Dell DTR Laptop Shootout - M1710 vs. E1705
by Jarred Walton on May 30, 2006 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Gaming Performance: Source Engine
With Half-Life 2: Episode One ready for launch in the next week, Lost Coast performance may become far more important. Episode One will also make use of the new HDR lighting and improved graphics along with game play being more than one short level. We tested with HDR enabled, all detail settings at high, and 8xAF. We also ran benchmarks at identical settings using Day of Defeat: Source.
The X1400 almost manages to reach playable frame rates... almost. Meanwhile, the M1710 has become CPU limited at the lower resolutions when we don't have 4xAA enabled. Unlike some of the other games, the 7800 chip struggles to provide reasonable frame rates in this game, barely breaking the 30 FPS mark. On the other hand, the bottleneck is clearly the GPU core itself and not the memory bandwidth, as enabling 4xAA is essentially free. 1280x800 would be required in order to get truly playable frame rates with the 7800 chip.
Day of Defeat: Source is more CPU limited than Lost Coast, and different map content allows the 7800 to run at 1440x900 with basically acceptable frame rates. It's interesting that where the slower graphics cards actually do better on DODS, the M1710 is able to scale to higher frame rates with the lower resolutions in Lost Coast. The 2.16 GHz Core Duo CPU appears to max out at about 47 FPS in DODS, at least on 945PM chipsets.
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Gary Key - Tuesday, May 30, 2006 - link
Jarred will be reviewing these in the near future.tthiel - Tuesday, May 30, 2006 - link
I've been issued plenty of Dell laptops at the various companies I have worked for and they were all cheap plasticky junk. I've lost track of how many died on me. I was just given a new Thinkpad T43P and it is much better. Very well made, rock solid. So many of the engineers where I work wanted those instead of Dells that they had to restructure the ordering process and images to take care of all the new Thinkpads.JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 30, 2006 - link
I've heard about problems with ThinkPads now that Lenovo has taken over. (I haven't used any personally, so I can't say for sure.) I have also used many of the older Inspiron models, and have been unimpressed. These are definitely in a different league, however -- the cheap plastic case (at least on top) has been replaced by aluminum, for example. The problem is that most businesses don't buy higher end Dell laptops; they go with the more value oriented offerings, and whenever prices cut you can be sure that quality is cut as well.We're hoping to expand our mobile coverage in the future, so this is merely the beginning. As time goes on, we'll have more products that we can directly compare new offerings with. For now, I'm generally impressed with what the E1705 offers. Impressed enough that I recommended one to a family member, after browsing around looking for a suitable equivalent. Getting a large laptop with a 17 inch (or larger) display, 1920x1200 resolution, dual core processor, etc. is pretty difficult right now. Getting one with 2 GB of RAM for $2300 is even more difficult. Not everyone wants a laptop this large, certainly, but for those that do the E1705 is quite good.
jenson - Monday, January 7, 2013 - link
when cheap laptops really got a good shake, with many models looking and behaving a lot more like their costly cousins than in the past.