Slashdot Mirror
Unique Dell XPS M1710 Review
Searching4Sasquatch writes "Hot Hardware has just posted a unique review of Dell's flagship XPS M1710 notebook. They stumbled across some very interesting information within the BIOS which seems to indicate Dell is working on a docking station with its own discrete graphics. 'The user is given the option of using either the integrated GeForce Go 7900 GTX GPU found within the system or the extremely interesting option of using the graphics card found within a docking station. Could Dell be planning on releasing an enthusiast dock that features a high-end GPU that could not otherwise be crammed into the confinements of the notebook chassis? Perhaps an upgrade to allow for standard or even Quad-SLI would be possible with such a dock.'"
Well it looks nice. But will it explode?
insert 'they probably are running their website on it' joke here
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
And if true, it would be the first time that I can recall that I am actually somewhat impressed by Dell.
There have always been expansion docks for laptops that allow PCI and even ISA bus access. Hell there have even been carbus based graphics adapters for notebooks. All this is a bridge to PCI Express bus. There is nothing new to see here... move along.
Their (very popular) D600 has the same option in the BIOS.
This is nothing new, please move along.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
It was posted at 12:24 and it was down at 12:27 when I checked. Three minutes and mirrordot didn't have it either. New record I believe.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
My IBM Thinkpad has had the same option in the BIOS for ages. Seeing how 'boring' IBM is, I'm guessing there are lots of notebooks with similar options in the BIOS.
Mobile Gaming is becoming somewhat of a buzzword, but I think this idea has some potential to it in a slightly different way. For those of us who don't necessarily enjoy lugging around a 12 lb notebook just for the occasional gaming opportunity, Dell or whoever could create a very portable notebook that docked into a more sophisticated machine, thereby allowing for a small family to go back to one PC. Of course, it's probably not in the best interest of the manufacturer, since they want us all to have as many PCs as we can stand, but it makes sense for the consumer. There are docks out there with built-in hard-drives, why not built-in video cards and extra RAM, and even a bigger monitor? Having everything on one PC would be beneficial to a lot of people.
Too bad what we want and what manufacturers want us to want are often two different things.
Yes, you can dance to Radiohead.
I wonder if this project has anything to do with their recent purchase of Alienware.
http://religiousfreaks.com/I've got a number of older C/Dock models that came with Pentium 133Mhz Latitudes. They have a PCI slot and the option in the BIOS to select which is Primary video. I'm not sure, but I think there might even be a list somewhere on Dell of supported video cards. Heck my D800 has the BIOS option, too, and it defaults to "Dock Video Card".
A high bandwidth device like a graphics card going through the I/O bus problably isn't goignt o be a good idea. You'd have both a much higher latency and it's flood the i/o bus.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The ideal use of this configuration I think would be to take your notebook to school/work/etc., bring it home and dock it in for more power.
The only flaw in this is that the "desktop replacement" itself has too much mass for it to be portable. If they could combine this type of dock with a smaller, more mobile system, it'd be the best of both worlds.
Most likely this is going to appeal to the hardcore power users in the notebook crowd.
Ok, so they're doing little more than speculating about what Dell might be doing with its dock. Fine. Then they jump and start speculating about SLI or Quad-SLI? Considering that there are few mainboards that do either one of those functions, they're realllly reaching in even hoping for that kind of functionality. 4x AGP would be a good enough start for a new concept like this.
Chris Knight is my hero.
The Powerbook Duo was a helluva machine. Sub-notebook and a desktop. It was nice to be able to do page-layout with dual monitors at work, and take the Duo home to do copywriting and the like. Expensive, though.
As for this, I can see the benefit to a few people, but 1) people who need workstation-level graphics will also need more RAM and faster processors than are available in laptops, and 2) people who would like to game with their laptops like to game on their laptops away from their desk, which is why they're playing games on laptops.
Of course, I haven't RTFA, as the link is dead to me.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Could Dell be planning on releasing an enthusiast dock that features a high-end GPU that could not otherwise be crammed into the confinements of the notebook chassis?
Maybe the option is something cheap instead of something that performs well. Why only ask a question on one side of the coin? Of course it would be nice if there was some great innovation, but considering how much goes into graphics cards from a company focused entirely on that concept, I really doubt Dell has the resources to come up with something that's better (or unheard of).
But we can all dream for a while!
I remember seeing an article in Maximum PC a while back talking about the possibility of external PCI-e in the near future, thus allowing you to essentially put the graphics card anywhere you want and upgrade it easily. Is this the type of option that is implented here? As for the posts mentioning the option on older laptops, you might want to confirm that it is actually an option to use a seperate discrete GPU, rather than just selecting what port the video signal actually goes to.
This space intentionally left blank.
On my Dell laptop. The dock has a dual card with two monitors.
I use one for the program, one for the debugger, and the laptop screen for email.
I've ONLY had this setup for 4 years!
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
It doesn't have to be a conspiracy theory guys, it can be something simple.
what size will this docking unit be?! /me starts thinking cooling for the stuff...
-m10
Could this be like the option to use a PCI graphics card in my ancient (3 y.o.) IBM Thinkpad dock?
It is well known that some of the Latitudes and Inspirons and Precisions are identical units except for casing and bios changes especially throughout the C Series. In some models you can pull the Quadro card out of the Precision and install it in a Latitude or Inspiron. Dell might be planning on offering this as a Precision model with some kind of Quadro card in the dock.
Why don't monitors include graphics cards tweaked for exactly their performance specs? Self-powered speakers offer better performance and flexibility for upgrading the "processor" and "UI" components that drive them. Notebooks would include LCD cards, but not have to drive external monitors/projectors directly. That would make the notebooks smaller, lighter, cooler, cheaper, and the external display higher quality.
Give me an optical digital display output instead of VGA.
I could put that display output into a breakout box to any number of different displays, including multihead where I have them, without and extra HW. The differences could be entirely in software. Outputting OpenGL for display would let even simple HW and relatively simple SW exploit practically any display environment. Including the long-anticipated immersive goggles, or better.
Dell's BIOS seems to go a single step in the right direction. When will we sprint down the path?
--
make install -not war
I say just get it right in the first place... inside the laptop. Video cards get obsolete so fast anyways, by the time a new technology actually gets to the market, the miniature (and laptop-compatable) version is available within months. Until monitors have wireless interfaces, I really doubt this kind of technology will take off.
How hot do these things get under full cpu load?
It would be nice if reviewers rated heat which is becoming a big issue. Especially after the macbook pro problem and anything running on a duo.
I bought my compaq based on price and heat issues. I want a "laptop" and not a "notebook". Yes, my laptop never gets hot and I can comfortably place it on my lap. A cool CPU is also a longer lasting unit. My gf's Vio on the underhand, needs a special USB powered cooling unit pad below it to prevent if from overheating. She paid almost $500 more on her notebook too. Ouch
Dells so far do not have a good reputation for being lap friendly.
http://saveie6.com/
The Dell C/DockII, which is about 5 or 6 years old now, supported two PCI slots, one of which could be used for graphics.
:-)
So technically, anyone with a C series laptop should be able to get up to around an nVidia 6200 for their "docked" video solution.
(Now I have to go try this...)
I never quite understood why someone would buy these really pricey gaming laptops. For my boys I built microATX cubes that have every bit as much performance as these high end laptops, for about 1/4th the price -- and they are easily and cheaply upgradeable down the road. When they go to a friend's house for a LANparty they just grab the cube by its handle and throw their keyboard/mouse into a bag. Monitors are not a problem -- most people have monitors leftover in their basement/attic from when they upgraded to LCD, so they just connect to the surplus monitor, plug into their network and off they go. Seriously, you can build a nice cube gaming box for about $550 (DVD writer, Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB DDR400, 300GB SATA HD, Windows XP license, box w/420W supply, motherboard) plus whatever graphics floats your boat (I find the $99 NVidia 6 series PCIe boards are more than adequate, though I have also found that many games are actually quite playable using just the embedded graphics like the NVidia 6150). Sure, you may be 10 or 20 fps slower than your buddies, with a little less detail in the shadows, but who cares (especially when most LCD monitors top out at 60Hz refresh rate anyhow ;-).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
this has been an option in dockable Dells for like... 10 years?
I bet that it will cost more than a top-flight graphics card for a desktop. As the thing is already 8lbs even without the dock I'm struggling to see the point of it a little. I guess it might be OK for taking to LAN parties but then again, any gamer that serious won't want to compromise with a laptop.
Also I bet it runs hot and resting the heel of the left hand on a broiling plate whilst accessing ASDW isn't my idea of gaming heaven.
I'd rather have a top-notch games box plus a small and light laptop. Probably wouldn't cost any more either.
while sco {
wget -O
}
as posted
"Hot Hardware has just posted a unique review of Dell's flagship XPS M1710 notebook. They stumbled across some very interesting information within the BIOS which seems to indicate Dell is working on a docking station with its own discrete graphics. 'The user is given the option of using either the integrated GeForce Go 7900 GTX GPU found within the system or the extremely interesting option of using the graphics card found within a docking station. Could Dell be planning on releasing an enthusiast dock that features a high-end GPU that could not otherwise be crammed into the confinements of the notebook chassis? Perhaps an upgrade to allow for standard or even Quad-SLI would be possible with such a dock.'"
Written in English
"Hot Hardware has a review of Dell's flagship XPS M1710 notebook; they found information in the BIOS which suggests Dell is working on a docking station with its own graphics card. Customers can use either the laptop's graphics card, or a graphics card found within a docking station. Is Dell planning an enthusiast dock that features a high-end GPU that could not otherwise be crammed into the confinements of a notebook? Perhaps an upgrade to allow for standard or even Quad-SLI would be possible with such a dock.'"
and thats without even trying; 8.5 lines down to 6.5 - quite a savings
"interesting" should be used, at most, once per page.
...putting a better graphics card and one of those physics processors in a docking station...
I remember several years back a friend had a Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop with basestation. If I remember the correctly that basestation had two PCI slots. He installed a Voodoo Monster and played his games.
I'd get one if it was a reasonable add-on. Just knowing that I could squeeze a couple more years of life out of a laptop would be worth it for me. The PCI boxes they sell for laptops today sell for $1000 or so, way too pricey. What I don't understand is why someone hasn't released a cardbus powerVR (like the old Matrox3D). If you don't remember - it was an internal PCI card that worked with the overlay of your existing video card - no cables required. One would just pop the card in, install the drivers and get decent (for the time) 3d. I'm surprised someone hasn't used this idea for the cardbus slot on a PC. Bandwidth might be an issue but I think it would still be sufficient.
www.wildpad.com
Perhaps an upgrade to allow for standard or even Quad-SLI would be possible with such a dock.
Hey, and maybe then I can get a docking station for my docking station that has QuadQuad-SLI, and then maybe I can get in a robotic exo-skeleton and become the first Headmaster, and we can finally take the fight directly to Unicron. Is the gaming industry out of its mind? Seriously. I mean, I am not going to buy four graphics cards to put into my computer to play games. Ever. Period. End of story. I'm sorry game developers, but you're just gonna have to make do with the measly bazillion pixels my current stand-alone graphics card can dish out.
--
Instead of imagining a beowulf cluster of PS3's, just wait three years and check out the PS4.
Docking bays with full size expansion ports were around ages ago (I had one back in '96 for my old 20 MHz Toshiba T1600, IIRC), but they seem to have dissapeared over the past few years. I think they were a casuality of the trend to make notebooks complete standalone desktop replacements, which lead to port replicators replacing docking station, and finally port replicators themselves disapearing. None of my last four laptops have had any kind of docking-type support built in. Silly little USB solutions that don't replicate video or PC card slots are still around, but they have certainly faded into obscurity.
I think this is pretty nifty, even if it has been done before. One of the biggest obsticles to buying a notebook for quite a while now has been a lack of upgradable video. This will certianly help to remedy that problem. Not all of us really like having a seperate notebook for work and desktop for gaming. This would be perfect for me.
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Sounds like you're used to the infinitely reconfigurable world of software.
Video cards need high bandwidth low latency connections. High bandwidth/low latency connections are difficult to extend to the back of your case, let alone up to the top of your desk. And you definitely cannot daily-chain them to multiple monitors.
And why would you use optical? Wire is all you need for short distances. The bandwidth of twisted pair is very large, the capacity of a coax is enormous. Optical would just add cost.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
LCD screen... swaps out for the monitor plugged in to the docking station.
Keyboard... swaps out for the monitor plugged in to the docking station.
Mousepad... swaps out for the monitor plugged in to the docking station.
Graphics system... swaps out for the monitor plugged in to the docking system.
About the only remaining parts that don't swap out are the hard drive, CPU and memory. In exchange for that, you tend to get a clunky docking station that takes up way too much desk space rather than discretely sitting under your desk like a dedicated tower. Given laptop memory and CPUs tend to be underpowered compared to desktop equivalents, replacing them for a typical laptop would run, what, $150 at the outside?
At what point does it become a much better idea to make your laptop hard drive hot swappable and then have a dedicated tower with all of the better priced components the desktop allows with an open bay in the front to move your data and OS setup over? By the time you have a docking station with a high end graphics card in it, the additional components are pretty trivial.
I think I've done the due diligence and searched the thread. Apologies if I'm duplicating comments from someone else with a degree in the bleedin' obvious. Shurely this is all about Vista readiness?
Unfortunately, I cannot get to the article, so I cannot see exactly what they are talking about.
:)
But to be short, the D410 and D610 BIOSes I work with have an option to default to the docking station video as well. IIRC, Dell produces docking stations (not just the advanced port replicators we use in the field) which have PCI and AGP slots. It seems only reasonable that they also intend to produce models with PCIe slots (none currently show on the website.)
So, this may not be anything new or stunning.
As an aside, I am disappointed that the newer Latitudes do not have docking ports. The USB port replicators are crap, and the drivers constantly crash on at least two models I have in customer sites (not my purchase, mind you.) I believe that the ability to dock could be viewed by home users as a replacement of the desktop. Of course, that would mean that people would not buy a desktop AND a laptop, so lower bottome line, eh?
As others have already mentioned Dell has had their C-Dock, and D-Dock docking stations with half height PCI slots for years now. I used to have a C610 and used a C-Dock with a nice sound card a few years ago and it worked well. At the time the support for using PCI video cards was available in the BIOS but it never worked very well.
The M1710 may have a dock connector on it but I doubt it is anything of a quantum leap beyond what they have on their Latitude models. It would make more sense for them to roll out a new dock that would allow upgraded video cards on their M90 or a new professional series laptop. Then move it down into their consumer line. I'm no expert but to try and get a PCIe 1x or 16x to work in a dock you're going to have to design how it will supply power to cards that may draw as much as the laptop, keep the video card cool, and play well with the laptop. The pathway between the laptop and the dock is going to have to be beefed up to and all I can see is headaches with crazy PCI bridges everywhere causing trouble. Think of how much time and effort would be going into a dock which would cost at least $300.00 so that users can install a $300.00 video card in it. This would be a waste of time for Dell.
This is just some hardware site trying to make something out of nothing. Pft.
I don't see how this review is unique. I can find any number of online or paper magazine articles that fawn over their sponsors latest products.
BTW, the docking station fotr my 6 year old armada can accomodate a PCI card, and it doesn't even need a special BIOS section.
A single coaxial cable carries the same data as that optical (TOSLink) cable. Some say it carries it better. But either way, it doesn't carry it worse, and an RCA connector is cheaper than an optical one. Pro electronics usually use coax instead (ADAT being the biggest exception).
There's nothing lower latency about optical compared to a digital coax. Both are too slow. The speed of propagation in a fiber or wire is only so fast. It would make computer busses a lot more complex to have to soak up 1.5m of latency.
Optical isn't necessarily high power, but it's not lower power than a wire either.
Optical interchip busses would be odd, the transceivers would take up a fair amount of space.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Well it looks nice. But will it explode?
...the processor had one of these fans.
Low electron velocity at low voltages?
.77c (231,000 km/sec) .65c (195,000 km/sec) .59c (177,000 km/sec) .66c (198,000 km/sec) .65c (195,000 km/sec)
Electron velocity is not determined by voltage. Electrons have a fixed charge, higher voltage only changes the number of them, not the speed of them. I don't think you even understand you are talking about.
I stole this sheet from the internet, showing the propagation speeds in various wires and fiber:
Medium Propagation Speed
------ -----------------
Thick Coax
Thin Coax
Twisted Pair
Fiber
AUI Cable
It kind of hurts your argument for the speed of fiber, doesn't it?
The cheap plastic multimode fibers used in SPDIF do not have particularly high bandwidth capacity.
I don't see how you think the deployment was justifiable economically when it was undeployed as fast as it was deployed. Soon after appearing on portable CD players, SPDIF disappeared again.
Optical has been the future for home systems for a long time. But we've not outgrown the ability for wire to carry data so far. I remember when 100 mbit ethernet was optical only. And when GigE was optical only. Now GigE is twisted-pair based and 10Gig is just starting to be.
The problem with optical is the cost of terminations and transceivers. Over a 10km haul, putting on terminations (ends) is no big deal, you're already paying thousands of dollars for the fiber itself, what's another couple hundred for terminations? But when your cable is 1.5m long, the cost of the terminations is problematic. And then you have to put a transceiver in each device too. Yeah, there are cheaper alternatives to all this, but these reduce the bandwidth to a point where it doesn't hold any bandwidth advantage over wire.
Wire will remain the smart choice for home interconnects for the near future at least, twisted pair mainly.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Electricity also travels at the speed of light (well, very close).
But the speed of signal propagation in a wire is less than the speed of light because no electron makes the entire journey. The electrons run into atoms, and are absorbed by those atoms momentarily, before ejecting another electron to continue the propagation. The distance the electrons go before hitting an atom is called the "mean free path" of electrons in the material. Higher mean free path increases the conductivity of the material and I believe also the propagation speed.
Photons in fiber do the same thing. The protons do travel down the fiber, but they hit the atoms that make up the fiber from time to time, causing this knock-on effect. This slows propagation in fiber to well below the speed of light also.
Also note that the speed of light is only constant in a vacuum, in a medium it can be different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fibre
"Since the refractive index of glass is around 1.5, the speed of light in the fiber is around 200,000 km/s, or two thirds of the speed of light in a vacuum."
This is the same info I gave you a moment ago and you ignored and contradicted.
You're confused about the higher voltages thing. Again, higher voltages do not speed up electrons. Voltages don't accelerate electrons either. Voltage is a measure of the number of electrons in an area.
I think you're confused because raising voltage increases the rate of voltage change at a particular point in a circuit. That is, if the voltage at a point in a circuit is 0V and I apply some power, it goes from 0 to 1V. If I apply ten times as much power it goes from 0 to 1V 10X quicker than before. You see this as making electrons go faster, but it isn't. It's putting in more electrons in the same amount of time. It's doing this by using more power to overcome the resistance in the area.
But what we're really talking about here anyway is propagation. Propagation is the way this change in voltage (which becomes a curve when measured in time) propagates down the wire. Raising the voltage quicker makes the curve steeper but it doesn't mean the change propagates down the wire more quickly.
You can think of this with water and waves, because waves propagate in the ocean simiar to voltage potentials do in wire (and light does in fiber). If I jump in the water I make a small wave. If I do a cannonball, I make a tall wave. But, if you look at the waves as they propagate away from the point where I entered the water, although the cannonball waves are taller, they don't propagate from the entry point to the other end of the pool more quickly. They're taller when they start, they're taller when they get there, but they don't move any faster.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If you buy a Dell XPS M1710 or Inspiron e1705/9400, be prepared to have a shitty screen. Something like 90% of these models are made with awful quality Samsung LCD panels that have ridiculous light leakage. The other 10% have panels by Sharp which are supposedly very good (and which is of course what all companies get when asking for a review laptop), but if you want one of those you'll either need to get lucky or return your laptop over and over and over until you get a desirable screen.
I've used a C610 laptop for 5 years. Any of their laptops with a "dock" connector have these options and it has more to do with dual monitor setups than it does some kind of super dock with a high end graphics card.
The C610 is a POS 1.2ghz P3 with 256MB ram and 20GB hard disk but the dock has PCI slots so you could put a respectable video card in it. Same with any other dock with expansion slots.
So what's the big deal? Why is this newsworthy?