Dell Studio 14: Defining Solid
by Dustin Sklavos on August 19, 2010 2:49 AM ESTStudio 14: Gaming in Practice
We've recently revised our gaming benchmark suite to make things more consistent and hopefully clean up the data we present to you. We're also adding StarCraft II to the suite and it's hard not to make a convincing case for it: the game is immensely popular, but also stresses a system fairly evenly, capable of being limited at both the CPU and GPU levels. If it has one fatal flaw, it's poor threading: StarCraft II doesn't take advantage of more than two cores, potentially leading to severe CPU-limited situations on quad-core processors that operate at slower clocks. We'll be looking at this more in an upcoming article, but here are some preliminary SC2 results (subject to change if we modify our test sequence). Because of the change in benchmarks, we won't have quite as few systems listed for comparison, but we will be adding more laptops to the mix over the coming weeks and months.
And here's where the HD 5470 gets dicey. You would think by 2010 that a dedicated graphics part should be able to handle any modern game at 720p (technically 1366x768 or 768p), at least at the lowest settings. After all, the Xbox 360 is nearly five years old, and 720p is the target for that console. But the Mobility Radeon HD 5470 can't: Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 are basically unplayable. You can probably make a case excusing Bad Company 2 (or drop it to DX9 mode to get frame rates up another 20%), but Mass Effect 2 uses an extremely common engine—Unreal Engine 3—and a fairly well-optimized implementation at that. If you bump the resolution down, you can get these games playable, but we're of the opinion that you shouldn't have to. If you're a glutton for punishment on the other hand…
Midrange Gaming? Not Hardly…
Bumping up to our new "Medium" test settings on the same set of games is pain inducing. Literally, the slideshow that was BFBC2 nearly caused me to toss my cookies. Obviously, these settings are not playable, though the 5470 does manage to put paid to NVIDIA's similarly anemic 310M. Less taxing titles might break the 30 FPS mark, but you'll definitely encounter games where even minimum detail is out of reach at the native resolution. The M11x from Dell's Alienware brand manages significantly better gaming performance, although there are instances where games may be CPU limited (i.e. StarCraft II)—we'll be looking at another laptop with a faster CPU and the same GPU soon to see if that's the case.
Paying an extra $160 just to get to this point is extremely difficult to justify; if you mean to do light gaming on the go and are willing to turn down settings, we're comfortable recommending going for the Mobility Radeon HD 540v instead. The 540v should perform very close to the 5470 while reducing the overall system price. If you'd rather get something that can actually handle gaming at medium detail, you might want to check out the ASUS K42JV and N82JV (a review of the latter will be posted in the next couple of weeks).
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Friendly0Fire - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
Uninformed much, wow. The styling is a matter of taste and if you dislike it, go grab your favorite cheap plastic fest, or do you prefer the elitist Macbook?The GPU, wow big deal I couldn't see more than a 1 or 2 FPS difference. Still plays all games really well.
Trackpad, get some program to customize it.
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
...nearly five hours on a six-cell with a dedicated GPU is unexceptional?What's it gonna take to impress you people?
It's true, the machine's a bit heavy, but it's well-built, too, has excellent expandability, and performs very well. I've played with a few 14" notebooks, this is probably one of my favorites.
OCDude - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
Why do all laptops under $1000 have to be 1366x768? That is a crappy resolution if you actually want to get any work done on the thing... *sigh*zoxo - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
It's not just the resolution, but the gloss. I really wish they'd stop shoving these craps down our throats.bhima - Saturday, August 21, 2010 - link
AMEN BROTHER! The only reason I will probably get an ENVY 15 instead of say, a Sager or ASUS is because it actually offers a FHD matte screen. Seriously, I don't understand why people like glossy monitors. It isn't because of picture quality, because if that were true, the majority of IPS panels would be glossy but they are not.tipoo - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
My Studio 15 has a 1920x1080 screen...Its awesome, I hate going to lower resolution ones now.ESetter - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
I don't get the critcism related to the GPU. Some computers are just not meant for videogames and the Radeon 5470 is perfectly fine for other usage scenarios. I believe the majority of the notebook market isn't interesting in gaming at all.rootheday - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
I think the point is: What value does the 5470 add here over the Intel HD graphics that are included in the processor? For the market that doesn't care aobut gaming, the Intel graphics offers great battery life, good video playback, etc - and you could save $100+ off the price.Dell isn't the only one to do this - if you look at laptops online, you will find lots that advertise as "1GB ATI discrete graphics" or "512MB NVidia discrete graphics" - but are equipped with the NV310 or the ATI5470 like this one. It looks like the only one who benefits here is the OEM who applies a big markup to the card... in a world of very thin margins for OEMs and ODMs, this is one area where they have found they can still milk the customer out of more money with relatively little benefit.
mino - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
Give me Radeon 9600M over HD anyday!One word: DRIVERS !!!!
(posting this from G45M and regretting saving $100 back then)
ESetter - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
Three main reasons:1) No memory & memory bandwidth stolen from the CPU. Memory used by an integrated GPU can be siginficant. Moreover, I run some CPU-memory intensive code and I want to be sure the memory bus isn't loaded by the GPU.
2) Better drivers and compatibility with graphics APIs (especially OpenGL). I remember writing a simply 2D OpenGL application which had trouble rendering on Intel GPUs.
3) Better UI performance. I've got a Mobility Radeon HD 5470 myself and Aero performance is noticeably smoother than on my previous notebook with a GeForce 8400M. My desktop with a GeForce GT 220 and double of the video RAM is also significantly smoother than my current notebook. I'm not sure how current Intel GPUs compare to the 8400M but I expect them to be in the same league if not inferior.
I'm not sure, but maybe video playback is also better on dedicated GPUs.
Overall, I think there are good reasons for choosing a low-end discrete GPU even if you don't play videogames.