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Inspiron 17R Special Edition

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 5:39 pm
by docskins
It's about time for a new laptop and I am having a hard time deciding between the Dell Inspiron 17R Special Edition and the Dell XPS 17.
I have a Inspiron 17R that is 2 or 3 years old and that my youngest daughter wants to buy. Never had any problems with it so I'm going back to Dell for my next one

The 17R has a better graphics card and the 32GB caching drive
The XPS has 2 drive bays so I could move my SSD into one of the empty bay.

Is the caching scheme going to be almost as good as my dedicated SSD (C300 128GB) or do I really want the 2 drive bays.
And if I get the XPS will the GT555 be good enough for the next 3 years?

I am mostly a casual gamer now but would like to be able to play MW 1, 2, & 3, Crysis 2, Crysis Warhead, MoH 2010, and a few others all single player. The other few games I play play decent enough on my current Inspiron 17R with the HD 6450.

Re: Inspiron 17R Special Edition

Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:19 pm
by DPete27
You can find FPS on various notebook GPUs here. I would say the GT555 is middle of the road.

Having the OS on an SSD will be faster than using caching which is faster than having the OS on a mechanical hdd. Most laptops have an optical drive bay that can be replaced with a hard drive caddy so you can run dual drives. Optical drives are a dying tech anyway, and If you really need one you can always get an external (USB) optical drive.

Re: Inspiron 17R Special Edition

Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:47 pm
by docskins
I went ahead and got the Inspiron as the better graphics seemed the best path to take. I can always replace the HDD with a SSD at a later date if I need to and move the HDD to a caddy. Very seldom use the optical drive with the exception of installing software so the suggestion of the drive caddy is a good one.

I agree with the SSD being the boot drive. My old Inspiron 17 had the drive replaced with one which did wonders for the responsiveness of the system. Unfortunatly that meant that I had to carry around an external drive for all the other crap that I needed to save. And having to lug around the external was a pain in the tail as often as I had my laptop out on various job sites (construction).

Re: Inspiron 17R Special Edition

Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 9:14 pm
by DPete27
If you end up installing a hdd caddy, make sure you put the SSD in the main hard drive bay. Sometimes manufacturers cap optical drive SATA speeds to 1.5Gbps since optical drives dont need the extra bandwidth. While this is a huge inconvenience for the end user which only saves the company a couple pennies, at least your mechanial hdd won't be nearly as bandwidth starved on the slower line as an SSD would.

Re: Inspiron 17R Special Edition

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 4:43 am
by docskins
Thanks but I wont need the caddy. Took the back cover off this last night and there is an empty slot for a second HDD. Put my spare Momentus XT into it. BIOS and Windows saw it just fine. I think now I will take the SSD out of my old Inspiron ( wife's new hand me down laptop ) and use it in this one.

CHEERS!