XPS 15 9570 Owners Thread

Do you guys still have your old Killer card to swap it back and check how it performs?
I've heard all bad aboit the stock Killer card, but I've had nothing but great wifi performace and perfect Bluetooth connection with it.
Yeah, the Windows Bluetooth process comes up every time the BT mouse is used. The Logitech dongle is better for performance, BT is better for battery life and convenience.

And also it could be worth checking different Intel graphics drivers, especially the one from Dell's website?
These new ones seem a bit buggy.

@improwise Yeah, I think there's much more to the laptop than just pure performance. If you're always at home and plugged in then yeah, performance is the most important, but if you're sometimes mobile then the overall picture of a laptop becomes more important - the size, weight, battery life, screen quality, keyboard, wifi, BT - all become even more important than the performance, even taking into an account some small glitches (provided they're actually small and realistically not that important to be bothered with).

 

@improwise remember that you have that stuck at 4ghz behavior. That might be the source of your slugginess.

The RAM is operating at JEDEC standard timings. Don't think there's anything odd there.

@splus I am also ok with the killer card. Don't feel the need to swap.

 

I have the same "slugginess" noticed from the first day I got the laptop and it is also present after clean Windows install, seen in the video, or reported here https://communities.intel.com/thread/125615 including all the other examples listed there. If you deactivate all Windows 10 animations, it wont be noticed anymore that much, yet, you "feel" it it is there. There are some examples for this, like Windows Explorer scrolling through folders, or sometimes just opening a UAC prompt, and it lags. It just doesnt "feel" right under Windows. It behaves a bit like a memory leak, but restarting Windows doesn't help for this. I sometimes have 40 Chrome tabs opened, and 30 pictures, then if I let it "stay" a bit, then randomly open a picture from the taskbar, it lags, where I dont have this behaviour on other PCs I use, even older ones.

I also have a lot of the phenomena shown in this playlist, and that is from a XPS 9550:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD_Nf7Vbam2j3O-wXFzCouM3f9-qGvreA

A good example is to just resize a window, if you cross a certain point, larger than about 1920x1080, it becomes laggy and slow and the larger you size it the slower it gets. That shouldnt be a problem for this kind of laptop at all. If you disable "window shown during resize" you wont notice it of course.

 

The slugginess have been around for much longer than that, felt it on the 9560 as well. Its actually more apparent now when I compare it with the P52. Previously I have just assumed it is "some software" that is causing this but running the same software on the P52 feels more "effortless" somehow.

 

What have we found out about the iGPU vs the dGPU for non intensive task, like just plain office work etc? I've noticed that the P52 seems to switch to the dGPU as soon as the TB16 is plugged in, but on the XPS15, I recall that it will use the currently active GPU, no matter which that is. I usually do all "heavy lifting" at a desk and then its normally so that I am connected to power supply/dock. The P52 seem to have such good cooling etc that you can't really notice the switching from increased fan noise etc. Would imagine that forcing the dGPU to be active on the 9570 would cause quite a lot of fan noise.

Edit:
Also please note that the P52 has quadro graphics, which is supposed to be more "stable", but what that actually mean is beyond me. Ie if it is just relevant in certified applications or if it could be better stability in general. But all these GPUs mentioned should be more than enough to handle simple Windows management...

 

@ maffle - I have just tried your suggestions and still no success....usb flash drive still not showing up in the boot menu. Tried all of the possible combinations of ports, On/off/bios cycles - no luck. This is really disappointing, how's its possible such a premium product to behave like that. I can't basically install OS of my choice, even to do a clean Win10 install, that's crazy...

 

Not sure what message you are refering to but I find that the easiest solution is to create a new USB stick using the Media Creation Tool and then put your USB as the first boot device incase normal boot menu does not work. You might need to disable secure boot also.

Typ om MBR can affect also. One can fault the XPS15 for much but installing a new operating system is not one of them

 

@ improwise - I was referring to the issue that my XPS cannot boot from any USB flash drive, no matter SecureBoot is enabled or not, or the flash drive was created with Media Creation Tool, Rufus or something else. I believe that this is an firmware (BIOS) bug in 1.5.0 version but I need someone to confirm this, that's why I have posted here. I know that it is possible to downgrade the BIOS version, but at the moment I don't want to do that, before having a proof that 1.5.0 introduced this strange behavior. Since 1.5.0 has been released on 05 Oct 2018 I think not so many people are currently running this version and probably that's why this problem was not so common right now, but let see.

 

@Lazar Kanelov No it isnt related to 1.5.0. I had this problem since I got the laptop with 1.1.x and it was never fixed so far. Try this,

cmd as admin

diskpart
list disk
select disk # of usb stick (be careful to really use the number of usb stick)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format quick fs=fat32
assign
exit

Now let Windows Media Creation tool run again and create the USB stick. I noticed some weird glitch in the past, where this procedure was necessary, and using it without, wouldnt work.

Do you just have this one? I actually remembered I tested this again after I had installed Wiindows, and I noticed, that it actually worked "better" with another usb stuck I had (a sd card with adapter) than the new stick I bought (which works normally in other pc). This is some nasty bug with the XPS, and it seems to be picky with usb sticks and not everyone working and it is also random, if it shows up.

 

@maffle - Wow, that's strange... Did you tried contacting Dell about this, what they said?
Does anybody else experiencing the same issue?

 

@Lazar Kanelov Yes I contacted Dell and got no answer back. I googled about this, and if you do, you will find other people having the same issue here and there on Reddit or forums, mostly for the previous XPS 15 9560. It seems to be rare though. But mine has exact the same issue. Like I said, it just showed up by pure luck after like the 30 or 40th try. Disabling secure boot also didnt help for me. And of course I had fast boot off, so all hardware should be initiated.

 

Actually, now that you say this, I remember that I had a situation couple of months ago where I made a bootable USB stick but it didn't work with my old Yoga 2 Pro. But I could have sworn that the stick worked before with another recovery OS, like couple of years ago. So, I changed the USB stick and the other one worked.

I think there could be something with these partition designations that make one USB drive "more" likely to be bootable than the other, or even bootable at all. Maybe it's a newer thing...
It might be worth trying different USB sticks and also formatted as bootable with few different programs.

 

Well I just spent 35 minutes talking to dell "technical" support about the 74C GPU temp throttle setpoint. I had planned to talk about the other issues too, but that was far too painful.

Supposedly, he wrote the bios team to provide them with my test results in games and included links to other people reporting the issue (here, reddit, and dell's own forum). We will see if anything comes from it, doubtful but we will see. He was also willing to try to get me a refund for the laptop after I told him it was like bait and switch. I didn't go that route as I would love for Dell to just fix it, but it seems like that is an option in the future.

*on edit*
I do not have any USB boot issues with 1.5.0. I just reinstalled windows 10 this morning.

 

Just tried this on my 9570 with BIOS 1.5.0 and it was no problem booting from the USB drive. Or at least start the installation program on it, I assume that is what you mean or do you refer to Windows to Go or whatever it is called these days? This was with UEFI and SecureBoot enabled. Can't see any reason one would work and not the other though.

If I recall correctly, the MBR can be a bit tricky and you need to match that with the USB or it could be trouble starting. Recall having that problem myself a few times with the XPS15.

 

@custom90gt Thanks for your efforts. I am not a GPU user at all, but while I was doing some tests last time I had the feeling that at times the GPU was reluctant to boost to its max clock (even before the 75c threshold). I had the feeling that it was somewhat erroneously forced into a low power state (the system was not hot). You may wanna check and pass this information to Dell.

I will keep this thread updated on the C-states/Thunderbolt/Sleep behavior that I reported to Dell.

 

Is anyone else getting frequent crashes upon wake? Probably 1 in 4 times the keyboard will light up but the screen will never come on and it must be reset.

 

I got it couple of times just after I got the laptop in late July or early August, but not since then.
Any drivers that need to be updated?

 

I haven't seen this. Are you using S3 sleep or stock? Wake while on or off AC?

 

Yes, happened to me about 10 times so far. It is not a total freeze though, at least for me (because leds toggle still work, and laptop is "there" behind the off screen. and can ping the laptops ip. just picture is missing, of Intel driver crashed or wasnt properly initiated). You can work around this, by having a permanent editor open which has unsaved data in it. Then if it happens, hold down power for about 5-7 seconds, then the picture will pop back with Windows saying are you sure you want to power off (unsaved data), swipe down to really shut down, swipe up to cancel, and Windows and picture is normally there. I havent tested it so far when it happened, but it also might help to connect a 2nd monitor via HDMI to get a picture back.

I have seen this behavior more often with undervolting the iGPU (or cache) too much. Going a bit back on the undervolt, and it hasnt happened anymore for me for 2 weeks (or it was fixed in latest Intel drivers, but I doubt that).

I have this issue too on another Dell tablet of mine, a 7140, and it happens randomly there too.

If you have the Intel RST driver installed, make sure you have latest because one of the last had BSOD issues, also if you have Intel Wifi card, update to latest, where also was a BSOD issue.

 

Yes, that is the main reason I am pondering if I should make the switch to Thinkpad. Drives me crazy. I hav mostly seen this togheter with the TB16 dock, not very often when started/resumed with only the AC adapter connected or nothing at all.

Have to say, even given my supposed love fest with the P52, I can't shake the fact that it kind of feels like something from the 90s which its thick and heavy chassis and roubust design. Even the charger feels like something from another centrury than a XPS15 (or MacBook Pro). Actully never thougth that would bother me but I find that it actually does.

 

Yup, I completely agree with the Thinkpad feeling.
At the end it all boils down to what every individual needs - if you'll be tied down to a desk, don't care about the looks and need a (much less) mobile workstation then P52 is definitely better.
But I think where XPS shines is as an overall package, as a pretty portable laptop.

I think those resume issues are 100% because of drivers. I've had it only couple of times, but not in a while. The new drivers should be better, more polished. I'd check Dell's site for the newest drivers and install them, even over the latest drivers from manufacturers.
Current Intel Graphics driver from Dell worked OK for me, and the newest one from Intel from a week ago works even better (once you disable forced Windows driver updates in System Properties, Hardware tab, Device Installation Settings, and set Automatic installation from manufacturer to No). The previous ones from Intel were a bit buggy, and that could cause the screen resume issues.

Unrelated to this - I found that BT uses power during the sleep because it's active (which is totally unnecessary for a laptop), so in the next few days I'll play with it and activate the airplane mode before I put the laptop to sleep, and see if it sleeps better... It should.
Ideally, it would be good if Dell can deactivate BT during the sleep, along with the BIOS option to disable USB. BT in XPS is attached to USB, according to powercfg /sleepstudy, so maybe that's the root problem.

 

Now, this is interesting. I just decided to try the "Power saving" energy plan (have disabled Continous Standby) and now all of a sudden my CPU seem to have the adjustable CPU clock speeds that it should have. But in Balanced mode, it never goes below 4 Ghz even with light or no load. Its almost like every power plan has gone up one step (power saver => balanzed, balanzed => high performance). For the Power saver plan, the CPU does not seem to go above 3 Ghz, but at the same time, it actually clocks down as it should when there is no need for high clock speeds. This also result in much better thermals and lot less fan noise. All of this is with default settings for power plans and I dont have Dell Power Command or whatever it is called installed (never really understood what that program actually does that is different from switching performance options in Windows instead).

 

I do believe it installs customized variants of the power plans and it let you manage the battery charging.
It's one of the few things that I kept.
Did you did into the default plans to see which value they set for Max/Min CPU freq? Did you check your SST value in throttlestop/FIVR?

 

Both power saver and balanced has 5% min and 100% max for CPU. But the Balanced one seem to get stuck above 4Ghz unless throttling forces it down. Weird...

 

So whats the latest on Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework, should we install it or not?

 

Do you have ThrottleStop installed? If you do, it's super easy to check and adjust the Speed Shift SST. Your symptoms sound like SST is set to 0 (max performance) on Balanced plan, for some reason. SST 0 would keep the clocks at the max all the time. If you set it to lower (128 is default) then the CPU clocks SHOULD behave normally.
Is speed shift enabled in BIOS, btw?

I keep my laptop always at regular Balanced (normal Modern standby) plan, but always at the Best performance, the slider all the way to the right. But then I have the SST set to 128 on A/C (that's the default, don't need more performance and fans), and 192 on battery, which still gives me quite good performance and good battery life.
The difference between 192 and 128 is obvious, if you look at the idle CPU clocks, 192 is lower and tends to go down faster. Windows power plan slider gives me much worse performance when not in Best performance mode (slider to the max). I think those Windows power plans are simply a mess, not very well balanced.
In short: Best performance mode + SST adjustment = great performance and great battery life.

 

Yeah, that's what regulates the thermals... The lack of it might easily be the cause of the weird CPU clocks you have. I think at least in the XPS 15 it works OK. In some laptops the thermal values in IDPTF aren't adjusted perfectly and tends to throttle more than it should.
I know that on battery XPS is slower than on A/C. I'mot sure, but IDPTF might be the one that regulates such things...

 

Well, I have it installed so it would rather be the presence of it causing it though. But I have not had it before and not seen any obvious problems like this.

 

SpeedShift is at 128 (BIOS default value).

 

Have you tried to play with the values? It just might got stuck somehow and need to "reset" it. Or maybe some specific core values in some TS settings got messed up, so only one core is at the max all the time?
Or delete TS ini file, if you were playing with it, and restart TS.
There's a Reset Turbo button in TS, might be worth a try...
I have the latest Dell IDPTF installed. No problems.

 

@improwise to check the *current* SST value you have to look under the FIVR page of throttlestop, where it reports the currently applied voltages.

 

I will try backing off my cache UV (-125mv) and see if it helps. Running a 9260 wifi and everything is up to date.

 

i did not, should I look into doing that? Seems like Dell has a lot of other stuff installed I don't think I need. You recommend creating like a USB stick and installing it from there? Worried I won't get all the right drivers back for like fingerprint, Dell Premier Color and all the little details I've seen some people struggle with these

 

If your touchpad is really as bad as you say, I would request a replacement first from Dell, instead of doing a clean install. You cant mess up with the drivers, it's just two or three you have to install from Dell. The apps you dont need and I wouldnt recommend them to install, like the color app ect.

 

I wish there was a way to test it but it just seems jumpy and not smooth at times and other times it is flawless. Seems like software to me though

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk

 

Thats unlikely though, because it uses the native Windows 10 precision touchpad api, and not some 3rd party software. Go to a stroe where you can test the touchpad of another XPS and compare to yours. It never was jumpy for me.

Does it say your PC has a precision touchpad under Windows 10 touchpad settings?

 

dont think any stores have any around here. Maybe I should contact dell support and see what they recommend? Because laptop is perfect in every other way for me. Would like it to run a hair cooler but no biggie I think once i get touchpad i can do fresh install and undervolt some more etc to help with that but touchpad has been annoying

 

and yes has precision touchpad

 

The HP Zboook G6 x360 looks kind of interesting. They seem to have gone a different route with heat pipes than XPS15/Thinkpad X1E/Thinkpad P1.

 

Hey all. Few questions. When did the xps 15 9570 came out officially? Also i assume almost every person that buys this laptop buys it directly from dell.com right? Thus if you buy it, don't get it anywhere else?


I have a dell xps 15 9550 bought from a few years ago which is decent. But in general when does a new xps 15 come out? Once a year? So there is going to be a xps 15 9580 next year or something like that?


So basically anyone with a dell xps 15 9570... this laptop probably would be good for many years right? But my dell xps 15 9550 that i bought few years ago... it probably would still be fine? Also i noticed the processors on the xps 9570 are called i5 or i7 processors... but they are either i5-8330h or i7-8750h. My laptop is i5 6300hq so its a quad core. I never seen or heard of H. But all these 9570 laptops are quad cores? I assume the i7-8750 is much better than the i5-8330h? However, because its a quad core, it still means you have not good of a battery as you are sacrificing battery for power right? How many hours does one get with a xps 9570 on battery?


https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-15/spd/xps-15-9570-laptop


I don't plan to get a new laptop anytime soon. But if i was to get it, is the best value the one with i7-8750h processor on the 2nd option? It has 8gb ram and 256 ssd. But the thing is if you already have a 256gb ssd, wouldn't it be fine to buy the cheapest one with i5-8330h and then replace that 5400 rpm hard drive with your 256gb ssd? And the other thing would be if you want to increase ram, you just buy it yourself and install it yourself or go to repair shop to have them do it... that price is lower than getting say the 3rd option which comes with the i7-8750 processor with 512gb ssd and 16gb ram?


Seems like getting the 1st or 2nd option is best right? Is the i7-8750h that much faster than the i5-8330h? Example i use i5 6300hq and its fine. Back then i thought about whether paying mor for an i7 quad core processor i5 6300hq and someone said that i5 is still quad core because it has hq. Also what brand does dell give you for the 5400rpm vs the 256gb ssd and 512gb ssd?

 

One thing that is a bit interesting, in the BIOS there are options both for Speed Step and Speed Shift. My understanding is that Speed Shift has replaced Speed Step and that if Speed Shift is activated, that will disable Speed Step. But at the same time, why even have options for Speed Step in the bios if Speed Shift is available? Could there be a reason to perhaps disable one or the other? I am mostly thinking about the abysmal state of Dells BIOSes here and the fact that we never really seem to know what actions will lead to what.

Have scheduled a pickup for my last remaining 9570 now BTW, unless something magic happens in the comming days I will won't be a 9570 owner any more

 

Talked with Dell support last night they sent me an updated bios to see if it changed anything and still did it. The mouse like gets stuck! I went to hit the windows button to shut down for the night and had to wait nearly two seconds for the mouse to move! It was very odd. Also let my dad use and he said it would just stop or stutter as well and thought it was just him as he has never used a newer laptop, and i said nope same thing it did to me just isnt smooth movement. Hooked up my work bluetooth mouse and it was like butter man was it nice, I almost just want a new laptop now. Frustrating that I finally found a laptop with a great screen and battery life everything is really good except touchpad sucks. My prostar that was a good bit cheaper touchpad was on point compared to this one. Hope I can get sorted out

 

I think the XPS 15 comes around February, March, April. I've gotten 9550 and 9560 directly from Dell. You can get the XPS 15 from different stores other than Dell like the Microsoft store, for example.

I had the i5 - 6300hq and it was a quad core (4 threads) chip. I quickly got the i7-7700hq version of the 9560 because the it -6300hq was slow for my workload.

I'm still using the 9560 with the i7 and will most likely be looking at the 9580 (a better i9 hopefully ).

The i7 - 8750h is a hexa core chip (6 cores / 12 threads) and is definitely much better than the i5 - 6300hq. Do a little Google searching and you'll find good info about the processor capabilities and differences.


Sent from my H8166 using Tapatalk

 

Kinf of ironic (and expected). Ever since it was decided that my third 9570 should be sent back with not replacement, it has worked much better than before together with the TB16

Only difference I can think of is that I disabled Speed Step in BIOS (but not Speed Shift) and that I a bit earlier disabled "Wake on AC".

 

So you're keeping it?
I really couldn't trade this amazing battery life and a bright and clear display for any other laptop! XPS doesn't just have a biggest battery, but it looks like it's also quite power efficient when compared to competition. And it's still at the top in the benchmarks for ITS class...

Yeah, I don't know if those SpeedStep settings make any difference, but if SpeedShift completely took over from SpeedStep, then why are the SpeedStep settings still around? Or do they still affect the CPU performance?
I have SpeedStep enabled in ThrottleStop, but maybe I should disable it?

I just updated to BIOS 1.5 from 1.2.2 and everything works OK, pretty much same, or I can't see any difference. I'm not a gamer though, so the 74 degree GPU limit doesn't affect me, although I'd love to have that raised back for the sake of those who need it.

 

You have a choice of using the older SpeedStep or the newer SpeedShift. If you have SpeedShift enabled, it seems SpeedStep is automatically disabled by the CPU regardless of other system settings.

SpeedShift is an updated "power scheme" should provide better performance and reduced power consumption. It is also CPU based, whilst SpeedStep is a cumbersome hybrid CPU-software "solution."

All that said, Intel has provided only limited documentation so these are black boxes. More info here, including links to Intel guides:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-xps-speed-shift.796891/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/

 

Don't know yet if I'll keep it, the constant anxiety every time I plugg it into the TB16 dock has to go before that can happen. Have asked Dell for some extended time though before sending it back, but have not received a reply yet. Disabling Speed Step should nt have any effect but considering the state of Dells BIOSes, we can never know.

 

Is anyone in here running the latest october 2018 update of windows 10? If so, any changes to DPC latency by any chance?

 

Yes. No.

Regarding my CPU being stuck at 4+ Ghz. Seems like this might have been an effect of my trying to disable Connected Standby to enable the different power plans and the ability to choose between them. With CS disabled, neither Windows nor the Dell Power Command seemed to be able to control the CPU. When I disabled CS the CPU started showing more normal behaviour.

 

Ah, if so, could it be then that your TB16 problems were actually Windows related, and got sorted out after the Windows update, and not the SpeedStep change? Or maybe it was XPS-Windows compatibility issue?

Yeah, I also tried it the other day again, and noticed that the CPU was behaving in a weird way (at least one of the things I noticed was that C2 was constantly over 70%). And also, what @maffle mentioned earlier, that with BIOS 1.5 with S3 enabled the core 0 gets stuck to high usage for no reason after coming out of S3 sleep, but goes back to normal after turning off the bluetooth (and stays normal after turning it back on, but goes back up after the next S3 sleep again), so I enabled the modern standby again.
Something is off with CPU and S3 sleep...