Dell XPS 15 R2 - L502x - Owners Lounge

oh, aparently my battery have even more wear level than yours and you also seems to have a bigger capacity battery, (mine is the ty one and lost like a 1/3 of the total ammount of charging capacity so I cant not move far from the charger for a while ^^)


well, if it keep asking about battery voltage, try getting a multimeter and checking the voltage of the battery pins, some of them should give 11-12v
try also cleaning the battery pins from both computer and battery.

 

Yeah, I'm surprised that the wear is fairly low for an 1.5yr old battery, the the larger capacity is handy since I regularly use it away from the AC adapter.

I'll look into a multimeter if the warning light is still there in a weeks time, thanks again

 

About HDMI, it doesn't seem to be true, does it? Wikipedia says that HDMI 1.3 already does 2560×1600 and this notebook has HDMI 1.4. I am choosing between a monitor with 1920x1080 and 1920x1200, and I'd want to be able to have a second one identical later. So, will I be able to connect TWO 1920x1200 monitors to this notebook?

 

My post was a while ago, so I don't recall what it's about.

However, from what I'm reading, it seems that my point was that you are limited to 2560x1600 per monitor. So for example if you had a monitor on your HDMI and a monitor on your miniDisplayPort, you could easily get 1920x1200 on both monitors (provided that they are at that resolution).

 

Any League of Legends players out there?

I have been having FPS drops from 60-70 fps down to 5-10 fps recently while playing. Riot seems to think that it is a problem with NVIDIA Optimus. I have tried many things from updating drivers to undervolting my video card to reduce heat. Anyone else with a L502x having this problem?

 

me

if you want extra fps, put pre-rendered frames to 8 to league_of_legends.exe this may not be posible using nvidia control panel directly, so you will need to use nvidiainspector to tweak the driver profile for lol

to get the best performance on LoL I Oced also the card and moved the shadows from very high to high, it isnt almost noticiable but it give a huge performance boost with minimal visual impact, enable also vsync at the game options, it you want the game go smoth use it, and set the frame cap to "high"
let me know if those settings help you ^^

 

Holy crap that actually helped some.

I used NVIDIA Inspector to set the pre-rendered frames to 8 for LoL. I also overclocked to 675/1000. However, I am running full screen at 1366x768 and the lowest settings. I still have voice clips including the announcer repeat. And some champs still cause framerate drops when I play them. However, all in all it is much better.

What are you overclocking to? I took your post to read that you have had the same problems. Are they identical to mine? I am just trying to figure out the source of this.

Thanks for your help(and modded BIOSs)

 

I also have the 1366x768 screen, however I usually play on an external 1440x900 screen using the minidisplay port.

using msi aferburner to OC my 525m card to 704 mhz on core, memory untouched, using also modded bios.

everything on very high except shadows on high.

it is usually ok, when vladimir is on the screen the fps go down a little,

pretty weird that by lower graphical settings, lower resolution, you get lower FPS, make sure your nvidia GPU is being used by alt tabing and watching the GPU ussage with some app like msi afterburner.

playing with intel graphics gave me 35/40 fps with my current settings.

about OC, try focusing more in core than memory, memory OC is usually less noticiable than core OC since core is the one rendering frames

and yeah, i had similar issues, doing what I said + OC greatly improved stuff for me ^^

 

oh, I forgot to say I edited also the league of legends profile from nvidia inspector, removed all other exes from the profile except the main one "league_of_legends.exe"
after that, I manually set the other lol executables to use intel gpu.

i have to do that after each game update since they move/update the executables.

I ensured the nvidia gpu did used only the main executable, you can check the programs being used by the nvidia gpu by checking the nvidia activity icon at the tray menu ^^

I also made a simple script to disable windows aero when I go gamming

Code:

@echo off
title KASAR Aero script ...
set aero_file=ksr_aero.txt
color 17
echo.
echo #######################
echo ## KASAR Aero Script ##
echo #######################
echo.
echo.
echo.
if not exist "%aero_file%" goto file_fail else (goto read)

:read
title KASAR reading file...
call :read_file<%aero_file%
goto show_info

:read_file
set /p aero_status=>nul
goto :eof



:show_info
rem echo current aero is: [ %aero_status% ]
echo.


if /i "%aero_status%"=="disabled" goto aero_on
if not "%aero_status%"=="disabled" goto aero_off



:aero_on
echo Enabling aero ...
title KASAR Enabling aero ...
net start uxsms >nul
set aero_status=enabled
goto write_file


:aero_off
echo Disabling aero ...
title KASAR Disabling aero ...
net stop uxsms >nul
set aero_status=disabled
goto write_file

:file_fail
color 47
echo.
echo the file %aero_file% does not exist ,creating ...
set aero_status=enabled
title KASAR creating file ....
goto :write_file

:write_file
echo %aero_status%>%aero_file%
echo.
echo.
title KASAR TOOL - Aero %aero_status%
color 27
echo aero is: [ %aero_status% ]
echo.
exit

just copy the content to a txt file and rename it to something like toggle_aero.bat

then double click it to enable or disable it

 

Can you describe the executable process to me a little more clearly? Sorry but it confused me.

Thanks for the aero script. I had just been running without Aero since these problems started which is annoying. It worked perfectly.

So I left the MSI afterburner monitor on while I played a game and logged it. It does look like I have spikes where the GPU usage goes down to zero.

I am pretty sure that I have my power options and what not properly set to select the discrete GPU. Riot wanted me to disable optimus but it looks like we dont have a BIOS option for that.

 

when you edit the profile with nvidia inspetor, at the menu you can see a green + and a red X, them allow to add or remove game executables, lol have many of them, like the air client and more stuff, just leave the one related with game , and set the other ones with the intel gpu.

you can see the path of the executables running by the task manager.

then open nvidia control panel, open the ones you want to run with intel gpu, and set them, restart the lol client and have fun ^^

optimus cant be disabled on l502x as far I know.

but you can set all apps by defauly to use nvidia gpu, then set all the 2d ones to intel graphics manually by using the nvidia control panel, it has been the thing I has been doing till now

the spikes where it go cero on msi after burner could be related with alt tab, howver make sure your gpu is set on max performance at the nvidia control panel, check also the energy power plan settings and set everything to performance.

 

How are you setting prerendered frames to 8 for league of legends? I don't see that option inside the nvidia inspector >> driver profile settings >> league of legends

Also, I set the application for lol.launcher.exe, but you said to set the other leagueoflegends.exe to the integrated graphics, I can't seem to figure that out either.

** EDIT: I found the prerendered frames **
Still confused about the other execuetables though

 

set all other executables to intel graphics, and league of legends.exe to nvidia gpu ^^

also, delete all ofther executables of lol except league of legends.exe, the X menu should look like this one



dont forget to apply changes

 

Thank you! The screenies really help. The only part I'm confused about is how do I set all the other executables to intel graphics?

**EDIT**
Nevermind! I understand your previous post now! Thank you much

 

glad to know you got it

did the performance improved?

 

Wait, overvu are you having the same problems as I am?

captain, thanks for your explanations. I did log the gpu usage through MSI Afterburner and I get intense spikes down to 0.00% usage and they were not the result of alt tabbing. I ran the game windowed at 1366 x 768(on my 1920 x 1080 screen). I was able to watch the lag in the game coincide with the spikes down to 0 in usage. It is slightly better, but I am still pretty frustrated as I have tried a ton of things to fix this and don't seem that much closer.

Any other thoughts?

 

mmm, then aparently it is caused by spikes produced by somthing like energy saving or another apps

it could also be related with cpu, since if the cpu stop proccesing the game it also may affect the gpu.

I would check there are no other cpu or gpu intensive apps opened such as antivirus, download apps, or some kind of app running at the background, try running the game with minimal software at the background.

give also a check to the windows power plan advanced settings, intel graphics advanced settings and nvidia gpu advanced settings, ensure everything is set to get the max performance and the system also does not overheat.

 

I was having issues with GPU usage spiking down to 0%, but after I set all the other executeables to the integrated card I was fine. I'm on A11, 0.83v/0.98v, overclocked to 860/1340/900

 

The LOL executables are : lol.launcher.exe(integrated), league of legends.exe(discrete), and lolclient.exe(integrated). Correct?

Overvu were you having the same problem as I am with the character voice and announcer repeating?

 

yes, that is correct, if you want a game or a 3d app to get optimal performance, it should be the only app using the discrete gpu, you can check everytime the apps using the discrete gpu by checkng the nvidia activity icon at the system tray, I check it when I alt+tab from games to confirm it is using the GPU and ther are no other apps using it.

since I had this laptop I noticed many 2D apps crash and are unstable while using the discrete gpu, it also is unnecesary since the intel graphics can handle most windows, so I just leave the distrete for the game main executables and also other stuff like console emulators ^^

 

No, I never had that problem. Good luck!

 

For some reason, I have the lol launcher set to intergrated but it is still showing up as using the GPU. Any ideas on why that would happen? Looks like I also need to switch the Intel Boost Monitor to intergrated.

 

well, the lol executables are tricky to remove, but it is posible by the methods I described on previous pages.

the problem is that it load also another lol launcher from subfolders, and it is still set to nvidia graphics.

to get rid of that, do following

1 - remove lol launcher and lol client executables from the nvidia inspector league of legends profile, it should be only set to league of legends.

2 - open league of legends client, and stay on the main screen after log in

3 - open task manager and locate the lol executables , then note the paths

4 - open nvidia control panel, open 3d apps, and browse manually for those executables, then set then to integrated graphics and apply changes

5 - close lol client and ensure no lol processes are opened

6 - open league of legends again, no executables should be using nvidia gpu, except the game one when you start a match "league of legends.exe"

 

Firstly, Thanks for the effort you are putting into help. It is beyond what I was ever expecting. I truly appreciate it even if we don't figure this out.

Secondly, LoL is still having FPS drops and repeating audio. EVEN though I managed to finally figure out the executables. I have confirmed that only the one exe is using the GPU while playing. My problem was that I had somehow missed one of them(they are tricky).

Thirdly, I am kind of guessing that maybe I have a hardware failure of some sort. Riot has had me perform: driver updates, driver reinstalls, client reinstall, chkdsk, memtest, Furmark, clean boot(w/o services and startup items), check my power settings. With you guys I have setup my driver profiles. Overclocked and undervolted the GPU. I have tried windowed mode. Borderless. I have tried to see if it is my usb headset is the problem(it worked before with Lol). I have turned off Aero. Uninstalled my antivirus(Avast). Tried to roll back my NVIDIA driver.

What else is there left to do? I sure am stumped.

 

^_^

well, I never had issues related with repeating audio, just some fps decreases wich made my game play annoying, but with the tricks I posted before I managed to get the gameplay smoth.

I play at 1366x768 when I play at the laptop, and sometimes I hook it to a 1440x900 display using the minidisplay port and then I use that resolution.

hI have everything on very high except shadows, on high.

well, some characters are bad optimized like vladimir, when he is on the screen the fps lower a bit.

my GPU is overclocked to 700 mhz (was 600 mhz on default) and using a modded bios.

what is your GPU? 525m or 540m?

and your cpu? ram ammount?

well, in my case I have a i3-2310m (I think I am one of the users with lowest CPU installed on their L502X on this forum ^^, but games run fine or aceptable in most cases, so I think it will be ok for you)

well, another thing I did when I got my laptop, was format the whole disk and install windows 7 ultimate x64, the machine came with just a premium version of windows, and also was full of crappy software.

since I did the clean install and I had the control of what were running on my machine everything went fine and had no issues.

formating may be not an option for you, but well, it fixes stuff many times ^^

well, I never had issues with audio, just a almost unoticiable spike when the announcer says "welcome to sumoners rift" and "30 seconds to minions spawn" the fps get down for less than a second and then it run fine the rest of the game, I think I can live with that ^^


well, I also use a small app to optimize the games, it force specific executables to use all the cores, and keep the load balanced on all of them, also set the process to high priority.
it is named "easytoolz"

you can configure the apps by clicking on cpu affinity when the app is running

then you manually set the apps

the app is on german, but It is pretty simple to use

I use the same options for all the game executables

all cores and following options



in my case, league of legends executable is at

however it will probably change on next client update ^^

 

I will check out that app.

I have the following
I7 2360qm
525m
6gb ram

I just made the client run on the integrated graphics(verified with the NVIDIA monitor) and it behaved pretty much identically. My worst fps drops cause a screen freeze for a couple seconds(maybe 2-4 seconds). They don't necessarily coincide with more activity on the screen but do seem more prevalent when action is going on.

 

well, with that specs your computer should be more than enough for lol ^^

when I ran LoL with intel graphics I got like just 35 fps, and just at the begining of the game, it was unplayable for me.

thats why play it allways with the nvidia GPU.

its really curius you get the same performance with nvidia gpu than intel.

maybe something is wrong with the nvidia drivers.

do you experience similar issues with other games? or just LoL?

 

Well I do have vsync turned on so the Intel Graphics seem to do 60fps at my settings(remember I have everything on the lowest possible setting).

I just finished playing Xcom enemy unknown with no real hiccups in that game. The wierd thing is that everything was fine with Lol until the Elise/New TT patch. I had no fps issues at all. So odd.

 

well, if it started happening with LoL just after a patch and you didnt installed anything else, then it is a LoL related issue.

well, since I didnt played LoL like from two weeks ago I cant confirm I'm not having issues with newer patches.
I may give again a try to some gamming tonight and I will let you to know if I notice something unusual.

 

Hi guys, I'm an owner of a L502x since April 2011; it's been some time now that I have a grinding noise when the fan goes on, I'm not entirely sure that it's the fan itself though; I've finally ordered a new one off ebay and I'll be replacing it when it arrives, but reading the last 70 pages of the topic I've come across a couple post mentioning a grinding noise and a mobo replacement...now since my nb is out of warranty, a mobo replacement would be quite more expensive than a new fan, so I was wondering if anyone who had this problem can tell me for sure if it's the mobo which needs to be replaced, or the fan, or something else altogether

Thanks in advance!!

 

If it only happens when the fan is on, then it would be the fan.

I had the same problem and had mine replaced (under warranty) twice.

So it should all be ok when you install the replacement fan

 

hi everyone i want to share my experience with you i have allways worked with ASUS lapton and since two month i bought dell xps L502x it has an intel I7-2670QM and it works perfectly well, i use it for deferent tasks like programming runing DBMS playing HD video and the temperature is between 55 and 65°C (125 and 150°F) all i can say this is normal with this model of CPU i bench it with VirtualBox runing Linux and HD video palying in background the temperature has never crossed the ligne of 85°C it's a very good laptop :thumbsup:

 

Thanks for the input; it only happens when the fan is on but sometimes the fan goes on, and then the grinding noise starts, a bit later though; so I was wondering if maybe it's connected to the fan going on but it's not the fan itself...

Guess I'll just have to wait for the new one, replace it and see...

 

That's quite similar to what happened to mine as well, the grinding noise wouldn't be to bad initially, but soon got worse as the fan continued to run.

 

Let's hope I can solve it with the fan replacement as well then!!

 

So, I am back with more on my saga with peformance issues with my l502x. I am looking for tips for dealing with Dell because I am becoming more and more convince that this is a hardware problem.

I stated earlier that I was only problems with League of Legends and they started with the Elise patch(October 26th). I looked in my steam library and noticed that the last day I play X-Com Enemy Unknown was October 17th. So I fired up the game and it basically froze(the screw froze with the cursor and sound stuttering). I also tried to play Dota 2 and had similar problems as Lol(fps drops(gpu usage to 0) and sound problems).

From looking through other threads an option may be to replace my motherboard? From my MSI afterburner logs it looks to me like the problem is not heat(temperature and the gpu usage drops don't correlate). My temps seem to top our around 80 degrees. The only other option other than going through Dell for the motherboard replacement is a repasting of the thermal paste and underclocking to possibly see if reduced heat helps.

Any thoughts?

 

My 1502 has been giving me temps at idle at around 60 C and 91 C under load. Is this normal? See my dig for system info. RAM is corsair vengeance.
Sent from my Windows Phone 8X by HTC using Board Express

 

Marco, both temperatures seem slightly high to me. Have you gone about repasting your gpu and cleaning out your heatsink? There is a thread here on doing just that if you have not.

 

Hi I've been having a problem for the past few months where my display will glitch like this and was hoping someone could help me

This can happen 3 times a day or not happen for two weeks , once it happens I'm forced to hard restart and it works fine again no errors until it happens again.

I'm running
L502X 2540M 540M 8GB

Any help would be greatly appreciated Lj

 

Firstly, make sure your video drivers are current..

But I suspect that that's a hardware error, and your best option is to have the laptop checked by Dell if it is still under warranty.

 

That's what I thought unfortunately my laptop is like 4 months out of warranty and I guarantee they'll charge an arm and a leg just to replace a faulty graphics card.

 

You could also pay off to see if it is your RAM that is faulty, either by running Memtest+ or removing one of the memory modules and see if it locks up again. (if it locks up, you just switch in the module you replaced to see if it still occurs.)

Also, open up the Nvida control panel > 3D settings > Global Settings and set integrated graphics to default, and then change any games you may have to use the Nvidia graphics card manually under "Program Settings"

 

Random question-Can I replace the main board in the L502X with an Alienware one or something with a GT555M or better?

 

no, the 525m or 540m GPUS are integrated at the motherboard, so it can be removed or upgraded sorry.

the only way to upgreade L502X graphics is use one of the minipci-e slots to get a external GPU support, and that will require a desktop pcie express card, a external power suply and other stuff.

 

Let me rephrase my self better. Are there any motherboards from the Alienware (I hate the way they look) series that would fit in the L502X, because the L502X has a slow GPU for CAD.
E.G. this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Alienw...aptopMotherboards_CPUs_CA&hash=item3a7d5d93ce


I don't care about battery life as long as it is more that 15 minutes, and I don't want to buy a completely new laptop, whereas a L702X board is only $150.

Also, since the 555M is pin compatible, is it possible to solder that in place, or will that break the VBIOS, and if so, would it be possible to replace the Nvidia VBIOS?

 

well, you are talking now about doing very agresive hardware mods.

it has been discused before at the modded bioses topic.

I didnt had any alienware laptop yet

anyway I highly doubt the motherboards would be compatible with the L502X case, I didnt saw yet a motherboard laptop fit into another laptop case wich wasnt the original model wich was designed for.

you would need to destroy or modify half of the case to make it fit and the result would be at least ugly.

about remove the gpu to make the 555M fit there, you would need to cut the part of the l502x motherboard (asuming there will be non GPU important laptop parts related in the removed part of the PCB, and then solder the 555M card there.)


I know the 525m and 540m have a pcie x16 interface connection (it is non removableintegrated at the motherboard anyway), and the 555M probably have a MXM connection to a compatible socket at the case.


but assuming the mxm conector pinout would be compatible with the pciexpress 16x, I dont know what traces are what at the L502X motherboard

this has been discussed at the page 124 of the topic I mentionated before

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ed-bioses-download-gpu-voltages-more-124.html

 

Very true, and I do believe that even the L501X motherboard is incompatible with the L502X due to different placement of mainboard components/screwholes etc.

---------------------------

@car251

What CAD software do you use? - I've used 3DS Max for school, but I only do relativiely basic stuff than real pros.
and do you mean that it's slow in the display port or rendering, because rendering time is heavily CPU bound in most circumstances.

 

Hello people,

I was wondering if someone could help me with an issue I have.

I have a Dell xps 15 l502x laptop running on windows 7 64 bit.

When the laptop restarts automatically after an update I find that the screen is on even when the lid is closed as I can see the light of the screen in the dark, this also happens when I click restart on the start menu and when I close the lid I can see that the screen light is still on and after restarting the screen remains on.

I have to open and then close the lid for the screen backlight to turn off. Normally I can open and close the lid and the screen will turn off every time so I don't see this as being a physical problem. This only seems to happen after it restarts automatically or If I restart it manually and close the lid straight away.

I have installed the latest bios and Nvidia drivers but still this hasn't fixed it.

Any help will be really appreciated.


Thanks

 

Should we install Intel Management Engine while install drivers under chipset drivers on a fresh Windows 7 install?

Also I get this event

The driver \Driver\WUDFRd failed to load for the device HID\VID_1B96&PID_0006&MI_01&Col02\8&1c39cefe&0&0001.

I get a slow motion problem in the desktop when i get this error. I have seen many people complain about it.

Any fix?

 

Hello guys,

I've been running into very low fps performances, decided to not worry about it for a long time and went to console gaming.
But since I've been missing out on a lot of games I decided to come back to PC Gaming. Tried switching up a lot of settings, drivers, everything, nothing seemed to help.
Until I checked my temperatures:



This is a little too hot idle, isn't it?

2630QM, 540M.

540M is hitting like 97C when using a benchmark before it under clocks(?) itself.

Any suggestions what to do?