Inspiron XPS 10 by MaximumPC

Question

In this month's Maximum PC, they faced off six top of the line gaming laptops (well in my opinion, 4 of them were worth the read, the other two were more tag-ons as they aren't specifically made and advertised for gaming). The Toshiba Satellite P25-S609 (7 out of 10), Sharp Actius RD3D (5 out of 10), ABS Mayhem 61 (8 out of 10), Voodoo Envy M:855 (8 out of 10), Alienware Area 51M (9 out of 10), and Dell Inspiron XPS (10 out of 10). I've never heard of a computer getting a 10 out of 10 from them. Pluses: No-comparison performance that's faster than most desktops. Minuses: Just a little ligther and smaller than the anchor for the USS Enterprise. One major highlight from the review: In fact, only one machine has performed faster in these three tests (MusicMatch, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop 7.01 Benchmarks): the 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition reference machine we built ourselves in March to benchmark the 3.4 GHz P4 EE chip. That reference machine used a 250 GB 7,200 rpm Western Digital hard drive and an 875P chipset with low-latensy Corsair Micro RAM. This means that, technically-speaking, the XPS is the fastest production machine we've ever tested in Photoshop, Premiere Pro., and MusicMatch. Period. The XPS was decked out with a 3.4 GH Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, 1 GB DDR400 dual channel RAM, Mobility Radeon 9700 128 MB, 60 GB 7,200 rpm HDD, 4x DVD+R, 2.4X DVD+RW, WUXGA...$4,130.

gadgetgirl · Answer

Thanks for the highlights. Do you have the url? I'd love to read the complete article. Thanks, Jen

tstormx · Answer

fyi, the Toshiba P25-S609 they tested is a discontinued model. Would have been a better comparison had they tested a P25-S670 with a 7200rpm drive and 1gb PC3200 SODIMMs.

CSmith06 · Answer

I'm still looking for an online one, I subscribe so I saw it first there. Oh that's interesting (about the Tosiba laptop). When was it replaced?

tstormx · Answer

The new Toshiba has been out a few weeks. Doesn't get a lot of attention but the P25 has the best display for a 17' and is very under-rated in terms of performance...runs cool, stable, no lock-ups. Would also been interesting if they had compared a 17' HP ZD7000 series...you can get one with a P4 3.2EE for $2500 at BestBuy. Add a few hundred dollars more to put in a 7200rpm drive and 1gb PC3200 SODIMM's and you're still around $3000.

Porsche911 · Answer

@tstormx wrote:
fyi, the Toshiba P25-S609 they tested is a discontinued model. Would have been a better comparison had they tested a P25-S670 with a 7200rpm drive and 1gb PC3200 SODIMMs.

The Toshiba P25-S670 does not come with a PC3200 memory.
"512MB DDR SDRAM (Expandable to 2048MB) (Both slots may be occupied) Expansion memory: 256/512/1024MB, 2.5V, SODIMM, PC2700 DDR SDRAM"

Toshiba leads for:

"NVIDIA® GeForce™ FX Go5700 GPU w/128MB DDR memory"
the beautiful design
Integrated 802.11 a/g
DVD +- RW / +- R

Toshiba lacks because of:

The screen is 17" but the resolution s ucks at 1440x900
Ethernet is 10/100 Mhz
Harddisk is 5400 rpm

More specs at: http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/product/pdf_files/detailed_specs/satellite_P25-S670.pdf

tstormx · Answer

You have to add the 1gb PC3200 memory and 7200rpm drive to the P25...like I said, it would then be a better comparison (closer in specs to compare performance).   The 17' Toshiba screen and 15.4' Dell screen are both top notch...for 17' screens, you can't beat the Toshiba.  Obviously Dell does not offer a 17' screen so it's a little hard to compare in that category.  Some like UXGA resolution and others don't, some like a 17' screen and others don't...it goes on and on.  Bottom line...they're both great machines and I would take either one!

Locked Topics – Laptops General

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