XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

How can I calbrate the colours/screen? I saw people talking about profiles, but I am very new to this field - never really cared about the screen quality before, and I did not need to - and now I would like to exploit this screen at its best. Can someone guide/help me?

 

People who calibrate have professional hardware calibrators to do so. Someone did post a color profile for the QHD+ panel a while back, but I don't know how transferable those profiles are from one display to another even of the same model. I installed it and saw virtually no difference, likely because as calibrators have found, the QHD+ panel is stunningly accurate without any calibration once you disable splendid mode in Mobility Center.

 

1. Update to driver version 16.6 and you'll be fine.

2. Heat isn't bad, though I think GPU temps are around there during sustained gaming periods -- not exterior temps though. Throttling can be avoided if you have the machine laid flat on a table-like surface. Otherwise it can be picky if you're on a couch/bed or have the machine angled.

3. Depends on the apps you use. Some work just fine, others don't.

I love how people say they don't have time to do research when they're the ones who would benefit, and instead assume that everyone else has time to hand them answers out of pure generosity that they've already given several times over -- though of course I've just vindicated that assumption, I suppose. But that attitude is partly WHY this thread has grown as long as it has....

 

Thanks for your reply.

Sorry for asking question which may have been asked million times in this thread, but i just wanna make sure, because different people may have different result and the research i have done probably are not enough to cover what is really going on.

It's really great to hear that the wifi is working on this model, apparently they added AC card, that is same as the new MBP.

 

Thanks, I noticed that wiki seems didn't include this review:

Review Dell XPS 15 (9530, Late 2013) Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

Another scaling issue that I don't remember if has been covered here already.

The flash player: youtube was working fine since out of the box, but then other flash object were demanding the adobe player (for example, facebook videos). Installed that, videos work and all is good, except that the player interface now is really tiny. Any known workaround for this? Before installing adobe flash player youtube was doing fine with the interface of the correct size.

 

Anyone knows something about SSD firmware updates? Samsung Magician tool doesn't work and I can't find anything about the SM841.

 

I just wanted to say that as far as I can tell, for those buying at COSTCO CANADA, that the extra warraynty doesn't seem to have the same limits as in the US, I have read the whole agreement they sent me, and it does seem to be a full coverage (different insurrer from US version.

 

The SM841 and its cousin the PM841 are not official retail units, and therefore Samsung doesn't provide firmware updates for them directly. Firmware updates would need to come from Dell, which historically has not been great about issuing SSD firmware updates in terms of timeliness, frequency, or long-term support.

 

The only option I can think of would be to force YouTube to use the HTML5 player rather than Flash, but I'm not sure there's a way to do that, and even if there is, it would only work for sites that supported that sort of thing. Otherwise, add Flash Player to the list of Adobe apps that don't have proper scaling support yet.

 

Should be fine in Chrome Desktop mode and IE.

Firefox is tiny for me.

 

Oh crap... :/

 

Meh, I'm not too worried. I feel like by now Samsung's SSD firmware has matured to a very reasonable level, so further improvements would be incremental at best. I really wish the SM841 firmware had native support for eDrive to allow BitLocker to use its hardware-level encryption, but even that's not a major issue for me. But if it bugs you that much, mSATA versions of the 840 Evo were just announced.

 

I have read a review, they state that the GT 750M graphic card works better then any laptop on the market right now, 3dmark11 reached 2900 (normal 2600). Is that true?

 

When I bought from the US previously, the Dell laptops with 3 years warranty was international and I could fix my Dell in Canada.

 

Yes, but the Costco US warranty seems to only cover up to 1400$, whereas the Canadian one seems to be full (in the fine print it says up to the value of the notebook per repair), and they replace the notebook, etc. always mentioning original purchase value, and no mention of other maximum. Seems like a great deal for 99$. This was one of the reasons I ordered from Costco.ca

 

It'd be best if you can find the specific review, but I doubt it.

The 750M is the middle-tier GPU in this generation. Other computers have 760M's, 765M's, 780M's, etc ( NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M - NotebookCheck.net Tech for a rundown of the 780 and links to the other options) which are each a step above the last.

 

It's true just because it uses GDDR5 instead of DDR3, but many users have reported a throttling issue on GPU (even if it's used on hard surface).

Damn, my XPS was delivered just today (4 days before scheduled delivery) but just today I have left the delivery destination...

 

It is true. The reason this iteration of the GT 750M is faster is because it uses GDDR5 instead of DDR3 memory (most use DDR3). My 3DMark11 scores shaded closer to 3000 than 2900. It's a very good performer in a pretty package. One of the reasons this machine is special, for now.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Serious issue now: since the beginning I noticed that if i put it on sleep - closing the lid for instance - and I leave it sleeping for more than just few mintues - let's say 1 hour -, then it was pretty slow at turing back on. The keyboard was highligting but there were 30ish seconds before the screen was back displaying something. Since a turn on from shut down is 6ish seconds, that sounded strange.

The problem is now: same behaviour, I close the lid, left it for 3 hours-ish, and now doesn't turn on. Keyboard and power button are illuminated, but black screen. Inputing doesn't change anything, and now even the fans started whirling, something that never happened at all so far during normal usage.

 

I experienced that issue once out of the many times I've resumed from sleep (which on my system is actually Intel Rapid Start hibernation). I attribute it to GPU drivers, which could clearly stand an update or two based on other issues we've seen, e.g. games showing up in 1:1 on the QHD+ panel rather than being aspect ratio scaled to fill the entire panel. I've also seen this failure to display anything after resuming from sleep/hibernate occasionally on several other systems. It's annoying, to be sure, but not a major deal for me. That's one reason I never sleep or hibernate my system with important data open that I haven't saved.

 

So, what's the deal with all this Intel rapid start application and all the other Intel pre-installed programs? Should I keep them, set them somehow, or else?

 

I am having some real gpu problems with games right now. Basically the game (quakelive) gets more fps in window mode (easily constant 250fps) than in full screen mode (max. constant 125fps) while both modes are using the same resolution. I already made a thread on the games forum and tried countless things already: ESR - Weird FPS problem on new laptop-Optimus? - Quake Live Forum

If that bug/problem isn't getting fixed by next week I will send my laptop back I guess.

I tried updating drivers (with DDU), I also went back to the Dell stock nvidia driver.
I am forcing the game to run with the GPU (ingame shows GT 750M and also the Nvidia icon says that my game is running with the dedicate GPU).
I tried running the game in Windows 7 compatibility mode (gives a few fps more).
I tried connecting an external screen via HDMI -> Still lags in fullscreen but perfectly fine in window mode.
I played around with Nvidia settings (vsync & tripple buffering off) but in any case, if window mode works, fullscreen should work as well.
I really don't know what else to do.

 

Depends on what you want and what your specific spec is. I'll address each in turn:

Smart Connect: Requires an SSD-only system or an SSD+HDD system in RAID/Smart Response mode (i.e. independent SSD and HDD disks won't work). I have it installed to keep Device Manager happy but keep it turned off. I have no need for my data to be refreshed while my system is asleep, and very few apps support it anyway.

Smart Response: Requires an HDD+SSD system. Haven't used it myself since I'm SSD-only, but seems worthwhile for accelerating the performance of an HDD system, especially if you've only got a 32GB SSD anyway, which is pretty much only usable as a cache. Or a very small Windows partition, I suppose.

Rapid Start: Requires an SSD, but not necessarily ONLY an SSD. Opinions here vary. On the one hand, it gives you the battery benefits of hibernation along with resume times almost as fast as coming back from sleep (3-5 seconds). On the other hand, you have to carve out a partition on an SSD equal in size to your total installed RAM to use as a hibernation partition (ON TOP OF the hibernation file on your C drive, which you have to keep if you want to take advantage of Windows 8 Fast Boot), and if you're running system encryption, the data written to the Rapid Start hibernation partition isn't encrypted, whereas with traditional Windows hibernation written to the hibernation file, it would be. Rapid Start warns you about that. The exception to this is if you're using a self-encrypting SSD, in which case everything is always encrypted. And on an SSD-only system, resume time from even regular hibernation is really fast (or even full shut down), so the difference isn't as drastic as a system where Windows is installed on an HDD and a Rapid Start partition exists on an SSD. I personally have it enabled on my BitLockered, SSD-only system configured to take effect immediately when I choose Sleep because I never have sensitive stuff open when I sleep/hibernate, it seems a bit faster than regular hibernate, and I don't currently need the extra storage I need to dedicate to this purpose. You can also configure Rapid Start to transition from regular Sleep to hibernate only after it's been asleep for a configured amount of time. I also believe that if you want to use Smart Connect, you have to either use this method of hibernation or only regular Windows sleep; Smart Connect can't work when you're using regular Windows hibernation. There's also an issue with the XPS 15 specs that come with 16GB of RAM and only a 32GB mSATA SSD. If you set it up for Smart Response even allocating the minimum amount of SSD storage for that purpose (18.6 GB), there won't be enough storage left on the SSD to set up a Rapid Start hibernation partition. But if you're SSD-only or only have 8GB of RAM with a 32GB mSATA SSD, you'll be fine.

Rapid Storage: This is often confused for one of the above technologies (usually Smart Response), but is actually just the name for the Intel AHCI/RAID driver on the system, which you should definitely install for performance reasons and which I believe is required for ANY of the above technologies to work.

I wonder if it's an issue that will require an update to the app to fix rather than a driver update. Otherwise it could indeed have something to do with how the Intel driver is handling the rendered output from the NVIDIA GPU and preparing it for display, which would require an update from apparently Dell, since the stock Intel driver doesn't seem to install on this system, possibly because of its particular Optimus config. I think the reason we haven't seen any updates on anything until a couple days ago was the holiday order rush and the fact that lots of people take vacations around now, but now that everyone's back, hopefully updates arrive soon.

 

I just ran a performance test of Company of Heroes 2 in windowed and full screen mode. The scores between the two modes were very close but I got a higher score in full screen mode. It must be something with Quake Live that's causing your issue.

Windowed Mode: Min: 12.44, Maximum: 30.13, Average: 20.81
Full Screen Mode: Min: 15.58, Maximum: 48.23, Average: 26.89

 

I would recommend a test:
If you can, set your game so that it has more detail (not resolution) until it renders under 125FPS in windowed mod, and then see what speed you get in fullscreen mode. This would be to see if there is some bottleneck in the Optimus system which would cause the difference.
I am not a gamer, but that would be my instinctive way of trying to debug this.
Cheers.

 

If we have the top tier XPS 15....How do we uninstall rapid smart. Gosh how lazy are people...you can't wait an extra 3-5 seconds!!

 

I won't quote the post in order not to make the page even longer, but thanks for the clarification! I have the top spec model, so same situation as you, I believe. At the moment I have rapid start enabled, so as far as I got it, it means that after 120 min - my timer - it actually hibernate with its technology. But if this is the cause of the problem then it seems to have the opposite of the intended effect...

 

I meant that resume from Rapid Start hibernate takes 3-5 seconds total, not that it saves 3-5 seconds over resuming from regular hibernate. I'm not sure Rapid Start is enabled on the top-spec XPS by default (wiped mine before I bothered to check), but if it is, disabling it would be a matter of uninstalling the Rapid Start application, and then if the hibernation partition exists, go to Computer Management > Disk Management, delete it, and then extend your OS partition to fill that space -- assuming that the hibernation partition is directly to the right of the OS partition. If it's anywhere else, reclaiming that space for the OS partition would be more involved, either using a third-party partition manager or spanning the OS volume across two separated partitions, which I'm not sure is possible on GPT for the system volume, never tried it.

Then if you want to re-enable regular Windows hibernation, open an elevated Command Prompt (i.e. run as administrator) and enter "powercfg -h on".

I don't think Rapid Start is the cause of the problem since I've seen this behavior occasionally on several systems that don't use it, and I've personally only experienced the issue once on my own XPS. But it's easy enough to temporarily disable without removing it completely inside the Rapid Start app if you want to try regular sleep instead. If you want to try regular hibernation again, you'll need to re-enable it using the command I mentioned at the end of my reply directly above.

 

Do you know how to install Rapid Start? I just replaced my 32GB mSATA with a 256GB one and when I try to install Rapid Start it says my computer isn't supported. I went to the bios and the Intel Rapid Start feature is disabled and greyed out. Since it's greyed out I can't enable it. Any ideas?

 

The Rapid Start install guide is here for UEFI and here for MBR; unless you're running your BIOS in legacy mode, you should be set up for UEFI. You're probably getting that error because you haven't set up the hibernation partition properly first, which is required before the app will install. I wouldn't have expected even the BIOS option to be grayed out before setting up the partition, but I suppose that's possible.

If you replaced the 32GB SSD with a 256GB unit, hopefully you changed the SATA mode from Smart Response to AHCI so the SSD is exposed as a separate device. Not doing that wouldn't stop you from using Rapid Start, but it would stop you from installing the OS onto the SSD.

 

I believe it's a problem with OpenGL games (or generally quake3 engine games). I tried another quake3 engine game (Wolfenstien - Enemy Territory) in which I should atleast get 900fps+.. but I can't even get 200. So yes, the handling between igpu and dgpu seems to be weird.

I believe it's a problem with OpenGL games (or generally quake3 engine games). I tried another quake3 engine game (Wolfenstien - Enemy Territory) in which I should atleast get 900fps+.. but I can't even get 200

That is hardly possible ;P The game is based on an old engine with really low graphics. Normally I should be able to get ~700-900fps. However it is maxed at 250 due to server restrictions.

 

Thanks!! This helped a lot. I installed Windows 8.1 using UEFI so this was exactly what I needed.

 

Just posting a quick State of the Wiki before shutting down for the night. At this point, the XPS 15 wiki is up to 32 separate pages of content, almost entirely derived from the first 128 pages of this thread. I still need to comb through the past 7 weeks or so of content (pages 129-279), but the wiki as it stands has the bases mostly covered. Don't be surprised if you see a page on there indicating a solution that has already been improved here; I will get to it eventually if it has been posted here.

In the meantime, I invite you all to check the wiki out and add your own thoughts, or place requests for content you think would benefit the wiki, even if you are not willing (or able) to commit to providing it yourself. I prioritize my efforts based on what *I* personally want to see in there, so I have no objection to somebody else completely shaking things up on the wiki or even taking over administration of it.

By all means, refer new people to the wiki when they ask questions that you're sure were answered back in October or November. That's the whole point of the wiki - reduce the amount of effort our XPS enthusiasts are spending repeating themselves and allowing more room for new solutions and tips to emerge.

Happy new year, all.

 

The new Dell QHD+ Touch Panel Firmware Update did absolutely *nothing* to fix my touchpad issues. What (if anything) it did for the touch panel (screen) I don't know. I cannot perceive any difference. I've tested with both the original Dell touchpad drivers (17.0.13.0) and the other drivers from Synaptics (version 16.3.15.1) that I prefer for their improved scrolling.

Edit: To be clear, I can detect no improvement in scrolling, touchpad sensitivity, or gesture behavior. I wouldn't have expected it to, but several people reported an amazing change - and I'm calling bunk on that.

I will say that the firmware updater gave me some trouble when it first ran - but that may have been due to the fact that I didn't run it as administrator the first time. Eventually it ran, but said that it failed at about 58%. I rebooted the machine and ran the update again and it said that the latest firmware was installed. My guess is that the verify operation (which usually happens during the second half of a firmware update) is what failed - though I can't be 100% sure.

Occasionally (very rarely) my XPS 15 would not wake up correctly when woken up. The display would remain off. Closing the lid or pressing the power button to put it back to sleep and the resuming again *always* fixed that. I'll keep an eye out to see if the update fixes that issue as it may have been related to the touch screen, though I doubt it. I've never had an issue with the touch screen not working when the computer is resumed from sleep.

 

Could you add the link to the Wiki to your signature? It nearly defeats the purpose of having it someone has to sift through 100 pages of content to find the link.

 

Does the XPS 15 really have this much problems? Some sound ignorable, but the coil whine and display going out makes it like a deal breaker.

That aside, does Dell offer the Windows 8.1 Reinstallation DVD when purchasing computers/laptops?

 

I don't know if it is really 'professional' but here is a color profile made with an X-rite I1 Pro screen calibration device for my 3200x1800 display. This profile yields a delta-e of about 1 on my Windows 8.1 system. That means that the difference between the colors produced by my display and reference color values is too small to be detected by the human eye. A very good result.

I'm curious how this profile would measure up on other displays, but one would assume that it would be similar on the same hardware/software. If you want to try it, right click the profile to install. Then select as default in Color Management. This profile was made for 120 cd/m2 brightness level, which is a common standard. On my XPS that is approx the 4th level up with the brightness keys. That is, start at the lowest brightness, then click up 3 times.

View attachment XPS15.zip

 

In reply to myself:

After talking to the Dell support multiple times they finally found out that my order of two XPS 15 9530 was cancelled, just because the optionally ordered Mini-Display Port to VGA cable is out of stock (or production). The XPS 15 itself can still be ordered with estimated delivery in 4 weeks here in Europe.

Dell cancelled two orders of nearly 2500 € each, just because two cables of 25 € were out of stock. Silly. I'm unable to place a new order, because they cancelled my order, but forgot the cancel the authorization hold on my credit card as well. I'm quite pissed off. I would really like to buy these XPS 15.

 

I've been trying to install your modded synaptics drivers but I haven't had any luck getting it to work. I followed your instructions and then installed the Touchpad_Synaptics_W8.14_X09_A01_Setup-09P23_ZPE.exe driver to get it to work but no luck. Is there any link to the Dell drivers that you've used that work with your modded synaptics drivers to get the synaptics functionality? I really just want to use any synaptics drivers over the Dell ones as I don't like the Dell drivers. None of the versions I've tried have worked .

 

"Display going out"? Someone mentioned that it happened to them once,
I mentioned I've seen it myself -- once -- on this system and on many other systems on occasion. Hardly a major problem or one specific to this system. I've even had almighty MacBook Pros not resume from sleep correctly before.

Coil whine depends on the person. Mine is frequent, though most of the time it's quiet enough that any other noise would drown it out. Occasionally it gets louder such that it graduates from "minor gripe in principle to actual annoyance", but those incidents are rare and don't happen often. I don't care about the whine because every other laptop I've had has had coil whine and there's nothing I can do about it anyway, so no point in griping. No fix from Dell (at least not a guaranteed one) and it's certainly not enough to make me want to return this thing, especially because there's no other laptop on the market I'd rather have.

But at the end of the day, as with any new technology especially on the cutting edge side of the market, there are going to be issues. Some will likely be fixed with firmware/driver updates over time, others will remain because nothing is perfect.

The XPS 15 doesn't come with reinstallation media, but Dell will apparently ship you a free USB key with Win8.1 on it if you can't find an ISO to make your own. The M3800'comes with the USB key in the box.

 

Good point. Of course, it might not be a bad idea for other participants in this forum to do likewise.....

 

What do you suggest to use to monitor the temperatures of cpu and gpu?

 

I was finally able to order one. During purchase the estimated delivery date was Jan 31st, but the order confirmation says Feb 12th.

 

Are you, per chance, mixing up the estimated delivery date (order confirmation) and the estimated shipping date (product page)? It has caused a lot of confusion, Dell should really just list the former.

Anyhow, my system's estimated delivery date was delayed from December 27th to January 23rd... But apparently, it'll be delivered next Monday, so that's a pleasant surprise. Now to hope it's devoid of hardware issues...

 

Oh yes, you're right. My mistake ;-)

 

Well I do believe I'm going to abandon Intel Rapid Start, at least for now. My sister (using a new Inspiron 7437, also with Rapid Start) just mentioned she's having the same issue of her machine occasionally not waking back up after a Rapid Start hibernate (the keyboard would light up, but not the display), so I told her to try disabling Rapid Start for a while. That prompted me to try that myself, and although I didn't do any stopwatch comparisons, on my SSD-only system the time to both enter and exit regular Windows hibernation seems to be just as fast as (or within 1-2 seconds of) using Rapid Start. Side note: Microsoft sure did a great job burying the checkbox to actually SHOW the Hibernate option; I had to use Google to find out where to go in Power Options (it's under "Change what the power buttons do....")

I can still see the value of Rapid Start for those using an HDD+SSD cache setup since the time difference between the two hibernation options would be much greater there, and of course if you want to use Smart Connect and a form of hibernation, Rapid Start is your only option. The only function Rapid Start offers that I'll miss (and that I've wished for a while that Windows would implement) is an option to hibernate ONLY after the system has spent a certain amount of time in regular sleep. I don't want to use the provided hibernation timer because there are times I intentionally want my system to stay awake unattended even on battery, but if I put my machine to sleep thinking I'll return quickly and then I don't, it would be nice to have a way for it to automatically enter hibernation based on a counter that starts when it goes to sleep. I know I could set up differently configured power profiles to sort of achieve this, but I won't always remember to change power profiles when I need my system to stay awake unattended, and the aggravation of my system hibernating when I wanted it to stay awake because I forgot to switch profiles would outweigh the benefit of the battery savings for me. Rapid Start offered the best of both worlds solution I'm describing.

I'll keep an eye on whether the failure to properly wake up persists now that I'm no longer using Rapid Start. I'm thinking it might given that I've seen that behavior on other systems that don't use Rapid Start, and if it does I may turn it back on to regain the aforementioned "hibernate after sleep interval" option.

 

Anyone know when this model will be in dell outlet. This is an expensive laptop to buy from dell.com. I did chat with dell reps but they have no idea when this be in dell outlet.

 

No one is going to know.

 

I will report that as I stated after updating the touchscreen firmware update, my screen went on the "blink" it happened while an external usb flash drive was attached and I was transferring a movie onto flash drive, immediately after updating firmware. so I came here and reported the "blinking screen" I will say now that this behavior has not repeated itself since then. I do not portend to know or even speculate why or what happened, but it isn't happening now.

I will say that last night, while connected to my home tv screen via hdmi, I was watching a .avi film via windows media player, and having "full screen" activated, somehow, during the viewing, the window would minimize...without me touching the computer, or otherwise changing anything...it just simply went from full screen to small window...and it happened 3 times.

these are just my reports, in case others have experienced them.