Dell XPS 15 (Skylake) 9550 Owner's Lounge

Yeah, it´s terrible service, I´ve spoken alreay with many support members, nobody could do something they told me...

 

I am from Germany, too. Do not take their delivery times seriously. When I ordered online it was listed out-of-stock with 2 weeks to wait for delivery. I ordered anyway and it was sent out on the same day. To me, it seems like they have problems with their inventory listings.

 

For my first XPS I had to wait 2 weeks

 

Is Dell mental or something, how is it possible to piss me off even more after all this story? I have called them because of the return off my broken xps this Monday, did not get an answer till now so I wrote the Chat and they told me that they will pick my product up next Tuesday. Since I've got no confirmation mail I've called them today to ask for the pick up date. For my surprise they told me they did not arrange a date now with the pick up service, so the Chat supprt was telling lies, good that I've called them. What's up with Dell nowadays, there is something wrong with how they work there with private costumers. Was thinking about using my 15% voucher but after today I'm even more pissed off about them. Never had such a bad experience with a company now. Yeah I was unlucky getting a buggy laptop, I know they can build beautiful well working devices, but the way they've supported me was awful.

 

We've been buying nothing but Dell notebooks for years particularly since I had a local guy to repair and upgrade them on the cheap. Our XPS 1530 was the last premium Dell during a time when they would fall all over themselves to help you. After that, when we upgraded to our L501x, their quality was declining, but we were able to get a new replacement which turned out to be an upgraded L502x when the guy who came to fix it, couldn't. Since then, however, like the PC market, they have been a steady decline. We stayed with Dell because in prior years as they provided easy access to software, drivers, and service manuals while their designs provided easy access panels for the basic upgrade parts.

Despite its flaws, the 9550 is still a very streamlined, very powerful machine for a reasonable price.

 

Hi everyone. I was benchmarking my XPS 9550's SSD and it seems that stats I'm getting are lower than those posted here.

As shown below, my stats are lower, especially for writing. Is there some setting or driver that I'm missing ?

These are the stats I SHOULD be getting:



And this is what I'm ACTUALLY getting:

 

Yeah, my friend told me that their support is still ok, if yu are no private costumer. I know, the xps has not really a competetor, so it´s hard to find a good alternative for now. I would be happy with it, if they didn´t fecked it up so badly. They did not even ry to please me with a good offer. I think I am not worth it as a private costumer, they won´t lose much money, if I buy somewhere else. But still shokcing what Dell has become, they were top class and well known in Germeny for excellent support and quality. That is gone now, look at trustpilot for example. Sad, isn´t it...

 

I had similar issues http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/interesting-observations-with-the-pm951-512gb-ssd.787707/

I run on AHCI mode now without issues. I have also heard that newer versions of intel rapid storage drivers fix the issue.

 

Well, I spoke too soon. Apparently what it changed is that now I don't ALWAYS get the no audio issue. I am starting to feel that it might be a hardware issue after all (the audio chip locking up or something, unless is a BIOS misconfiguration). About the driver version, I was looking at the wrong place, so it does use the most recent driver.

I am not sure what to do:

1. Wait for a couple of months and see what happens with new BIOS/drivers
2. Send the laptop to Dell
3. Take it to the MS store (I have MS complete). Any experiences with the MS store?

 

They decreased the price for the xps on the german site. 1749 for FHD and 1764 for 4K, is the 4K worth it, is the bttery life bad?

Don´t get it, now it´s 2099 again...

 

Well I switched to AHCI mode in the BIOS (Windows 10 initially didn't run, but I got it working using the Safe Mode trick), but even now I'm getting virtually the same lousy values (shown below) ... ... I installed those Intel Rapid Storage Drivers from Dell's site like 2-3 weeks ago (there's no update for them on Dell's site since then)... What now ?

 

You can try the latest version from intel: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...echnology-Intel-RST-RAID-Driver?product=55005

You can also try the samsung NVMe driver, but you'll have to uninstall the intel ones first.

 

try the drive optimisation to force trim. right click c drive & properties, you will find it on the tools tab.
reboot a couple of times so it clears and try again once the task manager shows things are quiet.

 

I saw the drivers available on Intel's website (including the one you linked to), but they all have the word "RAID" in them. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I only have one SSD in my laptop and not a RAID configuration, so should I still use these "RAID" drivers ?

You're talking about running disk defragmentation manually, right ? I did that. Takes about 5 seconds to complete.

 

HI Guys

I am having serious issues with my 9550.

I have been using it for work since i got it 3 weeks ago, and while there are alot of windows recovered the display adapter from a crash notifications( every 30 mins!) , there seems a bigger problem.

No games seem to work at all when I try the nvidia card with them. I have tried Rome total war 2 , Civilization using dx10/11 mode, 3dmark 2011 and unreal4 engine all fail to load. Instead i am greeted with a black loader or black screens with only sound working. I also ran the dell online diagnostic and while it passed the nvidia device ok, half the 3D demos never loaded and i was staring at a black screen while they ran. Unlike the intelHD card which ran all games , and the diagnostic tests also ran fine.

Has anyone got any games they know work i can also test ( ideally free versions) or anyone have rome total war and can confirm theirs works ok?

Thanks guys

 

Yeah it has both RAID and AHCI drivers on it. Raid is just a mode of operation, it doesn't matter how many drives you have. Just download and install the setuprst.zip file, not the floppy disk ones.

 

I have no issues with games on mine

Try downloading these drivers from intel: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...river-for-Windows-7-8-1-10-15-40-6th-Gen-?v=t

and get the latest nVidia drivers from their website.

Avoid dell drivers - they are generally old

 

I think I will give them a chance, 1480 for the xps is to alluring, hope I will be lucky this time.

How is it possible to play games via HDMI over the nVidia on my TV? Did not understand it last time.

 

So I uninstalled my previous Intel RST drivers, rebooted, installed the ones from your link, rebooted, and still I'm getting the same numbers more or less ... I also edited the laptop's power options and set everything to max performance, and quit virtually all apps, made sure bitlocker is disabled and search indexing is not running ... still no improvement

I found this post on another forum where a person used some 'samsung drivers' which improved performance, but the download link he has given is dead :/

 

So I've owned my XPS 15 9550 for 2 days now and I am wondering if there is a way to lower how sensitize the touchpad is? Im not talking about mouse sensitivity, but the physical touchpad itself? I feel like dust touching the thing moves the mouse...

Anybody know of a way?

 

deleted

 

It was my post where I talked about using the Samsung NVMe drivers

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin.../software/Samsung_NVMExpress_Driver_rev11.zip

 

Can anyone help me reinstall Win10 without RAID 0. I somehow ended up using the IRT to make it a RAID 0 and now I want to go back to what it was 32gn + 1 tb. I have done reinstall of Win 10 but still shows RAID....

 

Oh wow, small world .. I haven't tried them out yet but I assume you'd now recommend the Intel RST drivers over these now (since you didn't mention them earlier) ? And would I have to uninstall the Intel RST drivers to use these ?

 

Not quite, it is located in the same place but if a SSD is detected it performs trim.

You will have to manually install via the device manager, if you get stuck google it.

Answered several times. when the nvidia card is used it routes the output via the intel GPU.

I would call it quits and reinstall if the samsung driver doesn't help, by rights it shouldn't.

No it is fekin awful, you get used to it but the slightest touch and it's off on one. People force the synaptics driver but not many are happy with the result, if you want to try you will see a thread on it in this forum section.

You already posted a thread on this, be patient, the community are not here to answer you within 5 minutes!

 

Thanks, so it's not true that the nVidia is not usable via HDMI on my TV and this means I can play games on my TV. Hate Dell but what should I do, the price is to food to no t try it one last time.

 

Not from what I have read, if you hate Dell don't buy it, or buy it that is up to you.

 

Haha, the word hate is to exaggerated. I liked this Laptop and it fits my needs perfectly and for 1480 € I should try it or not?^^ I hope I had a lemon and that it was only bad luck. You guys got well working machines or not? Bt the support was still bad, will think about it till Monday.

 

Wait, why would the HDMI port not work with games? I used the HDMI port for games for the first week.

 

A friend told me that the HDMI is connected to the Intel chip and if you're playing games the Laptop will use the power of the Intel card . Because there are 2 different cards in the xps and the nvidia is connected to the screen and has no output or something. Not sure if true though.

 

How are the fans and cooling working for everybody during games?
I run on the default Dell power profile and FF14 DirectX11 "normal laptop" causes the fans to spin up to obnoxious levels and heat to start building up to sweaty levels in the center of the keyboard. It seems like things start to throttle but I haven't verified yet.

I've been trying to talk myself into keeping the XPS15 FHD despite the awful ghosting because the form is soo perfect, but the heat and noise make even casual gaming unenjoyable.

 

Your´re almost right: the Intel chip is for output and the nvidia is for rendering. So if you play a game using the dedicated graphics it will do the rendering and the Intel card hand the rendered frames to the display.

 

Ok thx, so the nvidia will still be usable while connected to the TV because it guides the signal to the Intel card. It comparable to streaming. Not sure if I got it right.

 

I just googled a bit and found a site with a graphics for that. Its a bit older but should show how nvidia optimus works:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/lapto...-mobile-gpu-implementation-done-right/?page=3

(I don´t know how the reputation of that site is but the picture is all right, I think)

 

Yes that's exactly right. All outputs are capable of accelerated graphics.

 

Thanks guys
So you don't have problems with your xps?
So if I order a new one I can get no lemon right?

 

Been posted here many times. Go back through this thread or search for GoNz0 posts.

 

I tried playing a game using HDMI on my 4K TV, and got a lot of "tearing" effects. Could this be because of a 30fps limitation? (Also didn't seem to get sound coming through HDMI. :-( ) Using the built-in display, it works well for me. I haven't bothered connecting it to a monitor.

 

Tearing needs vsync turning on to stop it.

 

So I installed the Samsung NVMe drivers and they definitely did help, thanks guys ! .. The new stats are now virtually the same as those mentioned in the benchmark I linked to earlier.

I did not uninstall Intel RST drivers before installing this Samsung driver, so does that mean they're both communicating with the M2 drive simultaneously ?

New Stats:

 

I mentioned this issue last week, don't remember the exact page. The issue is that there is no other event than an unexpected shutdown, nothing else to find. Symptom is that it goes to sleep and after a long boot time it is started fresh. I have resolved the issue by uninstalling the Nvidia card and then let it out detect. This resolved my issue! It now goes to sleep and comes back like a charm in seconds, every time. I have installed all latest drivers and bios update(s). On the side I've done an upgrade of the Samsung EVO firmware of the SSD, replaced my sata as SSD wasn't available for delivery at ordering time.

I've had this issue in the past, after driver updates but and found a solution to resolve. This made me go crazy as I run around with my XPS all of the time. Now it works like a charm and more than happy with it!

Hope this helps!

 

For that @GoNz0 suggested that I update to the latest BIOS. I did that yesterday. Last night I put my laptop to sleep and also took out the charger before going to sleep myself. When I woke up this morning, the laptop resumed from sleep successfully and the battery charge was at 95%. I still have to test it further but so far I think the BIOS update may have helped.

 

Are there any other common issues with the XPS 9550 which I should test my laptop for ? Thing is the return window for potentially returning the laptop is nearing its end, so I want to make sure that I have a fully working XPS 9550

If you guys can think of anything I should test for, please do share

 

Best bets to read through the thread rather than us all repeat previous postings! (as it would add another 50 bloody pages!)

Well, if you are in raid mode then the samsung driver isn't being used. If you are in AHCI mode you shouldn't have intel RST on the system as it needs raid mode to run.

 

I tried installing the driver but it complains NVM Express device not found. Apparently you have to switch to AHCI mode first. I didn't bother since I am probably returning due to the awful ghosting & heat issues.

This remindes me, what are people's experiences with Dell returns? It sounds like you have t o request the RMA within 30 days of when it was billed? So 5-7 days shaved off because it takes them forever to build and ship the units. Do they try to talk you out of it with discounts and stuff like when you call to cancel an order? I doubt they could discount enough to make me keep it though...

Normally I wouldn't want to stretch out the return period but I'm waiting on a the Razer Blade 2016 to be shipping in 2 weeks.

 

They arrange a collection date in the UK, you can say you are away for a couple of weeks on business and arrange it for your return.

 

Occasionally the left side of my XPS 9550 (the vertical strip-like area to the left of the CAPS lock key) would heat up a lot, even though at those times the fans aren't running at full power, and the CPU usage would be like 1%. What could be causing this heating issue ?

 

Is it charging?

 

Yup, although it does still remain warm for another 30-40 minutes even after charging is done. I quick google search earlier today did lead me to a Reddit post which said that battery charging can heat up the 9550, but I don't know if this is common or an issue with mine.

Why would charging cause the laptop to heat up anyway ?

 

Because you are putting energy into the battery, and additionally, running the machine. Energy = heat