New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

scarletxfi · 2011-05-14 05:36:36

I'm going to get a DELL XPS laptop, then new sandy bridge one (http://www.dell.com/au/p/xps-l502x/pd?c … dhs&~ck=mn)

planning on dual booting:
Windows: Altium, genesys, Matlab, SolidWorks, Visual Studio, LabView, maybe a game or two, etc
Linux: everyday stuff with occasioanl work related (^)

1. Any support issues (besdies card reader, which I don't care about)?
2. It comes with a sandy bridge and an nvidia GPU, will I be able to choose which one to use as the graphics card? (ie use intel one when less 3D and battery is required)
3. Will mainly run programs like blender, scilab, Wings3D, openoffice, and occasional 3D gaming with wine ...Will that be problematic?
4. Wireless card: Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1030 with Bluetooth v3.0+HS, Intel seems to have linux drivers for it.. has anyone experience with it?
5. Anything else I haven't thought of?

A bit more info besides what is in the wiki will be good..
(and I'll update the wiki, if and when I get it..)

Appreciate the help,

Last edited by scarletxfi (2011-05-14 05:39:21)

Gusar · 2011-05-14 07:22:32

scarletxfi wrote:

2. It comes with a sandy bridge and an nvidia GPU, will I be able to choose which one to use as the graphics card?

It depends. Is it pure Optimus or does it also have a hardware mux to switch between the cards? If it doesn't have a hardware mux, getting the nvidia card to work in linux requires quite a bit of gymnastics: http://www.martin-juhl.dk/2011/05/optim … em-solved/

scarletxfi · 2011-05-14 07:59:52

according to this: http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html
It does have Optimus

Gusar · 2011-05-14 08:50:21

That is has Optimus is clear, very few nvidia laptops don't. The question is, does it have a hardware mux to switch graphic cards?

egan · 2011-05-14 19:31:01

I just bought this laptop. Everything works perfectly (the sound is amazing), except the NVidia graphics card on Linux.
Wireless works out of the box with the latest Linux kernel.

Maybe you'll have more luck but I couldn't get Xorg to work with the nvidia driver on account of Optimus most likely. The Intel driver works fine for me on Linux since I mainly use only terminals.

There are a couple of minor things I don't like about the laptop:
-Neither real nor emulated numpad, which might make using Blender a pain.
-Very bright LEDs on the power supply and the case.

Last edited by egan (2011-05-14 19:32:30)

scarletxfi · 2011-05-14 22:19:22

I see...
Thanks for the information!

Tzbob · 2011-05-14 23:16:15

I too own an XPS,

current problems are:
USB3 stops working after coming out of standby
Nvidia card obviously doesn't work

I did manage to turn off the Nvidia card using the acpi_call module and the integrated intel gpu does everything I need so I'm not to bothered by it.

Gusar · 2011-05-15 00:36:51

Tzbob wrote:

Nvidia card obviously doesn't work

It does, check the link I provided.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-14 05:36:36

New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

#2 2011-05-14 07:22:32

Re: New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

#3 2011-05-14 07:59:52

Re: New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

#4 2011-05-14 08:50:21

Re: New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

#5 2011-05-14 19:31:01

Re: New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

#6 2011-05-14 22:19:22

Re: New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

#7 2011-05-14 23:16:15

Re: New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

#8 2011-05-15 00:36:51

Re: New Sandy Bridge Dell XPS laptop - questions before buying

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