Dell Inspiron 8100 1130UT

Just over a year ago Intel released the 1.13GHz version of its flagship Pentium III, although only a few systems made it into the marketplace before it was duly withdrawn. This time around, the 1.13GHz Pentium III has a new architecture, with '-M' placed at various points across the catalogue to distinguish it from existing Mobile Pentium IIIs. Dell's Inspiron 8100 chassis supplies us with the platform to evaluate its re-emergence, and with the new Pentium III Tualatin architectural changes in tow, we're quietly confident that Intel won't be asking for trouble this time.

Moving on to Tualatin provides numerous improvements over previous mobile Pentium IIIs, such as 0.13 micron processor technology in micro-FCBGA packages. The Advanced Transfer Cache has been increased to 512Kb, again using on-die Level 2 cache integrated within the CPU, and the processor system bus has been improved to 133MHz.

The chip utilises Intel's 815EP desktop motherboard chipset. Dell has opted for this over the new Mobile Intel 830 chipset, launched with the Pentium III Processor -M, because the 8100 is a development from the proven design of the existing 8000 series.

As shown in our recent budget notebooks group test (see Labs, issue 83, p92), the swelling notebook market is finally upon us with prices starting as low as £599. For such a premium processor, however, Dell has opted to showcase it in its top-of-the-range chassis with plenty of desktop replacement features, and a commanding price of £1,999.

We've previously reviewed two other Inspiron 8000 chassis (see Reviews, issue 75, p161 and issue 79, p172 or go to www.pcpro.co.uk for full details) and our general opinion of the chassis has not changed with this recent 8100 build.

The build is sturdy and reassuring, port connectivity covers all bases including IEEE-1394 and the upgrade potential is well covered. And while the 15in TFT screen's UXGA resolution may not be optimal for everyone, it's bright and sharply focussed when dropping from its native resolution to 1,024 x 768. The only criticism of the chassis is its sheer size and weight, although this is a consequence of the uncompromising feature list.

Both previous models featured only 128Mb of PC100 system memory, 32Gb IBM UltraDMA/66 hard disks and fixed eight-speed Toshiba DVD-ROMs - and the 1000UT came installed with Windows ME. In contrast, the 1130UT runs Windows 2000 Professional with 256Mb of PC133 system memory, Toshiba's excellent six-speed DVD-ROM and quad-speed CD-RW combo drive in the fixed bay, and the hard disk capacity has inflated to 48Gb.

While the Inspiron 8000 850UT was criticised for its 3D performance, attributed to the use of ATi's Rage 128 M4 graphics, we now have Nvidia's 32Mb DDR GeForce2 Go, and Dell is currently the only manufacturer using DDR memory in a mobile platform.

We expected shining 3D performance from this and weren't disappointed. With the resolution set to 1,024 x 768 in 16-bit colour, a phenomenal 3DMark2000 score of 4,731 was returned. Raising the colour depth to 32-bit still returned an admirable score of 3,419, and 1,807 in 3DMark2001. This edges just ahead of Toshiba's Satellite 3000, which returned scores of 4,435, 3,192 and 1,452 respectively.

After the disappointing 2D performance of the Inspiron 8000 1000UT, it was good to see that the increased processor frequency, memory quota and more efficient operating system combined to improve matters considerably. The score of 3.37 is the best achieved on any mobile computing platform by a long way, but is this at the expense of battery life?