Dell XPS 15 L501 *Owner's Lounge*

So my cousin just got his xps 15" and did a clean install. But I was confused on something. At device manager, it shows both the hd graphics or whatever and the gt 420M. Does this laptop switch over to the gt 420M when gaming and such? Cause when I looked at the Windows Experience Index number, its a 1.0, which is based off the integrated (as i would think).

Also, I think he bought it with the 1366x768 resolution but in the Screen Resolution, it has the option to go up to 1920x1080, which is also the recommended. Is there something wrong?

 

Yes the XPS 15 uses switchable graphics called Optimus in which it will automatically switch between Intel HD graphics and the GT420 depending on the application and or your personal settings.

If the option to scale to 1920x1080 is available then, congratulations to your cousin because he got the 1080p instead of the 720p, an error definitely in his favor.

 

Had a feeling if was switchable..

and Wow about the higher res thing!

 

I will mention that it's only switchable when you get the 420m and the core i5. If you get the 435m with the core i7 the hd graphics is left out and you don't get optimus.

 

Hi everyone. My first post in this thread. I have been waiting for a true replacement for my good old XPS M1530, and finally I have ordered this XPS L501. I originally ordered a Vostro 15 with i7-640m, but then I found out Dell has just updated its web site with this new product. I cancelled my order with the Vostro straight away, and placed an order for this thing.

One question for those use dual external screens. I was using dual external screens on my M1530, and they worked just fine (VGA+HDMI), I can unplug the screens at any time, and put the computer to sleep, use it at home and bring it back to work and as soon as I replug the screens back to the laptop and close the lid, things will just resume right. However, I found that the L501 doesn't handle this very well. I use HDMI+miniDP this time for external screen, and it seems the miniDP wouldn't work after waking up from a sleep. I have to restart the computer to get the miniDP to work again~!

Has anyone out there experienced the same thing? My one is a i7-740m, and I use two Dell U2311H, one with HDMI-DVI cable, the other one with miniDP-DVI connection. The miniDP one is an adapter from miniDP to DVI with a DVI cable. I have tried two different brand's adapter (one from Apple, the other one from eBay), and they both give me same result.

The HDMI one will work after waking up from sleep, but not the miniDP one. Anyone can share a clue or some experience?

 

It seems that I didnt get optimus in my computer , I do have the 420m. I cant seem to find it anywhere

ooops nvm I found it

 

finally, just got call from local shop that my xps 15 is waiting to be pickup.
Never own dell notebook before. How many bloatware will I have to remove ?

 

You don't have to remove that much, I don't really see why people want to remove the Dell bloatware anyways. Also why do you have to pick yours up I thought Dell delivers it to the address provided if you did.

 

Well I've received my XPS 15 yesterday ordered 1 Dec 2010.
i7 740 version with 6GB RAM

1) It came with 1080 screen "AUO17ED" AWESOME!! It came preconfigured with font at 125. Anyway text at 100 is very readable.
2) Sound the speakers sounds really clear, sometimes when there is a sound with a very very "bassed" frequency, at high volume level, the subwoofer can distort just for a second (camon it is a notebook). It only happened once after playing a whole CD. CDs sound really clear, best sound on a notebook I ever had. AWESOME!!
2) Temperatures are near 50s in idle and don’t go beyond 70 on my standard load, FINE!!
3) General material Quality GOOD!!
4) Mini Display port, it works, plug and play, with my external monitor at 2560x1440 resolution. AWESOME!!
5) Battery Wear Level 10% BAD !!
6) HDD activity LED on the BACK, REALLY REALLY BAD !! I really need to be aware of the HDD activity.
7) CPU, GPU and memory frequency as ordered. GOOD!!
8) I'm a maniac regarding noises on my office, and this notebook is almost silent, I hate the noise coming from the standard desktop PC's. I was expecting a kind of jet plane after reading this forum. Compared against my older Toshiba and IBM notebooks this is very silent.
9) USB 3 not tested I do not have any device usb 3.0, usb 2.0 working fine so far.
10) It is very bulky compared against my old Studio 15, but it is for far a better notebook, I will buy it again and have no doubt to recommend this notebook.
11) I've upgraded to Ultimate (becasue I need virtual machines "XP Mode" with hardware support) then only removed the Mc Afee suit and installed Nod 32 and Zone Alarm. I could not find any other bloatware to worry about.

 

"4) Mini Display port, it works, plug and play, with my external monitor at 2560x1440 resolution. AWESOME!!"

Hi pituky,

Can you confirm you can get your external screen to work even you have put the laptop into sleep and wake it up again? My one's miniDisplay port doesn't work with miniDP to DVI after that. However, miniDP to VGA works though.

It seems the function of outputting to a DVI via miniDP is lost until next restart.

 

There is a recovery partition on my XPS15 and there are some data on it, because 7+GB is used on it. I did a clean install but to check few things I want to go back to original setup. How to force XPS to restore it from recovery partition? F8 during start of the system mentioned in the manual doesn't work...

 

F8 should work then pick repair.

 

Hey guys, I have had my laptop for 2 days now, and its amazing glad i got it, i just have one question though, When i go to My Computer and system properties in my ram section it says I got 6GB, but only 5.74 is usable, can someone tell me why it is not using the full 6GB?

 

Some of the available RAM is reserved for the Intel HD graphics as far as I know! It's the same on my system.

 

so basically Intel HD keep eating memory even when system using nvidia gpu ? or.. I have gt435 myself, but I'm trying to help friend choose.

 

Intel only uses sytem memory which is 4,6,8, or what ever you ordered with the system the graphics card has a seperate memory bank I believe, so that won't be a problem.

 

Got a quick question on temps. I have read through it and people seem to be getting varying results. I played BFBC2 for about 15 minutes on medium settings just to check the temps out. My CPU peaked at 81 C and my GPU peaked at 83 C.

Is this to hot?

My system is Dell XPS 15 - i7-740QM - 435m NVIDIA

 

Thanks for that. I thought I would have to do a clean install to not have it on the system. Now all I have to do is remove McAfee and install my own stuff.

 

So Dell had a 15% off refurb sale. I picked up an XPS 15 L501X w/ the 1080p display, Blu-ray, i5-460M, 4GB ECC (yeah, I have no idea if that's true), Intel 6250 + WiMax, w/ the 6-cell for about $740 before shipping or tax.

Dell appears to want $179 for the 9-cell battery. Anyone know where it can be obtained for a bit cheaper? Paying 1/4 the price of the notebook for a battery seems... insane.

 

That is high. It's only a $40 up grade for the 9 cell on a new XPS. Hopefully you can find it cheaper somewhere.

 

$40? geez, dell charges €70 in my home country

 

wow, that is expensive.

 

Thank you sooooooo much, this has fixed everything!

So what's the deal with dell, why are they selling something called an "extreme performance system" (XPS) if they can't keep the graphics drivers up to date! I would imagine this should be one of their priorities!

 

I did some more digging. Seems the battery is a Dell R795X. Found it for $59 + 14 shipping on eBay from a Chinese supplier. 36mo warranty. They say it's a genuine Dell (guess they don't all make it to Dell...). Figure I'll give it a try.

 

Lots of the stuff I have bought from Chinese suppliers on eBay that they claim is a name brand usually doesn't end up being name brand.

 

Same here. Bought a "Dell" branded battery from e-bay Chinese supplier 2 years ago and it was not one when gotten. Still worked well for a bit but not as long as expected and thus not recommended imho.

 

Will these temps damage my machine in the long run?

Playing BFBC2 for 30 mins just now. Max CPU temp was 80 C and max GPU temp was 83 C.

 

More heat will shorten a components life, but I don't think those temps will straight out destroy anything as long as the GPU doesnt get much hotter. CPUs can take pretty much heat and modern components will throttle before reaching dangerous temps. I've only had one game take me to around 80C. Usually I am in the 65C range. If you play Civ V or try the demo and you go much over 65C for GPU, then the cooling paste was probably done poorly, or the GPU is faulty.

 

Cool. I have Civ V just haven't installed it yet. Will try that one out and see what my temps do. Still might try to find someone around here to do a new paste job for me.

 

Hi Guys,

I have got my replacement XPS 15's replacement, which is again a XPS 15.

It finally came in 2 days back. I just had time to check it.
While re-installing the O.S from the DELL re-installation disk (Win 7 ULTIMATE 64 bit), I notice that the BDROM shakes/vibrates a lot.

It makes a noise like a medium loaded food processor!

I checked the same with some other DVDs (which weren't burnt to the hilt).

For these, I get the occasional drive vibration on spin up, but it doesn't shake up as much as the Windows Re-installation DVD Disc.

The installation completed fine though.

Any suggestions for this? i feel the Bezel of the drive vibrated against the chassis of the system. Would a drive change help?

Other than this, the system seems fine (fan still runs occasionally though).

Thanks!

C

 

does anyone here have 768p AUO screen ? any good ICC that I can use ?

 

Did you have to special order the Dell re-installation disk for Win 7 Ult? I did not receive a re-installation disk for my Windows Home Premium. I need one now to do an in-place upgrade to correct some corrupted system files.

D


XPS 15 | i5-460M | 1080P | 6GB RAM | 500 GB HD | 9 Cell | GT 420M | Intel N6300 wifi | BL KB | Windows Home Premium

 

Yo, BIOS A06 out now:

Drivers and Downloads

 

Page is there but won't let me download it.

 

Nevermind, Google Chrome doesn't like Dell

 

Hi, today I have been getting loads of black screen shutdowns. My laptop just shuts down unexpectedly with a black screen and restarts and says Windows did not shut down correctly, no blue screen or dump file. Just browsing the net and playing music, it has happened around 10 times today, before it happened a few times, but only once in a while. I also still get stuttering when playing music, randomly in the middle of some tracks, again not all the time.

Anyone any idea what could cause this? Has this happened to anyone else?

 

Yep, what ever you described there happened to me, i did a diagnostics and found that my ram and gpu had a fault, will be calling Dell now.

 

The best you can do is call up their tech support team, and ask them that the O.S. is corrupted due to some virus attack, and you cannot boot to the recovery partition, so they should send you a OS re-installation disk.

I had put forth a request for the same, and they obliged. Try the same, should work!

 

They have removed the download file. Must be having issues or could be released without testing..

 

Yep, you are right, i just tried and it won't download.

 

Hi there yogaduane, don't know if you got a answer to your question above yet but maybe this will help.

Go to the Support page at Dell.com. From there, click on the Assisted Search link. Then type in "request operating system disk". Then in the next pop up window click the "Request Backup Disks" link, fill in your information and that's it. You will receive your back up Windows 7 disks in the mail in a few days.

 

Guys,

Did anyone try booting their XPS 15 with a UBCD4WIN image (Windows XP) off a USB drive?

I am getting a BSOD with ACPI.sys as the reason. Will post a screen later...

 

Basically I needed to re-partition the Internal 500 GB HDD for Win 7 re-installation. Let me know if anyone has tried the UBCD4WIN.

 

Can someone please tell me how I turn off my screen when playing radio podcasts i've downloaded. I have the power settings to turn off after 1 minute but it won't because windows media is playing. I was wondering if there is a way to turn off the screen while playing music / podcasts, so as to preserve battery life

Thanks in advance

- NewcastleBoy

 

you could try setting the lid to "do nothing" when shutting it,
This will turn the screen off but wont put ur computer to sleep/hibernate etc

 

I've got the middle touch button set to turn off the screen for when I'm just listening to music, that could be an option if you haven't got something more important on there.

 

i bought my xps 15 back in november, today i turn it on and theres absolutely no audio/sound! can anybody help meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...please

 

first off im sure your not stupid enough to have it muted.
so right click speaker icon bottom right, click playback devices, makesure your speakers are ticked, you may have to configure them, also chech properties.

Bottom right there may be an orange speaker as well, realtek HD audio manager? try volume control and sound manager

 

hello people, i have xps 15 and would like to change my memory from 4gb to 8gb(crucial ddr3 8gb pc10600)
and hdd from 500gb to crucial realssd c300 128gb
mind to share the guide?

 

Have a lookie at the service manual from dell.