Dell XPS 17 3D: Speedy, and in Stereo

Dell XPS 17 3D Review, by Loyd Case February 2011

It seems like only yesterday that a Dell XPS 17 last passed through the PCWorld Labs, yet here we have another one. That always seems to happen when a new CPU generation launches. Toss a capable GPU and 3D stereoscopic capability into the new model, and you have a feature-rich desktop replacement.
The XPS 17 3D reviewed here ships with an Intel Core i7 2820QM clocking in at 2.30GHz but capable of pushing to a full 3.4GHz in Turbo Boost mode. This is one of Intel's latest quad-core processors built on the new Sandy Bridge architecture's 32nm manufacturing process. It's a major improvement over past Intel quad-core mobile CPUs, offering faster clocks, more robust power management, and overall better performance.
The display provides the 120Hz refresh rate and IR emitter necessary for stereoscopic 3D. We used it with an aftermarket set of Nvidia's 3DVision glasses, and everything works quite well. Driving the display is an Nvidia GeForce GT 555M mobile GPU. Dell has beefed up the resolution of the display to true 1080p.
Most of the other features are comparable to those of the earlier XPS 17, including dual hard drives, four USB ports (the two on the rear are USB 3.0 capable), 802.11n, a Blu-ray drive, and both HDMI and mini-DisplayPort digital video output connectors.
Our test system's performance in standard desktop apps was stellar, producing one of the highest scores we've seen from a laptop on WorldBench 6, an impressive mark of 151. The new Intel CPU, coupled with a staggering 16GB of main memory, were no doubt major factors. You'll pay for this power, however: The XPS 17 3D starts at $1450, and the configuration we reviewed will run you $2389 (prices as of February 2, 2011).
The Nvidia GT 555M is newer than the 445M that Dell used in the last-generation XPS 17 L701X. Since the screen is now true 1080p, however, the 555M needs to drive 44 percent more pixels than the older laptop's 1600 by 900 display had. That means lower frame rates in games, so you may want to dial down the resolution a bit if you're playing current-generation titles. The performance of the GT 555M seems only slightly better, as in 3D Mark 2011 this laptop garnered a score of 1307 versus the mark of 1286 from the older XPS 17.
At 1080p, the XPS 17 3D ran Far Cry 2 at 49.93 frames per second, while in the racing title F1 2010 it managed just 18 fps in DirectX11 mode. In Just Cause 2, a graphics-intensive DX10 title, it eked out 18 fps as well. On the other hand, in Metro 2033 it reached 25 fps, only a little slower than the older XPS 17, which was running at a lower resolution. We disabled antialiasing in all game tests.
The change in screen resolution also means that stereoscopic 3D gaming, while theoretically capable, will be performance limited. If you want to take advantage of 3DVision for games, you'll need to reduce the resolution considerably, possibly as low as 1280 by 720.
Playing 3D Blu-ray movies, though, works very well aside from the substantial reduction in brightness and contrast. The effect is particularly startling in the IMAX 3D Blu-ray title Deep Sea 3D. We also viewed standard Blu-ray high-def movies, and those looked great. In all cases, you really want to sit in the sweet spot, as the color shift and brightness drop-off are both very noticeable as viewing angles change.
Audio quality seems quite good, with acceptable speaker distortion and with the overall tonal quality tending toward neutral. Bass is limited, as you'd expect. The volume level during music playback didn't seem particularly loud, but audio during games could get quite ear-piercing.
The keyboard seems to be a slight step backward. The keys offer a gentle sculpting, making it easy to settle fingertips into them, but the surface seems slippery--it's too easy for fingers to slide to another key and mistype while touch typing. The arrow keys and PageDn/Ins cluster keys are way too small, as well.
Overall, the Dell XPS 17 3D offers superb performance in standard desktop apps. Gaming performance is pretty good, too, though you'll want to scale back the resolution a bit and dial down the graphics features for best results, particularly in newer games. The new display looks very good, and stereoscopic Blu-ray movies are spectacular, if you're into them. Performance on stereoscopic 3D games is still too limited, however.
Weighing 9 pounds, 11 ounces with the power brick, and measuring nearly 2 inches thick in places, this is no HP Envy 17. Still, if you're looking for a capable, premium desktop replacement that can do everything, the Dell XPS 17 3D fits the bill.

HP Envy 17 3D: 3D Movies on the Go

HP Envy 17 3D Review, by Loyd Case January , 2011

I took a close look at HP's Envy 17 last September and found a lot to like, plus a few issues that bugged me. So it goes with most products--there's no perfect laptop. Now HP's refreshing the Envy 17, adding a new display and stereoscopic 3D capability.
In fact, the unit HP shipped to PC World had only one minor difference, other than the display, from the earlier version. The new Envy 17 with 3D had a single 500GB hard drive rather than a pair of 320GB drives. The CPU, RAM, Blu-ray drive, and GPU were all the same. So I'm not going to dwell on features like USB ports, processor, or networking--those are all pretty much the same. The carryover AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5850 GPU, though, is a key component in enabling stereoscopic 3D; it may also be a weak link, as we'll see.
One thing that did drop a bit was the performance score on PC WorldBench 6. That's because the battery life of the Envy 17 3D seems significantly shorter--1 hour, 27 minutes, versus 2:19 on the original. That could be because the display's 120Hz refresh rate, needed for stereoscopic 3D, sucks more juice. A single hard drive, instead of two drives in a RAID array, can also impact WorldBench scores, as some of its benchmarks scale well with storage performance.
Let's talk about that display before we dive into stereoscopic quality and performance. The display for normal 2D work is every bit as good as on the original Envy 17. Viewing angles are far better than most laptop displays, color fidelity in digital photographs and videos look accurate; and even black levels in video are surprisingly robust for a notebook PC. About the only thing I'd wish for is a matte finish--the glare from the glossy finish on the LCD panel gets quite distracting at times. I played several standard, 2D Blu-ray movies, including Serenity, Star Trek, and Kick-Ass, and they all looked pretty sweet.
Now let's turn to stereoscopic 3D. The new LCD panel offers refresh rates up to 120Hz, which makes stereoscopic 3D a much more pleasing proposition. The chance of headaches and eyestrain is reduced at higher refresh rates, though if you're like me, long viewing periods may still be hard on your eyes.
HP enables stereoscopic viewing with third-party hardware and software from Tridef. The 3D glasses use the same type of LCD shutter technology as the competing 3DVision products from Nvidia, but the glasses are a little bulkier. That's an issue if you don't wear glasses, but I found them better than Nvidia's glasses in my case, because they fit a little better over my normal eyewear.
Driving the display is the aforementioned Mobility Radeon HD 5850, which is starting to get a little long in the tooth. For gaming in "normal" 3D, it still serves pretty well. But when you use stereoscopic 3D, you need twice the frame rate. That's a difficult proposition for most mobile GPUs. The way to get around performance issues is to cut the resolution to 1280 by 720. Given the reduced brightness and contrast, you won't notice large differences in image quality, and the 3D effect can be quite impressive.
When it works.
Therein lies the rub. Tridef's software solution for stereoscopic 3D gaming is far from perfect, especially when you compare it to Nvidia's 3DVision. When you first launch Ignition (the game-launching software), you scan the system for games, but the utility only found two titles: Dawn of War II andCivilization V. The rest of the games that were installed had to be manually added.
When the games were actually run, the overall experience can become frustrating. For example, two games--F1 2010 and Just Cause 2--gave this little gem of an error when we tried to launch it from the Tridef game launcher app:

Just Cause 2 is, in fact, a DirectX 10 game. F1 2010, which yielded a similar error, is DX11. I tried updating the Tridef software from its Website, but the problem persisted.
Some games do work well, though imperfectly. I obtained solid stereoscopic 3D with Batman: Arkham Asylum and Dawn of War II. However, some image ghosting was visible, probably due to imperfect 3D image convergence. Moving close to or further from the display didn't have any effect. The Tridef utilities seemed to offer no way to calibrate the screen and glasses. The ghosting was quite faint, and not particularly distracting, but it's still there, and isn't visible when running on an Nvidia-based system.
Civilization V popped up a message in-game that "Tridef Ignition does not yet support DirectX 11 mode for this game. Please try again with DirectX 9."
Running in DirectX 9 did yield pleasing stereoscopic 3D, but at the cost of some cool DX11 effects. Again, Nvidia's 3DVision ran the same game just fine in DX11 mode.
Okay, so stereoscopic 3D games are a mixed bag when trying to run on the Envy 17 3D. What about 3D Blu-ray? The tale here is much better. Both the Disney 3D Blu-ray sampler and the lone 3D test on the THX calibration disc worked superbly. The Disney clips are all animated, and look really good. The sound quality seems the same as on the original Envy 17, which is to say pretty darned good for a laptop, though you may want headphones if you're looking for deeper bass.
Clearly, HP, AMD, and Tridef have a lot of work to do to catch up with Nvidia's two-year lead when it comes to gaming in 3D. However, HP's Envy 17 3D offers a robust stereoscopic 3D experience for Blu-ray 3D, and if that's your primary interest on the stereoscopic side, the Envy 17 3D delivers.

Asus N53SV

Asus N53SV Review, by Jon L. Jacobi January , 2011

Asus's good-looking N53-series laptops have proved to be some of the faster all-purpose notebooks on the market. Such is the latest N53SV model, as well, only more so thanks to its new state-of-the-art second-generation Intel Core CPU. Our test configuration, which sells for $1219, sports the high-end 2.0GHz Core i7-2630M processor that pushed the unit to an excellent WorldBench score of 126. However, you can save some money at the expense of performance by ordering it with an i5-2410M or i3-2310M.
All configurations ship with an Nvidia GT-540M GPU, which makes for good gaming. A game like Unreal Tournament 3 tops 100 frames per second in all the resolutions supported by the 15.6-inch, 1366 by 769 display. With more strenuous games, of course, you can expect lower frame rates. The other, less-glamorous main components include 4GB of DDR3-1066 memory, a 750GB, 7200-rpm hard drive (slower, 5400-rpm drives with less capacity are available in some models), and an 8X DVD burner.
At 15.6 inches by 10.6 inches by 1.6 inches thick and 6.4 pounds, the slate-gray N53SV is on the large side for an all-purpose laptop, bordering on the desktop replacement category. However, besides accommodating the large screen, it also allows for a spacious keyboard deck. The keyboard and touchpad are indeed roomy, and have a nice if somewhat soft feel.
Sadly, the keyboard annoys you with odd layout choices: The placement of the cursor keys shortens the length of the right shift key, and several oft-used editing keys such as Delete are stuck in nonstandard locations. There's also no separation of the main alphabetical keys from the said cursor keys or the numeric keypad. This causes visual and tactile confusion at times. One button was defective on our unit and occasionally required a good whack before it would respond.
One other minor issue is that the built-in Atheros AR9285 Wi-Fi adapter is single-band, 2.4GHz-only. You won't be able to connect to the 5GHz networks that are rapidly gaining popularity. On the other hand, the unit has Bluetooth and gigabit ethernet, and one of the three USB ports is the new, sublimely fast USB 3.0. Other ports include a headphone jack, a microphone input, and an SD/MMC/MS/xD card reader.
Asus touts the Bang & Olufsen audio on the N53SV, and as far as it goes, it sounds good--loud, spacious (with software aid), clear, and punchy. But "as far as it goes" is only down to the lower midrange. No matter what audio company's logo is on a notebook, the notebook needs a largish speaker and some air to provide bass response. As you'd expect with the processing horsepower that the N53SV has on board, video played supersmoothly.
Asus bundles some nice software to take care of the peripherals: Cyberlink's PowerDVD for playing DVD movies, Power2Go for disc-burning chores, PowerDirector for making movies, and MediaEspresso for converting videos and music between various device formats. You may also boot the N53SV to the Asus Express Gate Cloud--a Linux-based interface that provides quick access to photos, a calendar, the Internet, and so on. However, the N53SV boots to Windows 7 so quickly, you might find yourself not bothering.
The NV53SV has some excellent features. The price-to-performance ratio is nice, and it's never been whacked with an ugly stick. If the minor keyboard issues don't bother you, it's worth a look.

Dell Precision M6500, Laptop Pakai Port USB 3.0 dan Core i5

Heni BeritaNET.com

Setelah Dell meluncurkan Latitude 13, perusahaan Amerika juga meng-updateartikel notebook Dell Precision M6500.Notebook bisnis dual-core Dell Precision M6500 ini diklaim Dell sebagai mobile workstation yang paling powerful di dunia, dengan pilihan Intel Core i7 atau i5 dual core, power computing maksimum. Dell Precision M6500 memudahkan user untuk bekerja di mana saja karena portabilitasnya. Untuk Precision M6500 dengan Core i7, dilengkapi dengan tipe Intel Core i7-920XM Quad Core Extreme Edition, memory 1066MHz, 1333MHz atau 1600MHz.
Dell Precision M6500 ini menawarkan support untuk RAID 5 dan 3 drive di penyimpanan internal. Dengan pilihan 3 disc penyimpanan dan SSD MiniCard64GB, maka user dapat menambah 2 drive pilihan RAID 0 atau 1 untuk mencapai konfigurasi maksimum hingga 1TB. Dell juga berencana menambah Precision M6500 dengan port USB 3.0, camera 3.2 megapiksel yang support Gobi 2.0 untuk fleksibilitas maksimal.
Layar notebook Precision M6500 berukruan 17 inch dan 100 persen customizable color range, Dell juga support Microsoft Windows 7 32bit dan 64bit, Vista, XP, juga Red Hat Linux 5.3 64bit. Laptop Dell Precision M6500 dual core tersebut akan hadir di akhir bulan Februari, berikut pula untuk rincian harganya.(h_n)

Dell Precision M6500, Laptop Pakai Port USB 3.0 dan Core i5 Heni BeritaNET.com

Heni BeritaNET.com

Setelah Dell meluncurkan Latitude 13, perusahaan Amerika juga meng-updateartikel notebook Dell Precision M6500.Notebook bisnis dual-core Dell Precision M6500 ini diklaim Dell sebagai mobile workstation yang paling powerful di dunia, dengan pilihan Intel Core i7 atau i5 dual core, power computing maksimum. Dell Precision M6500 memudahkan user untuk bekerja di mana saja karena portabilitasnya. Untuk Precision M6500 dengan Core i7, dilengkapi dengan tipe Intel Core i7-920XM Quad Core Extreme Edition, memory 1066MHz, 1333MHz atau 1600MHz.
Dell Precision M6500 ini menawarkan support untuk RAID 5 dan 3 drive di penyimpanan internal. Dengan pilihan 3 disc penyimpanan dan SSD MiniCard64GB, maka user dapat menambah 2 drive pilihan RAID 0 atau 1 untuk mencapai konfigurasi maksimum hingga 1TB. Dell juga berencana menambah Precision M6500 dengan port USB 3.0, camera 3.2 megapiksel yang support Gobi 2.0 untuk fleksibilitas maksimal.
Layar notebook Precision M6500 berukruan 17 inch dan 100 persen customizable color range, Dell juga support Microsoft Windows 7 32bit dan 64bit, Vista, XP, juga Red Hat Linux 5.3 64bit. Laptop Dell Precision M6500 dual core tersebut akan hadir di akhir bulan Februari, berikut pula untuk rincian harganya.(h_n)

ASUS Umumkan 4 Notebook Terbaru

Tidak ingin membuat para calon pelanggannya penasaran, ASUS pun buka suara untuk empat notebook terbarunya. Sebagaimana dilansir cnet, pabrikan komputer asal Taiwan ini umumkan banderol serta tanggal peluncurannya di sebuah acara yang digelar di New York. Keempat notebook tersebut adalah ASUS NX90J, ASUS N53JF, Eee PC 1015PEM, dan ASUS G73.
Dari keempat notebook tersebut yang paling menguras kocek adalah ASUS NX90J. Pasalnya notebook ini dipersenjatai dengan spesifikasi yang ciamik dibanderol sekitar 2.300 dolar. Seperti prosesor Core i7, RAM 8GB, serta dual hard drive berkapasitas 640 GB. Notebook ciamik dengan layar 18.4 inchi ini akan meluncur di pasaran pada akhir bulan ini.
Selanjutnya ASUS N53JF, notebook berlayar 15 inchi ini dibekali kartu grafis terbaru NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M serta Bang & Olufsen ICEpower audio. Notebook ini juga akan meluncur akhir bulan ini dengan banderol sekitar 1.000 dolar.
Adapula Eee PC 1015PEM, notebook 10 inchi yang dipersenjatai dengan prosesor dual core Atom N550, dan 1.5GHz RAM. Selain itu, notebook ini juga akan ditanamkan fitur konektivitas Bluetooth dan juga port USB 3.0. Notebook ini akan meluncur minggu ini dengan banderol sekitar 379 dolar.
Terakhir ASUS G73, notebook gaming yang meluncur pada bulan Februari lalu. Ketika diluncurkan pada bulan akhir September di Amerika, notebook gaming besutan ASUS ini akan dibekali dengan kartu grafis 1.5GB GeForce GTX460M. Adapun banderolnya ada dikisaran 1.800 dolar.
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