XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

Just noticed that after the awful A09 bios update my system doesn't recognize the GeForce videocard!!! What do I do now??/

 

Call Dell.

They have to replace the mainboard, if they don't have a fixed bios to repair it.

 

why are there soooooooooo many issues with this laptop...brain gonna explode...its like getting in a relationship with a super hot girl at first your like YES SCORE!!!! but then you soon realize she has no personality, is selfish and complains about everything...

 

Could it be that there is a setting in the bios that needs to disable the HD4000 in order to recognize the secondary card ?
I am just saying since I don't own the laptop but this is a common issue

 

Do you think that it's possible to be fixed by a bios update?

 

EZervoud: there is way to disable the hd4000, in fact the system would not work at all without it as the GeForce uses it for final display.

Bios update mayfix the situation too.


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

Hi all
I have bought the L521X - my version is running 32gb SSD mSATA alongside a standard 750GB HDD. I understand that the SSD is used for caching though I want to install Windows 7 on it - I'd like to treat it as a separate partition and then have all other data running on the 750HDD. I looked through previous posts and in principle it looks like it could be possible though I'm struggling to determine for sure whether I can do this without screwing things up..
Has anyone achieved this particular setup? Apologies if I'm running over old ground here..

 

I don't recommend installing Windows on a drive that's less than 60GB and if you're not a real techie, who is comfortable using junction points, 128GB is better. 128GB mSATA ssds are under $150 these days...

 

i think the A09 issues are with Windows 7....i have WIndows 8 and i can see the GT640 but then again i also reinstalled the entire OS as UEFI after changing to UEFI and putting the mode to Windows 8 in the bios...

 

My win7 works fine with a09, GeForce and all, no clue why but am not complaining. I am okay being the minority so long as mine works - sorry.

I have the stock i7 / M640 / 32msata / 750hdd, but I added ram so it has 16gb - and I thus had to reset the masts use with iRST. No clue if that matters or not.


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

I was starting to wonder if ANYONE had a system that worked properly. WiFi has no problems?

Dell is replacing my wireless card, palm rest assembly and hard drive (shipped with wrong one). Guess we will roll the dice.

 

My wifi isn't perfect - distance falloff is faster with internal vs USB (net gear wnda3100v2 n600), but within 10-15' of y wap I get 100 Mbps u&d on both. Since that covers 98% of my use I am fine.

Dunno if it would be same if I had to use it professionally in lots of places. But then if I had that issue I would have gotten a Lattitude and not an XPS.

The 15.3 intel wifi driver cleaned up a few things for me (like I have the same u&d rates whereas before up was 2x down reliably). There may be more tuning possibilities with software but I doubt there will be a world of change from that.

I believe the XPS wifi suffers from some casing-caused isolation and some interference from other components (CPU, GPU, etc) which would require notable hardware tweaks to address.



Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

Hi, first time poster here.

I am noticing throttling issues WITH THE i5+630M VERSION AS WELL. When I play GTAIV on medium settings its starts off really well at around 80fps and then just drops in a few minutes. I'm downloading A09 as we speak to see if it helps.

I have had no real wifi problems and screen issues luckily. Both work great.

 

Counterpoint to many, I'm now "thrilled" with this computer - wireless is 15mb/s download and 5mb/s upload and computer-to-computer is ~110mb/s which closely matches my desktop performance from Verizon. The antenna also closely matches my 2011 XPS17 in terms of seeing neighbor networks near-and-far so no issues I can identify. I use it for Office and graphics work in CS6 and the screen is great albeit a little too reflective in some settings. The computer is 3 weeks old.

Some notes I hope help:

1. Added my own Crucial M4 256gb mSata drive and did a ground-up re-install with all programs on that. I followed instructions on the bottom of page 122 on this thread for installation. Then focused on updating Intel wireless and Realtek wired drivers. PCMark score is 4375 and Windows Experience (in order top to bottom) is 7.5, 7.8, 6.7, 6.7, 7.9. Obviously the graphics card is the limitation and the NVidia driver is 306.23.
2. For the N-6235, I'm running Intel 15.3.0.16 drivers dated 8/22/2012. I spoke to excellent Dell service tech who suggested I turn-off N-band. A known deficiency is that this card is B/G or N (rather than B/G/N). So, for stability, he recommended this option. I'm getting full Internet speed so I've take his suggestion.
3. AO9 bios is running well. Battery life is fine. My mistake was not to measure before updating so I can't comment on that.
4. Next up is plan to switch to 16gb of Corsair Vengence RAM (I run Adobe CS6 so need all of the fast RAM I can get). At this point, I see no reason to switch out the hard drive for a 512gb SSD although I know that would extend battery life even further. If I'm going to be working extensively on battery, I transfer a folder to the mSata and keep all work on it so the HDD doesn't spin up.
5. The "small" trackpad buttons have taken getting used to since I have long fingers and coming from an XPS17 but that is minor quibble. I also miss the matte screen for working outdoors but I knew that going in and this works well for my extensive photo-editing and occassional work in Adobe Premiere.

Hope this helps - I know there's been a lot of complaints but "knock on wood" I'm couldn't be happier and can whole heartedly recommend this system - especially with an updated large mSata drive.

 

I could not find any image of visible screen grid in any of the threads, so posting a link to a picture. You will find two screens side by side:
FullHD of L521x vs 1680x1050 of E1505. If I keep distance of less than 10" I can see the grid but then, I'm not used to having the screen so close.
L521x_vs_e1505
I used to see the grid more often when I started using the laptop, so I guess it's a matter of getting used to it.

Regarding other issues:
1. Wifi is pretty short range and not usable in places further from hotspot (worst reception of all devices, including phones), although stable after I uninstalled Mcafee and disabled sleep function on wifi adapter. By the way, my old E1505 would have very unstable connection if I left Bluetooth on. Anyway, I have BT disabled on L521x as well just because I don't use it (saving battery).
2. Touchpad itself is a bit loose and seems to move a bit sometimes when I click - not an issue for me. I am planning to look at it as soon as I have any need to open laptop (upgrading RAM, SSD).
3. Battery usage seems to be getting worse with every firmware update, so not planning to go up from A06, considering rollback to A04 since I don't see any improvements.
4. The annoying sound of DVDROM with each startup/wake up and on some other mysterious occasions. Did not find any firmware updates for DVDROM on DELL or Panasonic site for device ... uj8a7 - wondering if it's a DVDROM or laptop firmware issue.
5. Very long time for wifi to get connected after wake up from sleep. Not fixed with DELL or Intel wifi driver update yet. Seems to be longer than having full Win7 start.

P.S. really guys, you think, that I need to write DVD brand with a typo "matshyta" so that you can read the name and not "mata" with letters missing after posting. Not funny.

 

I am running Bios A04 (came with laptop) upgraded to Intel WIFI 15.2 on the intel site, not the 15.3 on Dell. My reception is the same from 6 to 25 feet based on speedtest, no more disconnects since I removed the Macafee evil software and installed Norton.

I have no grid issues (Old eyes) with the display.

The DVD drive ejects or whatever at times when I boot, or insert a USB flash drive. This machine is not perfect but it's fast (i7) and solid.

The only item to fix at this time is my dvd drive random noise.

 

I tend to agree with you peakjunkie, I'm pretty impressed with the XPS 15.

Granted I'm still on A04, but I haven't experienced any thermal throttling after some pretty heavy gaming, including Borderlands 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution on pretty high/max settings (I'm yet to specifically tested the unit with a monitoring application, which I will get around to over the next couple of days).

I haven't had the wireless issues and my wireless router is at the other end of the house through a few walls.

I don't seem to have the grid screen issue, or at least if its there it is hardly worth complaining about; it's a brilliant screen.

Also, if you revert your GT640M drivers to the latest ones available on the Dell website, you should see an improvement in your Windows Experience score to 7, though I'm not sure what this does to actual working performance.

 

I'm looking for the Windows reinstal instructions. Something I've done many times, but not with the mSATA and rapid start tech. I only see 76 pages though so I can't find page 122. Even though I'm waiting for a new hard drive I went ahead with the reinstall to troubleshoot problems. Well, I screwed up something because Windows won't load.

 

Here you go sir

 

Ah yes, I should have been more specific. Not talking about a physical reinstall.

My L521x came with the 32GB mSATA and the 750GB main drive. I'm switching out the main drive with an SSD (when the Dell tech delivers it this week). In the mean time I'm trying to finish the reinstall with the 750GB drive. So to utilize the RST is there anything I have to do to the mSATA drive? I should have paid more attention to how it was set up from Dell.

Just to get the Windows install disc to detect the hard drives I had to go into BIOS:Advance:SATA Operation and changed it from Intel Smart Response Technology to AHCI (told to by Dell). At what point should I switch it back? I had installed all the chipset drivers, HD 4000 driver. The geforce driver wouldn't install. I got it off the geforce website. I figured I would get back to figuring that out later. Then I installed the Intel RST driver. It finished and restarted the computer. I get a screen saying Windows Error Recovery and Windows won't load. I tried changing the SATA settings, but it won't work.

 

Well you said pg 122 so i got it for you. I tried! sorry I can't help more as I know nothing about what your doing

 

Gotcha. I must have mis-understood the original post. I'm simply trying to reinstall Windows 7 on this unit.

 

Disclaimer: I have not reinstalled windows on my xps15, so YMMV.

I'm pretty sure the Dell Flack you talked to knew not what they were talking about. The BIOS option you referred to is really switching the system between AHCI and RAID, and installing Windows under one controller-type and switching that invalidates a low level hardware driver.

There are ways to recover that, using a Windows boot DVD and doing a repair or some-such, but the short of it is that you want to leave it set for Intel Smart Response during install, even though you are NOT installing to it as a system drive.

Once Windows is setup and you have the intel drivers on then you can use the iRST management tool to set it up for caching and the enhanced sleep/hibernate mode.

Someone way early linked a doc from one of the dell sites that describes the setup, here's a link to a copy.

Dell Doc on iSRT setup

good luck.

 

Hi everyone.

Any update about the problem with wifi and trhottling?.
I love the design of this laptop, but i don want to buy it if the problems persists and i lose my money.

 

Hey Everyone,
I think I might be about 15 pages behind, but could someone tell me if Dell has released a fix yet? Thank you!

 

haji85 / mrt194: no updates wrt:wifi other than the 15.3 driver release, no hardware changes put out as of yet.

wrt:throttling, nothing new since the a06 bios, so you have the choice of a04 (cpu throttling) or a06 (gpu throttling).

There is an a09 bios release but it seems problematic to a number of people - causing the m640 to be non-available in windows. The only known change in a09 was the inclusion of UEFI boot support, which I assume is targeted towards Win8 as Win7 doesn't use it.

 

Maybe this info could be useful to someone that wants to upgrade SSD of this notebook by himself or wants to wait until Dell updates its SSD supply.

Samsung has just presented the new 840 series:

Samsung 840 Pro SSD: More Speed, Less Power, And Toggle-Mode 2.0 : Samsung 840 Pro: A New SSD Flagship

here a review of 840 Pro 256GB:
AnandTech - Samsung SSD 840 Pro (256GB) Review

here a review of 840 PRO 512GB:
Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD Review - Performance, Value, Battery Life and Untouchable IOPS - The SSD Review

 

yes it does, you can easily install Win 7 using UEFI boot and it will boot quicker along with the other benefits of UEFI over BIOS

 

Anyone know a good, decently looking bag for this laptop?

 

This is interesting. The document says the system should have 8GB of memory or less. Changing the factory condition may nullify any performance benefits.

Does anyone have the factory supplied SSD for the L521x? Looks like it does not have the mSATA? Is RST installed though?

The document from Dell talks about how you must select AHCI or Rapid Start in the BIOS, not ATA. It doesn't explain the difference between AHCI or Rapid Start modes though. I know my Windows instal disc didn't see the mSATA or HDD until i selected AHCI.

It does state that Rapid Start is supported if only an SSD is installed. I have little interest in the Smart Connect feature though (system waking up by itself periodically).

I think I may have messed up the partitions it needs. Guess I'll be looking for a Windows reinstall guide for HDD+mSATA, SSD+mSATA and SSD only configurations, including pertinent info on setting up RST and Smart Response.

 

After using A09 bios for a day:

Throttling issues have been fixed for me on the i5+630m version

GTAIV now playable on medium at 60fps, before I couldn't go past 15-20FPS. F1 2012 playable on High for 35FPS.

Wireless working great now after 15.3 update. Fan speeds are a bit louder after A09 update but I can live with that. This is how the laptop should've been from day 1. I am very pleased with it.

 

I have 16 Gb in mine, with the 32Gb mSATA SSD configured with 16 Gb hibernation partition and it works great. No noticable slow-down on startup (5-10s from power on to login), hard to say if iRST "hibernate" is any slower as the machine is sleeping at that time and I don't care.

Of course, that's 8 Gb less SSD space for caching my spinner, but there you go. One day I'll replace it with at larger mSATA SSD but I'm in no hurry.

From other articles I have read on the web, Rapid Start mode is really a RAID mode, thus the drive controller appears as different hardware to Windows.

Setting up the msata ssd partition for iRST is crucial, won't work without it, the remainder of the SSD can be used for spinner drive caching.

mSATA+SSD isn't worth setting up iRST probably, it's not supported I don't think, anyway.

If wanting to run both mSATA+SSD then i think you'd want the mSATA big enough to put the whole OS onto (64Gb at least, 128Gb better).

If you're not going to have that large an mSATA SSD on a system with a "primary" SSD then I don't see a lot of benefit at all to the mSATA.

I suppose there could be some notional improvement from using the small msata SSD to cache against a slow/large SSD, but I just don't see that it'd be worth the trouble in real use.

Good luck!

 

Hi Guys

Sorry for my english

I want lto buy a 512gb ssd drive from samsung for my xps. My System configuration now is 1tb hdd + 32gb msata cache. What should i do now with de msata? Can i revome the msata? Do i have to change bios settings for the new sasmung ssd instead the 1tb hardrive?

 

Can you say anything about your battery life with the i5 and a09?

 

for SSD you have to change the SATA mode in the bios to AHCI and do a fresh install of the OS. This is just off the top of my head and there may be better more detailed instructions somewhere in this massive thread

 

Ok thank you. I install windows from the recovery dvd new. after this use the samsung magician tool.

Whats with the intel rapid start start technology? Works the hibernation partition on the main ssd whitout the msata ssd?

 

Hi everyone,

This is probably a question that has been asked many times - should I buy this laptop?

On paper it looks great and fits my requirements almost exactly. However, having read much of this thread it is apparent that there are several ongoing problems: temperature, throttling and WiFi connectivity.
Do you regret buying it or are its stronger points worth it? At least in the hope of a (perhaps partial) fix in the future?
Are there any similar laptops you can recommend in the £1500 to £1700 price range with similar specs and build quality?

Many thanks for your help - due to an impending deadline a quick reply would be very much appreciated if at all possible!

 

You don't have to do a fresh Windows 7 installation. You can clone an image of the existing drive to the new drive. The cloned drive is ready to go as soon as it replaces the existing drive. Time required: 15 minutes.

Not right now. Wait a few more months. Why buy a premium laptop, knowing full well that it has problems that have not been solved for months? Why spend big money on a brand new laptop, then continually check this forum for BIOS updates and hope for fixes from the manufacturer?

 

I believe that is better for you to read by yourself this thread and reviews by Anandtech and notebookcheck so you can make your decision with right info.

For second point "others notebooks" I suggest to wait for new Asus Zenbook UX51VZ (also known as Zenbook U500VZ) there is a thread about it in this forum :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...nnounced-15-6-hd-ips-gt650m-quad-core-i7.html

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

i should sleep better and pay better attention.

wrong thread, or understood the wrong thing, apologies.

 

Do your own research. It's your money and time, after all.

 

Read this entire thread, it's full of complaints about this laptop. Anandtech and Notebook Checks reviews basically tell the reader not to buy this notebook.

The design is great, the execution is... unacceptable.

 

If the current state of how it manages heat (e.g. cpu/gpu throttling), how the wifi (does/does-not) perform, and whether the screen is sufficient for your needs, sure, buy it.

If any of these elements are not good enough for you, as they are, now, without any fixes or updates, then you should wait or look elsewhere.

 

Would anyone recommend the Vaio S Series 15? :
http://bit.ly/OX9aW3

It's rather expensive but I would really like something with a 15 inch full HD screen (1080p), SSD and a discreet graphics card (640M looks pretty good).
I don't need it to be a "ultra book" - in fact I would prefer it if it wasn't. I will happily have something a bit heavier if it means lower cost or better performance.
Unfortunately I cannot wait for the new Zenbook as I need the laptop ASAP. Basically I would like something akin to the l521x without the problems!

Sorry if this is a bit off topic - and thanks again for any help!

 

i came from the S15 to this Dell and they are not even close in build quality. Every time i closed the lid i felt like the Sony was going to snap right off. It has way too much flex on the orangegate screen.

The speakers on the Sony are also a joke, if you have the tv on in the same room, you may have trouble listening to youtube videos...if you use headphones then it's all good

the Sony is also less powerful, maxing out at 12GB with slower RAM...

the Sony did have better cooling however and it did throttle but a work around was found that involved tweaking the fans using Sony's software


all in all I'd take the Dell anyday over the Sony...my XPS is perfect by the way, including WiFi

 

Thank you for the heads up!
Reading this thread made me think that the XPS problems were universal. Is your XPS participially new? Did you have to install any drivers etc to make it work? How long have you had it?

It's nice to know that they are not all faulty

 

If you want other options, you could also open up a thread in What Notebook Should I Buy? - A Laptop Buyers Guide.

 

i have Windows 8 installed on it right now and using the UEFI boot option that bios A09 added.

 

Hi everyone,

Recently I discovered this forum after searching for some answers about my laptop. I have the L502x and I had problems with it for months. I've found my answers here. I've replaced the thermal paste, i cleaned the laptop inside ( i did not removed the dust filter). The laptop was freezing in games, the temperature was always high ( 90c ). After those things I mentioned early , undervolting and did some tweaks in nvidia control panel I managed to play Battlefield 3 like i used to. I'm still playing, testing to see how the temperature goes.

But I don't understand, even when I'm only using programs like Mozilla, Skype, the temperatures are exactly the same as I'm playing a game.
Any solutions? Is that normal.

 

Check this thread out; there's some expertise to be found here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...allation-cpu-gpu-repasting-56k-warning-6.html