XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

Works for me but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do

 

Hi,

I purchased a new Dell XPS 15 L521X and received it in the mail Friday before last.

One of the first things I noticed was that the trackpad made a clunk sound upon being touched even gently as you move the mouse cursor. You touch the pad it makes a clunk and moves slightly - press harder and it depresses further and clicks as expected. This stopped happening after a few hours use - the track pad was solid and silent unless pressed hard to click - but then started wobbling again.

I called Dell and convinced them to send a tech to replace parts - it took them a week to get the parts in and he came today and replaced the entire palm rest/ keyboard / touchpad assembly. The replacement touchpad exhibits the same behaviour - and the laptop now fails the Dell diagnostics with some sort of video card error so he is coming back to replace the motherboard next

It's kind of hard to explain the touchpad issue so I made a video and posted to YouTube:

Dell XPS 15 L521x touchpad issue - or is this normal for this laptop? - YouTube

Is this normal for this trackpad? If so I am surprised no one else mentions this shoddiness.

PS. Having read most of the 161 pages on this thread I realised that this laptop also has the crappy WiFi reception problem. Having read my Dell Canada terms and conditions it appears I can get a refund within 30 days but will have to pay shipping and up to 15% restocking fee - not happy.

Thanks for any info about how your XPS 15 L521X touchpads feel/sound/work.

Dave

 

You can contact (PM) one of the Dell "social media" persons to arrange for a return without restocking fee. Somewhere in this long thread, Dell_Bill gave the details on doing that. If you care about your money, read back carefully.

 

That's weird... I just tried that link again and it didn't work... I did, however, find the file in their FTP directories, and it works for me.... Here is the link for all of the owners: ftp://ftp.dell.com/FOLDER00719182M/1/L521XA06W.exe

Please post back your results here... Hopefully the issues are resolved!

 

DELL BIOS A06 (NOW WORKING) - Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

Also, after I re-ran my WEI I finally seen the Processor at 7.5 and my Video Cards are both 7.1 now... very nice!

 

-.- ... That link still doesn't work for me.... What the ....

 

The FTP link works for me

 

Yeah, finally a link that works! Thanks!

 

Still 7.0 WEI on video side (after applied A06), you might have Windows 7 Ultimate, I have Pro.

 

i have home premium and my video went up to 7.1

 

I noticed that all XPS 15 L521x come packed with Home premium by default, I do not know why they gave me Pro, never asked. Maybe as XPS 16 replacement on which I had Win 7 Pro!

Edit.
....Will you check for me if the Optical drive is activated/moves when attach an USB 2 external Hdd. I updated the chipset drivers and was OK, now is back . does not bother me , but I want to know if others encounter the same thing.

 

7.0 or 7.1 does not mean anything... I ran the WEI test 3 times in a row, and I obtained 7.0 twice and 7.1 once... (I did not touch the BIOS yet, I still have the A04).

So ? Does the A06 solve the throttling problem ? And does the temperature reach unreasonable limits under stress ?

 

Guiux: In theory yes, A06 tunes out the throttling problem. In reality, someone else will have to test today as I didn't have time before work to do so.

Dell_Bill: Thanks from another end user - for all your involvement and time and sharing of information. It's so very frustrating when it's an opaque "box" going on with no updates at all, for me, and you've kept that completely at bay.

Now, to wait and see what the Wifi solution is. I don't run into the limitation much as my home wifi is only 3Mbps to begin with, but at a couple faster locations around town it sure is frustrating.

Cheers.

 

to let you know the dvd rom is still accessed under A06 when you connect USB etc

 

So running the A06 BIOS.. I saw that in Furmark running with Prime95 it stayed in the 80C range and didn't do the crazy dips in temp/throttle that it did with A05... The CPU still seemed to be stuck at 1.2GHz but I never put too much weight into benches with non-real world apps (coming from being a reviewer and doing this many times)

Anyways, I only had time today to test Skyrim and with the same settings as the A05 BIOS. On A05 it would start out around in the 30s FPS using FRAPS and a few minutes after I started to walk around it would just hit 12-15 and stay there making it very jerky to play.

With A06, the frame rates seem to hover more around the mid 20s and mid 30s. It did dip into the 15s every once in a while, but it would jump back to the 20s and 30s relatively quickly and it was a lot more playable than before. I played for about 15 minutes and it was a lot better experience than the A05 BIOS at the same amount of time.

But that's my quick take on the A06 BIOS. As far as a quick real world game in Skyrim..

-EDIT- Just did a quick gold run in Diablo 3 going through the Core of Arreat.. The game stayed in the upper 30s to low 40s in FPS even with a bunch of Stygian Crawlers around me.. Curiously, the FPS lowered to the high 20s and low 30s just walking around Bastion's Keep and selling my stuff.. But in the Core of Arreat it was all well and good. I teleported back and forth between the two and it was the same in FPS experiences.. lower in town, higher in dungeons.

 

Hi Bill!

Thanks for the fast answers and the support. I got my system l521x today and I like it but as mentioned so many times the wifi connection is just horrible. when I just go like 8 meteres away from the router the WIFI signal is really low and always disconnects. I live in Europe and dont know what to do now because I m going to make an exchange semester in Island, Europe and I guess I need a good WIFI. Is it possible to get Dell support in a different country? Island isnt part of the EU yet but maybe soon. What would you do?

Thanks again for any answer.

 

I don't know particulars of the game, but as a 10+ year veteran game developer (with small to AAA titles shipped under my belt) I can actually tell you that this makes sense.

Interior environments tend to be a LOT simpler to manage in the game (AI, physics modelling, sound propagation modelling, rendering) than exterior environments. The exterior spaces tend to have such a larger field of view that so much more must be managed.

Depending upon the game particulars and how well the level-of-detail is managed the externals can cause extreme workloads on the data management, cpu load, and rendering.

 

Weird...
I still have the A04 BIOS, and already played Skyrim during hours without a single lag !

And I am playing at 1920x1080 with "ultra" settings (I just set the Anisotropic Filtering at 8x instead of 16x to make it perfectly fluent...).

 

Does anyone know if the A6 bios is for all versions? (Which I assume it is) and if it helps core i5 versions?

 

It's for all versions.

 

Yeah but this is in Diablo 3 where there are really no AI in town.. just static folks.. Whereas in the dungeon, there's a lot more happening in the background and you get large group of enemies coming at you with various AI calculations plus all the effects from the spells and monster attacks so I would assume it would be lower FPS in the dungeons and higher FPS in the towns. The towns in D3 are a lot less intensive it seems than the dungeons and the layout of a town and dungeon are pretty much the same and in terms of FOV it's all an isometric view so the camera angle is not dynamic.

What titles did you work on? Let me know in PM.. I might have reviewed some

 

I made some tests with the new BIOS (A06)... these are my first impressions. Keep in mind my ambient temperature is high (a bit over 30 °C).

The new bios removes the CPU throttling that was activated when the GPU reached 71 °C, and set a GPU throttling threshold when the GPU reaches 80 °C. Now it's possible to use the full potential of the CPU while using programs that turn-on the GPU like Photoshop or Premiere or by using an external monitor. I made a long video export using Premiere and the CPU worked at maximum boost frequency and 100% load most of the time.

Also there should not be risk of shut-down or overheating that could have been experienced with the A04 bios. (To DELL: With bios a04 and starcraft II, after 15 min of playing my system was near the shut-down threshold, at 99 °C for the CPU and 95 °C for the GPU, even with the CPU clamped at 1.2 ghz!)

I made a stress test using furmwak+prime, and the system stabilized at around 95 °C (CPU) and 80 °C (GPU). Using furmark alone the GPU could keep around 600 Mhz with my high ambient temperature (a bit over 30 °C)

Also the top and the bottom is cooler while the system is on load.

Sadly while gaming the heat from the CPU can push the GPU at 80 °C more easily, and the GPU can throttle to 135Mhz for short periods of time. CPU and GPU don't play nice together, each one try to claim the maximum thermal budget using their "boost" technology even at cost of starving the other. I have a better gaming experience if I limit the maximum CPU frequency using a custom profile of windows power setting.

Overall, my first impression is that the laptop works as it should and it is more comfortable to use. The thermal balance between CPU and GPU is still not perfect and gamers will prefer to fine-tune it by limiting the maximum CPU frequency while gaming.

I cannot assert the impact of the 80 °C GPU threshold on gaming performance compared to XPS15 competitors, for that we have to wait for Anandtech.

 

Thanks. I'm primarily tracking the WiFi issue - which I am experiencing - but I will install this as well.

 

Probobly doesn't need to be said, but make sure you're running off AC power when downloading the bios update. This will save you an extra download attempt as the launcher doesn't give you a chance to plug it in.

I'm getting a 7.1 processor score after the bios update, which is good and consistent with what others have (I have the i5 chip). My HDD is only at 5.9, which surprises me considering the setup (750 Gb 7.5k rpm + 32 mSata). I suppose you have to have Raid 0 or a SSD config. to get the higher scores though. The optical drive does activate at the wierdest times though. Not a major issue by any means, but hopefully a fix down the line.

Now, if we can just get that wi-fi fix...

 

Good to know it helps. This is my son's machine and I am sending him off to college with it. getting that wifi fix would be great!

 

It's a pretty good school computer. I'm thinking about getting one for college too. But I need that wifi to work
Do you mind me asking what config you got and the price?

 

Encouraging news! Do you mean setting CPU performance at 99% to prevent turbo boost while gaming?

 

I hope that works, I would find that a passable solution.

 

I got him the Core i5-3210M processor GT 630M with 1GB GDDR5 500GB 7200 HDD with 32GB mSATA I also got the 3 year accidental damage service for $1,535 and I got the $200 gift certificate which I fought to make generic i.e. not from the overpriced dell university accessories site. That got him everything else he needed, backup drive kensington, etc. etc.

now just need working wireless.

 

Yes, I am running Windows 7 Ultimate x64...

 

Windows Ultimate and Ultimate Laptop, complete package!

 

I have been following this for a week now and just wanted to chime in that I am having wireless issues as well. I was going to call tech support but I would much rather just follow Dell_Bill on here.

I found this thread a day after I ordered the unit so I figured I would try it out for myself and see what happens. Of course my situation is no different than anyone else on here. I can get roughly 30 feet away with a clear line of sight to the router and the throughput falls right off. I have a Netgear Dual Band N router (N900), and tried with both frequencies with similar results. I can say that the 5.0GHz range worked much better with various materials were between myself and the router.

I was thinking of returning the unit, but with the release of the A06 BIOS and seemingly positive reports with regards to throttling, I would be willing to hang on to it for a while. I trust that Dell would take care of the wireless issue, and would hate to have to return it and then buy it again once it is fixed.

Does anyone have any experience with the micro/pico wireless adapters? I see a ton of mixed reviews and cannot get a good feel for how well they work. I usually need a range of ~100'.

 

I've been following this thread as well but haven't had any wifi issues. Does this mean that only certain batch is affected by this? If this is an engineering issue shouldn't I have the same problems too? The only thing I did to my l521x is get rid of the 1tb hdd and replace it with the m4 500 ssd and reinstall the os.

 

I just received this computer as a replacement for my Studio XPS 16. I have updated all drivers and the BIOS. I absolutely love this computer, but like everyone else want my WIFI fixed.

From what I have read most people are having consistently slow download speeds. I am experiencing slow download speeds but they are inconsistent. We dont have the best internet where I live but the speeds will vary from 3Mb/s to .2MBS, sometimes as low as a steady 20-60 KB/s. But it always starts high and works it way down to the low speeds. It was also download multiple files at the same slow speed. If I am downloading 6 files I expect them each to download slow down. Yet rather I am downloading 6 files are one they each only download at an average of 20-60kb/s.

 

Hi, I'm new to the forums, but this thread made me want to join in. I plan on ordering the Dell XPS 15 with the Intel Core-i7, 750GB HDD, etc for college on Thursday, but the laptops wifi connectivity (or lack thereof) is making me a little bit anxious. Is there anyone who doesn't have this issue? I also thought it worth mentioning that I went on Dell and couldn't find the A06 BIOS listed under drivers for the system...

 

I have had my XPS 15 for a week and a half now. I love it. Unfortunately I am also one of the many that has the wifi issue. I bought the laptop to use for MBA school which starts next week but it will be almost useless at school without a wifi connection.

I tried my luck with tech support and explained the issue to several different agents. All of them wanted me to do the same things others have tried---new card, new drivers, etc.

They ended up sending me a new card to swap with the factory installed one even though I told them I didn't think it would make a difference.

After Bill explained that a fix was in the works, I told Dell tech support that I would wait for the fix, but that I was quite unhappy about the situation--especially since I had to point them to this forum to find out what their own company was doing about the problem.

Anyway, after I emailed the manager I have been dealing with and told him that I would wait for a fix and come up with a temporary solution--I got a phone call from Dell saying they want to replace the whole laptop with a new one. Even then, I explained that my concern was that the replacement would have the same wifi issue as the first. Despite this, they are still replacing the laptop and assured me the new laptop would not have any issues with it just like they assured me that the new wifi card would fix the wifi issue. I made sure that this exchange would not be a refurbished unit, since I just barely bought the new one. They told me it would be a new unit.

I am satisfied with their level of support at this point despite the breakdown in communication and I am hoping that the new replacement does not have the wifi issue. However, it still amazes me that Dell is willing to do this even after I explained that I am willing to wait for a fix. What I really don't understand is why no agent that I have spoken with or chatted with over at Dell was even aware of the wifi issue. They also didn't know a whole lot about what to do about the issue. This tells me there is a real lack of communication and proper training going on over there.

Just thought I would share my experience. I'll let you know if the replacement still has wifi issues. The interesting and silly thing is that the exchange takes up to 10 business days, yet I could get on dell.com and purchase the same unit and have it shipped tomorrow. This is nonsense and sadly a growing trend where companies treat new customers better than long-time/existing customers just to get more money in the door faster. However, I shouldn't complain too much since they are sending me a whole new laptop, which I am happy about as long as the new one actually works.

 

What BIOS do you have? A06?

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Sadly this is all too common in big companies.

The "social" channel we have into Dell (Bill) is actually far more efficient than the regular business communication channels. Currently they are still in investigation mode on this issue, and a few years ago there wouldn't have even been any acknowledgement at all until it had been investigated, resolved and a fix deployed (probably many months).

In other words, we are privy to internal activity that hasn't been formulated into Dell's processes yet.

I'm not defending it at all, but the Dell support department is setup to follow precisely preconfigured diagnosis steps, not surf forums full of speculation and "work things out".

On the other hand, these strict processes *should* have stopped this problem even making it into production. That's a pretty major screwup.

 

WEI measures hardware, not software/opsys.

 

This is part of the problem I think: people thinking these numbers are good. I'm willing to bet the Wi-Fi problem is more widespread than Dell realizes simply due to consumer complacency. Interesting though that your Wi-Fi dongle got worse signal. I wonder if that's an additional symptom or just a coincidence. Anyone else try the dongle approach?

 

Yes? I did not about that! Thank u for letting me know.
So, I did not know that the NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M
graphics card is software, I thought that is hardware!
Maybe Adobe Photoshop is hardware.

Is both of them....a ferary if has not a good driver could be slower than a Mini Cooper ....the same with the GT 640M, if it has not a good driver (software), the WEI could be lower, as far as I see.
...software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device.

 

Not so silly really, it's not all about hardware availability - it's also about personnel availability to come out to you. These days all companies SHOULD be running as lean as possible in order to stay profitable, this means service people are not as numerous. I'd expect that is the biggest driver on the 10d delay.

It is also probably a bit slower to get hardware to the service people, as it's not the "fast path" for moving hardware out of the company for a profit.

pessimist note: every hardware swap and service call reduces the profit made from the sale, so I'd also expect companies like dell to NOT want to do that more than absolutely necessary.

 

I was surprised at the performance boost the A06 BIOS gave me. My WEI processor and graphics scores moved from 7.1 to 7.5 and 7.3 and 3DMark moved up to 2095. The fan runs a bit more often (not necessarily at its highest speed though).

5 weeks into my system, I'm quite happy Yes, the Wi-Fi could be better, but the issue hasn't gotten in the way of anything I've needed to do yet.

 

Well, the A06 bios helped greatly for me; I'd consider it a major improvement. The fans will kick in with a bit more force right away to prevent problems; as a result, while encoding a video (with Handbrake), the CPU now stays around 70 degrees C. With A04, it would quickly go to 80, throttle, stay throttled until temp reaches 60, go to 80 again, and so on.

The only downside now is that for games that are properly multithreaded (I've only tried Max Payne 3), it will now start throttling the GPU after a while. Which is actually worse for performance in this case...

The Wifi does trouble though. At home, I'm now usually using a cable. The router is downstairs, I'm two floors up, and the just won't even make a connection (or even see the network most of the time). Even my smartphone has much better reception!

 

I guess you missed the part where I said they are replacing the entire laptop, which means all they need to do is slap a shipping label on one of their ready to ship units in Tennessee. There are no service people involved at all. All they are doing is shipping me a new unit and having me return the one I have.

I understand a company needing to run lean, but to neglect current customers just to get more new ones is a poor business model. And, your argument doesn't really make sense in this case since this is not a personnel issue, it is simply their policy to take 10 days for an exchange, even though I could get on the website and have the same exact unit shipped to me next business day. They have them in stock, so it's not a stock issue. There is no tech or service personnel needed, so that isn't the issue either. Dell would just rather put it off for 10 days and handle new customer shipments rather than deal with the problem right now.

 

That's unfortunate that you're having trouble, Dell agreed to exchange my system last Thursday (Dead pixels and some touchpad stickyness), shipped it out on Friday and it arrived yesterday. Dell is shipping these units directly from China because they don't have any local stock so it's not going to be a next day thing.

We'll see how happy I am tonight when I actually get some time to look at the replacement system. I'm going to be furious if they have shipped me the wrong unit or it has dead pixels on the screen.

 

I have to agree with everyone above A06 seems to have fixed the throttling issues. I played Civ V for a few hours last night and the performance enhancement was definitely noticeable. It use to take anywhere from 20-45 seconds for all the AI's to take their turns where as now its about 10-20 seconds. To be absolutely sure I ran HWiNFO and monitored the clock speeds throughout the game and they stayed steady at 2.8GHz where as before it would drop off to 1.2 after about 10 minutes. As for temperatures I didn't really notice a difference I'm still getting mid 70's to mid 80's after several hours of gaming.

As for the WEI my processor did go from 7.4 to 7.5 but I'm pretty sure that is just normal fluctuations in the test. The only thing is that the 2 graphics scores are stead at 6.7 when they were 7.0 the first time I ran the test.

 

today i called the tech support in germany and they didnt know anything about the wifi issue and he told me that he will call me later. Later he called me and confirmed the problem and also said that he would return the unit because no wifi card replacement helped and it really seems to be a hardware issue. he said it could last months until a fix is available and i should not expect a fix in the next few weeks. For me this is a no go and Ill send the unit back. I could somehow deal with problems like the bad display (as I read the entries about the display I thought they overreact but mine has some very fine vertical lines too and they are really noticeable and somehow annoying but it was ok) and the throttling but bad wifi .... it's really annoying because the notebook feels and looks fantastic ... it's a shame ...sry

 

Dont jib, ok? And yes, software (hardware drivers) are imporant. But you did write previously only about opsys (Pro versus Ultimate). And Win7 versions arent important there (WEI index!), if we are speaking about win7 and Premium vs Pro vs Ultimate versions. They all have the same speed, only difference is in features. And WEI doesnt measure features...

 

I received my XPS 15 (i7) a few weeks ago and after discovering the throttling issues and Wireless problems I went looking for an answer and found this forum. This is my first post but I've been following along more or less closely since the page count was in the 40's. It seems from what people are now posting that there's a fix available for the throttling problem but I must have missed the post (if there was one) where the link to download it was posted. I'd really appreciate a re-post of the link or someone pointing me in the direction of where to find it. Thanks