XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

Any word from Bill or Dell on their plan for fixing the mutliple issues on the L521 and 421x?

 

Didnt bother to read back one page huh?

 

Guys, don't rely on Ubuntu for wifi testing in N mode, N mode is known to not be well handled yet in the Linux world. To me, yours tests results above 50 Mb/s are not relevant.

 

You could ask for a return, and set the pickup dat in 2 weeks from now. if its fixed whiting 2 weeks you can cancel the return, else they pick ik it up and you can buy it again after its fixed.

This is what I did.

I asked a other way but Dell resonded to me "we are customer care, we don't know anything about technical issues, we can only handle the retun for you "

 

Sounds like a great idea, thanks!
I think I'll keep the L521X anyway, but in the worse case scenario tomorrow I'll fill my return form just to gain a bit more time to take the right decision.

@Bill, is there any chance you could ask the Dell UK rep who will talk to Risco to drop me a PM, too, in regards to this Wifi issue?

 

I have decided to return my dell XPS15 ...the tech came out but was unable to do it as he did not have the right screwdriver to undo the torx screws.
Still this is my first laptop and it has not been pleasant ..I do not want to come onto forums like this looking for answers.
I paid all this money thinking i was buying a good quality product.
I have no intentions of being a beta tester for a company.
So hopefully Dell australia Tomorrow will accept my return and give me my money back.

 

Awesome tech. Came out without researching what they'd need to perform the repair.

I'm also considering returning mine and getting an alienware. I really prefer the looks of the XPS 15, but I'm also willing to give them a chance to fix the BIOS and WIFI. I received my computer on the 9th so I guess i have until the 30th to return/decide. (21 day window in US)

 

Can you guys try something, please? Go to Device Manager, open network adapters, properties for the Intel WLAN card, advanced tab, highlight "802.11N mode" and disable it? This is not a solution. I'm just curious.

Thinking: card is slow in Windows but not in Linux. One difference between Linux and Windows is N was disabled in romu's testing. Disable N in Windows and see what happens.

 

Bill, I did this last night when testing for you. It was slow as hell, even worse than N. I did also try moving further away from the router, but signal kept dropping out in both Linux and windows.

Also I got the pm you promised, thanks!

 

My tests are done with a Wireless N capable router, sitting 7 feet away, no barriers between (LOS).
With 802.11N mode enabled:

With 802.11N mode disabled:


This might just be the increased speed with N wireless.... but idk....

 

Bill, keep in mind my only available reference was a 2006 Macbook Pro. I'm not sure at all this mac can run in N mode.

 

Dallas BBQ is lame as lame can be for Texas. I grew up there, and I live in Austin now. So trust me on this. I can rattle off a bunch of places in Austin that are better than anything I know of in Dallas.
Franklin, Mueller downtown, Mueller in Taylor, Salt Lick, Iron Works, Kreutz, Smitty's (those 2 are in Lockhart, but not that bad of a drive), Rudy's is good and probably the lowest on this list but still better than most anything in Dallas. Just be prepared to get in line at no later than 10 AM for Franklin. They sell out by 2 every day. Same with Mueller downtown.

You live in Italy. I have no sympathy. BBQ and Mexican food is about all we have in Texas better than Italy. Everything else is hands down better there. So don't feel bad. You would be appalled at our pizza. lol

You can send a PM to Dell-LornaM. She doesn't work cases outside the US, but she can talk to the UK team and request the restocking fee be waived. No guarantees they will agree, but she has the proper contacts to ask, and she's happy to try for you.

It was just a thought, but if one or two more could try, I will stop thinking about it.

 

Tried it and no difference according to speedtest.net

 

I too was having troubles. I went out and bought a Netgear N600 this weekend to replace my Apple Airport Express (cringe, I know). 5Ghz is fine. No dropped pings, speed next to the router at full 300Mbps and copying from my laptop to my NAS I get 20MB/sec average down and 8-9MB/sec up. 20 feet away with a few walls in between, still no dropped pings, even while copying, and only lost aobut 20-25% throughput. 2.4GHz has issues. It doesn't want to connect at full 300Mbps even next to the router. It also drops pings and has higher than 1ms round trip times. The speed due the dropped packets are bad. Sub 1MB/sec down and 3-4MB/sec up. Moving away from the router just aggevates its. I think most users that are experiencing issues are on 2.4GHz and some have even commented that 5GHz fixes their issue. Long story short...5GHz works as expected, 2.4GHz is the problem child for me.

Can anyone else confirm the problem only lies with the 2.4GHz radio?

 

Hahaha... I'm sorry I went to the Dallas BBQ in Times Square. Its pretty decent for manhattan Now... Manhattan has you guys beat on just about every other type of food.

Ok. Something weird Bill... I'm throwing out my Linux theory, I'm sorry... now I'm getting the same speeds as my e6220 in windows. Both in the 14-15 down 12 up range.

New theory on the Wifi issues. Heat. I threw one worker prime 95 in place test while running furmark. Wifi speeds dropped to 3 down 5 up. As soon as I stopped furmark the speeds went up to 8 down 11 up. My linux theory may have worked because I wasn't stressing the system otherwise. Is the antenna somewhere heat would affect it?

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Also... I didn't get the new link for the bios.

 

Just gave the new BETA BIOS (A05) a quick spin (I noticed it was uploaded to Bill's Skydrive) and totally digging it.
GPU performance is a lot less eratic than with the previous test version. Also system kept performance up on both CPU and GPU during Civ5 session of half an hour and this even without frame limiter and focussing at around 80C CPU temp This was not the case previously.
It still throttles on GPU and CPU but within acceptable limits for this particular game. I'll run a 3Dmark 2011 right now and post my scores in a bit.

Very happy with these preliminary results.

Good job!!

 

I have the link to bills Skydrive, but which one is it?
QBL_A05_GPS80 or QLM_A05_GPS80

 

Flashed the new BIOS and ran 3DMark11. These are the results:

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3612QM Processor,Dell Inc. 0880F2 score: P1981 3DMarks

P1981, don't know how that compares to other systems but I'm sure you all do.

 

It is the QBL one.

 

Elands, that is the score I would expect to see for a 640m with GDDR5. It's good.

I pulled the trigger on one of these today but I'm a little worried about the wi-fi issue. How is the troubleshooting coming along?

 

Hi, just finished my 3DMark2011 basic run.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3612QM Processor,Dell Inc. 0880F2 score: P1995 3DMarks

P1995 3DMarks (did use the latest Nvidia drivers).

 

Aw Texas only has good BBQ and Mexican food? I heard Viet food is pretty good in Houston. Native New Yorker here going to Rice. So IDK anything about food yet.
bad pizza? Darn, where am I going to find a good New York Thin Crust when I crave it now...

Yeah Manhattan has pretty much the best food and tap water
Don't like the Times SQ Dallas BBQ, got deathly sick last time I ate their pulled pork sandwich

I don't think heat will affect it? Isn't the wifi antenna is near the hinge in the plastic away from the heat of the cpu and gpu.

 

@Bill - Any feedback from engineering with regards the wifi? I see you mentioned on my Youtube that you think a possible software fix. Is this based on the Linux testing or other information?

 

Nice to hear. Solid feedback like this means we'll see it officially posted sooner. Thank you.

The QBL one is the 15 and the QLM one is the 14. Be careful grabbing those files. We use a mysteriously random naming convention when that stuff is still in test. A fully qualified BIOS won't install on the wrong platform, but I've never tested an incorrect engineering version.

Houston will have good pizza and definitely good Viet. We have good pho here in Austin as well. Both towns have a pretty good sized Viet population, so you'll be ok. You'll just have to hunt around and do some trial and error for the pizza. If you ever do a roadie to Austin, hit me up. I might try to meet you for some good BBQ or something.

The antenna is in the plastic part of the hinge cover.

I have nothing from engineering on WiFi just yet, other than they have a tiger team devoted to fixing it. They are meeting daily, and when they have an update of any kind, I'll share. The software fix was just speculation based on the Linux testing more than anything. All I know is for sure is, generally speaking, if the antenna works well once, it's not the antenna's fault.

 

OT But man a Tiger Team sounds . Like Spec Ops engineering

 

Is there an ETA on the new bios yet? I'm not that bothered by the throttling as it stands (not much of a gamer), but hey, I do like updates

 

The hinge extends all the way to right where the CPU and GPU heat is.

I could see heat affecting an antenna very much. Doesn't an antenna depend on specific resistance in the wire as well as length/design? I'm not a RF engineer, but it makes sense to me since resistance changes with temperature? Again I'm just trying to theorize, since XPS matches my e6220 right after boot up, but can't match it after its gotten nice and hot. I thought linux was the answer, but in that scenario it was right after boot up, and I put no load on the machine.

 

then apple would be having the same issue with the MBP with retina because they also use the same design and the apples gets hotter with the gt650m + i7

 

Their antenna insulation may be better?

 

what insulation ??? look back in this thread @ the pics i posted of the MBP with retina display teardown or Google it you will see

 

Like I said, I'm just trying to come up with ideas. If the antenna design was crap completely it wouldn't work at all, no? Something has to be interfering with it / changing how it works since it works sometimes and not others. Whether its a software issue or hardware.

 

I am returning mine but yesterday i tried an experiment .
I bought a mini usb wifi and it installed and worked fine.
What happened next was suprising after i took it out and used it without the USB wifi I had excellent speeds after a couple of minutes the speeds dropped back down to the normal crappy speeds

 

That sounds like a software issue.

 

Unfortunately I'm running out of return policy time, so I may not be able to wait out a repair of the Wifi and throttling.

 

So here are two screenshots of running Furmark and Prime95 (SmallFFT) . This first one is from the A04 beta BIOS



Now you can see the temp of the GPU hovering around 70C or so.. The CPU would throttle up and down as well as well as the GPU but held on to the 1.2GHz for longer periods of time.

Here's the same test with the new A05 beta BIOS



You can see more peeks and valleys with the temp of the GPU while the throttling of the CPU still happened but seemed to spend more time near the 3GHz range.

As far as gaming goes, I tried Skyrim again with these settings



Still the same, walking around Marketh it would be around 30 or so FPS using FRAPS and then once I hear the system fan kick really high it drops down to 12-15 range and stays there for a while. Now granted, the settings are probably a little higher than what the system should be playing at anyways and I'm not one to game on my laptop.

Also with Diablo 3 I tested the area right before you go kill Azmodan. Walking around starting out it was doing around 33-40 FPS even with a bunch of those spider things walking around. After about 7 minutes it started to go down to about 15 FPS and then after about 1 minute or so it would jump back up to around the mid 30s again.



Again, might see some gain lowering the settings a bit. I'll have to play around with it but I'm guessing some of these should be turned down anyways for a portable.

Hope this information helps.

 

AnandTech review!

AnandTech - Dell XPS 15 L521X: A Detailed First Look

Edit: Just noticed its also posted in the other xps thread. sorry got too excited.

 

I tried out the new A05 beta bios last night and ran into some fairly serious GPU performance issues in every game I tried about 5-10 minutes in. 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark11 scores were where they should be but GPU clocks (and performance) fell continuously as I played Diablo 3, Sonic Generations and Starcraft 2 to the point where the discrete GPU was actually performing worse than the integrated video, at least in Starcraft 2 (I played the same single player mission for 15 minutes twice, once on discrete and once on the Intel chip with the same graphics settings).

What was strangest to me was that the GPU never really got very hot, I believe it said the max temperature was about 68, I've had (desktop) nvidia graphics chips running up to about 100C for short periods without any issues.

 

Nice! So we are on the same boat... I'm looking to replace my 9400 too

Coming from a 9400, would love to know how it feels, the transition form 9400 to L521x when you get it!

I'm not a RF engineer neither, but I've had a few courses on how antennas works, RF signals, signal encoding and stuff like that while getting my degree in computer engineering!

Personnaly, I highly doubt heat has anything do to with it... Maybe if the laptop did get up to 1000 degrees, maybe then, but at this level, I dont see how it could have an effect on the electromagnetic properties of the antenna.

It's most probably a software/driver/firmware problem with the card itself (unless it has been reported to work well on other computers).

Or, very unlikely but definitely more likely than heat, an interference caused by electrifying the aluminium case, turning it into an antenna itself (very unlikely) because of signal leakage from inside components running at high frequency. Or maybe (a little more likely) the "energized" case is messing with the antenna's polarization.

In any case, this is how I see it... As I said, I'm not an expert in this domain! Take it as a personnal opinion.

 

Yep, I agree; still don't understand how heat would affect the antenna.
Probably not the best source on this but given my basic engineering experience, I don't think the heat will affect the performance much unless it's extreme heat and 80 - 90 degrees isn't that much.

Well luckily the A05 is a beta, maybe we'll see an A06 firmware soon and that'll be the end of throttling.

 

I am seeing the same results when gaming with the latest A05 Beta Bios - GPU starts at 709mhz and quickly throttles to 135mhz under load within a few minutes and the GPU temp was around 72C.

The CPU did stay running at ~2.8ghz though and temps were 77-82C, but unfortunately my framerate was still pretty bad once the GPU throttled (effectively the same end result as when the CPU throttles with A04)

 

Dear Bill, why GPU throttles so much at only 72 degrees? Couldn't it continue to run at nominal clock (700 MHz?) until 90-100 °C? In the case you don't know (since you're not supposed to) could you please ask to the engineering team for us? Thank you

 

Guys, what drivers have you tried for nvidia? Wondering if it is nvidia rather than Dell throttling?

 

I am using the Dell drivers from the Dell website

 

Try the latest nvidia beta?

 

I was actually seeing less eratic throttling during half hour session in civ 5. It remained between 615mhz and 708 throughout the session. Temps also maxed at around 72c degrees.

 

Long time reader, first time poster. Purchased a L511Z originally through our Dell Enterprise (for business use) account which was not updated properly to reflect the release on the L521X. Of course when I saw the L521X (which was cheaper and obviously higher spec'd) I immediately returned the original purchase and swapped for this lovely looking machine. And then I found this forum and the troubles and woes... Still I am much happier with the design and function of this laptop.

I have the Core i5-3210M w/ 8GB RAM, GT 630M 1GB, A04 BIOS

@Bill and All -- A few things I've noticed that others may have missed:

#1) NEW ISSUE: In the BIOS boot options menu (press F12 at boot), I am presented with my choices to boot from. Issue is if there is a CD already in the CD drive it CANNOT be ejected at this menu. So the CD is stuck in the system until you can boot to something else. Basically the CD eject key is non-functional at the Boot Options screen. Can others test this as well? Same results? This is an obvious omission, the L511Z had no problem ejecting CDs at the boot menu options. @BILL - Can we include this fix in the next BIOS release PLEASE!

#2) Just an FYI: With the laptop facing you, ready for use, tip the laptop up to look underneath and look next to the front left dot (the small black rubber piece that protrudes slightly). Next to this there is a small button, when pressed illuminates a battery capacity meter. I have read several reviews of this model and seen no mention of this (and even saw one review chastizing for the removal of this from the L511Z model). Even more interesting I haven't seen this documented anywhere, even in the quick start guide or User Manual, maybe another omission on Dell's part?


Lastly, I placed my order for this laptop on 7/15 and was originally scheduled to ship out on 7/27 but it came by 7/19. Since we are under an Enterprise account I was thinking maybe Dell was holding our purchase until this issue was resolved but indeed it was sent anyway. I've done limited testing on the Wifi issue and do not believe it is affecting me, but I also haven't heavily stressed the laptop (i.e. to produce heat) and then test. Could it be possible this is only affecting i7 models? Connected to our corporate WLAN APs I pickup 30 mbps down and 30 up (of course my desktop picks up 430 mbps down and 50 up but thats the advantage of a 10 GB connection!).

 

I tested the included NVIDIA 296.01 driver and the Beta 304.79 driver as well as setting prefered GPU to "High-Performance NVIDIA processor" and set "prefer maximum performance" in the NVIDIA control panel.

 

Returning my L421X and going for the MBPR. Sorry guys.

 

I'm running 304.79 beta. With the A04 bios the GPU doesn't throttle at all, only the CPU so I don't think it's drivers.

 

Seems like a serious bug to me, to be throttling the GPU - both so severely, and so early (temperature-wise). Throttling down slightly when reaching ~90 degrees C - okay; but why would you do that at such low temps?