*The Unofficial XPS 17 Gaming Performance Thread*

Rather than resurrecting a long since defunct thread, I thought I'd take the liberty of creating another that centres on the XPS 17 and it's performance when gaming.
My intention for this thread is to accumulate results to provide potential buyers with an idea of what to expect, and thus I would appreciate your contribution.

As you are no doubt aware, the XPS 17 is a competent laptop for gaming purposes, and is on par with Alienware's M14x.
The combination of a quad core processor, up to 16GB of RAM, and a GT 555m make the laptop a veritable contender, especially given the price/performance ratio.

I'm curious to know how the system fares with the likes of Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. Benchmarks and configurations are most welcome.

 

Bump.

Whilst a good OP generally goes first, I've not had the time to extensively test my new XPS, and was rather hoping those who've played some of the most recent games would reflect on the level of performance one can expect.

 

I don't much care about cps or bench marks, but mine just flat out rocks. I play fallout New Vegas on the highest settings and it runs nice and smooth. Star Wars, The old republic on high as well with zero lag, just run beautifully. The best thus far is Skyrim. Man, it looks unreal and plays awesome. I know some want numbers, I just want to enjoy the games I play and this computer lets me do that.

 

When I try running any games, it will run well for a while but after a few minutes I will see some problems. The screen will go black for a second, then lag up completely and then come back after a few seconds. I have no idea what is causing this problem.

 

I'm curious to know what settings you're using for Skyrim, and at what resolution?

 

I've been running UT3 at high settings in 720p and it runs very well. Constant 60FPS (No point in going higher, after that you are wasting your GPU time.) Never dips below.

 

Far Cry 2 runs with a consistent 40+ frames on a mixture of high and ultra settings at 1600x900.

Call of Pripyat plays smoothly with preset high settings, DirectX 11 dynamic lighting enabled, and a resolution of 1600x900.

Skyrim never dips below 30 frames with presets set to high, AA disabled, 8x AF, and FXAA enabled at 1600x900. I might consider dropping to 1366x768 to squeeze an extra few frames, however.

More to follow.

 

Screen res is at 1080p. I can run it on high, causes the fan to sound like a jet engine and after a while it lags some. I run it on medium, res at 1080 and it runs great. I have been able to leave SWTOR on high and it doesn't lag at all. I installed the new 290.53 driver from NVIDIA and everything works great. Sorry I wasn't more explicit in my first post. I have played a bit more since and found medium is best for Skyrim.

 

I'm interested in results for BF3. It's the one game I'm reticent about, given it's steep requirements.

 

Last time I played game, I was typing go east, look, open door, ... ... takes world's most powerful chip to run it.

 

Bahahaha! I played that type of game on my TI-89 calculator. 12MHz BABY YEAH! Haha.

 

Staying on topic, MW3 results are much needed also.

 

Good thread.Resently i delete most of my games,but i will post some result on memory. Battlefield 3 only in Singe Player 1400:900 all on high texture on ultra,shadows on medium af-16;motion blur-of;AA-of;SSAO--34-37 fps
Modern warfire 3-1600;900 all on Max;AA on max,35-40 fps
Skyrim1600:900-Ultra texture;AA-4;AF16;without FXAA;and shadow on high,all ohter things on max and on- 45fps inside;29-35 outside.when it is raining the fps drop to 22-30.Some thimes i have issue with fps drop to 19-25 after 25-30 min play.I dont know why Dirt 3 1600:900 all on ultra only shadows and ambient occlusion on high 35-40 fps;i remember that those 2 on ultra kills my fps. Crysis 2no dx 11 path 1600:900 Hardcore settings 35-40 fps after nvidia driver update 280.XX i think,before the update i play on 1400:900 res. to reach that fps.
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit1600;900 all on max 45-60 fps. medal of honor 2010 1600:900 all on max-34-50 fps. Mass effect 1 and 2 1600:900 res all on max 45-60 fps. StarCraft 2 only in Singel player 1600:900 all on max 29 fps min 35-40 normaly. Unreal Tournament 3 1600:900 in SP all on max 35-40 fps. Hard Reset 1600:900 all on max AA4 25-29 fps. Rage 1600:900 all on max AA i think was set one or two below max 45-60 fps. Dead island 1600:900 all on max 45-50 fps. Heroes 6 1600:900 all on max and here the gpu start to have problem 23-26 fps. Witcher 2 hit my gpu very hard i played on 720 p with high setings and without all triplle mipple motion things i manage to get 24-29 fps.but that was before any patch and driver optimisation for now the things may be better.Last weekend i tried New batman arcane city and i have problem with dx 11 with max setting big strugling when i turn seting one step down on dx 11 the fps was good but some times i have masive drops.I did not try with dx9.This is prety much all games that i can remember .Sorry if these results are not very accurate but this is only on memorys.And all this is with overcloced gpu.If i try or remember something i will post the result.

 

Fantastic! Exactly the sort of contribution I was looking for.

 

I am not bothered to go through actually getting the fps I get while I play, all I care about is that the game runs smooth and I never get any dropped frames, so basically anything 30+ fps to me is playable.

I have Skyrim set to ultra on 1600x900, all settings turned to max except Shadow details, I turned it down to medium and the game runs perfectly.

BF3, again ultra setting at 1600x900. This time I had to do a little more turning stuff down to get a constant 25+ fps.
From memory I think AA and AF are turned down to x2
Some post AA filtering to off
Motion blur off
Battlefield 3 is definitely harder to run than Skyrim, but you will still get very high settings with it.

 

I think ultra settings for BF3 is pushing it somewhat.
I'd hazard a guess and say high settings at a resolution of 1366x768, or medium at 1600x900 would be more reasonable.

 

Your right, it's pushing it a little.
I just checked it there in a game and with those settings it goes from 20-30 fps but if I didn't have fraps running I wouldn't have noticed it was running low. You should have no issue running it at high on 1600x900

I have attached the settings I use and I think it runs fine on them and I have attached the settings the BF3 auto sets.
Auto

Mine

 

Are these results for multiplayer, particularly the larger maps?

 

Well you play without ambient occlusion that gives you big fps boost.And with safe power gpu can handle some ultra setings.For me with SSAO and with high setings is better.But in MP maps i think i must run the games in medium/SSAO, but i never try MP game.

 

I must admit I am neither a gaming junkie nor am I obsessed with graphics, so I don't notice a lot of the differences.

But, yeah only tested on SP, but I tried to do so in bigger battles or with lots of smoke and lighting around so I would be running at the worst possible situations. Ambient Occlusion just looks like more shadows to me, so not too bothered by not having it on anyway.

 

I'll post my results and personal preferences once I've had the chance to properly test BF3.

 

I've tested the game extensively on large conquest maps such as Caspian Border and can report a steady 30+ frames at 1600x900, with all settings on high except mesh and shadow quality which are set to medium. (No AA, 4x AF - Ambient Occlusion Disabled)

Using an overclock of 740/1480/1000. No instability or crashes thus far. Temps never exceed 69°C.

 

Performance has been improved considerably for Skyrim using the most recent drivers, which are compatible with the latest revision of the GT 555M.

 

What's your settings currently and FPS after the Driver update, and have you OCd your GPU? ( Skyrim ). Counter-strike Source I'm running at 40-50 Average FPS, sometimes will dip to 30 and in certain places 60 FPS. It's kind've disappointing but it must be something with hte source engine i havent updated my Driver yet, and still on Bios A14. I'll post back after updating the GPU Driver Don't know how to do the bios jsut yet.

After GPU Drive download:
Yeah still roughly 40-50 FPS with 30 drops and some places 60, Kind've disappointing. Thought it was the driver version causing some problems. Oh I'm on 1920 x 1080 GT555M 8GB Ram and for CS:S Everything is on high... or max. but it's an old game so....

 

I'll have to install FRAPS and get back to you regarding Skyrim.
Counter-Strike Source rarely dips below 60 frames on the utmost maximum settings, although I'm running the game at my laptop's native resolution of 1600x900.
I'll get back to you with more specifics once I've had the opportunity.

 

In skyrim for me with my specs at 1600x900 NO overclock with settings on ultra except aa and af off, fxaa on 16xaf forced through nvidia control panel, shadows low.

Outside normally between 35-40fps average
inside normally 50-60fps average
in cities normally 40fps average

Plus im using about 60 mods and 5gb worth of custom textures

with an overclock i normally tend to add about 10fps on

 

Hey guys,

Just got my XPS 17 set up and playing Civilization 5 (released in 2010)
Now for an old game and a decent reliatively new gaming rig in the XPS 17 (8gb ram, 2670qm, 555m 3gb, SSD) you would think I would be able to run this game at high settings.

Unless I turn everything down to medium settings and some even to low the game will crash on me. Do you guys think this is a game issue? driver issue? Optimus issue?

And if my new powerful dell laptop can't handle Civ 5, a game released 2 years ago with at least some sliders set to high graphics, then what can?

 

i havent played it in a while but i have civ 5 and it worked on high or even highest settings fine. It is a fairly demanding game though and a quad core is the recommended spec but obviously that shouldnt be an issue. Are you sure your using the nvidia card? have you whitelisted it in the nvidia control panel?

 

Not sure how to whitelist somthing? I know where the menu is under 3d management options where you can tell the laptop which gpu to use but Civ5 doesnt appear in the dropdown applications, just the STEAM.exe

Also, since I did a fresh install of Windows, I hope that my drivers are working correctly, how can you see what graphics card is being used during gameplay? I need to make sure it's working properly, it is getting really really hot on the left side of the laptop.

 

Right, go into 3d management and go to the drop down box, to find the civ 5 exe you need to go to steam/steamapps/common/sid meirs civ 5/ then add the CivilizationV.exe and the Launcher.exe to make sure then set to use the nvidia gpu. Whitelisting is basically this process.

You can see what gpu is being used from a nvidia icon you can activate in your notification area, go into nvidia control panel and go to the desktop tab, then select display gpu activity icon. You will have to alt tab out to see if its working though, currently no way to check in game.

Get this http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html to monitor temps, note the nvidia card will only show up when its activated via optimus.

 

Thank you! That worked great...can run Civ on high settings now without any issues. I'm currently installing Crysis 2 and was nervous if Civ couldn't run on medium then Crysis would probably make my laptop blow up

 

Haha no problem crysis 2 should run on high fine i would think as its not as demanding as the first.