XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

Don't mean to plug my own thread but check it out:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/675771-new-dell-xps-15-l521x-first-impressions-pictures.html

Have plenty of pictures on it and some benchmarks.

 

@Bill, thanks for all the feedback and support. This is the main reason why I'm sold on Dell.

Great to hear. I definitely want to try it out before shipping it back. Everything else about the laptop is OK. Do you have some kind of ETA for the BIOS update? Don't want to rush you guys into anything. I'll call up the DELL customer service tomorrow and discuss with them if they want to provide me the opportunity to test it with the BIOS update. Is this issue something that is communicated to all Dell customer service branches so that I can just refer to it?

 

Oh I've seen every pixel of every picture in that thread many times...

I'd just like to see a quick video of it. Elands, if you're interested in doing one that would be cool. Pictures just aren't the same. Just don't put a s***ty soundtrack on it

 

There was a bug in the logic, right? It's not just fine-tuning values here, right?

I mean, in no-way does it seems normal to me, to go suddenly down to 1.2Ghz... There should be a gradual drecrease here, not a drastic drop to 1.2Ghz. The clock speed should decrease gradually as temp increase, not suddenly drop from "normal" clock speed to 1.2 Ghz instantly! From what the others have described, it act as a swicth with only two possible values, but that's not how it should react!

Edit:

So of course, the schemes might need some adjustments, it's to be expected, but the currently described problem looked more like a bug than a miss-aligned scheme!

I might sound harsh, but I'm really not... I'm just hopefull this laptop turns out as great as it should...

 

I'll see what kind of time I have if I can get around to it!

 

I find the finish of this laptop better! than a macbook.
the soft touch is really nice to have you palms comforable resting. the feel of the touchpad is great. the screen is very nice.
I even like the page up and down is now with the arrow keys easyer to reach.

Let's hope lets hope it will be durable because i find it more scaring putting the laptop on the the table because its one massive piece of aluminum. A plasic laptop can asorb the impact better I think. or I"m doom thinking and there will only be a dent in the table and nothing with the laptop

the only real negative pont is I find it's really heavy.

Will a 256GB ssd differ from a 1TB HDD in weight?

 

The problem could be caused just by putting the "safety valve" to low for the power consumption.
Lets say they put it 35w for the processor, but in reality it can pull some 40w, the laptop would override the intel safety measures and trotling it all the way down.
Intel already have many safety features, but some laptop makers like to add a few, in case one fails to act.

 

I'm unable to get into specifics yet, but just know we can do a lot with the BIOS, including setting a throttle frequency to an exact value. Not specifically commenting on this situation and totally making up numbers, but if you see a GPU throttle from say a rated clock speed of 1.2GHz to 600MHz, in one jump, that 600 number could have easily been something else like 400 or 1000.

 

ok kool but i think it would be better tho have a gradual drop though
ie 1.2 - 1000 - 800 - 600 - 400 min ....

i wonder if the issue affects the i5 version since i think a dual core should run cooler

 

Gradual drop is definitely a miss. i5 does not seem to be affected, but it will have the same changes since it uses the same BIOS, obviously.

 

Has anyone else that has submitted a return received a reply? I submitted my request via the "Initiate Returns" link on the order status page. That was five days ago and I have received no response. I submitted it again yesterday, still no response. I haven't even gotten an automated email.

I don't see how a BIOS update can fix this problem. If the CPU and GPU reach their thermal limit with the fans going 100% I don't see what you can change in software to fix that. You can't make the fans go faster or change the cooling, all you can do is make the components run slower.

 

So far I've only seen thermal shut down happen when someone sets a specific value on a setting using ThrottleStop. I have not heard about any real world usage scenario where thermal limits were reached on either component. Please link me to examples.

 

I have never used ThrottleStop, I had thermal shutdowns happen both times I tested running prime95 and Furmark, I posted earlier in this thread. I don't know if you would consider that real world or not.

But my post wasn't about thermal shutdown, it was about things getting so hot they slow down even when fans are running 100%. How will a BIOS update fix this? My fans are already always on and audible just sitting at an empty desktop, I don't want them to be on even louder all the time. Am I missing something?

 

If you require a system that will run the CPU and GPU at 100% load concurrently for more than a few seconds, you bought the wrong system. If you need to return it, I'm happy to ask someone to reach out and assist. Just let me know. Definitely don't want anyone using the wrong hardware for their needs.

 

My fan runs at 900 rpm when doing nothing. At this value i hardly hear the fan. The ratteling off the hdd makes more noise.
But when you load the cpu above 25 % the fan goes to 3000rpm and then you can clearly hear the fan blowing. I believe the fan can go upto 8000 rpm or something.

 

I'm pretty interested by this laptop if the throttling issue is resolve, but I want to know something, in light surf, typing etc.... is the fan REALLY inaudible or simply very quiet?
By advance, thank you

 

I do development and surfing and I don't hear it . It's pretty quiet for me until I start up Diablo 3

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk 2

 

Thank you, and during D3, is it very loud?

 

It is audible but quiet. But my CPU idles at 46C, wonder what other people have?

 

Can you explain what you mean with 100% cpu load?

I do not expect the system to continuesly run at turbo boost (2,9ghz 3,1 ghz)

But i do think then system should be able to run continues at the stock processor speed of 2,1ghz. In my oppinion the 1,2ghz is only to save battery life when there is a very low cpu load, or am I mistaking?

 

My current laptop is a XPS 15 L501x and it runs this test fine, I left it running 10 minutes no problems. I thought the new model would be a nice upgrade and it is in some areas but not so great in others. Thank you for your offer to help, can you have someone PM or email me with what I need to do for a return? I am having no luck with the form, no response at all and it is pretty frustrating.

Can you explain what the BIOS update is going to do and the expected behavior of the system after the update?

 

It can get loud yes... I'm used to loud laptops so it doesn't bother me plus I have my headphones on

 

Hey Bill, I'm a little confused about this post as I thought you had met with LiquidSilver who has a laptop with the issue whilst gaming? Or did you mean actual shutdown of the laptop, rather than just throttling?

 

@ BILL (or whomever works for DELL): I got my Dell XPS L521x today, as a replacement to my L502x, which was replaced 3 times inside of 90 days of purchase. I was supposed to get the core i-7 with 16 gb ram and they sent me a core-i5 with 6 GB of RAM. I'm beyond frustrated by this utter incompetency and would like this handled ASAP. I look forward to either a PM or response to this post. Thanks in advance.

 

And for the record, the L502x had MUCH better screen quality and the sound on the L521x is horrendous compared to the L502x. Why oh why is this apparent "upgrade" such a "downgrade"

 

Can anyone who owns this laptop comment on the graininess of the screen? I think it's a big issue with the xps 14.

 

Mine came within a few Celsius of thermal limits on a real-world 100% scenario (running an n-body simulation in CUDA while running 8 loops of integer divisions on the CPU), even with throttling.

 

Hey guys, I thought I would take advantage of the expertise on this forum to make sure that my upgrade from the hdd to a new samsung 830 goes smoothly. Here is my general plan:

1. Update ssd firmware on another computer. (Should I format the drive also or will the win7 installation take care of this for me?)

2. Download a win 7 HPx64 iso from here since no installation media is included with purchase by default. Then burn to dvd.

3. Install win 7 on ssd and make sure that BIOS is set to AHCI.

3a. Use drivers disc to install hardware drivers? (Should this step go here)

4. tweak win7 settings to optimize ssd performance.

6. Format old hdd and use as a "music and data" drive.

5. Enjoy the speed.

My other question is will I need to set up the mSata drive to cache off of the ssd once I install it or will windows automatically take care of this?

If i am misisng anything please let me know, the drive gets here this weekend hopefully. =)

 

The screen on mine looks great. I have a XPS 15 L501x that was the WRGB+LED 1920x1080 or whatever the fancy acronym screen was at the time I bought it and the new screen is maybe slightly less bright and a little better making colors pop but there is really not much difference between them from what I can tell. I do not see any graininess.

 

I just received my L521X (i7, 8gb ram, GT640M, 750gb HD)) in the mail today and am currently using it. I wasn't originally going to register or write anything and then, after reading all 48 pages of comments I felt the need to mention a couple of things.

Dell-Bill, we never spoke directly but I appreciate your responses on this forum, you've helped me to feel very reassured about my purchase. Just having a few people actually on these forums checking out the problems and trying to fix them is a lot more then I expected from any large company. I certainly hope the BIOS fix comes quickly but I have no doubt Dell will do what is necessary.

To all of you panicked people going crazy, chill! It's not worth getting overly stressed over. If Bill says there's a solution coming don't take the first opportunity you have to say that his fix won't work without even owning this laptop yourself. I think the main problem is that there are 1-2 people on here that really know what they're talking about (good and bad) and the 200 other people are just repeating the same thing and panicking about a non-issue for the moment.

I played Diablo 3 on max settings for about 20 minutes without any issues. I didn't use any fancy programs but I didn't see any frames, so I think that's good enough until the good people at Dell can fix this throttling issue.

To everyone else (non computer geeks), this computer is awesome, it is the most money I have ever spent on a computer and I love it. The screen is beautiful (anyone that says otherwise either has a defective computer or a defective brain), the keyboard and touch pad work great. I've been using it for about 90 minutes now, installing Adobe CS5, Microsoft Office and playing Diablo 3 and my lap is still a very comfortable temperature. If you want a slim and easily transportable computer that just happens to be very esthetically pleasing and you don't want to pay to have an apple on the lid then this laptop is the one for you.

 

I honestly find it hard to believe that the new screen is better at "making colors pop" or whatever. The previous screen was noted by pretty much every laptop review site as the best laptop screen on the market at the time.

 

I have not used it extensively since I decided to return it, but I did put the two side by side shortly after I got it to compare the viewing angles, etc and the L501x was a little more washed out, a little more kind of whitish over the whole screen than the new one, like when you turn the brightness up too high on your TV. It could just be the settings, I didn't really mess with it. Either way, I see no graininess at all.

 

Have you changed image quality to generic color? the preset that came with the laptop was way over-saturated, good for animated shows but otherwise I prefer a more neutral color display. All in all I'm very happy with the laptop, all this talk about it overheating and throttling down was blown way out of proportion.
I have been playing Amnesia, Skyrim and Diablo 3 and the temps never exceeded 80 on the gpu and barely touched 80 on the CPU.
And so far I have yet to experience any sort of throttling, for anyone on the fence I say go for it.

 

Has anyone loaded up Starcraft II yet to see how it runs? I'm planning on placing my order in the morning.

 

I was replying to the scenario of running Furmark and CPUPrime at the same time. There are now real world scenarios that will cause the system to throttle unreasonably, but that combination is pretty edge case in terms of real world usage. It won't be long until we have a BIOS for you guys to test, then we'll know where we stand as far as temps and throttling goes.

We don't know what the BIOS is going to do just yet. It's too early for me to guess.

I thought he was using ThrottleStop with a specific setting he mentioned?

A better exchange from the L502x is the Inspiron 15 R Special Edition. Same form factor, sub woofer, etc. I will ask one of the tech guys to have a look. You might also try one of the links in my sig if you would rather.

I guess screen quality is pretty subjective. Opinions here tend to run toward the L502x having a slightly better screen, but not MUCH better. But again, subjective. Only thing that matters is what you think.
Sorry for the poor experience. Hopefully we can turn it around for you.

 

It doesn't have much sense to use mSATA for caching when you have a 2,5" SSD as primary drive, since the mSATA is slightly slower than the SSD: you would have your most frequently used files cached in the slower unit

 

Hi, just got my L521X and enjoying it

Can any owner confirm the maximum msata SSD that you can install in place of the default 32GB one? Is the installation and setting troublesome?

Thanks in advance.

 

Hey guys!

I'm about to change my Dell Studio XPS 1640 (P8700, 8GB, 4670) into brand new L521x with i7-3612QM and 8GB as well but I have 4 main concerns:

1. Will I see noticeable performance improvement in general use (but not gaming) or those benchmark points matters only in games?

2. Currently I have Full HD RGB-LED screen. The one in L521x has only WLED available. Is it a downgrade then in my case?

3. How is the keyboard flexibility in L521x? I hate to see keyboard surface going down under even small pressure like it is in most of new notebooks. My Studio XPS 1640 has really good keyboard and it doesn't bend under the pressure.

4. How is the performance of built-in mSATA SSD 32GB drive? I know there are many SSD drives out there and they are based on so many different technologies. Also is it useful at all with such small capacity? I guess it's even to small for system partition.

Also is there a SIM card slot in L521x?

Thanks for your help guys! Also I'm very happy to see Dell-Bill_B being so helpful here. L521x would be my 5th notebook from DELL so far and I never even though of getting different one

 

Here you go:

I redid the tests three times consecutively (although this time I probably didn't press the first and second test soon enough coz I was doing some other stuff, probably a few mins apart). Results similar:
Score
P8626 3DMarks

Graphics Score
7258

CPU Score
19851

PC Health Check

I tried to attach the log file but it's too big! i tried to compress it and it's still too big -.- it's 1.5mb big. The highest GPU temp I got was 67 celcius.

Edit: finally figured out how to make it a text document. There you go! Enjoy lol

 

Same keyboard. Keep the aluminium lid and, yes, the Inspiron 15R Special Edition could have been the L503X.

 

Yet a huge price difference, how would that be compensated in the exchange?

 

When you say grainy, do you mean you can see the spaces between pixels? I was comparing the MacBook Pro screen to my new L521X and was initially disappointed. Some images even appear pixelated on some websites. But having other people look at the screen and talking to a Dell Rep, we concluded that this is an HD screen after all, and I just have to get used to it

(It's like having an HD tv and watching non-HD channels, those channels will look crappier than the HD ones I guess )

 

Mine came through today, with backlit keyboard as promised (UK).

First quibble is that if the laptop is sideways or on its side (as if in a laptop bag), the screen isn't flush with the base, there's a small gap. I hope this won't cause issues with hibernation/standby while in a laptop bag...

Second quibble is that when it wakes up from hibernation it makes a very strange buzzing mechanical sound, kinda sounds like a DVD drive ejecting. Talking of DVD drive, inserting and ejecting disks is incredibly loud too! Sounds like a rabid turkey, lol.

On a white background, I can make out the black spaces between pixels, which definitely gives it a grainy effect. I'm sure i'll get used to it though.

 

Just received my laptop today! I am very impressed I have to say. It looks stunning.

 

Guys

can anyone please test WLAN speed at different distances from the router?

As said before, Fan prob is solved but WLAN, especially download rate is still very slow.
A technician just changed the WLAN card (which made the problem worse for some reason) and the screen with the antennas but to no success. I will now get a refund. I'd love to order a new one but if the WLAN problem is a design / driver / BIOS issue I'd love to hear if that is being adressed in an update or not before I actually order one.

 

Bill: I have been lurking here for a long while, never thought to post anything because everyone else has pretty much covered all concerns.

Today is different however. In total I have spent over 6 hours on the phone with dell reps trying to get my order fixed, get the right NUMBER of laptops (1) sent to me, and after all that get them returned because I am so fed up with the service. It seems at every turn they have managed to make mistakes that really are not warranted. Today was the final straw, when they managed to make yet another mistake and not send me the correct number of RMA numbers.

I was wondering if you had any contacts or resources that could help me get this mess cleaned up. I love the product, and your help with the throttling issue and generally everything on this forum has given me a small hope for dell, but my dealing will your customer service frankly worries me that any future warranty or customer service needs I may have will be met with the same..... jumbled mess.

I've got a general log of all the trouble I have had if that could help you get me some attention from higher ups, but I figure I wont blast it across the forum.

I really appreciate anything you can do for me.

--------------------------edit---------------------------
i will leave the rest of the post here, because I do still think the diffculties I have had might be worth noting to someone more important at Dell, that said however, my second RMA number has finally arrived. Thanks you for all your hard work Bill.

 

Yeah, this bothers me too on mine. I'm wondering if the envy 15 has a similar issue. One thing I did find that helps; it less pronounced the dimmer the screen. I took the brightness down 2 or 3 notches from the top and its a little better.

N

 

Hi guys, I've done a completely clean, fresh install, and all I've managed to do is go from ~95 processes to ~80 with nothing else running... still an awful lot, seems like the apps/drivers are awfully bloated!

Yeah, I noticed that it helps too, it just looks so dull though! Can't find a happy medium, lol

 

Thanks a lot Bill, I'm impressed by DELL response.
I wish the engineers good luck with their work, and you with yours. I think the repositioning of the XPS brand upset a lot of people who is vocal on the forum.

Why can't DELL stick that 3 letters to the same kind of product for more than a generation?

The new XPS is striking: of the people who saw mine, one decided to increase her price target to get it, and another said that his next laptop will be a DELL. Cutting its rough edges is really worth for DELL.

I'm away on vacation at the moment, and I don't have the XPS15 with me. I'll cross-check your data with mine in the next few days.
It seems that your laptops its working like a charm, it almost justifies the hard threshold the system has at around 70°.
So, or my model has some defect, or we will exchange our test results after six month, when the summer will change emisphere.

 

I didn't experience anything like that, maybe some low resolution graphic elements are scaled to be not too small on the high resolution monitor?

If it is that, maybe I didn't care because I expected it. Using Firefox, I need to manually increase the magnification of web pages, so it is natural that "low" resolution images get "grainy". hi-res photos look great, almost too sharp.