Dell XPS 13 2015 Skylake Infinity Display Owners Thread

Thank you for the response

Just to make sure, is your battery stats for the QHD version?
(I read your comment as it, and that you day that the FHD has even better battery)

 

Yes, I've got the QHD version. A colleague has the FHD and reports better battery than mine.

 

Awesome, 5-8h on the run would work for me in most cases

Could you say something about your personal impressions about throttling when gaming?

 

Sadly, this did not work for me. Even with the mouse wheel set to scroll 3 lines and the pointer speed set to medium with the precision pointer ticked, I still get occasional jumps and bounces when two-finger scrolling with the PTP drivers.

Guess I'll be going back to Synaptics... sigh.

 

Thanks for the awesome feedback!

Does your colleague also see a big difference between Chrome and Edge (or Chrome 32 bit vs Chrome 64 bit without flash) as well on his FHD? I wonder how much more battery life he gets out of it.
Last question: do you feel like the difference in Iris graphics makes any sense for light gaming? (say if both you and the FHD guy start the same game..)

I can't tell you how valuable that feedback is for our purchases btw, this is really great that you took the time to tell us so far!

 

Is the XPS with Intel HD 520 capable of outputing DTS-HD via HDMI?

I see that the "playback devices" says it is compatible, but I'm not managing to do so.

I thank any help.

 

Interesting occurrence that has happened more than once to not be a fluke, when watching a video on a Firefox, I will pause the video and restart it but the video player doesnt play anymore and Firefox appears to freeze though audio still works. The process also jumps from ~550 to ~2300. Any ideas?

 

Excellent post, very useful for those of us undecided on the Iris version. I need a touchscreen: unsure whether to go for a 256gb, i5 with HD graphics or the i7 with Iris - in the UK it's only £50 more for the Iris and you are getting newer/faster tech, but not sure how the battery life compares to the i5 touchscreen version. I will do nothing for the moment and glean more info as it becomes available.

 

Oh well, I didn't do nothing. It takes 10 days for delivery as they are assembled in China. Have ordered the Iris QHD, 256gb version from Dell UK. Asked for a discount and got 7% off.

 

My colleague is totally uninterested in tech so hasn't explored any options on browsers and effect on battery etc and I had to let them know how to upgrade drivers and bios to solve some other basic issues so won't expect feedback on this level of detail. At least without prompting, I will try.

In terms of difference on gaming. There are now quite a few different reviews highlighting the difference in performance in the 6500U against the 6560U. My interpretation is that the latter offers better performance on graphics (+20-30%) but, when pushed, battery suffers. My guess, and only a uneducated opinion, is that battery is much of a muchness when doing basic task between the two CPU/GPU's. Therefore what is the best for you, as ever, comes down to requirements and normal access to power sources on a day to day use.

I am rarely away from a power source, so works for me, and therefore a no brainier. If I was more portable I would likely be interested in FHD screen but would likely stick to Iris as believe better future proofing.

Just my two cent.

 

I will only game while connected to a power source, so an extra drain while gaming is no problem for me.

Have you had any longer gaming sessions? Could you say something about your personal impressions about throttling when gaming?

Also, I've only found the notebookreview for 6560U. Would be appreciated if you could link to other reviews of the 6560U/iris that you've managed to find

 

I got XPS 13 i7-6560U yesterday with Iris graphics, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD.

Everything seems pretty good - except there is an annoying electronic coil whine whenever I scroll with the trackpad. Its exactly as described by Notebookcheck as "Beyond the fan noise, there also appears to be electronic noise (coil whine) emanating from the notebook that wasn't detectable by our sound equipment at far range, but is noticeable by ear when up close to the keyboard."

It is pretty noticeable when you're in a quiet room and sounds as if there's a physical hard drive in there rather than an SSD. For the price of this laptop I expected better and am returning mine for a refund.

 

I'm thinking about doing video editing on the laptop soon and wasn't sure if Intel Iris was better suited for it. Every review seems to talk about gaming, but I'm not doing any gaming on this thing. I just wanted a good machine for software development and video editing.

So maybe I was thinking about going for the standard i7-6500U from the Dell Outlet store instead. Is the Intel Iris 540 better for video editing than the Intel HD 520 or is the difference negligable?

 

the problem with the extra power and cooling is not just the battery - totally expect it to drain more when using games and so on.
it also uses (a bit) more battery idle compared to non-iris which is +- normal with the current technology and as long as its not hugely more its ok. if its 3h less, its kind of bad though - which could be if firefox and chrome use the 3d driver differently than edge for rendering for ex (iris never going to low power mode for example).

however, the cpu+gpu still have a maximum thermal (?? only dell knows, or through testing...) and power (15-20w here) envelope - when you go over it the laptop will start throttling in different ways and if you hit thermal throttling in particular games tends to stutter (but 3 software as well) - which makes having iris useless and just use up battery. which is why we're all so interested of course.

 

I did have a XPS 9350 w/ i7-6560U too.

Didn't quite notice coil whine at first but after a day of use, it was quite evident... especially when plugged into power adapter.

I've returned it since it was rather annoying in fairly quiet environments.

 

It's a pitty that we do not have a real sense and we can not use windows hello.

 

Real sense?

 

Real sense camera

 

I got my New XPS today. So I am pretty happy no coil whine not other problems detected up until now apart from one. it seems that the keys on my keyboard are installed a bit higher than the usual I can see kinda inside the hole the key has. this is especially obvious at the top F keys could anyone post a picture of his keyboard and how it looks from the way he sits and looks at the screen?

 

Hi everybody,
I'm coming for an issue that I think I already read here but I don't remember any fix.
I'm not sure there's a pattern but it seems when I start my PC on battery and then i plug it to play, performances are so-so (let's say average FPS = 60 with big drops) wheras if I reboot i while plugged, average FPS is 90 with drops at 60fps. As I said I'm not sure of the pattern but it seems consistent and I think it was the issue some of you talked about.
Does it happen to you and is there a fix? All drivers are up to date I think.

 

BIOS also?

 

Indeed it was not up do date. I've just installed it and I'll give you an update soon. Thanks.

 

Changed my own order for a non-iris FHD following comments ive seen here and around.

If I really need faster graphics, that's where future tb3 gfx may come in ;-)

as for touch.. i actually use it in linux on my current laptop and its nice (i never though I would, but scrolling and clicking sometimes is faster via touch than touchpad) - BUT - i can live without it.
while reflective panel in the sun, its harder to live with in my sunny part of the world hehehe.

 

Problem with the FHD display is the sRGB coverage compared to the QHD display. But if you don't do graphics work, web design, photo editing or video editing then the FHD has many benefits.

 

if you don't do it professionally that is. I always used screens with non-perfect color accuracy, and I can tell when its next to a good, calibrated monitor.
but when i use it, i can't tell. its good enough for my own graphic work, design, photo, video editing (none of which is "professional" or needs calibration). I think this stuff is generally overestimated as it makes people think the other screens are horrible and it'll look bad for their family/vacation photos. They still look awesome, just not as accurate

 

Image of SpeedTest.Net result using FTTH (Paris) and ASUS RT-AC68U router. The test shows Dell WiFi card is OMG fast. The router is 2m distant and traverses one thick plaster wall. Despite that, the test shows the maximum down/up speeds that the 1Gbps/250Mbps pipe can deliver over *WiFi*.

 

Actually didn't fix my issue...

 

So over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed screen flickering issues. It seems that it happens occasionally only if the machine is awakened from sleep or hibernation. Never happens right after a clean bootup.

Anyone know of a fix?

 

Are there any new Infos about heat and battery life of the Iris Versions?

 

I thought I should just express my findings on improving track-pad issues with Chrome browser specifically. I did a clean re-install of windows yesterday as another attempt to reduce issues with track-pad that I have slowly been optimizing over time.

I can happily say it has given the biggest boost in track-pad performance, by some margin, since I got the device. It now works incredibly well with the only oddity that scrolling is much more sensitive in Chrome and Firefox than Edge. Have optimized for Chrome accordingly and now no jerkiness and jumping. Works well, almost one the best I have used and can now understand how the expert reviews came to their conclusion. For those who are still having track-pad issues I highly recommend but mileage may vary for each case.

As an aside battery seems to be marginally better as well.

To also give more feedback on gaming with Iris. I installed CS:GO at the beginning of the week. As per older games I haven't noticed any throttling at all with very smooth game play at max settings @1080p. To be honest I don't need anything else and have little interest in buying more modern games to stress further but I am not seeing massive issues with heat or battery at present. My only bug bear, including with the track-pad, is that I have had to put so many hours into optimizing the laptop to get it to work to its potential which is clearly very good. Dell do seem to be getting better but sweating the detail to get this performance out of the box would of been so much better an experience.

I'm now going to test under-volting the CPU slightly to push for consistent 8 hour battery rather than 6 I am getting at present.

 

That's interesting to hear. My trackpad worked great out of the box, but I got mine from the Microsoft store(signature edition = clean windows install), so maybe that's why.

 

anybody fing a fix for the crackling audio . especially when watching videos on youtube but also local audio files my xps sound crackles through speakers and also earphones . very annoying and have reinstalled/ uninstalled audio drivers many times to no avail . anybody have a solution ?? qhd 16gb 512gb...

 

I had this when the laptop first came but after updating all drivers it disappeared. I didn't define which driver solved it as it maybe chipset/bios rather than audio. Suggest updating everything (use dell command) to the latest and if that doesn't work then clean install. Still problems then contact dell for a replacement.

 

Excellent to hear! Please do keep us apprised. I'd rather not do a clean install, but will consider anything that gets rid of the rubber band effect when scrolling.

BTW, I think the reason scrolling is so much faster in Chrome is because they use a multiplier on the scroll wheel values. You can actually tweak this value on Firefox to make scrolling faster like in Chrome.

Very interesting. Out of curiosity, what browser do you use? Also, would you mind checking the number and date of the drivers for your I2C HID Device and HID-compliant touchpad in the device manager? Thanks!

 

I've always used Chrome 64-bit on this computer.

Here are the two pointing devices I found in device manager

 

For those commenting on scrolling issues (fixed or not fixed), the latest Mar cumulative update seems to be the culprit that has made scrolling a lot smoother (at least in my experience)

As far as sound crackling, not sure which update/drivers is responsible but it seems to be less apparent when I last updated everything. Still there, but not as frequent or annoying.

Coil whine - I received mine in Sept free from any whine. As I used it more, the whine started to show up. Definitely not a deal breaker as it is not that loud. So if you report coil whine, wait about a month or two to confirm. Otherwise you're just making others feel as though they have a defective product.

 

Received my 4K, i7-6560U, 8gb about an hour ago. So far most seems fine with it, and damn, its portable!

So far only updated through Dell Update | Command. Seems like bios is v 1.2.3 - is it the latest there is?
Youtube doesn't crackle (yet atleast). Will install steam and see how hot it runs soon.

Also, was following the xps 15" thread before and was set on the fact that 125% scaling would do. But on the 13" that is pretty miniscule - what level of scaling do you use that preserves the sharpness of text and doesn't make everything super tiny?

Edit:

What is "Mar cumulative update"? Update; found it out - windows update.

Do you use the beta drivers for the 540, are they any good?

Further, I have noticed that the computer freezes for short periods (often less than a second) at least when using Edge - which causes me to miss a few letters here and there since they are not registered due to the freeze. Anyone else having the issue?

 

Please i Want yo buy
QHD i7 6560U 16gb 512ssd version or FHD i6560U 8gb 256SSD version

And i have a lot of questions

This versión with normal use (no games ) fans works? With same use have noise? Is hotter? Estimated battery life?

Thanks for all

 

Just got my QHD, i7 6500U, 16GB, 512GB. Coil whine out of the box. I didn't even finish Windows setup to not have issues returning it. I was clearly able to hear the whine with some cracking noise at a normal distance. Not acceptable for a 1800€ laptop.

 

UHD with 16Gb And 512GB 2199€ no?

 

No, that's the 1TB SSD version.

 

in spain...

6ª Generación de procesadores Intel® Core™ i7

Windows 10 Home

Memoria de 16 GB

Unidad de estado sólido de 512 GB

2149€ (UHD display)

where are you from?

 

Thanks! Those actually aren't the drivers that control the touchpad. If you wouldn't mind, please check under "Human Interface Devices." There should be a "I2C HID Device" and "HID-compliant touchpad."

 

I also received my XPS 13 today. i7 /iris 540, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd. Mine also has coil whine - I am not sure if I will return it - it's not very noticeable.

 

Full hd or QHD ?

 

QHD.

When the fan is on low speed (which is quiet) I can't hear it. Any background noise in the room I can't hear it.

I'll probably keep it (some of the harddrives on older pc's I've had, sounded louder). I am curious to know how loud the whine has to get for people to return it.

So far it's a great laptop, very nice to have something this light and portable. I am unsure about the battery life, will see how that goes. I don't know how accurate the battery time shown near the windows clock is.

 

[Quote = "Kuya Simon, de la publicación: 10215646, miembro de: 544624"] QHD.

Cuando el ventilador está a velocidad baja (que es tranquilo) No puedo oírlo. Cualquier ruido de fondo en la habitación que no puede oír.

Probablemente me guardo (algunos de los discos duros en los más antiguos de PC que he tenido, sonaba más fuerte). Tengo curiosidad por saber qué tan fuerte el zumbido tiene que conseguir que la gente lo devuelven.

Hasta ahora es un gran portátil, muy agradable tener algo tan ligero y portátil. Estoy seguro acerca de la duración de la batería, verá cómo va. No sé cómo es exacto muestra el tiempo de batería cerca del reloj de Windows. [/ Quote]
voy a comprar este dell pero FHD version this night.. because i dont want.. 4hours battery but.. i love too QHD+ screen

 

Doesn't look much different lol

 

Anyone got any undervolting results? I am at -100mv on CPU, -40mv on GPU, they aren't my hard limits I just have tested any higher settings though. Whats everyones CPU temps running at mine is from 65-70. When sitting idle which seems high.

 

Just finished my first session of gaming, which in this case was a game of csgo for a little more than an hour;
Average temp 78°C, max 88°C.

10 minutes after gaming (surfing and HWinfo only) im averaging on 50-53°C on the cores.
Ambient temperature in the room is = 30.4°C (!)

A little about the gaming; most set on low, 1920x1080, fps between 100-120 (a few dips to 80).

My config: i7-6560U (iris 540), 8gb ram, 256gb ssd, QHD. I went with gold, took a chance since I dont like blingbling stuff.
But Im happy the gold was quite discreet, I think it looks nice

ps. Furien, might help others if you posted your config