Product Listing

Dell XPS M2010 - Mobile Entertainment PC (Centrino Duo)

By Vincent Chang - 13 Jul 2006

Benchmarks

Benchmarks

Frankly, there are not that many notebooks boasting the specifications of the Dell XPS M2010 as most notebooks are more for work and business purposes, meaning portability and reliability takes precedence over multimedia and gaming. Of course this is not the case for this perfect example of the desktop replacement class, so we have included some gaming benchmarks together with the typical MobileMark for the XPS M2010. Looking through our older reviews, the NEC Versa S5200 comes the closest in terms of hardware to the Dell as shown in the comparison table below. The CPU is almost identical in clock speeds though the NEC pales in comparison when it comes to memory, hard drive and graphics. However, MobileMark and its office productivity emphasis should ignore the XPS M2010's inherent advantage in multimedia and games.

Comparison Table
Specifications/Notebook Dell XPS M2010 NEC Versa S5200
Processor Intel Core Duo T2600 2.16GHz with 2MB L2 cache Intel Core Duo T2500 2.0GHz with 2MB L2 cache
Chipset Intel 945PM Intel 945GM
FSB 667MHz 667MHz
Memory 2 x 1,024MB DDR2 1,256MB DDR2
HDD 2 x Hitachi 100GB SATA 7K60 (HTS72101) - 7,200RPM / 8MB Buffer Fujitsu 80GB PATA (MHV2080BH) - 5,400RPM / 8MB Buffer
Video ATI Radeon Mobility X1800 Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics

 

System Benchmarks

As you can see, the Dell scored slightly lower than the NEC Versa S5200. Given its seemingly superior specifications over the competition, that is quite disappointing. Remember that notebooks are not simply built by just gathering components and fitting them together. There is probably much optimization that Dell needs to do to get the scores to be on par with expectations. Meanwhile, the battery life for the Dell was also inferior though that is not too surprising considering its dual hard drives, 20-inch display and power hungry graphics processor. With normal usage, one should get around two hours of operation, just about enough for a movie. Anything more would be iffy at best. Just like a desktop, this system needs to be tethered to the power socket.

Another system related benchmark, PCMark05 also showed the Dell in less than flattering light. Compared to another similarly configured notebook in the Sony VAIO VGN-AR18GP, which also has an Intel Core Duo T2600 processor, the Dell scored slightly lower for both CPU and memory. Given that we were not too impressed with the performance of the Sony, the Dell fell into the same category of underperforming systems and we feel that there is still much more untapped potential given its hardware capabilities. The Dell XPS M2010 did better in AquaMark03 as its scores were higher compared to an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ when in PCMark05, it had been lower. We included a couple of processor oriented scores in this comparison that we've obtained from our CPU reviews since this particular unit is neither a normal notebook, nor a proper desktop system. Thus these extra comparison results will give you an idea where this deskbook stands among typical desktop systems.

Graphics Performance

In this section, we have isolated the graphics subsystem of the Dell XPS M2010 and compared it against similar discrete graphics card of a similar class. This is only a rough approximation of where the ATI Radeon Mobility X1800 chip stands and from the performance scores, the Dell is in between the Radeon X1800 XL and Radeon X1800 GTO. Considering that the Dell also has 256MB of frame buffer and a similar core, its graphics performance is quite decent and one should face no problems running the latest games at optimal settings to take full advantage of the large widescreen display.

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