XPS 15 9570 Owners Thread

I mean if dell modified the bios they should change the version, that's the whole reason we have versions right? But I wouldn't put it passed Dell. Sadly I didn't see anything in looking through the dumps, but 20k lines is hard to go through without missing things I'm sure.

Sadly I don't think there is a way to either read or write the vbios in the laptop.

 

I dont agree on this specific one actually. The vBios is not made by Dell. I am totally sure they wouldn't change the version (or are allowed to) if they just flipped a hex value of it to another temp value. Maybe the vBios of the GPU reads temp values from the EFI though at boot time for Optimus solutions, but the upper temp value is always stored in the vBios, at least for desktop cards.

Which game(s) btw is maxing out your GPU so it reaches 75°c and throttles? I would be interested in testing that out too. Are we talking about some AAA titles where it is clear they wont run well on a laptop 1050ti maxq on ultra settings, or some ordinary games even with mid or low settings?

I agree though the point of 75°c is a delicate point, where something still could run well reaching exactly 74/75°C. I dont see any reasoning, why they reduced it from 78°c, which should still be in the normal temp limits for this laptop.

 

In all software design I've been involved in, including firmware, the revision number played a huge roll. If one of my software engineers changed anything and didn't change a version number, it was a big deal.

Lots of companies modify NVIDIA/AMD's firmware and put their own revision number on it. Check techpowerup to see all of the different versions from manufacturers.

It may read the max temps from EFI, sadly I haven't seen a change even in the max values, but like I said I could have missed it.

Far Cry 5 is the one thing that I tried, and even at medium settings at 1080p it hits 74C and ends up sitting around 900MHz-1GHz which drops the frames pretty good. I don't game on the XPS, but I like to have the option if I go to a buddy's house and he wants to play a round of something.

The drop from 78C to 74C is super annoying, I have no idea why Dell did it, but I would love to figure out how to undo it.

 

Well Far Cry 5 might be an extreme game actually, any other you tried and had issues? I am not a heavy gamer myself, but I play some games here and there, which arent super high-end titles. Obviously, we cant play the new Tomb Raider well on the XPS, but I wouldnt even try. I tried a few tittles, where the max boost was reached of 1748MHz and a gpu usage of 88% and I get around 66°C for the dGPU on that after 15 mins (Cities Skylines for example). But I also run a 0.875V undervolt for the dGPU, which runs fine at 1748MHz.

 

Yeah that was undervolted as well. I picked that one because that's what my buddy and I play online so I figured if I went to his house we would likely play that. I didn't have near that throttling before since the system tries to keep the CPU at around 78C too. There is a huge difference between 1GHz and 1700MHz in games. I can try to play some other games as well though, but most that I play with friends are "demanding" games.

 

@custom90gt Did you double check, you really get a 0.875V undervolt during the max boost? I am not asking because of questioning your skills, but because I actually noticed some sort of glitch or bug with MSI AB. I guess youre using MSI AB to achieve the undervolt? During my tests, I noticed, that something, maybe a bug, or maybe the bios, sometimes altered the clocking curve of MSI AB, even after I edited it, saved and applied it. It happend to me a few times, that after I set a 0.875V curve, sometime later, it was changed in the straight line, that there was a 0.950V set for upper clocks. I overwrote that and it worked again, until a next time I looked, it was again altered. You can let HwInfo actually run and let it show you the GPU vcore. MSI AB cant do that as I see it, for laptop cards. I am about to change form the MSI AB monitoring to HWInfo actually, so I can also have permanent GPU Vcore showing while I game.

Can you post your clock curve you use? It should be a horizontal straight line for the +1700 values, and every point be on the same y value.

 

@maffle, yeah thankfully I've ensured it's running properly with GPU-Z logs. Mine sticks right at .9v. Sadly mine wouldn't hit .875v without failing timespy stress test.

Here is my graph:

 

@ custom90gt Is the value of ~0.96V intended by you for the highest clocks? That is actually the glitch I was talking about, which happens to me. You might have set that by design, but it is set for me of something sometimes like that. Didnt you have luck with a 0.875V underclock? The important here is, that you have a horizontal line from the 0,875V (or the one you want to use), to the end, no lift up anymore afterwards. Otherwise, if the card clocks just a bit higher again, it will use that value. A stress test fail is not anything I would worry about, just use the game you want to play and if it wont crash, than thats fine.

Here is my curve:


I have set three marks into the picture:

1) temps/clocks
2) undervolt point + overclock
3) hwinfo check for vcore

The important here is, that from 2) it has to be a straight line to the end, no lift up anymore for any of the values.

 

The small change was not intended by me and like you said is a glitch in MSI afterburner. I have several GPU-Z logs that shows it stays right at .9v though and never over so I'm not concerned by it. I'm a firm believer in if I have an error in a stress test then it's not stable enough for games and vice versa.

 

The glitch actually resulted for me in HwInfo showing a 0.950V vcore, instead of the wanted 0.875V, maybe you should double check that. Something seems to reset the curve sometimes and sets a 0.950V lift in the higher end of the curve again (maybe the bios? nvidia driver? or dell tool?). I was actually confused, why it showed a 0.95V vcore, and then I looked into the AB curve, and it was set like that. After I reedited the curve and applied, it was falling back to 0.875V again with 1749MHz.

That is the same argument of using FurMark, which isnt a "real world" scenario. Or for example, AVX based heat generating tests, which also wont be used in real-world scenarios. It might lead to a crash, but in any game, it wont ever happening. If the GPU or CPU arent on 100% load (what the benchmark or stress test might trigger), that also means the vcore can be a bit lower, at where it might maybe crash with a 100% load.

 

In the 12 GPU-Z logs I have it never went above .9v so I'm sure it's fine. I get what you're saying and I've had to re-do the voltage curve before, but this one doesn't present any issues for me on either benchmarks or games. In regards to the stress test, we just have different opinions there, just like we do that we shouldn't be able to play AAA titles on the XPS...

 

How would you know if and how Dell changes the version numbers or not?

 

The question is irrelevant. It is in the range of possibilities and not having a 0% chance. It was just a hint of, how it might had happened. To me it is even likely because Dell doesnt program the vBios and they dont have a version log for them. A temperatur value is just a hex value of the vBios binary file to change. They dont have something like a version number they can count up for for the vBios, like for their own laptop bios.

 

Wouldn't be easier just to say that you, like the rest of us, don't know how and when Dell changes versions?

 

For any vendor, I would consider diabolic to change something and maintain the same version number. I do believe that Dell can produce their own custom vBios with Nvidia's blessing, just like custom card manufacturers do. The other thing I wonder if it is simply possible to flip a byte and flash the BIOS (or vBIOS). Aren't these things encrypted/signed nowadays? If so, it wouldn't work.

At the moment, given that the vBIOS versions are the same and assuming nothing diabolic, I would speculate that the temperature limit is not in the vBIOS but set afterward/elsewhere.
Weird idea: can someone with linux check if they also see a limit of 75c?

 

Yes, I would have a serious talk with anyone in my teams that did functional changes without indicating it with a new version number. But that is perhaps a discussion better suited for Stack Overflow than this thread.

 

Thinking of hopping to the XPS train as my next laptop (also will be my main machine. Just not sure should I opt for the i5-8300h or the i7 one.

Most of my usage will be normal office work with writing and Excel. Also Photoshop and Lightroom. And some gaming now and then (not really any very demanding games)

I'm a tech blogger and the XPS will be with me with my trips too.

Probably going to undervolt and repaste it anyway. Any recommendations which one should I pick?

 

@inffy It depends, how much money you want to spend in the end I guess. I'm sure the i5 (does the i5 model come with the 1050ti? I am not into the US models, which are a bit different than EU, which dont even have an i5 option) will be fine though, wait maybe for a good Cyberweek offer there would be some 15-20% off I guess by Dell and maybe even more by a cut on some models. A good investment is to swap the Killer card for an Intel 9260, which costs about $20. I wouldnt recommend the model in the US with a HDD, go for the SSD, or you buy a Samsung 970 EVO yourself, which got really cheap these days. You maybe also should find a store, where you can test the keyboard. Personally, I dont like it and cant type on it, where others praise it. If youre using it mostly on travel, maybe the XPS13 is a better solution for you though. 16GB RAM is also a good option, depending on your needs, 8GB is a "bit low" these days.

Little off-topic talk: I bought one of these adapters on Amazon for just $5, which works awesome with the XPS 15:


You can put a micro sd card into it, and it will be up to 99% hidden in the case (you can always get it out with no issue). The speed is also good and what the card would do normally too, so no performance loss there. I have it 24/7 in the slot, and use it as a backup/data drive.

 

Do you mind sharing a link for that one?
I've been looking for one of these, but there are quite a few size variations. They are mostly marketed for Macbooks sold in different years because all these laptops have slightly different SD slot size. So, it's not easy to find a one that matches perfectly...
What R/W speeds do you get?

 

I'd still suggest i7, just for future proofing in case you need some more demanding performance in future. But going with FHD display will give you much better battery life than 4K (which sounds like you don't need). I normally get 8.5-9 hours of battery life with my i7 with 4K display, and with FHD display you'll get another 3-4 hours. Of course, as maffle said, if you get i5, get the 97 Wh battery.
I only undervolted mine, and I never hear the fans, unless there's a big Windows update going on. And yeah, if you're gaming and decide to get an i5 make sure it has 1050Ti and not just 1050, like the last year's model.
Notebookcheck has very comprehensive and good reviews of both i5 FHD and i7 4K models, so you can see what suits you better.

 

@splus Yes, I know. Theyre all described as "for MacBook" on Amazon. But I am sure, most if not all of them also fit well in the XPS 15. This is the one I got. I was actually looking for the cheapest (in black). I wanted to try it out first, instead of wasn't buying a more expensive one. The more expensive one are also just fraud in my opinion. There are some up to $22 lol!

https://goo.gl/gMuSJT

The read/write speed are 100% identical with the adapter. It is a normal uhs-i card though, I don't have a uhs-ii card. So I get about 100/80 mb/s with it for single file read/write. It is a Samsung EVO Plus Micro SDXC 64GB.

Here is how that adapter fits in:

 

I was checking some things in BIOS and saw this option. I saw the name of it before, but only now I read the full description, which is a but different than what the name implies.
Could unchecking it help USB drain while in sleep?

And there's also USB power share feature as well. Wondering if it affects the battery drain while in sleep...

 

I was thinking is sticking with the fullhd version indeed. Don't really need touch or 4K. Battery life is more important as at home it will be connected to my UW monitor anyways.

 

Thats what I tought as well. Until I started using the Thinkpad P52 also and thought its fans must be broken or something as I could never hear them

 

Hello brand new 9570 owner here. Love the laptop so far but touchpad is a little quirky. It is either super sensitive or doesn't really respond. My 10 year old dell 1720 touchpad seems better. Any ideas? Maybe uninstall drivers and reinstall? Or is it just a quirky touchpad? Let me know thanks!!

 

Weird. Here in Europe they completely pulled the i9 version.

My order of the i9/32gb/ 2TB ssd is still on hold.

Wonder if they will completely cancel it or something new is coming.

Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk

 

Same here. Got mine in June and did not like it very much. Now in October the keyboard and touchpad have broken in and they feel very nice. It was very stiff at the beginning. Give it some time.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

 

So, they're the same then?
Although, if I put my ear literally at the USB port I can hear the fans when the laptop is charging. I guess that's because it charges really fast and heats up a bit. I just love how fast it charges, especially considering the huge battery! I stop watched it, and during the first half an hour it charges at the rate of 125 W!

That sounds strange. Mine has been perfect out of the box, one of the best touchpads. Yeah, maybe it's a driver issue. But if not then it could be hardware issue, with something under the touchpad causing the glitches.

It's still most probably the supply issues with the i9. There are apparently supply issues with all Intel CPUs, it's been in the news for some time.
But, unless you really really want an i9 for some specific reason, I think it's better to go with the i7. i9 throttles more than i7 and I don't think is a good option on ANY laptop today (apart from chunky gaming ones).

 

interesting almost like it was hopping around? or skipping? and good to know it gets better because not sure i can find a negative about anything else with it

Interesting, if it doesn't get better I guess I can get replacement from Dell, they have 30 day warranty I think or more??

 

You're good for 1 year. Unless you buy extra warranty, and in that case longer.

 

Well, the future heard you, and soon we'll need just an Intel graphics card and a good internet to play ANY game.

Google’s Project Stream is a working preview of the future of game streaming

Microsoft announces Project Xcloud—Xbox game streaming for myriad devices

 

@improwise Out of curiosity, since you have the P52, can you check if you get the stuck in C2 behavior when you plug something in the USB-C port?

 

What's the best way to see that, TS? Powercfg?

Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk

 

Very simple.
throttle stop -> C10 button, observe package C states at idle.
Normally, at idle, there should be some percent (of time) up to C8.
Check what you get with and without a usb-c device. (up to C3 might still be normal, as per @maffle reasoning).
Please also tell which device are you going to use. Thanks!!!

 

awesome and no i did not purchase extra warranty, hope i dont need that! got a good deal through dell so I will take my chances!

 

Same here. Sonetimes got a nice feedback, sometimes just did not register the click. The feel of the touchpad was very stiff. The keyboard also was stiff. I had previously owned E7440 and the XPS did not feel right at all.

Since I'm using mouse most of the time It wasn't a problem for me. But it is working much better now.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

 

@ splus I tried all these options in the bios of the XPS and checked them, if they had any influence on power drain or c state bug, they didnt, for me. But I also dont have a Dell Dock, so maybe people having issues with a Dock in sleep could try that option out.

The irony is, that the bios tab says "USB wake support" but then the only toggle says "wake on USB-c Dock".

Dell somehow forgot the normal USB ports to include and also normal USB devices on the USB-c port, not over the Dock. Because from the logic point, this option should mean, that for example Bluetooth (USB) and also a Logitech dongle shoulnt be powered anymore during sleep. BUT this mostly just means for S3 sleep, not modern standby...

The "USB power share" option also just means, that it allows to charge your phone over them with larger current I think, the options had no effect for me for sleep.

About the game streaming, you could do that already years ago on your own, with your Steam account and an AWS (Amazon cloud) Windows server you set up in a few steps. I tried it once, it worked actually really well and was fun to test.

https://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-an...-own-highend-cloud-gaming-service-on-ec2.html

 

Actually also live in the EU, and it seems the 8300H option is pretty new here, but few resellers sell them (well they haven't got any stock yet though). Also it seems dell doesn't specify on our local page which model has which 1050. One retailer lists all the models with 1050 and another with 1050Ti

EDIT: it seems the 8300H version will indeed come with the normal 1050 and not the Ti

Dell also doesn't sell them themselves here, so retailer is the only way to go here.

Wifi card I was planning to change too. At the moment I can only find the 13" model on show here, but i guess the keyboard is the same in both models? It's not the best but it's personally fine for me.

thanks for the infos and suggestions

 

Hello guys,

I have super weird issue with my Dell XPS 9570 (BIOS 1.5.0). The system can't boot from any USB flash drives!

The USB flash drive is basically missing in the F12 boot menu. I can only see the Windows Boot Manager and my SSD as available options.
I tried Windows 10 bootable USB flash drive, created with Rufus (targeting GPT/UEFI systems), with no success. The exact same USB flash drive works OK on another Dell computers. I tried all of the USB ports, tried switching off SecureBoot, enabling Thunderbolt Boot Support, setting Fastboot to Thorough - again nothing. Also tried several different USB flash drives with different sizes - Corsair, Sandisk, Transcend. No success.

I'm pretty despaired. Any ideas?

Best regards!

 

Pity about the USB BIOS options. I thought disabling them might prevent at least some of the drain associated with USB during the modern standby.

Yeah, I know that streaming has been around since ages, but now that Google and Microsoft are throwing their weight at it, this segment might develop much faster now to become much better than before.
The bigger the players, the more investment and development. And the more development, the faster and greater the changes.

 

@ luke1333 I never had issues so far with the touchpad, it is actually one of the best I had on any laptop so far. Did you do a clean Windows 10 install? Because if you havent installed the drivers, it will have crappy response and slow movement and dont support the Windows 10 native precision mode for touchpads.

@blue13x To be honest, I dont understand why you want the overpriced and bad performance/money i9. The cooling of the XPS just doesnt support that CPU really, and it will throttle down in seconds to the same performance of the i7 if not even below it. Cancel the order and go for the i7, if you still want the XPS right now. I also would not buy the 2TB option, and just replace it with a Samsung 970 EVO. You can phone Dell and ask for a specific custom build, instead of the few pre-custom builds they have on the site.

@ inffy Youre right, looked on the Dell site and they now also offer i5 in EU, which is new. I think the i5 models just have the 1050 though and not the 1050ti, that was what I saw before on the US site, and now the German site of Dell also says the same, so be careful there. Better phone them or ask Dell via chat. You cant flip the Wifi card for the new XPS 13, it is soldered on the board.

@ Lazar Kanelok I had the exact same issue when I wanted to do a clean Windos 10 install via usb stick, and reported it to Dell, with no feedback of course. It seems to be some stupid bios bug. I needed about 30 tries of shutdown/power on to make it work. Try this:

- go into bios, THEN stick the usb stick in, exit bios, press F12 and hope it appears in the list if not, repeat a few times
- try a few times with usb stick already in, then power on, F12, try a few times
- try a different USB slot on the other side

I needed like I said about 30 tries (on/off + f12 enter), to make it finally out of magic appear on the list, and then I could boot from it. I checked the stick on other PCs, where it always worked.

 

You have to set options in BIOS to boot from USB, and also make sure in completely different boot option that the boot isn't set to "minimal" because that won't allow booting from USB.
Not sure exactly which options, but there are few of them in different menus. You'll have to go through BIOS to find them.

 

@ maffle - Thanks, I also think that this is some stupid BIOS bug. I will try your suggestion and will post back. Many thanks, again!

@ splus - Yeah, I already mentioned that I have configured the system to be using the Thorough option which is the opposite to Minimal, so the system is supposed to do full hardware initialization, but still with no success.

 

Asked from one of the retailers (one that usually has the specs right) and they confirmed that the i5 has the normal 1050, i7/i9 has the Ti indeed.

 

Ok, will try to find time for that. Something that is very obvious when comparing the 9570 with the P52 is that I always have the feeling that the 9570 "struggles" to do stuff, despite having quicker CPU (marginally, 8950HK vs 8850H) there is a constant feeling of lag that just isn't there on the P52 which feels much snappier. And this is after lots of clean installations, tinkering etc on the 9570. Ironically, the P52 also works much better with the Dell TB16 docking station even though it cant charge that way.

 

@ improwise The feel of lagginess and things arent perfectly snappy I can confirm too. It may be related to this thread actually, at least (or more) on 4k models:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/125615

It got a bit better with latest Intel drivers and Windows 10 1809, but the problem still persists. A "workaround" for this, is to deactivate all Windows 10 animations, which makes using Windows much more performant on the XPS. Also, make sure to deactivate transparency under colour settings. And change default behaviour in Nvidia panel to "prefer iGPU" as the default option, not auto, then put games you want to run on dGPU in the exclusive list.


I just have my German language, so I cant provide an English one, but the options what to keep and what to disable are mostly self-explained. The only things you should keep are: Peek, miniature preview, crisper fonts, transparent select and desktop bg for fonts (though I have disabled the desktop icons too for better performance). This will also speed up scrolling in Edge and Chrome a lot.

Maybe the ACPI.sys latency spikes actually is also a hint for the lagginess too.

Using max performance profile of Dell Power tool and a lower value for SST (84 is default by Dell I think) helps for this, reducing battery of course.

 

Thats actually part of my normal installation routine to disable stuff like that, mostly because I dislike all these animations when switching virtual desktops etc. Only have font smoothing activated. But thanks for the advice.

I guess the question on my mind, and probably a few others, is "If the P52 is this good, what about the Thinkpad X1E?". Being a software developer, I just dont need something built for video encoding, rendering, data mining etc. but more something that feels snappy when I need it for a few compiles each day. And that does not go into crazy mode as soon as I connect a docking station etc. Lugging around a P52 just for that seems crazy although it should be said that it is nowhere close to being a heavy and big as workstations in laptop format used to be.

 

@ improwise I dont think you will be more happy with other laptops than the XPS 15 with the same CPU, if CPU performance for tasks like compiling (or CPU encoding or whatever) is important to you. Because with my undervolted i7 I get stable 1200 points in CB, which is really good, compared to other laptops with the same CPU, which even get low as 800-1000 (macbook). The snappiness I was talking about isnt about CPU performance, but for some minor little "lag", for example in Windows Explorer browsing large folders, or for the Windows 10 alt+tab preview (more examples are in the Intel thread even with videos), if you have like 10-20 windows open. Other from that, there is no lag or poor CPU performance I have. This is a good example:

 

Yes, I agree, this is not a performance issue, ie a typical performance issue where the CPU would not be enought. This seems to more have to do with DPC, micro stutter, drivers, BIOS etc. Have been running the P52 for about an hour now with LatencyMon running in the background, have been doing surfing, VPN stuff, Spotify streaming (all over Wifi) as well as a few builds in multiple instances of Visual Studio 2017 and so far I am still only in green in LatencyMon. Especially considering heavy Wifi usage, that is surprising. Doing the same on the XPS15 and it would have been all red by now.

That not to say that the P52 can't have DPC problems also, as soon as you start using Wifi that is kind of a given, but the difference between the two is remarkable and should not really be that much considering the hardware that is actually in the 9570 (i9, 32 GB RAM, Samsung 960 Pro SSD in my case).

Edit:
One thing I notice is that stuff like Bluetooth also seem to work much better, using a BlueTooth keyboard (Logitech G613) on the 9570 was quite flaky at best, but using it with the P52 is just smooth sailing. Can't help to wonder if there could be a problem between the 9570 and the Intel NIC that us power users put in instead of Killer as soon as we can. But that is far fetched, I know, since Dell themselves offer that Intel NIC in other configurations of the same machine. Grasping for straws these days...

 

@ improwise Agree, this might be all related with the DPC latency issue. Something causing some intern lag, which results also in stutter and lags in video animations for the iGPU. Some people had the theory, that these lag problems and bad animation performance in Windows 10 on the XPS might be related to bad RAM performance (cheap RAM Dell uses, which dont have good/fast timings) or even an issue, that the RAM doesnt run in dual-channel mode. I also noticed BT issues on the Dell (with Intel 9260) with my Logitech MX2s (lag and bad polling rate), so I am using the Logitech Unifying dongle. I also noticed, that when you have for example a mouse connected via BT, and move it around, it causes a 1-2% CPU load on the Windows driver foundation process. That was the reason, why I also stepped away of using BT for my mouse.