XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

I ordered an L521X from the Outlet in the UK a week ago. Spec is i7, 16GB, 128GB + 1TB + BluRay. This is a spec which I've never seen available new within the UK, so it is particularly interesting and maybe a little bit rare (within the UK at least). It arrives today.

I have bought from the Outlet before - an XPS M1710 - almost six years ago. Warranty support and consumer rights should be no different from those enjoyed by anyone buying a brand new machine. I had 3 year NDB warranty and needed two repairs (video card) in the third year. Dell sent an engineer next day both times and fixed the machine. It's been running fine ever since (typing on it now) and is today being retired, still in full working order, when my L521X arrives.

I realise I could have waited for Win 8 (and very nearly did), but since I like my machines clean and not full of crapware I thought I'd put a clean install of Win 8 on the thing tomorrow, when it's released.

I don't play games at all, but do edit and process 22MP raw files in Lightroom, so I'll be checking out screen quality, throttling and, of course, WiFi performance. If there are any problems it's going back and I'll be looking at Asus U500 or Macbook Pro Retina instead. The Mac is a sh!tload more money, but quality matters and I'd rather pay £2,000 for a perfect machine than £1,000 for one which sucks.

What might be a little interesting is that I already know the Tag Number for the machine and I have been checking out the drivers for it. The A11 BIOS is not listed for my specific machine, although it is there for the general L521X population, so I guess Dell has already upgraded the BIOS as part of the refurb. We shall see. No idea if any other fixes might have been applied.

 

Hello mark_pozzi,

I am from Dell Social Media and Community.

We are expecting the A12 to be released soon, however we do not have the estimated time yet.
I will update you all as soon as the update is released.

If you have Dell Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 wifi card and facing wifi connectivity or speed issues, you may follow the link below to update the driver.

Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

If you are still facing any issue, please tweet me your Internet Service Provider, Router details, McAfee details (if installed). I will be glad to help.

Dell-Niranjan
Twitter: @NiranjanatDell

 

Hi Niranjan,
It's nice from you to be helpful. But the most recent drivers don't fix the Wifi issue. Personaly I don't think the A12 Bios will.

People who tried to connect external antennas have seen the issue resolved, so this tends to prove the root cause of the L521x Wifi is hardware related. Could we expect a definitive fix, maybe by a screen module replacement?

 

Stop providing "software fixes" for hardware issues. Is the same driver as previous one.
I have N-6325 on XPS 15Z, and even with the oldest driver available is working PERFECT. Is not the card/software issue.
DELL should focus on the “next generation” L521x, to make it well, with at least the Wi-FI working, and recall all “first generation” L521X.

 

What do you expect from "Dell Social Media and Community"? It's obvious they will tell as much lies as possible without a blink of an eye. This is what's been practicing here since months now. DELL workers coming here, and in very sophisticated, polite way they are telling us the same and the same and the same over and over and over again. "Your satisfaction is our goal number one... "We are aware of the issue and we are working on it to bring you the best experience"... "The issue is fixed, please navigate to the downloads section and install latest BIOS, WiFi drivers, Chipset Drivers and HD4000 drivers. We were happy to help you, if you keep having any problems please contact us"... "Customer is the most important to us, that's why we were working day and night on the newest bios revision that will fix all your current issues (and break your mobo or GPU)"... "Engineers are looking for the root of the issue, it's very complex and not all machines are affected, probably some 0,000000000001% are affected or I would even say there is just one person with affected machine and he keep posting in this thread under different nick names".

 

LOL
At least 10 chars

 

How long until the new systems ship and we find out if the problems are fixed?

 

My UK Outlet refurb arrived this afternoon. First impressions are mixed....

1. Packaged in a plain box with power supply, two useless booklets and nothing else - no getting started guide, no discs or anything else. I guess that's all I need, but it's not the experience I've had with several other Dell purchases in the past.

2. The flap/cover underneath was insecure. Closer inspection revealed that the spring clips were mashed flat. I've pried them up and it seems to be holding, but that's not a job I would expect to need to do.

3. Vertical grid lines on the screen are extremely evident from 12" away and visible even at 18". Not happy at all with this. I need to load up my photo software (Lightroom) and if I'm not happy it's going back. I have yet to determine calibration accuracy. It looks nice enough for surfing etc., barring the grid lines, and is way brighter than any other machine I own. The proof will be when I get some photos up.

4. Stupid ing McAfee. Let's hope a simple uninstall works without leaving a trail of poison behind. I've stuck MSE on instead.

5. DVD drive noise is present, but only once each time after booting (so far) so hopefully not the end of the world.

6. Wireless performance seems fine from 20' from the router with one interior wall in between. It is faster than my aged XPS M1710 and Twinhead H12Y by a good 1MB/s at 17MB/s write and 22MB/s read with a 20MB file.

7. There were a bunch of Windows updates to install (53 for the first round), then a few others, and then some for video and (IIRC) wireless. I haven't tried installing any Dell specific updates.

8. Automatic download/installation of Adobe Premier and Photoshop Elements. both failed. I don't know why and I haven't bothered to look into it yet.

9. I don't understand the config of the 128GB SSD and 1TB HDD at all. The SSD is wasted as a pathetically small "Data" drive, with the OS on the HDD and SSD caching has not been enabled. I want to use the SSD as a 64GB cache for the HDD and have the remaining space used as my C: boot drive. Then the HDD can become my entire D: drive for data. I hope this is a sound proposal. If anyone can see a major flaw in that plan please shout before I screw things up. I don't want to restore my data to the machine until I have my partitions squared away.

10. I will run some throttling and heat tests once I have Lightroom installed. I've looked through the thread and searched, but haven't found any recommended software for monitoring and plotting temp and frequency over time. any recommendations? I'll happily post results if I can get something meaningful to share.

11. BIOS is at A06. I don't understand why the Dell drivers site is withholding A11 from the list of drivers for my machine. Maybe I should leave well alone for now, as my WiFi works.

So, just at the moment, despite minor niggles, the only real concern (until I run CPU/GPU performance tests) is the screen and the vertical grid lines. I'll update when I have more results.

 

tdodd: you probably want to hit the Mobility Center (windows-x) and turn the Default display color from "splendid" to "generic".

 

Thanks for the tip. Sounds like a smart move. Done.

 

Forget this screen for serious photography work. Calibratation may improve it a bit, but its color spectrum coverage is unsufficient.

 

Thanks for your input. I am aware that the colour gamut falls short of both sRGB and aRGB, but to what extent that will be a problem I am not yet sure. I doubt very much that the screens (laptops only) I've been using for the last 6+ years have been any better and I've survived. What I need to fathom is whether it is good enough.

 

EEK - first serious hurdle - I've enabled disk caching, using the SSD as a 64GB cache, but haven't yet started moving partitions about because....

A soon as I started diskmgmt.msc to see how things looked I was prompted to initialise two disks and had a choice to make between MBR or GPT partition styles. I haven't got a clue which is correct, or maybe better, and Google isn't helping.

More worryingly, although one of the disks is the new partition remaining on the SSD after allocating cache space, so that's low risk (I think), the other disk is the entire HDD, which already has the recovery partition and boot/system partition on it. I'm worried that I may choose unwisely and wreck the entire system. Heck, even if I do choose wisely, what will be the outcome for the existing partitions on the HDD? Could I end up wiping everything? That's not such a major issue if I'm sticking Windows 8 on tomorrow, but if I really want to run these screen and performance tests before deciding whether or not to keep it.

Can anyone help?

 

For a BIOS (non-UEFI) boot, MBR is the way to go (and probably what you have in place now).

BIOS revision A09 or A11 is required to support UEFI boot, which I am pretty sure you will need for Windows 8.

Note that doing the UEFI based boot setup for Win8 you'll find it easiest to "nuke" the contents of the drives to start with and install clean.

I don't have a large enough mSATA to know, but I'm pretty sure that if you're going to use the mSATA as a boot volume at all then you will not be able to use it for caching at all. The caching feature requires the mSATA to be in "intel whatsit" mode (actually RAID) and booting from it will require AHCI - I *think* - again - I have not tested this myself.

For my 2c ...

I'd use AHCI on the mSATA, install Win8 to it there, and not bother installing any of the intel Rapid Start or Smart Connect etc. drivers. Win8 should boot fast enough on mSATA to make you "not care" about the extra driver layers.

I'd leave the system using the normal ram cache for accelerating the spinning drive. May or may not be as super-duper as SSD-caching, dunno, haven't used Win8 yet.

Also, before you wipe out existing partitions and such, make sure you have media with Win8 that you can boot/install from once the BIOS is set to UEFI mode.

 

@c0derbear, thanks for your reply. I will Ghost some partition images and then play around. I'm happy for a full wipe when installing Win 8, but right now I don't have the retail software yet. I'll download tomorrow once it hits retail.

I have gone the MBR root for now and that has given me a usable partition on the SSD as well as retaining the cache partition still. Not quite sure how I confirm that all is well with caching, but my next step is to image copy the original Windows partition from the HDD to the new partition on the SSD. I'll probably get in a right old mess, but nothing ventured.... At least I know I have nothing of value on the machine yet.

 

L521X W7 Roundup

Commonly Found Issues: (User Reported)
Wifi Fidelity: Speed & Range Wifi-LAN

Good for internet browsing: Primarily issue for Wifi LAN transfer
Further testing is needed
Current Solution:
Reach out to Dell Social to get a Wifi Dongle (possibly US Only)
Software: Bios & Driver Updates
General thoughts: Most people do not do large LAN Transfers over wifi thus may have no issues.​

Screen Grid Issue: Lines on the Screen

Not all screens affected
Subjective
Current Solution: None ?
Known good Screens: (possibly)
6985X1 LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY. –AseaWright​

Random DVD Click: some users affected

When I boot the computer the DVD player makes an unpleasant noise -moeone​

Solution Unknown

Tips & FYI:
Downgrading Bios Firmware: Unable to downgrade firmware once updated.

Backup your data
A06 can only downgrade to A04​

Disable Bluetooth “turn off” -remove the bluetooth driver and support application.

The bluetooth control via the Mobility Center doesn't actually give you control of that radio vs the wif- C0debear​

UEFI Info: USB Drive Legacy Boot USB drive will not work under UEFI. –Krayziehustler
SSD Upgrade: SRT with mSata + SSD is generally considered useless.

Install the OS on the SSD and use the mSata for Data/Storage​

128mSata: If you have 128 + 1TB 5K HD

I recommend installing the OS on the 128 mSata and use the 1tb for Data
Select AHCI for mSATA​

Upgrading Ram: You will have to completely disable the notebook because there are 2 RAM slots, one is behind the motherboard. FYI Max Ram is 16 GB.

Use Teardown guide/user guide​

Windows 8: Upgrading to windows 8 Requires UEFI Boot
Screen washed out Colors Mobility Center (windows-x) and turn the Default display color from "splendid" to "generic" -c0debear

Resources
User Guide: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xpsL521x/en/om/en_om.pdf

Includes Tear Down​

Hardware Checker: http://www.mediafire.com/?r41zs67y3bu6687 -Codred2

Bios:
Bios A11: Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]
Bios A12: Unknown ETA

Win8 VS Win7 Version: Known Differences
Windows 7 ---> Windows 8
i7-3612QM ---> i7-3632QM
Intel Advanced-N 6235 ---> Dell Wireless 1901

No WIDI​

Drivers:
Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]
ftp://ftp.dell.com/pages/Drivers/Laptops/XPS/XPS 15 (L521x)/index.html

Accessories bought by Owners:
Neoprene Sleeve for 15" MacBook Pro by Incase

 

I have all the new drivers, and Dell replaced my screen. Now, my WiFi is much more reliable and faster than my iPhone 4. When I go home from college tomorrow I will do a test with a faster WiFi network and let everyone know.

 

Ok, I see that here we have someone from Dell. So I have a question: are there any improvements in those "second generation" XPS' s (with W8 and new CPU)? Better cooling system to reduce throttling, better Wi-Fi antenna or screen?

 

Could you check by HWiNFO64 what monitor you have?
It seems that are two : 6985X 1 and 6985X
I have the last one. Could the no. 1 make any difference?

 

Absolutely! Just how do I find that... xD

P.S. I also have a 6230 WiFi card.

 

Download this: hw64_402.rar, extract it and run it & go to Monitor that tells you everything about it.
N-6230 is a downgrade not upgrade

 

FWIW, I have a 6985X - no issues with my display quality.

of course the brightest I run my screen is only about 50%, even on AC.

 

My new one ships in 5 days with the new proc, wireless card, and win8. Ill report back then.

 

My friend had the same problem with the aluminum flap underneath and hi was not refurbished.

 

1 more! Realtek sd card reader drivers can hang for 10 seconds on boot. Disabling the reader drops boot time from around 26 seconds to around 13 seconds.

 

Perhaps we should put this in a new thread so everyone with questions about it can see it as the first post. We can also edit it from there

 

So how do I get dell to give me my old card back..

and I'm looking now, I appear to have this: Monitor Name "(Manuf): B156HTF [DELL P/N: 6985X]"

 

I have a 6985X too. I see the screen grid faintly if I'm really close and brightness is over 50%. But from 8ft or 6ft away I can't see it.

 

If I clone my HDD image to SSD, can I still use ACHI mode? What would I do with the msata and isrt? Uninstall isrt and format the msata? Please let me know, thanks.

 

I can make a New Thread if we want. But I figure everyone will ignore it if its not "popular" where as this one is popular already and all the "new" people read this one.

Let me know what you guys wanna do.

 

Xnap30: I would uninstall all the intel rapid start / smart connect / etc stuff, then set mSATA to AHCI and clone and go. But I haven't tried it so am unsure.


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

Yeah I did some searching on the posts that people made about upgrading to SSD. Unfortunately they're all mostly inactive but that ones that did switch to SSD did a clean install. :/ Then they had to format the msata a special way because diskmanagement doesn't see the msata disk.

Just going to try a clone instead of a fresh install. Don't really want to redownload and install all my programs. It wouldn't take that much longer but it's just a pain because I would need to get a windows 7 installation disk and download all the drivers I need. I can't find the post about which drivers to install in which order.

 

Ahh, my screen is a 6985X, not a 6985X1. The "1" must have jumped across when I copy/pasted from my dell build list. It is the QTY of the build...

 

My new model shipped today from TN. Anyone else getting theirs tomorrow? I wonder what hapened to the 10/30 ship date...

 

So has Dell changed the build of this laptop with the new Windows 8 model? I notice they changed the wireless card to the Dell Wireless 1901. Has dell put out any knd of statement on this?

 

I just order one from the outlet. I paid $947 after the coupon and tax. Basically, it's the $1699 model.


3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3612QM processor
Windows 8, 64-bit, English
Silver Anodized Aluminum and 15.6" FHD 1080p Truelife WLED Display and Skype-Certified HD Webcam
8GB2 DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz
750GB 7200 HDD with 32GB mSATA
Slot Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM
1 Year Enhanced Support - America's Best Standard Support
5.79 lbs

 

You guys are sooo lucky, over here in New Zealand all they have done is upgrade the L521x to windows 8 and that's it. No upgraded processor, no blu-ray and most importantly no new wireless card! I really hope Dell are just taking there time upgrading it because i don't want to be stuck with the old version forever.

 

Is the model # the same for "Version 2" of this computer? I want to buy this but I'm waiting to see how the newer version with Windows 8 fares.

Edit: Is it 9062sLV? ( Amazon.com: Dell XPS XPS15-9062sLV 15-Inch Laptop: Computers & Accessories)

 

That's the model I purchased. Minus the Windrows 8. I should be able to upgrade to Windows 8 for $14.99 though, since my system was made after June 2nd.

Sent from my XT910 using Tapatalk 2

 

I might have this wrong but how did you order the newer model when it's releasing today? I thought Dell Outlet wouldn't have the newer models in stock until they get returns and what not. (Newer model as in a different wireless card and possibly other fixes such as the display).

 

You read it wrong. He has the win7 one ordered.

 

I am very eager to find out more about the W8 systems and whether or not any of the issues are alleviated.
To those of you who've already ordered yours, it would be awesome if you could report to us.
Specifically, I'm curious about wifi, screen, and throttling and gaming performance.

And speaking of wifi, Is the existing issue affecting online connections in general (slow browsing, streaming, gaming, downloading), or is just affecting LAN transfers? I'm not an owner yet and have not been clear on that.

 

Windows 8 probably won't fix any wireless issues. Only a driver or a different wireless card can fix the problem. I'm not sure how widespread the Wi-Fi issues are, I'll report back when my system arrives.

Sent from my XT910 using Tapatalk 2

 

I got 3 L521X in today. Not impressed. After hours of testing I can confirm the wireless problem is NOT fixed.

Here is a quick overview of testing.

Intel 6235 centrino wireless. Works well in 5GHZ mode. Has major problems (like everyone has been seeing - slow transfer, high latency, unable to connect) in both Windows 7 and 8.
Dell 1901 wireless. (Atheros chipset). Tested in both windows 7 and 8. I can say with the Atheros in Windows 8, things are better, but there are still major concerns. For example the exact same card, (taken out and installed in a Vostro V131) gets 100x the through put from the V131.

Bottom line, this is clearly a design problem, but it only seems to affect 2.4ghz. I tested extensively with known working wireless cards (pulled from working systems) with a variety of routers, and in both windows 7 and 8. I tried different drivers, and different routers. The end result is the same, neither Windows 8, nor the 1901 wireless card change the fact that the L521X has poor 2.4ghz connectivity. I was able to reproduce this on 3 brand new L521X so this is not a random problem. I was using known working network cards out of laptops without issue, so this was not the case that the network cards were faulty. (I also used the cards that came with the system - no change)


The best performance was with Windows 8, and 1901 wireless card, but it was still unacceptable. Right beside the router, I got ~25mbit, but where other units where still getting 75-100Mbit, I was getting 0.5Mbit. Again this was reproduced with 3 brand new units, so this is not one faulty unit. At this point, if one is willing to exclusively use 5ghz networks, then the combination of Windows 8 and 1901 wireless card gives great performance, but the 2.4ghz performance is simply not acceptable. Period. I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone purchase this laptop that wants to use 2.4ghz wifi because you will most likely not get satisfactory performance. The fact that 5ghz seems to work fine points to both an engineering issue, and explains why some users may have not seen problems.

 

how do I find out what network I am running on, i.e. 5gHz or 2.4gHz and how is it different from each other?

 

ah...i found the answer to my own questions in IEEE 802.11 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

then that's bad...if we can't use the 2.4gHz channel, then it probably explains why the signal goes very weak the further you travel....mmm...if that's the case, i wonder what can we do about that. Would dell accept an exchange just based on the wifi issue? from what I have read so far, a lot of people have been offered a band aid solution of a wifi dongle or a change in wifi card (which didn't work anyway)

 

Last night I installed Win 8 Pro retail onto the 128GB SSD, still with BIOS at A06. I had to switch disk mode to AHCI in order for the drives to be visible. Running a Lightroom stress test for several minutes the CPU frequency hovered around 2.8GHz and did not drop at all. Max recorded CPU temp was 76 degrees and all 4(8) cores were well utilised. So, from a photography standpoint I don't see a problem with temps or throttling, although the fans did spin up and become quite loud. I appreciate that for gaming it might be a very different story.

Screen print below if anyone is interested.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-...UI/AAAAAAABhos/iCkVF3M9KuA/s1920/Untitled.jpg

 

tdodd...what's your environmental temperature? I think that might have a bit of bearing on the performance? would it not?

And I thought i read that you can't upgrade to Windows 8 if you didn't install Bios that's A09 and higher because of some UEFI issue? (not even sure what's that UEFI thingie)

 

Ambient temp is 18-19 Celsius at the moment.

I don't know anything about this UEFI malarky either, but all I can say is that Win 8 installed without fuss, just as the release preview did on three other machines, all of which are 4+ years old and have never heard of UEFI.


On a side note, is the Dell Drivers site down for everyone? I'm trying to get the latest drivers from Dell for Win 8 and the site is unresponsive. I've been trying for a couple of hours without success. The annoying thing is that I was downloading last night but the downloads seem to have vanished into the ether. I also noticed that the A11 BIOS file is listed but not found when trying to download. Has it been pulled?

 

How did you install it on original L521x with mSata + HDD? I just got an email from Microsoft and got a copy of windows 8 Pro 14.99. And I might try to install it.......upgrade or clean install?