XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

Request for 3 free benchmarks to be run.

The first is SPECviewperf. This will show how well the 750M does in cad/cam/rendering software. Here is the link - ftp://ftp.spec.org/dist/gpc/opc/viewperf/SPECviewperf11win64.exe

Second and Third are 3DMark11 which is the old standby for gaming GPUs and 3DMark 13 which can test more types of systems. Both can be downloaded at Downloads | techPowerUp

 

The only way I was able to make it throttle was to block the air flow and have it overheat on purpose. Then it throttles. Are they playing it directly on their laptop?

 

Regarding the touchscreen...

Its possible that one of the drivers on the Dell website breaks the touch screen. I can not be 100% sure, but when I received my laptop I proceeded to update the laptop with the latest drivers from the Dell website -as well as getting the updated wifi driver from Intel. After doing so I noticed the touch screen no longer worked.

I saw the following warning "Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)" under Universal Serial Bus controllers in the Device Manger; uninstalling it and refreshing (scanning for new devices) did not work, so I called Dell and they Remotely Accessed my laptop -but they were not able to fix it either (the guy was very helpful though on the phone) -anyway I decided to do a factory reset.

The touch screen is working again now -and I can see in the "HID-compliant touch screen" under Human Interface Devices in the Device Manager. I'm a bit hesitant to install the latest drivers now

Edit: As expected -the wifi is safe to update

 

Ok, if you've got it back, go into its Device Manager properties and to the Driver tab. Is the driver published by Microsoft or someone else? Also see if you can click the Driver Details button to get a list of the driver file names, which might help people find the proper driver somewhere.

 

I used my home FTP server to transfer 26 gigs of big video files at home -- like a hot knife through butter, took maybe half an hour. But I still lost my connection a couple times during the "big" transfer (the bulk of my documents). It's gotten progressively worse here at work. Not just during file transfers, but simply through web surfing. I got on chat with a Dell Rep. They had me change a few settings but it didn't make any difference. I went ahead and requested a replacement part. I've had this machine for 24 hours... I shouldn't be worried about flaky wireless. So I guess a tech will actually come to me?

 

Yes I did this before -it shows a popup saying "No driver files are required or have been loaded for this device" (its states Microsoft as the driver provider)

 

I meant to quote this in my previous post... oops!

 

Ok, well that would explain why there were no drivers on the Dell site, but definitely wouldn't explain the device spontaneously disappearing from the list; even if it were a conflict with another driver, you'd at least expect it to still be there and just have an exclamation point and maybe listed under a new name/category. I plan to wipe my XPS as soon as it arrives, so I'm hoping I can rebuild it without any conflicts or missing functionality.

 

I wonder if it is just a windows update that causes the issue too? Had any of you ran windows update before noticing that the touchscreen quit working?

 

A quick question for those with coil "squeak" sounds -do they subside when you go into Airplane mode (ie. switching off wifi by pressing "Fn + PrtScr")

 

just got my high spec in, haven't really tried it out yet
Also got a 15 inch rMBP yesterday, so i'll compare the two.
First impressions are that the xps is pretty nice, although the fans are already on and I can hear them while it is simply idling.
And I can hear the high pitch noise.
And the battery said 3 hours left at low brightness idling, but I will install a better battery monitor soon.
I'll run 3dmark11 on it, and try to test it out more soon.

 

Mine should come around november 20th, can someone actually do a review just using the laptop with various programs or games? I too want to know if there are throttling issues just like my xps15 l521x, games are unplayable, lag spikes and overheats, how does this one compare? and how does the battery live out? some say its 3 some say its 6. thanks guys

 

Please, keep us posted with your thoughts. I am trying to decide between the two of them.

 

By the way, does anyone know if the (low end / small battery) laptop can be configured in order to boot from the SSD? It would be nice to have the option to replace in the future the 32 GB SSD with a 512 GB one and boot from it.

 

Yes, its still there with Airplane mode enabled.

I still maintain it has something to do with the graphics card. I've reloaded my machine with a clean 8.1 and used Intel WiFi drivers and Nvidia display drivers. I tried to use the generic Intel 4600 driver but it wouldnt install so I was forced to use the Dell 4600 driver. The noise isn't any different. I have also gone through the BIOS one setting at a time trying to see if any of those settings made a difference (it did not)

 

Me too, XPS15/M3800 or MBP (i7 4960HQ)

 

Well, I've just got both too, although not unpackaging the XPS 15 just yet. However, one thing that is an issue with the new rMBP is that... you can have troubles installing Win 8.1 on them - I can't get it to install at all, due to EFI problems. A number of people have the same issue. Apparently Apple updated EFI to UEFI2.0 (like the new Haswell MBA) which means that BootCamp uses an EFI boot with Win 8.1.
EFI boot is better than the hybrid BIOS-emulated mode as all hardware is available to Windows, but for some reason the windows installer corrupts files on the EFI partition.

So now I have a new rMBP that doesn't run Windows... and a new Dell XPS 15 that could have issues...
I'll be returning one of them, that's for sure!

 

Yes it has something to do with the "Secure Boot" function, I resently saw via google somebody got around the problem installing win7 first and after that upgrade to 8.1, but it is a long way.

 

Hard to tell because the touchscreen is sort of on and then off, it didn't stop working 100%. It just stopped a bit then came back.

I noticed a Windows update, which is weird because I thought I disabled that.

 

I've had ZERO problems with mine and mine came 11/6.

No sound, excellent wifi (even exceeds my paid for speed of 50mbps down on AC with 58 down lol)
I use the touch screen for pretty much everything, a habit from using my Surface and have never had it stop working for me not even for a little bit

How are you guys doing Dell Updates? From my experiences at work, been using W8 since RTM in 2012. Do ALL windows updates first before you even begin to tinker with Del updates. Has worked for me on all my pcs running W8

 

Device manager reports that my XPS 15 has a TPM. Version 1.2.

 

I scored 1955 on 3DMark11. I have the mid-tier XPS 15.

 

I've not had any trouble with my WiFi on my XPS 15. I get a solid 120-130 Mbps from my desktop to my laptop over a Netgear WNDR3700v2 802.11n router. My Comcast service is 50Mbps down and 10 Mbps up and I can max that out on this laptop no problem.

I haven't tried an 802.11ac router yet.

 

I dont know about you guys who are debating apple vs dell. If i could, I would sell this new xps thats coming (mine is coming as a replacement for the l521x i had) and get the retina macbook, i say its more reliable.

 

I got the mid tier model delivered to my door yesterday. I was debating between the the XPS 15 and the rMBP. Here are some initial thoughts.

The Bad

• The trackpad is low quality. I've been noticing it missing clicks and trying to use it with Windows 8 gestures is just frustrating.
• The battery is getting anywhere between 3 - 4 hours of use from web browsing, watching youtube videos, installing software, working in Word... that sort of thing.
• The wifi has dropped at least 5 times in the 24 hours that I've had it. It connected just fine out of the box and gets good speeds when it works, but it will lose connection and then not reconnect unless I run Windows diagnostics.
• If I'm watching a youtube video and close the lid the computer goes to sleep after about a second or two... normal stuff... but when I open it up again it immediately starts playing the video again and I get the windows "wait" wheel and clicking on anything is none responsive. Requires a restart to fix.

The Good
• Design is very appealing, feels sturdy, looks great and very clean.
• It really does stay pretty darn quite and I only noticed the fans kick on when playing Skyrim. Not electronic buzz noise like others have reported.
• It's quick, boots fast, multitasks quickly, and the touchscreen responds very well.
• The machine itself has been staying pretty cool so far.

All in all the jury is still out on this one. I'll try and look into fixing some of the bad things I've experienced and report back.

 

Grab the latest AC7260 driver only package from intel.com. This solved my WiFi dropping issue completely.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 using Tapatalk Pro

 

Managed ~7hrs battery life last night only being used for a Skype Call (no web browsing or anything else), with screen off (but in call) for ~4 of those hours.

This is the 91Wh model, 2.4% wear (it's gone down since I last reported it). Big problem somewhere with power draw, but it's not the screen.

 

Notice intel just released 16.6 driver update for the 9260.

 

does anyone know if there is a way to have your battery stop charging at 99%? I wonder if this will stop the noise which happens when the battery is 100% charged. Apart from that noise after driver updates etc really happy with this laptop. Screen is amazing

 

Mine was stuck at 99% until the 3rd time I charged it. On BatteryBar at the time it was reported as having high battery wear of 9.4%, this has now decreased to 0% and it completes charging after two full charge/discharge cycles.

.. didn't help the battery life though.

 

Do you run 3DMark11 on battery or plugged?
Have you checked your power profile?
Because your result seems very low,
lower than M3800 (K1100m 2400points) and Asus N550JV (GT750m 2600points)

 

Can you kindly confirm to me if you are getting this problem with your screen, similar to what weewyum is experiencing (I am also getting this issue):

VID_20131113_145436.mp4 - YouTube

Thank you in advance

Regards

 

Yeah, I have it plugged in. This is for the Fire Strike test. I thought it was kinda low too until I ran the same test on my desktop, which scored around 2300.

 

Can you post something like that?

3DMark11 -
Score - P2420
Graphics Score - 2192
Physics Score - 7265
Combined Score - 1984

Maybe you have posted only the Combined Score, if so means that K1100m and GT750 are completely equal.

 

3DMark11 benchmarks for the top model. (Driver 327.02)

3DMark Score P2969
Graphics Score 2735
Physics Score 7192
Combined Score 2401

 

Ok, 3000 is much more than what was expected and GT750m is more powerful than K1100m.

 

3DMark11 -
Score - 1955
Graphics Score - 2018
Physics Score - 8080
Combined Score - 825


Fire Strike
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1633236
Version: 1.1
SystemInfo Version: 4.22.0.0
November 15 2013
Id: 1149503
Graphics driver is not approved

Click on the link and see for yourself if you don't believe me.

 

The clock of your GPU seems very low, only 400MHz, there is some issue, maybe throttling?

 

It's seems pretty well in line with Bokeh's score and the averages for the GT750M on other systems. I see more recent drivers are available than what I got through the automatic update, so I might try it again later.

 

Hmmmm. Interesting.

 

Maybe that is the Intel only and not the NVidia it almost seems like?

 

This is the result of Bokeh:

3DMark11 - Score - P2420
Graphics Score - 2192
Physics Score - 7265
Combined Score - 1984

So it's much better than K1100m (2400 points) and even better than Asus N550JV (4700HQ) with GT750m but with DDR3 (2600 points).

 

It's possible 400MHz is the base clock of HD4600, max frequency is 1.15GHz.
But if you see here: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4702HQ,Dell Inc. XPS 15 9530 is reported in every place GT750m and memory clock of GPU is 2500MHz also is reported the correct size of graphic memory 2GB.

 

I was more using Bokeh's as a guideline for the processor performance. I'm surprised it outperformed the Asus by such a margin though, especially considering the higher nominal clocks on the 4700HQ.

 

This thread might help.

Proper Way to install Windows 8.1 via Bootcamp...It works! - MacRumors Forums

 

I don't think so... it specifically says it's the nvidia and it also gets the memory right - 2GB.

 

It comes down to how fast the CPU runs in turbo mode. Out of the box, the Dell will run at 2.7 Ghz with all 4 cores fully loaded forever.

 

This looks right. The 750M has higher clocks.

Willing to bet the K1100M can be overclocked to catch up with the 750 or 755M.

 

Just replaced my middle-option 32GB mSATA with a 120GB and am booting from it right now. You just have to change the sata mode in the bios to AHCI from the 'Intel' setting it's on. This thing screams running purely off the mSATA and it's been getting slightly better battery life.

 

By the way, those of you complaining that Chrome looks horrible on the high DPI display - there's an HiDPI mode you can enable that makes it look fantastic (well, the rendering of the window and text anyway).

Change your Chrome shortcut so that it launches with this command line parameter: "--high-dpi-support=1"

i.e. "C:\.....\chrome.exe" --high-dpi-support=1

Works great for me...

[EDIT]
Actually, I'm going to caveat that: there's a few small glitches: the new tab icon looks odd, and when it offers to autofill a text box, the list of selections starts quiet a bit further down the page than the actual text box! Still, I know it's a WIP for Google. The text is nice and clear though which is what I was after.