mine has 9% wear now on 9-cell. battery is made by panasonic. i think the sanyo ones are more durable. as for calibration, non that i can think of

im using everest and rmcpu clock

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Added on July 7, 2008, 11:08 pmis this the first time you run scandisk? if so, 2GB is definately from your hibernation file, so that leaves 6GB of temps and junks. besides, you have a very fast processor, and good amount of RAM. your only system bottleneck now is your aging 80GB slow hard drive. you can speed up your system further by upgrading to a new 250GB or 320GB new generation 5400RPM drives which are even faster than previous generation 7200RPM. then u r ready to become a stallion.

Note to all, i have decided to keep to the norm of 2500 posts before V2 for this thread. if anyone feels strongly V2 should come at 100 pages, please PM me. i'll get on to it. thanks for all your continuous support here.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 7 2008, 11:10 PM

got "kantao" where to find one? i also want one.. 1520 deserves better than just 2 standard stickers. btw, my centrino sticker is red in colour, not blue. how bout u guys?

did u guys look at my SIG? i have two 320GB laptop drives. super fast, that's all i can say. my WEI score for HDD is 5.5, a score even 7200RPM desktop hard drives (before this year) have a hard time keeping up with. and yeah, it's been out there for few months. i've been using it since jan this year. highly recommended if you want to speed up overall responsiveness (by a considerable margin) of your laptop. last i checked, price was about RM500. could be lower by now

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 8 2008, 05:52 AM

15" can only fit one hdd.only one 320GB is in my laptop now, the other 320GB i use as external drive. samsung drive is the speed demon among the two, but makes random clunking sound, which makes me really uncomfortable, that's why i use toshiba as my primary. slower but give me some peace of mind. WEI for toshiba is 5.4

looks like this thread has just turned into an acer trashing club. i personally wont go for acer too if there are choices available. but looks like dell did a mistake to choose crappy graphics solution for inspiron and studio series..i sure hope by the time my laptop need replacing, dell will have a better grahpics solution for a wider range of laptops. lol.. cool down guys,

definately! i couldnt agree more. if 1520 has GDDR3, oh my, at 650MHz Core and 1000MHz Memory, that's beyond 8700MGT! wake up! stop dreaming!!

no u cant. M1530's 8600MGT is not a removable module like the 1520. everything is soldered to the mobo

yes, integrated BUT dedicated graphics. even the new studio series are all built this way to save space. that's why xps and studio are much lighter and thinner than 1520.

i posted this news a while ago, but the news did not mention which parts are bad. thanks for the heads up hihihehe. darn, looks like our 8600MGT is dying.. but how come until now, i've not heard anyone complain about dying 8600MGT? not even in xps line, or im just not aware of it?

that seems to explain why dell switch boat to ati..

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 10 2008, 02:45 AM

tat's real sad,,they dun know wat they are missing..

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Added on July 10, 2008, 4:48 pmi dont know to what extent the Inquirer's news about all 8 series chip are defective, but i know there is a signifincant credibility to that news because more than one source have confirmed this issue and even nvidia has admitted their mistake and is prepared to compensate

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 10 2008, 04:48 PM

i dont think your friends can play any (modern) games (with 3D) at all with intel GMA x3100 graphics. we made the right choice to get a 1520.

well, OC will boost fps by a good margin, other tweaks u can do is set all settings to low, then increase your resolution. for eg, i set all settings to low and resolution to max 1440x900 when i exit the alien world/cave, and still gets a solid 30-40fps average. all missions before the alien cave are played with partial medium, partial low settings. for eg, shadow, texture, etc are set to low, including resolution set to 1280x800, and AA disabled. i still get about 25-30fps on average, so pretty playable.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 10 2008, 07:12 PM

congrates on the new purchase,

your 1st Q, answer is no, you dont need to worry about heat. 1720 has an even larger heatsink compared to 1520, and assuming all cooling parts work as expected, your laptop should be able to handle the heat without any issues. just make sure you have good air intake/exhaust flow that is not blocked. if you come from a hot environment, you might want to monitor your temperatures a bit just to make sure you are on the safe side. as for cooling pad, i personally dont use one, but some other club members here do use it, so i think they will be in a better position to advice u on this.

2nd Q, what version of word are u going to install? i think office 2003 will have no issues running on vista, not sure about office xp though. and please refrain yourself from using the word "pirate" here becos im not sure if it's against forum policy to discuss about "good value" softwares. last thing we need is for admins to lock our club thread.

what are your system specs and price?

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 10 2008, 09:49 PM

glad it works for u. as you can see, you have a solid 42fps, so i would suggest you turn on some eye candy, to improve visual performance. as long as you can get >25fps, the gameplay will be smooth. try to set some of the settings to medium, (apart from texture and shadow), until you get the right balance between good fps and good visual performance.

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Added on July 10, 2008, 9:22 pmactually we have posted quite a few recommended monitoring softwares in this thread, but i understand the frustration to go page by page to find it. v2 will be coming soon, thanks for all your support and input.

you can try free softwares like HW Monitor, which gives u reading for both cpu and gpu, or rivatuner (more advanced), or RMCPU clock (even more advanced) or not free softwares like everest ultimate edition (which is both advanced and comprehensive). give HW Monitor a try first.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 10 2008, 09:50 PM

wow, that's a T7700 if im not mistaken. my T7500 is only 2.2GHz. you must have paid a premium for that processor

ooppss.. i missed that. thanks for the heads up. T8300 is priced the same as T7500 i guess due to the smaller cache.

nolah, this one im very sure. T8300 has only 3MB cache. T7500 Merom core has 4MB cache. T9300 onwards, however, has 6MB cache. i guess you cay say T8000 series is the "cheaper" penryn core processor.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 11 2008, 03:08 AM

YES! it definately can. the CPU is removable and replacable. it can be done quite easily. just buy a compatible merom or penryn chip (since A07 BIOS supports penryn) and u r good to go! not a problem. good thing about 1520 is, major components are not integrated to the mobo, even the GPU is removable module, unlike the xps and studio series

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 11 2008, 02:29 PM

ok, here's the bad news. quite frankly, intel dont give a crap what laptop you are using, as long as you buy the processor from them. this said, they will not provide u with any tech support or user guide on how to install their cpu in laptops. maybe just a simple universal guide on how to align the pins so that it fits into the socket. you gotta do it yourself, but with some time, patience and a little bit of knowledge, (add a pinch of guts wont hurt), you can easily open your laptop to reveal the internal components.

opening your laptop with care and precision will, by no means, void your warranty because unlike the *brands* you guys love to trash a lot, dell is pretty generous and leaves NO warranty void bullcrap stickers in their laptops (bravo dell!). if you can do it carefully without leaving any mark behind, they will never find out unless you tell them u open it up yourself (which is a very stupid thing to do) BUT, that dont mean they will authorize you to open up your laptop because they fear you might damage the fragile internal components. so my advice is, you are going to do this at your own risk, so try to be careful. as long as u know what you are doing, you should be fine.

and here's the good news. no extra hardware needed for you to upgrade the cpu to the new penryn (other than the cpu of course). ALL you need is the latest A08 (or at least A07) BIOS which is posted on the first page of this thread. so the cost is absolutely free apart from cpu hardware cost.

HOWEVER, i dont think any santa rosa platform will support the upcoming (launching date 14th July 2008 just in case if u want to know) centrino 2 penryn processors because of the higher FSB requirement. so in other words, as long as the core2duo cpu is rated at 667(merom) to 800(currrent penryn)MHz FSB, you can install it into 1520. the upcoming penryn will feature 1066MHz FSB.

phew, that was a long explaination. anyway, 1520 should have NO issues supporting T8100, T8300, T9300 and T9500. theoratically speaking, 1520 should support X9000 too, though u cant overclock because the BIOS wont let you. im not too sure about x9000, but try to call up dell to double check the supported cpus.

so elwwmatrix, which model are u interested to get? how much is the price? and where can you buy one?


This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jul 11 2008, 03:51 PM