XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

I really want to place an order, but the March 5 shipping date makes me pretty weary as I know that by the time I get it the Y50 will be out. I'm debating getting a temporary laptop or sticking it out for this.

As for the people who managed to get the XPS 15 from the Dell Outlet -- they're the lucky ones. The US does not have any XPS 15's in stock (and hasn't yet), but the UK outlet does. The mid-range model can be bought for ~$1500 USD -- and it's not a scratch and dent model. Too bad the UK outlet will not ship to the states.

Is everyone typically seeing shipping out times of about a month when they're ordering these? By the expected ship dates it seems that they wouldn't arrive for two months, but a lot of people seem to be saying that they're getting them in just one?

 

You might have missed my earlier posting, where I explained that the touchpad wasn't working at all under Linux (Fedora, see message title). More specifically, it wasn't being recognized by the kernel, thus wasn't being identified by udev, thus wasn't available to the X server.

For Linux I am running a full-capacity mSATA SSD, and initially set SATA operation to AHCI as you mentioned. However, I found an Intel recommendation to stick with Smart Response even on non-RAID configurations, so while debugging this problem I restored the original setting. I wasn't able to detect any difference in behavior between the two settings; both seem to work fine, so I left the original setting intact.

As I understand the state of support in current Linux distributions, the TPM and Secure Boot changes are necessary for those of us who occasionally build our own kernels. Not relevant for users of Windows or signed Linux distributions.

 

I just got a call told me I will get my laptop delivered on 15th of January.

I may want to sell it for 1700 after i got it and get a Y50 after few month.

But i am really worried about the warranty of Lenovo, i have never had a Lenovo laptop, do they also gave warranty like dell? I actually own a L521x, and It is still under warranty (i bought 3 years warranty), it recently got some problem, after dell tried to fix it and unsuccesful, they simply exchange it with the XPS 15 9630, i wonder if lenovo will give warranty like that.....

 

New Dell touchpad, RST, video and wireless drivers. Guess I'll be the guinea pig...

ftp://ftp.dell.com/published/Pages/xps-15-9530.html

Update:
No new touchpad features, but scrolling seems really smooth and reliable! I haven't been able to make it miss once.
Wireless seems as good as ever. Dell driver is ahead of the one on the Intel page, now.
New Dell Nvidia driver is still behind the current one. Dell Intel 4600 driver is now the same as the latest Intel one. So no upgrade, here.
RST? I dunno. Storage still works.

 

Nice find! I'm still on the Synaptics drivers and don't use the touchpad enough to be a good tester, but I'd be curious to hear a comparison from anyone on Synaptics who's willing to test the new Dell drivers.

The Intel GPU driver on Dell's site should still be an upgrade since the one on Intel's site wouldn't install on our system. Any gamers want to see if it resolves the issue with games not scaling to fill the entire panel?

Other notes: The WiFi driver forces installation of the PRO/Set Control Panel applet. Not a big deal, but fyi. There may be a command-line way to change that (or you could likely use Device Manager0, but I didn't bother to try. It's also kind of hilarious that Dell's Wifi driver package is 202 MB when Intel's version even with the PRO/Set Tools is only 91. Upon inspection it looks like the Dell package extracts two folders, one called Drivers and the other called production, with identical contents (right down to the byte count) except for different subfolder names -- and each 144 MB after extraction.

Also, it seems that these hard-drive installers still throw a compatibility error on Windows 8.1 after extracting the files, so you have to click Run Program and let the extraction run a second time before the installer actually starts. Sigh.

 

A02 is now available: ftp://ftp.dell.com/published/Pages/xps-15-9530.html

 

For me the Intel Driver installed fine (HD4600). And the Dell driver is now the same version as I already had installed.
I wonder what has changed for the GPU version though.

Whats the correct way to update all those drivers anway? just download and run?

Intel RST driver is still newer than dell.

@edit: the BIOS updater wants me to enter an admin password. I enter my windows user passwort but it doesnt work ?

 

Yep, download and run. Interesting, maybe Intel updated their reference drivers to work on this system; they definitely didn't used to install. Nice find on RST -- man, these drivers update way more often than I'm willing to keep checking on them, especially when I'm not having any issues.

 

Probably means the admin password you set for the BIOS.

 

I picked up one of these from the Dell outlet 1600 AU (mid spec, no SSD). Pretty stoked with that price, however there have been a few problems with my unit.

First off, battery life hasn't been exceptional. Not sure if that will improve, but from what I've read it's pretty standard actually (about 3 hours of medium usage, medium brightness).

The touchpad isn't that great. However, my previous goto laptop was my X220, and I pretty much exclusively used the trackpoint, so going back to a trackpad takes some time getting used to. I suppose it's okay for what it is, and perhaps it'll improve further with driver updates.

Wireless performance has been really hit and miss. After a period the wireless speeds seems to slow down significantly, webpages take ages to load etc. The workaround is to power cycle the wireless settings, and everything comes right after that. Have installed the latest Intel drivers to no effect. It's not a *huge* issue for me right now, but I believe there were similar problems with the previous model, you'd think they'd have it sorted. Bear in mind none of my other devices (multiple phones, tablets, laptops and pcs display any of these issues so do not think it's necessarily a WAP problem).

Coming from the Lenovo was a bit of a shocker KB wise - most of the time I had the Lenovo plugged in and driving two displays with a keyboard and external mouse attached, but I really needed something that had a higher resolution than 720p for onsite visits. Seems I had to sacrifice something, and it's the KB...

Resuming from sleep seems to have issues where the screen flashes on and off - the only thing that will fix this is a hard reset. This is probably the biggest issue for me - I've since updated to the latest bios so hopefully that'll be sorted soon. If no luck I think I'll be logging a case with Dell - as it's likely a software issue I doubt I'll be returning the laptop.

Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the unit, but I think I'd be a bit disappointed if I had paid full price. The screen is great, and I'm actually using the touchscreen (something I didn't think I would) and the performance of the laptop seems very good. Using the laptop on my laptop gets a bit warm (which isn't a good thing at this time of the year in Australia) but I can live with that. I think Dell have a few more things to improve on and they'll get their 'best in class' award -

 

For those that ordered their XPS 15 through Costco on or around 07 December, the parts seem to be in for our machines.

I just received a call from Dell's overseas customer service, who informed me that my laptop has been assembled and is in transit (presumably from China) to the United States. Dell's online order tracking system will still show it as "in production" for about another week, when it is expected to clear US customs and begin it's last leg from a US distribution center to my shipping address.

In sum: my package is on-track to be delivered on the day Dell's tracking system indicated all along.

 

Well new touchpad drivers were released today, so check those out. And of course disable gestures you don't need, especially the edge swipes. They seem to trigger a lot of false positives.

New Wifi drivers just came out as well, on Dell's site first rather than Intel's, surprisingly. If even they don't fix the issue, of course check for a firmware update for your router/WAP since there's always the possibility of an incompatibility between the specific chipsets in a given client and the WAP/router.

For resuming from sleep, if you're HD-only with no caching SSD you wouldn't have Intel Rapid Start, so I'm not sure what's up with that. Could also be driver-related, and new Intel GPU drivers came out today too, so grab them.

Driver page link (regular one hasn't caught up yet): ftp://ftp.dell.com/published/Pages/xps-15-9530.html

 

I've run the latest Synaptics (after disabling driver signing) and the Synaptics before that. More features, but I found scrolling rather uneven. This latest Dell seems super smooth and accurate while scrolling and selecting. An improvement over the others, IMO.

 

Just noticed one improvement on A02 BIOS update that I'm thrilled about: If the lid is closed, the machine will now output to the external display starting from POST!! This means you can tweak BIOS settings, enter preboot whole disk encryption passwords, run Windows Recovery environment, watch Windows start, etc without having to use the built-in panel. Before, my external display never lit up until the Windows logon screen. I have both a DisplayPort and HDMI display connected, and it used the DisplayPort-connected panel. That happens to be my primary display in Windows, but I doubt that matters during boot.

Strangely though, I originally noticed that while my USB keyboard worked to press F2 or F12 to enter the BIOS or boot selection interface, it would then become unusable IN those interfaces. I then went into the BIOS and set USB Emulation to Disabled (not the default setting), and then it started working in those areas. I would've expected it would have been the other way around (i.e. it would have been disabled, and I'd need to enable it to make a USB keyboard work in those environments), but ok. The one catch is that you can't boot off of USB devices when USB Emulation is disabled, so you'll have to remember to toggle that option when you want to do so.

Lastly, on the Dell boot splash screen, when it's displayed on my external panel I get this weird color noise on the lower half of the display, except where the little circular dots animation runs. That goes away as soon as the Dell splash screen goes away in favor of anything else though (BIOS, boot selection, whatever), so I don't really care. Maybe that will be fixed in BIOS A03.

And incidentally, unrelated to this update, I just noticed that my USB boot flash drive isn't selectable for UEFI boot when I have another USB cable attached, regardless of the USB Emulation setting. That cable attaches to my display's USB hub, which in turn has my keyboard, mouse receiver, webcam, and printer all attached, and I was too lazy to figure out which of those devices caused the issue. Just an fyi.

 

Has anybody tried running this thing with the lid closed and external monitors connected?

Some models (mostly older ones) pull air in through the keyboard, so shutting the lid makes them overheat.

Ideally I'd like to hear about what sort of temperatures you'd get when playing games so everything's loaded.

 

I use this thing with the lid closed almost exclusively, and while I didn't monitor temperatures, even after playing Portal 2 for hours straight the fans stayed relatively quiet -- nowhere near the full blast fan mode you hear when doing a BIOS update. :thumbsup:

 

Oops. Ignore my post.

 

Don't worry folks--these laptops are shipping: I ordered mine from Costco USA on 12/5/13--it was delivered to my house yesterday 1/8/14 --also minus the $100 credit from Costco for delivery delay that makes my final price $1899 for the top tier model . . .

N123

 

What an awesome price.

 

Ha. You tried only 3 and you had success with the fourth? I've got a Samsung Galaxy S3 and i'm not joking when i say i've tried about 10 USB cables. After i saw your post about it eventually working i tried as many as i could get my hands on. No joy whatsoever. It continuously connects and disconnects. It's driving me mad.
I'm not electrical engineer but i think there is a problem with the shielding in the USB ports. The reason i say this is because my Logitech unifying receiver range is about 20cm when there is another USB3 cable plugged in next to it. If i unplug the other cable the receiver's range goes up to the advertised range (3m or something).

 

Hmm especially with NVIDIA dgpu's simple dwnload & run can cause a lot of troubles.

What is "DUP support" anyway? Why shouldn't I just go for the latest nvidia driver from nvidia.com ?

The RST driver on the intel website is like 10 versions newer than from dell

And for the Intel HD4600 driver: it didn't want to install on my system either.. but after a fresh win8.1 installation if perfectly did.

 

Doesn't work either :S

@edit: Well I use the german keyboard layout. for some reason I had to enter the password as if I had the US keyboard layout (some letters ware swapped with the german layout). weird.

btw: intel wireless driver is also newer than dell's ?

 

I think the BIOS update fixed a CPU speedup problem:

before the A02 my CPU speed would never go above 2,9GHz... now I see it jumping to 3,2GHz

 

I ordered on Dell website on 12/11/2013, the status hasn't changed at all. The estimated delivery date is 1/30/2014.

 

I've done a download and run with the NVIDIA package and it worked just fine. I did choose not to install the 3D driver and GeForce Experience, but I can't imagine that would have made a difference. But the NVIDIA driver wasn't one where Dell's new release was newer than NVIDIA's, so I didn't count that in my advice to download and run.

DUP = Dell Update Package. Use the latest driver from NVIDIA.

RST on Dell is 12.8.7. On Intel it's 12.9.0. Doesn't seem to be a huge deal, especially on something as relatively simple as an AHCI/RAID controller.

I never got the Intel reference GPU drivers to install before or after wiping my system, but again I may have been trying an older version than you did at the time.

Interesting, It's likely that the BIOS only supports US keyboard layouts and thus accepted your password that way, and therefore because you're using a German layout in Windows, you have to compensate for that when re-entering it in that environment.

Intel probably gave Dell early access to a new driver and Dell simply posted it before Intel, which isn't too surprising given the Wifi issues that were reported with the previous Wifi driver version on Dell's site. I wouldn't be too surprised if Dell has already had some returns due to Wifi issues from people who didn't think to check Intel directly for a driver update, especially those who might have remembered the Wifi issues of the previous XPS 15, in which case I can see how Dell would be anxious to get an update out the door. I'm sure Intel will post their reference driver to the general public soon.

 

Well, I guess I will just wait for the next Dell GPU update and then install it. But I didn't mean problems with the installation process itself. I mean bugs / performance issues /...

Hmm I seem to have WiFi problems as well. I might try Dell's driver if its newer than the one from Intel. Is it the driver only or also with software?

 

Dell's driver includes PRO/Set, but if you download the Dell Update Package and choose Extract Only, inside there will be a Drivers subfolder which will in turn have subfolders for Win7, 8.0, and 8.1. If you use Device Manager to point it at the appropriate folder in there, you can install just the drivers.

If the Dell Update Package isn't available, use the hard-drive installation package, but the way to get around the auto-install there is to wait for everything to extract, then at the "All files extracted successfully" dialog, BEFORE you click OK, rename the folder that the app just extracted the files into. Then click OK and the auto-install won't proceed, but you'll still have the files.

 

In the end all I want is a driver that fixed WiFi issues and fixes bad fps in OpenGL games :/

 

I made an order on the 11th of Dec, with estimated delivery date 17th Jan. Today I received an email saying that I'll receive it on the 10th of MARCH (almost 3 months after my order, and as per the Dell website, about the same date I would get it if I ordered a new PC today).

I called Dell and they are apparently trying to ask the factory what is going on, as they admit those dates are not normal.

 

Should we start a separate thread about the order and delivery dates?

I'm waiting for 2 XPS 15. I would prefer to discuss the delivery dates in a separate thread and keep the 'owners thread' clear for other things. What do you think?

 

Guys I have found a good offer for the M3800 which is the same apart form the dGPU. Do you think that it is possible to get this one and clock the K1100 at the higher speed of the GT750 in order to get similar gaming performance?

 

Personally I've wondered why people bother talking about delivery dates at all. I don't really see how learning about one person's delivery woes or triumphs is valuable to someone else. I suppose learning about expedites might give others incentive to call Dell and request similar treatment (not that I've read any news of that sort, quite the opposite in fact), and learning about delivery dates slipping from what was originally promised COULD be useful to prospective buyers (who may or may not suffer that themselves and could always cancel if they do), but how many posts about that do we need? I'd certainly like to eliminate that talk from this thread, but I don't think it should therefore be given a dedicated thread. Why do we need it anywhere? I feel for the people experiencing delays of 1-2 months, but I fail to see how the community benefits from being advised that you're experiencing those delays. Posts intended purely to garner commiseration are more suited to Facebook/Twitter.

 

My in-depth knowledge of GeForce vs Quadro chips is admittedly a bit outdated, but last I checked, while equivalent GeForce and Quadro models use the same GPU chip, the Quadros have certain areas of those chips unlocked that are sealed off on the GeForce side, either by drivers, BIOS, actual silicon gates, or some combination of the above. Therefore the extra areas of the Quadro chips being used compared to the GeForce might cause them to run hotter at the same clock speed, in which case it might not be possible (or at any rate safe) to clock a Quadro identically to a GeForce using identical cooling. Again, this is all based on knowledge which may or may not be relevant to this particular case, but I wouldn't assume it's a simple task of enabling overclocking to obtain performance parity. If that were possible I imagine Dell would have done it that way seeing as the M3800 is the workstation-class variant and therefore isn't likely to be performance-limited on its GPU without a good reason.

 

Does anyone know if a laptop stand like this works fine for cooling on the XPS15:

mStand Laptop Stand - intro

 

Okay with your config, FHD and vsync off I get sometimes 180 and sometimes 250 fps. Before I applied your config I had around 700fps.

 

Maybe because of the resolution? Normally my config should give u a lot of fps more. What drivers for nvidia/intelgpu did u install?

Thank you a lot !

@edit: Actually 700fps shouldn't be possible since the game sets a maximum of 250 (more isn't possible?) .. hardware wise our laptop should achieve 700fps though.

 

You are welcome!

Should I try with higher or lower resolution? I have a fresh install with the newest Intel and Nvidia Drivers from their websites. Have forced Launcher.exe to use Nvidia GPU. But a lot more fps isn't possible because of maxfps 250?

 

Technically it is possible but they have maxed it to 250 fps. Could you run the game again with standart config at fullhd and check if you really get constant 250fps? I would rly wonder.. my config should give u an fps boost but just like me u get ~180fps. Also if you only get 180fps could u try window mode and see if it is at 250fps then?

I believe i tried standard settings and couldn't get 250fps.

 

Okay strange. Now I get around 125 fps with standard setting maxed out and FHD in fullscreen. Windowed mode gets only 90 fps with same config. But if you are always higher than your monitor refresh rate everything is fine, isnt it?

 

Not really as 250fps gives u a little advantage due to the game engine. In any case, the hardware should achive 700+ fps but can't even get solid 250fps.. that is what bothers me :/

 

This week's wiki update: we're now up to 40 pages of organized content and I have incorporated information from the first 2,300 posts to this thread. I'm catching up to the present (post 2,300 dates back to 12 December 2013), but it is a slow process. I am grateful to the handful of people who have taken the time to add or edit content on the wiki. I encourage others to do the same. The wiki is only as good as are the contributions to it and the corrections made along the way by folks who have better information handy than was available at the time of the original post.

Thanks!

 

I was given the high end XPS by a good friend I have split the SSD into two drives I just tested with CrystalDiskMark


https://www.dropbox.com/s/u7wtt9k1g2zfpvx/Screenshot 2014-01-10 21.35.32.png

Does anyone know if you can add another SSD drive I have a spare 840 pro SSD
How easy is it to upgrade the battery?

I have not had any problems with my machine which I got just before Christmas the only grip I have is the size of the menus which are tiny if I lower the resolution everything looks huge.

 

Is anyone using a USB 3.0 to ethernet adapter? I got this one:

Anker® Uspeed USB 3.0 bis 10/100: Amazon.de: Computer & Zubehör

I can get speeds up to 900mbit/s (110MB/s) but it crashes after a few minutes.. then sometimes it stays at 40MB/s (maybe because of my servers slow HDD) and crashes after some more minutes (15-30 mins). That is when I transfer ~200GB of files. I was gaming yesterday for 3 hours without problems.

 

Using the same one. Only problem is that it sometimes doesn't work anymore and I have to reconnect it again.


Still noone ideas why many games cant scale to fullscreen and use instead a small windows with black bars around? I have this problem in Assasins Creed 3, Crysis 3 and Battlefield 3...

 

Ye I have the same problem with reconnecting.. at 100MB/s this happens after 10-60 seconds :S

for scaling: did u try right click on the .exe -> don't scale on high dpi ?

or check intel gpu options -> custom scaling

 

The high-end XPS already has the upgraded battery, and that in turn means you can only use an mSATA SSD. There's no space for a 2.5" SSD, so your 840 Pro has nowhere to go. If by "upgrade" the battery you meant "downgrade" to the smaller one to regain that space for a spare hard drive, then that should be possible, though in addition to the battery you'll need to order the 2.5" drive sled and ribbon cable through Dell Spare Parts, but nobody has confirmed that the sled and cable are actually sold that way. Even if they are, it might be a chore working with the reps unless you can find the exact part number somewhere else before calling them. Or you could always talk to some of the people here looking to upgrade to the larger battery, since they'd then have a spare sled and cable they'd no longer need. User teh_crab on here works for a company that plans to order a bunch of machines with the smaller battery and then upgrade some of them to the larger battery separately, so maybe he can hook you up.

Replacing the battery is easy, check the Owner's Manual on support.dell.com; that's been asked and answered multiple times.

If you end up returning that one, I like the one I have, though I haven't stress-tested it. Still, the USB 3.0 passthrough port is nice so that I don't lose one of my ports to my NIC all the time. Amazon.de link: http://www.amazon.de/StarTech-com-E...8&qid=1389393121&sr=8-1&keywords=USB31000SPTB

 

Any chance you could try copying ~50GB-100GB at 100MB/s and see if it works flawlessly? For me the Anker Adapter freezes and then the system won't "accept" the usb port anymore and also won't shut down/sleep.

 

So, I'm trying to install a fresh copy of windows 8.1. As other people have said, the official MS iso download tool won't accept the keys included with the laptops, so I ended up torrenting two different, uncracked .iso's. However, when I went to install, it failed to detect the key in the BIOS/UEFI, and rejected my key (retrieved with a key recovery program) when I tried to put in in manually. After some searching, it seems that the "version" of the install media has to match the version on the computer (even though historically, the same install media would work for any version), and I found that one of the .iso's I had was the Pro version, which won't work. I couldn't determine what the other one was.

So my question is, for those of you who successfully did a clean install using the key Dell included with the laptop, how did you do it? Where did you get the .iso that you used?

 

its cheap and petty

 

but I wanted to be the 3000th post, and I couldn't wait for Mr 2999 to post something any longer...so here I am, making the 3000th post on the forum. hooray