XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

I don't use Chrome, but from what I've read, it sounds like the fixes will require an update to Chrome itself, not user reconfigurations. Firefox also has a few HiDPI glitches last time I tested it, but not as many or as significant as Chrome's.

 

well firefox is almost fine for me but its scrolling is not smooth...it hangs lil bit too..not that cool...chrome is very fast though...which browser u use by the way that is smooth in browsing and scrolling pages?

 

by the way i found an awesome site for high resolution wallpapers with almost all resolutions for any thing possible...and alotttt of such amazing wallpapers are on this site... InterfaceLIFT: 2880x1800 Wallpaper sorted by Date .i fell in love with my screen after looking at them....the blues the greens look like out of a fairy tale and this is the first time i felt i was looking out of a window...it blows ur mind..plus i downloaded some 4k videos which come with LG 4K TV which are like 2 gb size for just 2 minutes with a bitrate of 120 mb per second....looking at them makes u feel like u r dreaming....i love this laptop best purchase ever....and a lil bit barely audible coil whine is nothing compared to its beauty....alll u guys confused for whether to get it or not trust me its worth it cent for cent and there is a very slight chance those issues will occur all are talking abt here.....and even if any issues occur and u r not satisfied get a refund....but dnt miss out on this laptop

 

I don't care much about smooth scrolling. Firefox scrolls smoothly if you keep the scroll wheel going to scroll a long way up or down a page. As for shorter distance scrolling, yes it's a bit more "step-based" scrolling, but that seems more efficient somehow. And Firefox at least scrolls much more smoothly than IE.

The best website for wallpaper hands down is Digital Blasphemy. I bought several short-term memberships in the past that would grant me access long enough to download his entire collection at the resolutions I wanted, but after buying a few of those over time and realizing that I would only keep doing doing this because he consistently produces such great work, I finally just bought a lifetime subscription. It's amazing artwork, and he produces versions optimized for an obscene number of resolutions and even several versions that span 2 or even 3 displays.

I've paired that artwork with Wallpaper Slideshow LT, a free app that does exactly what the name suggests and even handles multi-display wallpapers very well. I now have 226 of my favorite Digital Blasphemy pieces cycle though on my desktop. If you don't need multi-display spanned wallpaper support, Windows 7 and 8 have built-in wallpaper slideshow functionality, though it's not as customizable as Wallpaper Slideshow LT.

 

Download the new Chrome 64 bit version. It fixes it all.

http://blog.chromium.org/2014/06/try-out-new-64-bit-windows-canary-and.html

 

How's everyone finding there touched periodically it's stays stuck down. A little bit annoying.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

wow i m typing this from the new chrome 64 bit....finallly back to the smooth scrolling of the chrome....works like a charm...

 

by the way why is it that when i download the wallpapers and view them full screen they look stunning.....but when i click on those wallpapers for set as desktop background and then view the desktop they dnt look the same...not that great quality as was when i viewed the individual pictures full screen and there colours also become lil bit dull

 

I don't know if this is the case (no access to Windows 8/8.1) but it's usually because the OS copies the wallpaper from the high-resolution version to a low resolution version in some temp folder. Usually one doesn't notice it, but when the scaling down operation doesn't work well on some images, you notice the loss of quality.

This is the reason why if you delete an image file that is set as your wallpaper, your wallpaper still continues to be displayed.

The other reason I can think of in this context may perhaps have something to do with how the Photo Viewer shows the wallpaper at native resolution while the wallpaper shows it at a scaled resolution.

 

If could be different resizing algorithms. I noticed that on my 1920x1200 display, the 4K versions of some wallpaper looks blurrier than the native 1920x1200 version, even though the aspect ratio is the same between them. I suppose that if Windows has to resize the image it might also change the compression factor at the same time, which would explain the change in color, but I can't imagine why it would do that. It's also possible that the embedded ICC profile is removed/altered during the resize, or maybe the background engine ignores ICC profiles whereas the viewer doesn't. And lastly, I think Windows still converts all images to BMP for the wallpaper display copy, so that could introduce some issues too.

 

So, bad news. I just received the new version with the i7-4712HQ. Coil whine is present, and it is quite loud. I think I will send it back because it is really annoying. It is a shame since it is a really nice and silent laptop.

Edit : I don't find the screen particularly bright compared to my previous displays.

 

Would getting a certified refurbished from the Dell outlet decrease my chances of having coil whine and other common issues? Really want this laptop but don't want to drop 1500+ on a laptop and have problems with it.

 

No. I'm not sure why you'd think ordering from the Outlet rather than new might decrease your chances of having coil whine -- if anything, it would increase them since even after the fix is available to affected customers and incorporated into the production line for new systems, a system ordered from the Outlet might have been originally built prior to the fix and thus still have coil whine. I doubt Dell will proactively replace motherboards on Outlet systems. But of course if you receive a system with coil whine (new or from the Outlet), you can use your warranty coverage to get the replacement motherboard when it becomes available.

Again, the latest official word is that the fix for affected customers will be ready in the mid-June to early July timeframe; no word yet on when people placing new orders can be confident that they'll receive a unit with the new motherboard. If you don't want to deal with potentially getting an affected system now and having to get service or don't want to commit to purchasing until the fix is actually available, you'll just have to wait. And actually, if you'll be buying from the Outlet anyway, I doubt there will be a way to tell pre-purchase whether the system you're looking at will come with the updated motherboard, so there's a chance you'll have to get service on an Outlet system no matter when you purchase.

 

So apparently, its not a CPU issue, but probably a motherboard issue.... hm....

Some questions to the owners, does your system throttle under heavy load ?
How is the battery life if one exchange the secondary 2.5 inch hdd for an ssd?

Regards

 

Is the coil whine something that has been affecting nearly every laptop or is it more like a small percentage?

 

It might be helpful for you to read the XPS 15 Wiki or at least the most recent few pages of this thread since this has been covered quite a bit, but it's a large percentage; only a few people here have reported not having any coil whine. The fact that Dell is releasing a redesigned motherboard to address the issue should suggest how widespread the issue is. The only real variation seems to be how loud the coil whine in a particular unit is and how aggravating it is to the owner. My system has it and I don't actually mind it much because it sounded like every other laptop I've ever owned. In fact I didn't even consider it a problem until I read everyone complaining about it here. I'll probably still get the fix when it becomes available, but as I've said here before, even if I were told that the coil whine would never be fixed, I personally would still keep this system because there's nothing else on the market quite like it at the moment, and it seems there won't be for at least a few more months. But others seem to have worse coil whine than I do and/or are more easily annoyed.

 

A friend of mine also confirmed the issue still exist, even with the new CPU.
Personally I am in the market for a ~4K, 15.6'' high-end laptop and the XPS 15 was on top of my list, for its price it is unacceptable to pay premium and get such coil while issues. I decided to go with the Lenovo Y50, their 4K Touch edition is coming out any day now with confirmed IPS display. I am only posting this because a know a couple of you are in the same situation.You sacrifice a bit on thickness and weight, the NFC and the DisplayPort but for ~$700 less you are getting a very stylish top tier Y50 with 512SSD, 16GB RAM, far superior GPU, native 4K IPS Touch Screen, far better JBL speakers with subwoofer and no coil whine issues. If you put together performance, portability and price, I definitely think the Y50 is worth checking out as an alternative.

 

When gaming on the QHD screen, do you have to drop the resolution down to 1080p? If so, how do the games look at that resolution on the QHD?

 

Yes, practically any game has to be dropped to sub-QHD+ resolution. Even most desktop GPUs can't play games smoothly at QHD+, and even if you had a game old enough to run well at QHD+, chances are the UI wouldn't be optimized so that things like a HUD would still be legible at such a high resolution on such a small panel. Games at 1080p on this display look like games on any other panel at 1080p. Scaling bluriness even on regular LCDs isn't very noticeable during games, and on this particular panel the pixel density is so high that the bluriness effect is much lower than normal.

And as I referred to earlier: XPS 15 Wiki. No offense, but this thread is already 587 pages long, so there's a very good chance that questions like yours have already been asked and answered. Obviously going back and finding answers in the thread would be tricky at this point, but fortunately some of us (myself included) who have already taken the time to answer questions in this thread have also taken the time to contribute to the linked Wiki to simplify other people's lives. The Wiki sections like Common Complaints, How To, and FAQ should be very illuminating to you and save others from even more duplicated effort and avoidable thread bloat. :thumbsup:

 

Depends what you are asking for. First - if you are asking if the 750m in this laptop can handle gaming at native resolution: it mostly can't. Some games will run, but most won't. So you will have to scale to 1080p or lower in the in-game settings. However if you are asking if you have to set the primary screen resolution to 1080p before gaming to avoid letterboxing (black box around your game): you mostly won't. I never had that issue. Though some people report that with certain games you have to, I personally never ran into that (aside from bench-marking programs).

 

I got mine from dell outlet, top spec and no coil whine.

 

Why would you think that a cpu refresh will fix the coil whine?! cpu cant cause coil whine...

 

It was many people's expectations that the new CPU had its energy usage tweaked in order to avoid the noise, or come along a fixed motherboard.

 

Couple of questions:-

1) What is the wake up time from sleep for you guys? Mine is about 4-5 seconds which I think is too much especially when boot time is only 8-9 seconds. i have rapid start disabled and the top spec version.

2) The brightness seems to be very low in "high performance" mode. I have checked the power settings for this mode and the brightness slider is all the way to the right. Surprisingly, the power saver and balanced mode have higher brightness. I would like to have that level of brightness in high performance mode. How do I have it?

Thanks.

 

Even if you have Rapid Start disabled, you might also have a hibernation timer set to kick in after your Sleep timer. Even if your system is originally put to Sleep, it can wake back up to enter hibernation if the Power Options are configured that way.

While you were in Power Settings, did you make sure to disable adaptive brightness? That's covered in the Wiki.

You might also want to play with Intel Display Power Saving Technology, found by right-clicking your background and selecting Graphics Properties > Power > On Battery.

 

I noticed this while the laptop is plugged in. Sure I have adaptive brightness turned off as I like to control it manually. In Intel graphics I only saw the power saving option for battery but only the "maximum performance" option under plugged in. In short, the brightness level drops a lot when in high performance mode compared to balanced or power-saver whether on battery or plugged-in. Is no one else facing this issue?

EDIT: On a side note, the hidpi and touch aware adobe suite is out now for those interested.

 

There are separate brightness levels for battery and AC in each Power Profile -- and adaptive brightness is also a per-profile setting, not a global setting. So technically you might be enabling adaptive brightness by switching to another profile, and it's also technically possible to have a lower brightness configured in High Performance than Power Saver. However, if you're sure adaptive brightness is turned off on all power profiles, you should still be able to use the Fn key to manually adjust brightness without having to go into Power Settings -- and your manual changes will be saved as the new settings for the active power source (battery or AC) in whichever profile was active when you made the change -- and ONLY that profile.

Are you saying that even after disabling adaptive brightness in all power profiles AND manually adjusting brightness with the keyboard hotkey, your max brightness is different from one power profile to the other?

 

Previous Intel CPUs caused a similar sound due to how their C-states worked, and apparently Haswell is the first generation to move the voltage regulator onto the CPU rather than the motherboard, and the next generation will reverse that decision -- so it wasn't a completely unfounded expectation.

 

Losing DisplayPort and only having HDMI is a deal breaker for me. That not only means no external 4K display @ 60 Hz (which I might want before I replace this laptop), but it also means you can only have one external display. I use two external displays constantly, so that was a no-go, and those USB video adapters have artifacting during more intense video sequences, even the USB 3.0 versions -- and they also can't do 4K. DisplayPort on the other hand can handle one to SIX displays all by itself with an MST hub depending on the resolution of the panels, but having both connectors means I can just use one display over DP and the other over HDMI.

I'd gladly give up HDMI on a laptop if it had DP, but not the other way around. It's strange that so many vendors are including HDMI but not DP since in addition to DP being more capable, it's royalty-free, whereas including HDMI incurs a licensing fee. And it's not like DP to HDMI adapters are expensive or rare, after all....

 

This is exactly what my original question was. Even with the brightness slider all the way up in each power profile separately, the max brightness on power-saver and balanced is higher than in high-performance. I'm sure I am missing something very small and silly but cant figure out what is causing this to happen.

 

I had the same problem. It is in the power profile for high performance. Go through all settings and turn off adaptive brightness.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

Nevermind, after digging deep into those settings for about 15 minutes I finally got the dropdown option to turn it off. And here I was thinking I had already disabled it in Change PC settings->PC and devices->Power and sleep->turn off adaptive brighness :thumbsup:

 

You probably did, but that's why I tried to make it clear in my post that adaptive brightness and general display brightness settings are per-profile, so if you turned it off while Balanced or Power Saver was active, then it wouldn't necessarily stay off when you switched to High Performance. If you confirmed that slider was Off even when you had High Performance active, maybe the Metro slider handles dimming the display after a period of inactivity? Anyway, glad you're sorted out.

It's also irritating that the Metro slider doesn't specify whether the change would apply to AC, Battery, or both....

 

So is there a way to return this to Dell due to the coil whine? I don't want this anymore, I've reached my limit after a few months. Is there a Dell guy to reach out to?

I returned last year's debacle XPS 15 due to the wifi issue after the 30day period via a Dell rep I found in these forums.

 

If you're within the 30-day return period, returning should be simple. If not, you can try working with Customer Service to get a return despite having exceeded that period. Or you can watch the Dell Communities thread for updates from Terry B on the availability of the fix. As has been stated multiple times here, the latest update is that a fix will be available in the mid-June to early July timeframe, so if you'd want to keep the system if it didn't have coil whine, you shouldn't have too much longer to wait.

 

It is possible. i have done it - but it wasn't easy.

1) On the customer service line they will tell you there is nothing they can do (most probably there really isn't because they can't accept returns after 30 days) and will send you to Tech Support (which will send you back). Even if you speak with the managers, they will tell you the same thing. You nevertheless have to go through the managers and then escalate from there.

2) Build a compelling case. These tips came from Gonzo - so all thanks go to him:
- The mistake was acknowledged on the official Dell forum by their own Liaison (Terry B, p.14 http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19536279.aspx?pi239031352=14). He writes: “All, without having the remodeled system boards I can’t really suggest having a service now. “ – which means there isn’t a fix (yet).
- Make them appreciate you as a customer. My entire family has Dell (which I have purchased for them) as well as my company, so I was personally very displeased with this service and it cast a negative shadow over my image of Dell.
- In my case, the technician specifically promised me that he will give me a refund if the last attempted service fails. Maybe you have something like that too?
- If you use the laptop in professional settings, then naturally the coil-whine is a no-go.
- It helps if you already had service. I was rocking a 3rd motherboard by the time I talked with them. If they didn’t attempt to fix the device it’s going to be hard. But you may let them try it two times and then escalate.
- Consumer law clearly states that if they can’t fix the product, you have a right for refund or replacement. This supersedes any Dell stuff. If they try to refuse, tell them that you will take them to the small claims court and from now on they will be dealing with your legal team and you will charge them for any fees you have to pay.

3) Escalate, escalate, escalate. Always speak with the supervisor and their supervisor. Your goal is the corporate office. They are the one that have the power to grant an exception to the no-return policy. It was only then when they agreed to the refund.

Alternatively, like you mentioned, you can try to find a Dell rep who will help you out. There are also some support staff that may, but in my experience both Tech Support and Customer Care (even the premium line) can’t do anything will just bounce you around. You have to be persistent, escalate and get to the corporate office.

P.S: Keep records of your conversation with them (you can put your cell on speakerphone and record with a tablet or another phone). I have done this to make sure that they don't go back on their promise.

 

I agree that the voltage regulators are on CPU on haswell, but how does that affect coil whine? Do you think voltage regulators make the CPU hotter?

 

Is there a thread with xps 15 prices paid? The cheapest I can find the top model going for is $1899 .. anyone get it cheaper ?

 

I have absolutely no idea. I just reiterated someone else's post, and maybe he had no idea either. That person simply found it interesting that a CPU for the first time integrates the voltage regulator, then systems equipped with that CPU exhibit coil whine (according to him users of other notebook models are noticing coil whine), and now Intel will be moving the voltage regulator back to the motherboard. But of course that could all be circumstantial since the decision to move the voltage regulator back could have been made for any number of other reasons. I guess we'll know more when someone finally gets their hands on a redesigned motherboard.

 

For what it's worth, I'm running two 1080p external displays via HDMI/DVI over a usb3 connection using the dock from Plugable. Haven't noticed any artifacts with 1080p on the external monitors.

Granted, this doesn't solve the 4k issue, but running three displays with this unit works and, in my case (graphic/design work) it works very well.

 

If you have any modern fast-paced games (e.g. racing or FPS), can you comment on how well they play on the USB-attached displays at 1080p compared to native attachment? I'm betting that over USB you'll see both compression artifacts AND lower frame rates since those USB docks use the GPU to compress the display output before sending it over USB.

 

You can get it in Dell Outlet for less - and its very much the same system. I got my top spec for $1839 and chatted with the Dell rep at the outlet and they offered me another 10% off. So I paid some $1670 for it. Always try to ask for more discount

 

new wifi drivers out, i think the BT are an old release again.

 

So there is a still coil whine in the new models too ?!?

 

the bt drivers are new...but maybe a problem with them as they have been unavailable

Applies to
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC7260 Bluetooth
Date
Release date
6/19/2014
Last Updated
6/20/2014
Importance
Recommended. Dell recommends applying this update during your next scheduled update cycle. The update contains feature enhancements or changes that will help keep your system software current and compatible with other system modules (firmware, BIOS, drivers and software).

 

Hi, I'm planning on buying the xps 15 with the 1tb/32gb cache. I'm going to replace both drives with ssd's. So I have two questions: 1 How do you deactivate the cache? I'm sure before I clone the main drive I should deactivate the cache. 2. What kind of drive is the 32gb cache? Msata or m.2? Thanks!

 

The ones with the new CPU, yes -- but since the fix involves a redesigned motherboard, that's not too surprising. Evidently Dell decided to ship models with the new CPU before the new motherboard was ready.

 

It's mSATA. Smart Response caching is disabled in the Rapid Storage application under the Acceleration tab, which you should do before cloning. Then you'll also need to go into the BIOS and set the SATA mode to AHCI.

If you insist on cloning rather than a doing a clean install, I personally would also recommend running "sysprep /generalize /oobe /quit" immediately before cloning. Windows sets itself up differently when it's on an SSD compared to a spinning drive, and I don't know if it will reconfigure itself if it's just cloned to an SSD from a spinning disk without a sysprep. Doing a sysprep will force you to step through the out-of-box Windows setup when you next boot that drive, which includes creating a new user account, but your old one will be intact, so you can just switch to that one and delete the new one you had to create during the setup phase. Note that you should NOT link that temp account to a Microsoft account. To avoid that, click "Create a Microsoft account" and then "Don't use one." Devious placement of the option to skip using a Mocrosoft account, eh?

 

I know its been discussed in the XPS15 Wikia under the Multi Monitor setup but is there any work around any one has found. This particularly bothers me as I have a 1080p monitor and then whenever I switch between the laptop display and the monitor display I have to always sign out to get the right scaling otherwise either things look to big or too small !!!! I mean I use both my Monitor and my laptop screen interchangebly but is there no solution other than having to sign out. Sometimes the scaling also doesn't work right as the icons seem larger than other times. Its a shame to have a brilliant display and have it run on a lower resolution. I use only one screen at a time either the monitor or the laptop screen but still whenever I try to interchange I have to signout. Sign out seems to fix the scaling as I guess windows then detects and knows what scaling it has to chose .

 

Maybe its me but I felt that the wifi performance has improved with the newer drivers as I get slightly better speeds.