Performance to go

For the time being two models constitute the new Studio XPS series. On the one hand a mobile 13 inch notebook, which can not only be seen as a persistent office notebook, but also as rather powerful multimedia-laptop, because it is equipped with an nVidia Hybrid SLI graphics. On the other hand a classical 16 inch multimedia notebook with a big field of application is offered. At first we will look at the Studio XPS 13, which is especially interesting because it combines performance and durability.

Already in the former XPS model design was considered important. In the new Studio XPS series this aspect gained even more importance. First of all, leather was used at the lid. However, the numerous deliberate details, which do not leave anything to chance, are even more interesting.

Let's start with the dominant design features. The lid is covered by a total of three different components. In the top part there is a high-gloss finished plastic part. A silver aluminium diecast part, which optically separates the black high-gloss finish from the black leather element, follows. So, the lid provides several haptic experiences, whereas the leather part feels best to the touch.

But, in mobile use you can experience at once that the leather element does not only look good. It allows to securely grasp the notebook there and move it from the table. Although lids are usually sensitive to fingerprints, this one escapes them.

Except of the leather element, the same material change from aluminium parts to high-gloss finished plastic parts, is continued for the base unit. While other manufacturers resort to hides or their artificial copies for the palm rest areas, Dell prefers high-gloss surfaces here too.

The test did not prove our initial concerns that the palm rest areas could be sensitive to dust and dirt, which is completely contrary to our experience with some glossy parts. The same is also true for the moulding with touch-sensitive hot keys above the keyboard.
While the hot keys are hardly visible if the notebook is turned off, they are illuminated by white LEDs after power on and thereafter readily identifiable.
Also the right display hinge provides decent optical charms. Their white LED visualises the operating state, and, e.g., pulses "Apple-like" in stand-by mode.

An nVidia nForce module (Gigabit 10/100/1000 Mbps) allows fast wired networking. Also standard of the new Studio XPS series is wireless LAN  standard-n (Dell Wireless 1515). Bluetooth (2.0) is available for a surcharge of 35.- euro.
An HSDPA module for wireless Internet access via broadband is also available for a surcharge of 60.- euro. According to Dell it is also possible to upgrade the notebook with such later, because all models are completely wired and equipped with the necessary antennas ex factory.

As usual, Dell also offers a number of accessories for the Studio XPS 13. These include external input devices, bags, routers, and various software - of course for a surcharge.
As a small free goodie Dell delivers the XPS 13 in a big coth bag, which is useful for cleaning the notebook, but also marginally protects the notebook during transportation.

Dell designed a special keyboard for the Studio XPS notebook series. This can be easily distinguished from those of other series by its striking surface design and a special font. The keyboard is really flat, and the actual typing area is moved about 2 mm from the key edge.

The layout appears to be rather clear, and also the key size turned out to be user-friendly in the test. This compensates for the rather dense layout without all-too big gaps between the keys. Maybe the a little bit  uncentred  keyboard and the touchpad needs getting used to. The reason is the key row right of the keyboard.

The illumination of the keys is very good. A decent light, not at all uncomfortable, can be seen through the letters. So, using this notebook in dimmed environments gets pretty easy. A further advantages is that light shines with hardly any exception only through the labels and not for instance much through the gaps between the keys. This guarantees a first class contrast for typing. Furthermore, it is even possible to adapt the brightness of the illumination in three levels. In addition also the illumination of the active Caps-Lock key is very useful.

The touchpad has a slightly roughened surface with rather good gliding properties. Also the two buttons score points by a feeling typical for Dell, that is soft feedback and good key travel.

Apropos feel of typing, we liked the keyboard with its short key travel and think that it is also ready for typing long texts. The decent tapping also contributes to this.
In the test we recognized that the pad has multi-touch features. You can e.g. zoom documents with two fingers. However, the standard scroll option, for which two fingers move across the pad, was not available.

In regards of processors Dell only offers P-series models of the Intel product range for the Dell Studio XPS 13. The reason is that these have a clearly lower TDP25 of only Watt compared to the T-series chips, which have a TDP of 35 W. So, you can choose between a P8400 CPU with 2.2 Ghz, a P8600 CPU with 2.4 GHz, and P9500 CPU with a clockrate as high as 2.52 GHZ, 6MB L2 cache, and 1066 MHz frontside bus. Considering the price/performance ratio the P8600 should be top. This is available for nearly 50.- Euro extra cost compared to the entry-level version with P8400 CPU. Detailed tests of the current Core 2 Duo Penryn CPUs are available in this special article.

Regarding the graphics card not that much choices are available. You can either select the integrated chipset graphics from nVidia, the Geforce 9400M G, or a combination with dedicated Geforce 9200M GS graphics card via nVidia Hybrid SLI (Geforce 9500M G). The later costs about 80.- Euro more.

Thanks to the nVidia Hybrid Power & Boost technology this combination of integrated graphics chip and additional dedicated graphics card can reach the performance of the middle-class of comparable multimedia notebooks. In the test the XPS 13 achieved, e.g., 3442 points in the 3D Mark 2006 benchmark test, which is very good. Therewith it is about equally powerful than various multimedia notebooks, e.g., the MSI GX620 with Geforce 8600M GT graphics or the Asus M50S with ATI HD3650 graphics. The huge difference between integrated graphics chip and active hybrid SLI graphics card gets also clearly apparent.

We can also give a positive summary conerning the results of the PC Mark 2005 benchmark test. With 6690 points the Studio XPS 13 clearly tops various other comparable multimedia specialists. Another important aspect are the premium RAM equipment and the brilliant SSD of this system. We will describe this a little later.

A striking detail in the PC Mark 2005 benchmark test is that the system is marginally better with chipset graphics (9400M) than with dedicated graphics card.

Because of the good result in the 3D Mark 2006 benchmark, one question arises: Can the gaming performance of the Studio XPS 13 be compared with system with 8600M GT, or is the  3D Mark score only nice to look at?

In the meanwhile somewhat old games, Doom 3 and FEAR, the Geforce 9500 graphics solution turned out to be rather gaming-friendly. E.g., in Doom3 it achieved a rather playable frame rate of 44.1 fps. Even solely with the chipset graphics (9400M) 44.0 fps were possible. Thereby the nVidia Hybrid SLI does not seem to be better. Furthermore, system with similar 3D Mark score, e.g., the MSI GX600 with Geforce 8600M GT clearly exceed these results(87.9 Fps bei ultra).

The lead of the 8600M GT is not that big in, e.g., the driver-sensitive shooter FEAR, a DX9 based game. But, here you can especially with high details detect differences between 9400M and 9500M graphics.

We chose Crysis with a resolution of 1024x768 as representative of demanding games. From the very beginning it was clear that it does not make any sense to try detail level high. Even gaming notebooks like the M17 from Alienware are not capable of this. However, at least for the sake of comparison the detail levels medium and low are of interest.

This gives a clear advantage for the Geforce 9500M graphics card over the integrated 9400M graphics card of about 20%. This can, e.g., on low details be essential for playability or not.
Furthermore, it gets once again obvious in comparison that a Geforce 8600M GT is indeed clearly more powerful and able to get the lead over the Geforce 9500.
Current multimedia hardware like, e.g., a Geforce 9600M GT, are definitely outside the scope of this graphics solution.

We gave it another try and tested the popular multi-player shooter Call of Duty 4 in practice. The key question was, whether this game can be played to some degree with Geforce 9500 graphics solution?

The recorded frame rate when playing part of the first single player mission led to the following conclusion: The difference between or more precisely the advantage of the Geforce 9500 graphics card increases with the demands on graphics (resolution, anti-aliasing, ...).
The frame rate won't get to some extent reasonable, before activating the 9500 graphics cards, reducing the resolution to 800x600 pixels and deactivating anti-aliasing. Once we did, we recorded frame rates, which mostly exceeded 30 Fps. Deactivating further graphical options, could lead to further improvements, and so might result in Call of Duty being playable to some extent with this hardware.