
thats because the powersupply it comes with is 90w, which the i7 + gpu when underload exceeds that. the bios is a prob.

other brands like the HP envy i have comes with a 120w powersupply and does not have any problems. gaming is super slick, considering its only a 1.6ghz cpu, its just down to the HP envys beefy gpu.


i would google xps 16 with i7 issues, you'd prob find more info.
 
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that is true, on certain dell models, i think the xps suffers that.
thats because the powersupply it comes with is 90w, which the i7 + gpu when underload exceeds that. the bios is a prob.

other brands like the HP envy i have comes with a 120w powersupply and does not have any problems. gaming is super slick, considering its only a 1.6ghz cpu, its just down to the HP envys beefy gpu.


i would google xps 16 with i7 issues, you'd prob find more info.

i just read that dell will send out a 130 psu for free if you have issues with the 90 watt psu so its all good tbh..
 
Dell have issued a new bios for the Studio XPS 16 with i7 (version A07) that removes most of the throttling. Dell support worldwide are sending out 130 watt adaptors on request.

I have a SXPS 16 with i7 720, 4Gbytes Ram, RGBLed screen, 256Gbyte SSD and I've just received my 130 watt adaptor. It does indeed improve the situation. With a 3D program running to stress the gfx card, and throw in Prime 95 running 8 threads in total, the system does limit the power useage by locking the multiplier and reducing the clock somewhat. It used to throttle right back to 933MHz and stay there until the load dropped. At least it now stays at 1.6Ghz. But this is a completely artificial test and of little real world relevance. With 3DMark Vantage or 3DMark06 running it never throttles, so I would imagine it would be the same in most games.

The RGB led screen option seems to have been taken away from the i7 models at the moment, I'm not sure if that is because the extra 10 watts or so it uses is an issue, or because of shortage of supply of the screens.

It's a great laptop, good looker and very fast. Pity Dell didn't get the bios right to start with.
 
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