Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 Notebook - Gaming and Performance
Gaming Performance
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In Doom3, we had some problems with earlier versions of ATI's drivers, used on the Mobility Radeon equipped notebooks, because at a specific point, the game would simply crash. With the newer drivers from ATI, every time a monster hit us, the screen would just blank for a second, as opposed to shake and tremble.
NVIDIA's newer driver, which were used on the XP2 G2, didn't have this problem. We should note that with Doom 3, this was the only game that made the GPUs run really hot, especially on Alienware's 51-M. On the Z80K, Doom 3 is relatively slow, but the GPU wasn't clocked very high and ran relatively warm, not hot. With the XPS G2, the spot above the keyboard where the GPU is situated just got warm. As for performance, the score speaks for itself.
With out AA enabled, frame rates were in the sub 20 fps range in Doom 3, except for the XPS Gen 2 which ran in the low 80 fps range.
Overall, the gaming scores we have here are pretty much what we continued to see following the trend from Doom 3. After all, this is Dell's flagship performance consumer notebook. Without AF enabled, we were looking at the XPS Gen 2 running at about plus 5 fps.
The GeForce Go5700 makes a strong stand in Jedi Academy, but there was definite loss in quality. The lightsaber glow wasn't as fine and there were examples where lightning isn't as smooth or as detailed as it was on the ATI powered notebooks. We saw no specific issues with this when it came to the Go 6800 Ultra on the XPS Gen 2.
X2 is thrown in as an indicator of DX8 performance. Even with the range of new games out there, people still play many popular old DX8 based titles. Keep in mind these are 4xAA and 8xAF scores. With either disabled, we were hitting frame rates in the low 40's fps range, except for the XPS G2 which was just under 90 fps.
Obviously, performance in the XPS G2 isn't lacking, even when it comes to games that demand the highest measure of performance. NVIDIA's GeForce Go 6800 Ultra is blazing new trails here. To see more game benchmarks using the Dell XPS Gen 2, check out this article.
