XPS 15 9570 Owners Thread

@ abujafar posted earlier in this thread what to do to switch from RAID to AHCI. Pretty easy, no need to reinstall anything.
Here's the post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-15-9570-owners-thread.817008/page-82#post-10773569

Notice that people tend to post things only when they have problems with their devices and not when they don't?
I'm very happy with my 9570, everything works great, no issues. I use Logitech wireless mouse with their USB receiver and also with BT, and never had a connection dropout on BT, which I can't say for a few other laptops I've used in past.

I suppose you'll have to find one and see it for yourself because we all see things with different eyes. What's sharp for one person isn't for another...
That being said, I personally think the difference between the 4K and full HD on a 15.6 screen is definitely visible, especially obvious with text.

I use my 9570 with 4K display for programming, and I specifically got the 4K display for higher than full HD resolution and sharpness of text. Using 175% zoom, it's a pleasure to work with super sharp text. With 6-7 apps open and a browser, doing coding, designing and lots of multitasking, I easily get 8 hours of battery life, sometimes even 9. That's with 50-60% of screen brightness in a well lit room and 20% in evenings. The screen is just so bright that I never need more than that.
(Btw, looking around cafes, the screen brightness on people's laptops is always dimmer than on my XPS, so even though 20-60% brightness sounds dim, it's actually not - 100% is usable only in bright sunlight, and 0% is too bright in dark for some.)

I undervolted -135 mV with ThrottleStop and removed few Dell apps, which helped the battery life. I might do a fresh install to increase the battery life even more.

 

Is it worth it to do a fresh Windows installation or just remove some Dell bloatware from the Dell stock Windows?

I have a Win Pro key which I want to use and the laptop came with the Home license. I wonder if it's better to do a fresh install and enter the Pro license key, or just upgrade the stock Windows Home to Pro and remove some bloatware...

 

Which Dell apps did you remove to save battery life?

 

I always do a clean install if I'm worried about bloatware, if I don't, every time there's an issue with the computer I wonder if a clean install would fix it.

 

This is kind of interesting, that is similar to what I am seeing with my 9570 with the i9. After repasting, it now seems it power throttles before it thermal throttles. With a much bigger chassis the P52 should be able to have better cooling, but not much use if power throttling occurs before that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/9690sc/thinkpad_p52_first_impressions_8850h_p3200/

It should be noted that I have only done some basic stress testing using XTU and OCCT so far, mainly as I dont really do any long running jobs like video encoding, number crunching etc.

 

Afterall, these are 45W cpus. Why do people complain if they power limit at 45W? It's normal, it's the expected behavior! Think about it!

 

Everyone with FHD version. Do you also have backlight bleed around the display??


And battery time. Using it for we browsing and Netflix with "better battery life" set in windows. And it says "3-4 hours remaining according to windows.... I expected something like 10 hours with a 97Wh battery and 1080P screen. Although 10% wear on the battery

 

@eucalyptus some backlight bleed is to be expected with IPS panels. It really depends on how bad is your situation.
The 10% wear out of the box is also what everyone is seeing.

 

Yes, but do we know for a fact that it does not kick in BEFORE the promised power levels? I have not done much looking into this as I assumed it would throttle before buying it, so have not checked at what point it throttles in mine.

 

Okay thanks Had an Acer Aspire V5 from 2014 ('13 model) with IPS and zero bleed.

Although, my Acer Predator X34 monitor have plenty, but that's a curved 1440P and those all have some serious bleed.

And dont Apple use IPS but with glass and coating? They don't have bleed, do they ? :O


Mine har rock solid in the top, just some in the bottom corners and some bigger peaks in the bottom middle. Only visible at higher brightness and black background. Can definitely live with it, but for this price it should be rock solid


Am I the only lucky one with a Samsung PM981 SSD???? 512GB version.


Haven't found any other issues such as keyboard, seems to be working fine.



Also, the temp issues! I mean, I ran TimeSpy with maximum performance in windows settings with HWmonitor in the background on AC adapter, and it got warm, but not over 90 degrees.Mostly low 80's. Have they improved the paste maybe? Anyone with a recent shipped one? Mine is built mid-July.

 

How is the audio working through the headphone jack? Any issues with hissing with the new drivers on the Dell site?

 

Works for me, according to Dell support assistant software I have all the drivers. Did a re-install of windows so have no other sound software or stuff that Dell shipped.

Only tried headphones. Not my real headset and sound is working

 

I'm only getting sound intermittently. I can't figure out why. I called up Costco Concierge (I bought it at Costco). The woman was useless. Update the drivers is all she knows. Weekend B crew perhaps. Another problem I'm having is typing. I'm a 2 finger typist with pretty big hands. I keep accidentally touching the touchscreen. The keys are too close to the screen. I think I'll return it.

 

How did you get Dell Support Assistant? It doesn't respond to me. It says "one moment...". I accidentally left the window open for a couple of hours and then when I looked at it again it still said "one moment..."

 

I just downloaded it from Dells website also downloaded power target now for the battery, don't think it has any purpose though other than looking cool

 

That's what I was trying to do too, download it from Dell's website. Maybe its just broken today. Does it have any value?

Right now I'm thinking of returning this one and getting the Huawei matebook pro 512. For one thing its keys aren't so close to the touchscreen.

 

More likely you experienced thermal throttling. This is what mine looked like from factory.

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

 

It's really hit and miss. Best way to get it started is to reboot, wait a few minutes and then give it a try, at least that is what I've found out

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

 

@micmex I uninstalled Dell Support app and I got a better battery life. That app doesn't even work properly anyway...
I disabled the Dell Mobile Connect startup in Task Manager. I might use it in future, so don't want to uninstall it yet.
Disabled the Realtek and MaxxAudio services in Startup as well, so I don't get any prompts when plugging in headphones, and it all works perfectly. I think sound volume is stronger now without MaxxAudio running.
I installed the new Dell update app v3.0, which uninstalled the old one that didn't work anyway, and was always active in the background. The new one actually works, and it doesn't run in the background. Perfect.
I also disabled the touchscreen in BIOS because I don't use it. I think that improved the battery life additionally. And I can wipe the screen at any time without registered touches.

@werewolf That's interesting about the typing... XPS 15 doesn't have its keyboard that close to the screen - it just looks like it's close to the screen because of the hollow gap between. Are you sure Huawei has any more space between the keyboard and the screen? Maybe only proportionally, but I don't think it has physically, because the XPS has a larger body than the Huawei.
You can disable the tocuhscreen in BIOS if you don't use it. Pres F2 when booting to go into BIOS.

@ eucalyptus I also had 9.9% of battery wear when I bought mine. I charged it fully and then worked on the laptop (normal to light work for slower discharge is better, not to stress the battery) until it hibernated automatically at 5% battery.
I've read somewhere it's better to wait a bit for the laptop and batteries to cool down a bit (half an hour or so is enough) before you plug it back in, so I waited half an hour and plugged it in. I let it charge fully and when I opened the laptop the battery had only 3% wear.
I did it again, just normal work and normal full charge, and the wear went down to 0.3%. Now it fluctuates between 0.3 and 1.1% of wear after 20+ charges.

 

Isnt it easier to just disable touch?

Headphones are not working great, had to disable some realtek stuff for it even to recognize when I insert them

 

Thanks, it worked. Initially, I tried to install the NVidia 1050Ti drivers downloaded from the NVidia website. It refused to install saying my hardware was not compatible. The only ones that worked were the download from Dell.

So I rebooted into safe mode and uninstalled the Intel and Nvidia drivers with DDU. Then it let me install the Nvidia drivers from Nvidia rather than Dell. I also installed the Intel drivers from Intel rather than Dell.

Anyway, after rebooting into normal mode, I had my Nvidia control panel back.

 

Hi,

RAID -> AHCI does not require a reinstall. You just have to follow a few easy steps:

https://gist.github.com/chenxiaolong/4beec93c464639a19ad82eeccc828c63

I did it on my 9570, and it worked fine. Seq write speeds went down a bit (from 1150mb to 470) - but it is probably due to an unfit storage controller driver. After you switch, you will see some a generic microsoft (standard NVME controller) driver under 'storage controllers' in device manager. Upgrading to an intel optane one helps quite a bit, but again, it is not as fast as when in RAID mode. So, not recommended unless you have some specific reason to do it. I have tried all the drivers from this package: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...-Windows-Drivers-for-Intel-SSDs?product=86741 - and I think the 'optane P4800X' is the fastest one of them.

I have a toshiba 512 gb NVME, by the way.

 

Thanks. I also would not recommend doing RAID -> AHCI with the LiteON drive. The BIOS no longer shows an M.2 SATA (says 'none'), and now when I try to install the LiteON FW upate, it now says 'No Drive Detected.' Did you also uninstall the Intel Rapid Storage Tech? Mine now says "Internal Empty Port 2" on the right hand side under 'Storage Devices' so something is acting funky.

I see the standard NVME drivers and will try the Optane ones as you suggested.

 

Yeah, it seems like there is a reason for it to be set to RAID after all.

I do have the intel RST installed and I see now that it says 'internal empty port 2'. That's strange. Maybe one should go the slightly convoluted road back to RAID (as described in 30 steps in the link above).

Hmm.

 

Looks like you and I are in the same boat. However, could not install those Intel drivers; gives me an error (perhaps intel doesn't work at all with LiteON).

Yeah, it's a ton of steps. I wonder how long it would take

 

Probably 20-30 mins.

I also just tried to run the firmware update tool. Says: no drive detected (I do have the latest firmware on there though, so I don't really need it, but still).

 

What's odd to me is how the OS still boots fine and everything. Maybe it's a physical limitation that the OS can't see the drive if you enable AHCI? Or, maybe it is just a driver issue and we're still wandering the forest.

 

So, I actually ordered a Razer Blade 15, perhaps more of curiosity than anything else. Something to play with as I await my third 9570 being built and delivered. Guessing that lack of fingerprint reader, TB3 charging etc will tip the scale to the XPS15 but you never know will be interesting to compare thermals etc. and if the 8750 in the Blade IRL is better than 8950 in the Dell.

Sent from my ASUS_A001 using Tapatalk

 

@improwise let us know how it goes.

 

Just like with the 9560, I get an almost constant feeling of "lag" in the 9570 even though I really shouldnt (ie high performance mode, no thermal/power throttling and no high load on the system), anyone else getting the same feeling? It should be noted however that I mostly use this machine for .NET development and Visual Studio is know to be laggy and I have A LOT of "developer utilities" installed of various sorts that could affect. I am suspecting DPC problems once again...

 

PC World recently did a comprehensive benchmark comparison between XPS, Macbook and Razer. I know the tests aren't perfect, but they do show pretty well how they compare...

 

I have that lag on Better battery and Better performance power settings, and it feels almost slower than my 4 years old 4th gen ULV CPU laptop at the same settings. Sometimes it was even dropping frames on 1080p offline videos. Weird!
But at the Best performance power setting it feels fast and snappy.
I wonder if it would perform better with a clean Windows installation?
What DPC problems, btw?
EDIT: OK, I read a bit about DPC. Looks like a driver latency issue, not a hardware thing. I may try to troubleshoot with the DPC Latency Checker, disabling one driver after another to compare the latency...

 

Nice, I saw that the did a video earlier when they received the Blade but had missed this one. Lisa also did a comparision, she at least used to be on these forums but not sure if that is the case these days.

 

Yeah she still frequents the forums. She addressed some of the forum postings on the 9570 review.

 

Finally a real competitor...

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13208/lenovo-launches-ultra-thin-thinkpad-p1

 

Use LatencyMon instead, DPC Latency Checker has been dead for quite a while unless something has happened recently. I always do reinstallations and run in best performance mode.

 

Your post was interesting because I have been feeling the same. Let me explain. I have two other laptops. One is a gaming Clevo machine and the other is a Lenovo Yoga.

The Clevo has a quad-core Skylake i7 6700 desktop CPU.

The Yoga has a dual core Pentium low voltage CPU.

(I also have a desktop, with Haswell-E 5930K running overclocked and a high-end video card).

With the Clevo, everything seems instant and snappy, like the desktop. With the Yoga, everything feels accompanied with a split-second lag.

I assumed the Yoga's lagging was due to its slow CPU.

My Dell has a 6 core i9, but in use it feels like the Yoga. It has none of the instant snappiness of the Clevo or the desktop. This happens regardless of the thermal mode (ultra-performance thermal management feels the same as quite and cool modes).

Why, I wondered?

The Dell comfortably outperforms the Clevo, in this informal face off I videoed here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKm4e7PGigjS_RTyDLdWzkw?view_as=subscriber

So what's going on?

I think it's input lag with the Dell panel. There's a barely perceptible but still there, lag between signal and output. To test this theory, I attached it via HDMI to an external screen (a 4k gaming monitor I use with my desktop), put the display mode in duplicate, opened a few tabs in the browser, repeatedly switched between them, filmed it and examined the video frame by frame. The internal panel reacts a split second slower than the external monitor, which is designed for low latency.

That's what I think it is. I'm still a bit annoyed as I was hoping the Dell would feel more like the Clevo than the Yoga in use, whereas in fact, it feels more like the Yoga. I find it moderately comforting to know it's the display not the CPU. I didn't buy the machine for gaming, where a low latency screen is essential. If I didn't use the other machines, I'd probably not notice it at all.

 

It looks to me Lisa has some bias against the XPS, for whatever reason. She paints it in negative light in this comparison video, and based mostly on the gaming benchmarks. I don't think that's fair, the XPS and the Razer have completely different GPUs and the XPS isn't a gaming laptop to begin with.
Most other comparisons I've seen show the XPS to be better than the Razer in CPU performance in variety of tests.

 

It must be how you viewed her video. I feel like she simply explained that the XPS is not a gaming laptop and can't really be held to the same standards as one. If anything I felt like she was saying people who mod the laptop may be a little crazy for doing so. At least that's what I remember from watching her video when it first came out.

 

Are you sure it's not the optimus bug that's causing you issues with lag? Sure the XPS screen isn't the most responsive but there is a difference between some barely noticeable ghosting in high FPS games and opening a program on the desktop. If I had a high speed camera I'd connect my 9560 to my 120hz monitor and see how much of a difference there was.

 

I dont agree, her reviews is generally among the best on YouTube I think. But if you want positive XPS reviews, have a look at those "Tally ho" videos

 

I doubt that it is a problem with the LCD panel, at least not the problems I am seeing. Optimus could be a more likely source of problems but it is a bit hard to find out.

 

Interesting contribution.
Do you have the 4k monitor or the 1080p monitor on the 9570?

When I got the laptop I noticed it was slow to open "File Explorer" in some circumstances. I removed and reinstalled the intel and nvidia driver and it solved the issue.
Perhaps, this is the optimus bug that @custom90gt is referring to. Basically, the lag is due to Optimus having problems to figure out if the program should run using the iGPU or dGPU.

 

What gaming monitor is that? My impression is that most gaming monitors have really bad HDMI connections, and that they are nothing compared to the DisplayPort connections. Also, if running i duplicate mote, have you made sure it isnt running in 30 hz?

 

How hot does your laptop get during charging on the left side of the keyboard?
I am not sure if mine is normally hot or abnormally hot.

 

I have the 4k panel. Yes, maybe I'll look into the Optimus bug, perhaps that's it. However, I did notice the external monitor seemed to be responding faster than the internal panel, hence why I thought it might be panel lag (as presumably anything with Optimus should affect both displays equally) - but will check it out.

 

It's an Asus G-sync 4K monitor

 

I think her reviews of the XPS are spot on. There is a good amount of research and testing done and I think the conclusions are on point.

 

Not at all really, perhaps so you can notice it although I does not fondle that much with anything but the keyboard and touchpad

 

There you have it, most gaming monitors only have HDMI 1.4.