Dell XPS 15 R2 - L502x - Owners Lounge

What about youtube videos? Are they equally as grainy?

 

I'll take a look at this, still looking at other settings with existing Intel 3000 install and Nvidia.

No not my encoded videos, I am also trying a few others such as YouTube videos - considering checking a BluRay as well but then not sure if that is a true representation as I am guessing BluRay disc and x264 would be rendered using different codecs and/or software(s) ?

As a note, it is mostly darker scenes I can see the graininess most in - sometimes scenes with a lot of white also...

I am trying a few but difficult to find any that are well encoded and are of the right type (e.g. movies) to check. There are a few 1080p test scenes etc of things like Planet Earth, the solar system but these are not easy to compare with (as not a good comparison of someone like movie scenes where a lot is going on)...

So as a test,

Avatar Movie Trailer
Avatar FULL 1080p trailer - YouTube

Had a quick flick through this in 1080p using full screen - I would say this is pretty well encoded and don't think I can see any grain in this?

Only problem though, as mentioned above - I really need a movie or trailer with a lot of dark scenes to check/make a comparison with as it shows up worst in these.

Or maybe you/someone else can suggest a video that you think looks perfect without grain so I can test it and also make a comparison?

 

That graininess might also by partly from the video itself. For example, my Firefly blurays (from the Bluray discs) have a bit of grain likely because of how it was upconverted from SD to HD. Likewise for my Dr Who blurays (second series), there is a bit of graininess in the videos because I don't think these were shot in "native" HD resolutions - they were converted to HD for the blurays.

But blurays such as Transformers and Star Trek aren't grainy at all, perhaps because they were shot in native HD.

I've ripped my BDs as well, and it follows the GIGO theory: grainy on BD, grainy in ripped mkv/mp4, not grainy on BD, not grainy in ripped mkv/mp4.

 

Stuff like Transformers and Star Trek make for tricky comparisons...I get what you mean about GIGO, but because there is a lot of CGI in movies like that they will naturally gravitate towards looking good as they are often filled with a lot of often computer-generated HD graphics or scaled HD models or like you say shot specifically with HD cameras. Though I will still try and give them a go to see how they look.

If anyone else is watching any x264 on this laptop, what are you watching and how does it look? And what is your usual viewing distance from it?

 

What I meant by GIGO was that if you paused any scene, you will see graininess or you won't. Can you take a screenshot of something grainy and post it?

 

I understood fully what you meant by GIGO.

Here is an screenshot taken of something that looks particularly bad:

From Cabin Fever (2002)
http://imgbucket.info/i-vHz9B/cabinfever.png
Look at the dark areas, although you don't need to look too hard to see the grain there


Another screenshot, this one from 50/50 (2011)
http://imgbucket.info/i-tASwG/5050.jpg
In this, look at the orange wall on the left, blue balloon and anything else in the background


And here's another one - this from Transformers Dark of the Moon
http://imgbucket.info/i-RtiXO/tr.jpg
In this, for me again it is the sunset type background where I see a lot of grain


For the 1st screenshot, I have also tried viewing this on a 1280x800 screen - I can still see the grain.

With the 2nd and 3rd screenshot however, viewing the second image on the same 1280x800 screen - the grain which was so clear and apparent on the 1920x1080 screen appears to have been somewhat "smoothed out" on the 1280x800.

Viewing same images on the original 1920x1080 though, I can still see the grain.

How does anyone else make these? Something wrong, or normal?

 

Has anyone had issues with "operating system not found" when booting from an external hdd? I cannot get it to boot at all!

 

OK, if I am thinking correctly of what you're saying, then that "grain" isn't really bad grain. I'm seeing that too, and I believe that is normal.

I don't really know how to explain it, but it's not really grain as much as it is just artifacts from the video compression, etc. I'm sure there's a better term for it, but that's what pops into my head at this time. Even though a x264 encode might be at something like 5Mbit, it's still not the 25Mbit or higher that a bluray disc plays at, so solid colours kind of come out as not-so-solid. This is especially apparent in the 3rd screenshot in 50/50 against the red wall on the far left, and the blue balloon like you pointed out. Even the plant at the bottom left corner shows a kind of graininess overlaid on top of it. The gradient background in the Transformers screenshot is just as evident. (If you could send me the timestamp of that Transformers scene, I'll test it out on my BD's here and grab a screenshot, see if there's a difference).

I viewed your screenshots on 3 different screens: built-in L502x 1920x1080, Dell 22" 1920x1080 over miniDIsplayport -> DVI, LG 19" HDMI->DVI 1440x900

 

USB3 or USB2 port?

 

Both of them, driving me buts. I can boot off it if I plug it in, then make a boot option in Windows BCD. However if I try to directly boot of the drive, it does not work.

 

The Transformers screenshot was taken at 1h:32m:03s - be interesting to see a comparative screenshot from the original BD.

 

Hey all,

DELL XPS L502X i5 2410M 2.3GHz 4GB 640GB Unused Gaming Bargain! | eBay

Just got this for £360 ($553), considering the small amount of damage, do you think it was a good buy?

Thanks

 

OK the movie itself (Transformers 3 Dark of hte Moon) seems grainy on its own. Full disclosure: I used the 15-day trial of ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre because it has screenshot capabilities, PowerDVD does not. Hope I'm not breaking any forum rules for potentially posting copyrighted material.

This is the screenshot of the same time stamp that you gave me: as you can see, the background sky is somewhat grainy.
http://imgbucket.info/i-mjtL1/2e78641e-c714-4229-9860-6d19771e5c35.jpg

This one is taken a few minutes before, I wanted to show that it is indeed a "grainy" film to begin with:
http://imgbucket.info/i-WdYBC/540c3121-0911-46c7-8472-ed839223d158.jpg

And finally this is the optional proof that it's off the actual bluray DVD:
http://imgbucket.info/i-rONj2/img_20120602_183612.jpg

IMO seems like your screen is perfectly normal!! (Rejoice!)

 

hello guys , is there any news about windows 8 drivers ? thanks in advance

 

I doubt we will see any win 8 drivers until the OS is RTM.

Sent from my mwp6985 using Board Express

 

Hi, I just ordered one of these and realized it only came with 2gb of RAM which was silly of me not to change but oh well.

I was wondering as I am pretty poor after buying this, could I purchase a 4gb RAM and mix it with 2 that is already in there?

I will buy another singular 4 next month when I get paid.
4GB, 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3-10600 upgrades for Dell XPS 15 Laptop/Notebook, CT1858253 from Crucial.com

 

What country did you order in? Are you sure the 2GB is not referring to the Graphics card, the 540m? I thought the base config was 4GB.

 

100% sure its talking about the ram. I ordered it in UK.

So can I? Wasn't to sure I can mix and match.

 

Really you don't need Windows 8 specific drivers except for graphics cards. All the Windows 7 drivers except graphics card drivers work on Windows 8 RP.

 

I bought my L502x back in october and lately the temps have been getting high when gaming. On BF3 i previously got temps of gpu:~67°C and cores:~74°C. Now i am getting temps of GPU:90°C and cores:93°C which seems very hot. I even elevate the back a little to allow better air flow. The thermal paste doesnt need renewal this soon does it? I am considering getting a good cooling pad. Any recomendations guys?

 

you can give a try to undervolted bios, they reduce gpu temps a lot, and since the cpu and gpu share the same heatsink at this laptop, that should improve the temps.

you can also try some hardware tweaking like remove the dust filter and repaste with better quality thermal paste (dell's stock thermal paste at this laptop is not the best one)

some members also said that turn off turbo boost can keep temperatures cool, but that may affect performance on exaustive CPU apps

 

I have just tried it with the A10 undervolted bios and in improves it, the GPU temp is now around 78-80 degrees which is great. But i would like it to be lower still. Looks like i need to do a thermal repaste then, is it normal for the stock paste's effect to decrease this quick? I have had it for 6 months.
Thanks for the info and bios .

 

Before you bother repasting, I highly recommend giving your laptop a few bursts of compressed air to clean out your fan. It can really, really help if your fan has been clogged up with months of dust

 

made a new thread about this but thought id ask in here aswell since it gets alot of attention was just wondering if anyone knew where i could buy the touch screen lcd for my dell l502x

 

Yes, that sounds like a very good idea. What would be the best way to do it? Would i need to open it up to get into the fan or could i just blow it into the fan vents? Im trying to avoid opening it up, not that im not capable, i just dont want to have that risk of missing something or loosing a screw. But if its the best way i will do it.

 

With a compressed air can you can try blowing directly into the intake and exhaust vents.

 

After that, it wouldn't hurt to take off the bottom panel (don't worry, just 3 screws that you can't possibly lose) and do a bit of dusting in there as well, as I would imagine any dust that was stuck in the vents/exhaust would get blown into this physical space. Just want to make sure you remove as much dust as possible.

I tend to air out my exhaust about once a month, just to make sure that dust doesn't accumulate. I don't see any noticeable difference with heat, but that might be because there's no dust preventing proper air flow.

 

Was this model available with a 1600x900 resolution?
I've just looked on the Dell website and all I can see is the 1366x768 option.

 

No, it has HD (x768) and had FHD (1920x1080). The FHD models are gone, presumably since the next generation is right around the corner.

 

After the tech replaced the mobo in my L502x, I keep getting bluescreens with STOP 0xDEADDEAD (yeah, really...). It seems like this is "user initiated stop", which I'm pretty sure is wrong
Not very happy with that.

 

maybe the OS got corrupted due damaged hardware.

I remember my system stoped having BSODs after format & clean installation
before I got BSOD while turning off network interfaces and while hibernating/resume from hibernation the first month I had the laptop.

I also were having issues with the second hdd caddy before format & clean install.

everything is fine now for me.

you can give it a try.

I know this is really a headache, installing everything from 0, OS, drivers, updates, apps, games , patches .... a real pain.

however that worked for me when I was about to throw the laptop through the window

 

Anyone playing diablo? I have GT525m and i5 cpu, but I have the 1080 screen, trying to find the best settings.

 

my xps stutters a lot, any idea to fix that?

tried installing the new bios sometime ago, but it stutters more these past few weeks..


and i tried installing the new nvidia driver, and it says that i don't have a compatible hardware, and im pretty sure i downloaded the correct one..

thanks a lot

 

what do you mean by "stutter"? as in only during games, or all the time even when browsing websites or in Windows Explorer, etc.?

Can you give us examples of what you do when this happens?

 

it's like a lag, and happens for 1 or 2 seconds..

and it happens anytime, but randomly. sometimes during games, movies, or just doing some word processing.

sometimes it gets more often than usual, and sometimes i can hardly find it stuttering..

 

That's how my laptop acted a few hours before the mobo died

 

I just got my L502X r2 today. I installed GTA IV and it barely ran on the built in display. I looked through the NVIDIA config and turned as much as I could to high performance using the GT540 card.

In the Physx tab, I set it to the GT540 side. I noticed the HDMI port was on that side and the built in display was stuck in the Intel3000 side. I plugged in the HDMI cable to my 22" monitor and shut off the built in display and GTA IV ran awesome!

How can I get the NVIDIA card to drive my built in display?? This is my first computer with a graphics card...coming from a Vostro 1220 and Inspiron 700m before:

 

The built-in display has nothing to do with the poor performance. It's likely that Optimus did not really detect GTA 4 and ran it off the Intel HD instead of the nVidia GPU. Might want to set the Optimus to run exclusively off the nVidia GPU instead of auto detecting it.

 

New IVY XPS 14 XPS 15 specs leaked. (PHOTOS)

The leaked spec sheet for the XPS 14 claims that it is powered by a 3rd-generation Core i7 “Ivy Bridge” processor backed by 8GB RAM. There’s also an NVIDIA GT 630M 1GB GPU pumping the pixels to the 1600 x 900 LCD display.

Storage is provided by a hybrid 500GB hard drive and 32GB SSD unit. Battery life is listed at 11+ hours.

The XPS 15 has a beefier alleged spec sheet. It too is powered by a 3rd-generation Intel Core i7 “Ivy Bridge” processor and 8GB RAM. However, this time the larger 1920 x 1080 full-HD screen is fed by the more powerful NVIDIA GT 640M 2GB.

Storage is also provided by a hybrid 1TB hard drive and 256GB SSD unit. The XPS 15 is also kitted out with a slot-loading optical drive and the battery life is rated at 8+ hours.

Both the XPS 14 and XPS 15 have backlit keyboards and a full compliment of ports, including HDMI, DisplayPort and USB 3.0. The design of these systems is similar to that of the XPS 13 in that they make use of Corning Gorilla Glass, machined aluminum and carbon fiber to create a shell that is lightweight, yet strong and hard-wearing.

If the specification of the final devices lives up to the leaked specification, then these ultrabooks will be ideally suited to enterprise users looking for thin-and-light systems that are powerful enough to get the job done. At the same time, they will also sport a battery that is capable of lasting through a full day of work.

The XPS 13 starts at $999, so I would expect the XPS 14 and XPS 15 to come in at around $1,299 and $1,499 respectively.
here it goes in english:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/d...d-photos/20822
__________________

 

Where are the settings for Optimus? I've checked every tab under the NVIDIA control panel (which leaves A LOT to be desired). I've turned off everything regarding auto-detect...what a horrible technology.

Also like I said, the game notes that I'm likely exceeding the 59mb of graphics memory when I'm using the built in display. When I shut off the built in display and use the external off the HDMI port, the game instantly gets happier and says there's 2,000mb of graphics memory.

Also, updated the bios and NVIDIA drivers last night. Thanks for the help.

 

Under 3D Settings > Manage 3D Settings, go to the Program Settings tab. There will be a "1." drop down menu with your games that Optimus has autodetected (If it didn't detect it, click Add and find the EXE for the game). Then under "2." Select "High-performance NVIDIA processor" and click Save at the bottom of the window. That will basically tell Optimus to never use the Intel GPU for that specific game.

That definitely sounds like Optimus doesn't autodetect GTA 4 and has been using the Intel GPU the whole time.

 

Others had the same gta iv problem and a possible solution in page 184

 

one issue!!!
when i open nvidia control panel and go to change resolution under display category----the resolution selected there is 1366x768(native) as my display is hd...at the bottom a message is written "some resolutions are not available because of a defective or low capacity cable"
is there anything abnormal????

 

getting beginning dump of physical memory...

crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\061712-29016-01.dmp
uptime: 14:57:27
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x7F1C0)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA8007FE9B30, 0xFFFFFA8007FE9E10, 0xFFFFF80003788510)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe


Please help me out!!!!!!!

 

I think that is normal. I see it too. My desktop has that too (old NVIDIA Geforce 8600GT).

 

Your system does have a defective or low capacity cable but it is normal. The 1366x768 lcd cable is not capable of outputting 19xx X 1xxx, which require an upgraded cable.

If ever you decide to manually upgrade to the 1080p screen, you would need a new cable along side the upgraded screen.

 

Any idea why I'm getting stuttering in Diablo 3? FRAPS reports the fps being a constant 50, barely ever dips below that @ 1280x720 with textures on high and everything else on low, low fx turned off. VSYNC is turned on but I can't figure out why the fps maxes out at 50fps, this isn't a 50Hz screen. On my desktop PC the camera panning is smooth as silk but even though the frame rate is pretty high on this laptop the camera pan is stuttering, really distracting.

Thanks!

 

ntoskernel doesn't usually crash unless there's serious system corruption or serious hardware issues. A clean install is your first step. If that doesn't help, I hope it's still under warranty.

 

I'm a bit curious as to the optical drive on my L502x. It rattles pretty much, and it's getting a bit annoying. I don't use it, so I could in theory just replace it with a non-rattling SSD, but it's a bit of principle as well. Drumming my fingers anywhere on the laptop, even softly, makes it rattle. If I drum my fingers left of the touchpad, softer than when I type, it rattles. I guess it doesn't rattle as much when I type because the keys take the impact.

Does everyone elses ODD rattle a lot?

 

Mine rattles when I use a CD/DVD that is warped. I blame the CD/DVD not the drive.