General Application Performance

Wrapping things up with our performance testing, we have results from the Futuremark PCMark suites as well as some of our own application benchmarking. When it comes to running your office, multimedia, and Internet tasks, most modern laptops are more than fast enough. What follows are a few of the more strenuous application benchmarks - 3D rendering and video encoding - that put more of an emphasis on high CPU speeds. If you don't do that sort of thing on your computer, you will probably find that just about any current dual-core processor is sufficient.

Futuremark PCMark05

Futuremark PCMark Vantage

3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R10

3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R10

Video Encoding - DivX

Video Encoding - QuickTime

Video Encoding - x264

Video Encoding - x264

The Studio XPS 16 continues to offer middle of the pack performance, just as you would expect given the components. For Internet, office use, or image editing, you shouldn't have any difficulties utilizing the XPS 16. If you want to do more CPU intensive work, particularly stuff that can make use of multiple CPU cores, you should consider some of the laptops that are now shipping with quad-core CPUs. The Toshiba X305-Q725 shows what you can expect from laptops with a 2.0GHz Q9000, where 3D rendering and x264 encoding clearly benefit from the additional CPU cores.

3DMark Results Battery Life
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  • JarredWalton - Sunday, April 5, 2009 - link

    I don't have updated scores with new drivers, but you can see the http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=324...">original XPS M1730 3DMark scores - including scores with the CPU overclocked. I didn't have 3DMark Vantage at the time, so those scores are also missing. Basically, the scores are relatively close to the Clevo D901C laptop.
  • Hrel - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link

    I have a Dell Studio 15 Series laptop T8100 320GB HDD X3100GMA... it's okay for the most part; wish it had some kind of useable graphics, but I couldn't afford the upgrade. Anyway, the slot loading DVD drive is a pain in the but! It quirks out sometimes when you hit eject and just keeps trying to eject the disc even if it's already out until you restart the whole thing; one time even after doing that it just wouldn't take discs for like 5 days at all. Then randomly it started working again. Not to mention if it ever DOES fail I'm gonna have to pay more for the replacement than I would if it was a standard cd tray drive; I REALLY don't like that choice of DVD drives.

    Also, on a 16" 16:9 Chassis they really should include a keyboard that has a dedicated num pad. Asus includes a full numpad on their 15.6" 16:9 chassis. On that note though, the keyboard on my Studio 15 is well laid out and pleasant to type on.
  • QChronoD - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link

    Where the measurements for the screen done with the out-of-the-box settings, or was it calibrated first?
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link

    Calibrated. As best as I can tell, there's no truly reliable way of testing the color accuracy without calibrating. I tried to do it in the past, but I became suspect of my results. Besides, if you need accurate colors there's generally no way around hardware calibration utilities.
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link

    Windows Vista Hope Premium? :0)
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link

    Truth in advertising? :-D
  • Lingyis - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link

    bad news--i was just gonna get one of these babies and Dell told me Studio XPS 16 no longer comes with an RGB LED option.

    i want a good laptop display--i'm deciding between the Studio XPS with a regular WLED vs the Precision M4500. The precision M6500 appears to have RGB LED but it's 17 inches which is too big.

    so what to go for--the RGBLED-less Studio XPS or the Precision M4500?
  • brock5 - Tuesday, September 28, 2010 - link

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  • brock56 - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link

    Eyes are the most sensitive part of our body and all <a href="http://rjneyeinstitute.org"> Eye disease </a> are equally capable of harming the eyes, as they are very delicate

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