XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

My thoughts exactly. It brought back some old memories too when aerials and interferences were speculated about. How about a faraday cage with all this aluminum? Even though I liked the subject (RF, Antennas), thinking back to those Maxwell's equations, and how complicated electromagnetism was when I had those courses wanna make me cry too

Do the two laptops have the same Intel WiFi Card? If not, maybe try a swap, to isolate the issue, to see if the card is the issue ( and/or drivers), or caused by this laptop! (If you are willing to do so, of course )

 

Right. If I want to tinker, I should not buy this laptop. All those considerations sound good, but they should not be my considerations.

How about swapping the GPU? Why? Because.

 

Has anyone else experienced significant tearing while scrolling through websites? It's driving me up the wall and I've spent the afternoon messing around with graphics card settings trying to resolve it!

 

what browser are you using? That only happens to me in Firefox, not Chrome or IE

 

Have you tried going to Firefox options and turning smooth scrolling on or off

 

It was happening in all 3...

However, I decided to monkey around in the settings for Nvidia gfx as well as the Intel, I set 3D application settings to triple buffering and v-sync forced. Now all is fine. What the hell though, I didn't think that the 640M would kick in while browsing a webpage!?

Edit: this is bizarre... now the tearing is back!

What on earth is going on...

 

I'm not seeing any of that.. however, I'm almost always using a secondary monitor (Dell U2711 atm), which seems to be powered by the nvidia card. You have updated the nvidia drivers to the latest version?

 

Try update the hd4000 driver, the nvidea gpu shouldn´t be used to scroll on firefox
I believe there is an option to limit the frames on intel driver?

 

Firefox scrolling sucks, they buggered it up a few releases ago. What you need is smoothwheel, don't mess with the settings just install. This fixed it for me

mozdev.org - smoothwheel: installation

 

I've taken a quick video of it happening in Chrome too... here you go:

New Dell xps 15 screen tearing - YouTube

 

Torx 5 to get the bottom cover off and a #2 or possible #1 Phillips should do the rest.

I updated this post. The cards can only be sent to US and Canada customers at this time.

 

@Bill I just posted the first part of my review of the laptop. Would you care to comment, it should be up in about 1/2 hour or so as uploading currently! See my sig for the link

 

just an fyi to everyone, when i got my laptop i had a really severe saturation issue when playing videos (anything in windows media player and youtube when playing full screen videos) after two full days of searching and calibrating and drivers etc. i found the culprit, Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel. For "standard color correction" they put it to "driver settings," changed that to "application settings" and all of a sudden people in the videos look normal again. if anyone else had this problem, how to get there: Right-click desktop ->Screen Resolution ->Advanced Settings -> Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel ->Graphics Properties->Advanced or Basic Mode-> Media-> And it should be the top table on right. hope it helps

 

About to throw a 512gb SSD in -- I'm guessing I need to disable Intel RST before pulling the HDD to clear the mSATA cache?
Then it's a matter of turning RST off in the BIOS?

I also have 16gb of 1600mhz memory on its way -- it should be interesting to see how disassembly goes

 

Thanks for running the program again. Yeah it looks like ~10 dB difference in RSSI. That in itself wouldn't stop me from purchasing the XPS 15, but the throughput still concerns me.

 

Can someone PM me that is having the wifi issue as well? I'm not getting any answers from anyone beside Bill but want to see what users are thinking. Can we all start discussing the wifi issue?

 

Dude, you should pretend to be iFixit and take pictures of your dissassembly adventure. I know I'd appreciate it!

When I get down to FL and have time to tinker, I will start trying to isolate the issue myself, assuming that it's not the actual antenna design inhibiting the Rx throughput. I'll start posting stuff up on it then.

 

Picture with the back off, much better access than the L502X.

 

@Bill

Just received my Atheros Wifi card in the mail toady, haven't had the chance to test it out yet but the packaging says I must return either the old chip or the new one within 10 days. I assume this will mean I'll get charged for one if I don't correct? Just checking to make sure.

 

Please try it tonight!

On a sidenote, I just swapped out the card for my 6230 from my L502X and it produced the same results, slow speeds.

 

My project looks to be pretty straightforward -- just a lot of steps and to get to the primary memory bay. My biggest challenge is working with PCs has been dealing with the tiny screws. A little nervous about the mSATA cache -- I suppose worst case scenario, I brick it and have to call customer support for help.

Will be a nice project for next weekend

 

Chris, which 512GB SSD did you get? I would appreciate if you can take pics while you dismanlte as I am getting one as well.

 

So the problem is probably the antenna and the aluminium cover. I do not know how Dell could fix that without re-designing the whole laptop... :/
I hope we will not have a silly patch like an external antenna. :|

 

Something like this may be needed:

 

Ugh, I really hope this isn't a Faraday Cage issue...but more and more it looks that way.

 

Sad to hear

1. Is it the same wifi card model in the two laptops?

2. Did you try the card from the L521x into the L502x? How was it?

 

reurt

I hope not .
If that is the case i will take Bills word for it and return the laptop ...
That offer still stands dosen't Bill.
I looked and we only have a 15day return policy in Australia.

 

It seems that L521x has only 2 aerials available, so inserting 6300 has no sense. Damn

 

I would also return the laptop... :/
My XPS 15 should arrive within 10 days, and I think we have 7 days in France to return a product. So I hope we will have a clear answer from Dell before.

 

I really hope not... And I don't see how Dell could have missed that... I mean, if it's a Faraday Cage, they should have noticed that systematically on all their tests, if they did any!

What I'm betting on currently, as repoted by someone else, is a grounding problem with the laptop's aluminium case itself... I don't remember who, but he said that some electrical contact was being made between the AC plug and the case... And when he unplugged AC (on battery), is WiFi was working perfectly...

I'm guessing, somewhere inside the laptop, a contact is being made between the case and the components, causing current leakage electrifying the case, and thus, preventing signals from going through as a Faraday cage. If a computer had been built "top notch", the problem might not show up, but on some model, something could be touching and causing the problem...

And that guy who was running OK on battery, might have been lucky that this "electrical contact" was being made at the AC plug in his particular case, to notice this effect!

 

I remember the post about plugged in versus battery power, but I missed the conjecture that it was a grounding relating cause.

I would very much buy this. It will be next wednesday before I get my hands on the my sister's L521X--do we have any electrical engineers on here that could voltage probe the chassis and lid with reference to the MoBo signal reference ground?

 

I'm honestly about to throw in the towel with Dell. I've been dealing with rude customer service reps all day not helping me at all. And on top of that, dell sent me a replacement for my xps and that one doesn't even have a working track pad. So let's see here

1. My $1,100 laptop doesn't work on wifi.
2. My replacement has a broken track pad
3. The customer service (besides bill) has SUCKED.
4. I love the laptop yet I can't even barely use it and have to just sit on my butt waiting for an answer from dell to fix the problem.

Fellas I'm not sure what to do here. But I can tell you that I am really in dire need of some detailed info from Bill on what they are planning on doing regarding the wifi fix. My apologies if bill has stated what their solution is already but if he has then I have not seen it and if someone can copy and paste it to me that'd be great.

SOS BILL


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Since many mobile devices jumped onto the "aluminium uni-body" bandwagon there are always issues with Wi-Fi. Remember iPhone, Asus Transformer, Transformer Prime and many others? Wi-Fi just hates being in one-part alu-body. I think it's construction issue. Software solution - fake signal strength indicator. Hardware solution - 3rd wifi card aerial or maybe some body re-design. Hard to say since I'm not a technician. But if there is a "wall" blocking the signal then you wont eliminate this "wall" by making it invisible (by which I mean any software solution).

 

I really don;t know if my internet is just poor or if I have the wireless issue, My laptop get's maximum 6mbps on speed test, but my parents Toshiba hasn't gone over that (I live in rural england in a non cabled area, 6mbps is a good result for my area). Both laptops pick up the same networks, and the areas where I get drop outs are the same with my phone. Either I am lucky in that I have no issue or I am lucky that my internet is so bad the issue doesn't make a difference

 

How far from your wifi server are you ?
Which model of the XPS 15 do you have ?

 

I also havent received any confirmation that Lorna got my PM with my info for the Atheros card.


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server as in the testing area? That's in Leeds, closest city to me. XpS 15 with 1tb HDD, no MSATA, i7 and the 640m.

 

I'VE HIT A BREAK THROUGH. This may have been stated before. But if not, here it is.

I unplugged my xps 14 from the charger and my mbps jumped from 0.45mbps to 11mbps. Seems like the contact of the metal end on the AC charger interferes with the signal...

 

yes someone mentioned similar experience before. Maybe the fact that in new xps 15 battery is hidden under the cover instead of being locked from outside the cover has anything to do with that?

 

I don't know but what worries me is how to fix this? It seems to be there is no way to fix it besides just re-engineering the whole laptop


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I am having issues with my downstream whether or not I am on battery, so either my xps has worse issues than the rest of yours, or this is not the whole truth.

Skickat från min HTC One X via Tapatalk 2

 

I am personally waiting for Elands to test the Atheros card he has received in the post today.

 

Me too


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New driver here

intel drivers pour chipsets Reseaux (Lan) & Wifi (Wireless)

15.2, does not seem to make any difference.

 

What annoys me the most is the fact this is my first laptop and i really could not decide what laptop to buy.
I looked at so many brands and then settled on this one.
I though buying a premuim Laptop like this I could not go wrong.
But here I am on a forum complaing about it and trying to get it fixed.
What makes it even worse is Dell Australia basically told me that this is the way it works so put up with it.
What a bitter disapointment this is.
What a waste of $2000 australian dollars

 

Looks like another couple of points for the "Grounding Issue" camp.

If no one else does this before next week, I will be probing the crap out of this laptop to look into GND issues.

Also, my atheros card is on its way. I don't have high hopes, but I may as well try it.

 

Looks like I spoke too soon. My laptop only worked well because I was within 10-15 feet of the router. Ugh.


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Crucial M4. I think I can take pics...will likely be next weekend before I catch a spare breath to do it.

 

OK I got the card. Doing a baseline test right now with whats included..
Router is in the middle of my house. It's an ASUS router running DD-WRT

Next to the router i get 30mbps down and 3 up
Same floor, corner of my house, about 3 walls between me and the router.. Maybe 50-60 feet away
I get 15.6mbps down and 3 up
Upstairs in my bedroom in the other corner of the house, few walls and a floor between me and the router
I get 13mbps down and 3 up.

Time to switch cards.

 

Great, I guess I will stay up for a little while even though it is nearly 1:30am in the UK!