XPS 15 9570 Owners Thread

I am really enjoying my P1. Enjoying the fact that it doesn't constantly wake up from sleep and it doesn't throttling the GPU at 74C. Also the FHD model is nearly 1lb lighter than the 4k touch XPS

 

How is sleep quality, I mean power consumption? Modern sleep I assume, S3 still supported? (Can you make sure it does sleep while in backpack, or at mercy of apps?)

And how is throttling under load... I understand no VRM cooling either so I wouldn't expect something revolutionary, rather subtle differences compared to the 9570 (or 5530)?

https://www.myfixguide.com/thinkpad-x1-extreme-disassembly/
https://ok2.de/media/ThinkPad/HMM/p1_x1_extreme_hmm_en.pdf

 

It’s probably be discussed in here before.

When I under volt the cpu with xtu, every time I come out of sleep xtu crashes. Is there a fix for this?

 

What about DPC? A review comming soon?

Delivery time of P1 was that much shorter than X1E then?

 

I can check, yes. And yeah, the shorter delivery time is why I went for the P1.

 

Intel XTU has a lot of bugs so not much you can do. I use ThrottleStop.

 

hahaha.

The XPS is engineered around Skylake and nearly-identical subsequent chips so has only very minor tweaks among 9550, 9560 and 9570. The newer nVidia cards are beating the daylights out of this platform and the extra CPU cores on the 9570 are not helping.

 

So. I called up dell yesterday and read my list aloud for the person in the other end, one of things being an unstable iGPU which is causing blackouts after waking up from sleep and also just crashes when pushed (not undervolted) regardless of the driver version. Their response was to issue a change of the motherboard, which I am curious about, but why not?

Another problem was the slow write speeds of the Toshiba SSD. I told them that the issue is a general one with those SSD's and asked for getting one from intel instead. We'll see what they bring (fingers crossed).

Last thing was about the blown speakers. These will be replaced, too.

Other things like DPC, sleep issues etc., I mentioned, too, but I know that no kind of replacement can help with that. Still, for the sake of statistics.

Is there anything I should be aware of and pay attention to when the technician gets here?

 

Uses S3 - I didn't see where MS could be enabled. It has never woken up AFIK and is always cool when I take it out of my bag. I haven't seen any throttling under load yet, but tbh I haven't been running tests because I've been too busy to.

 

let us know if changing the motherboard fixes the igpu blackout issue from sleep. mine is exhibiting the same problem. much worse when connected to hdmi 4k

 

You mean Samsung SSD instead as I have never seen or heard about Dell using Intel SSDs? But that does not mean that they don't

BTW, I have found that reinstalling the Intel drivers seems to make the screen flickering going away for a while, more than would be explained by just the restart that is. But perhaps you are not refering to that issue?

 

Palmface. Yes, your'e right, I mean't 'Samsung', not 'Intel'.

Reinstalling the drivers doesn't do it for me. We will see whether the replacement of the motherboard will help.

 

Hey

I have been using my XPS 9570 and recently it has been feeling kind of slow - periodically when doing basic stuff like browsing, emails etc.

Is there a recommendation on how I could test this (Benchmarks perhaps?)

Extra: Would you recommend updating to the windows 10 october update and Bios 1.5.0

 

I am curious on the new bios 1.6 i have heard it is supposed to have a lot of fixes. I am on the 1.5 and no difference over the older ones as far as I can tell but my machine is virtually brand new

 

Heard where?

 

reddit & my contact with dell support said should be out very soon they said so who knows what that means!

 

Which power plan are you using?
I've found the max performance to be the only good enough one. Others like balanced and better battery have small stutters, and feel much slower. It looks like those other plans are simply not very well optimized for this laptop/CPU.

I always use max performance power plan, even on battery. But when on AC I set the SpeedShift SST in TS to 96 and when on battery to 192 (or 160). That gives me better performance when on AC and better battery life when on battery.
With other Windows plans like better battery I get much worse performance.

 

Do you use the Windows power plan or dell power management program?

 

Regular Windows power plan. Pull the slider all the way to right to best performance, for both AC and battery, and set the Speed Shift SST for battery to higher value than stock 128. Not too high because it'll throttle the CPU clock too much.

In my experience, other plans like better battery and better performance on both Windows and Dell power plans, don't perform that good and don't offer good battery saving when compared to regulating SST directly and keeping the power slider at best performance.

 

I remember that there was question about it in the past.
I was on BIOS 1.3.1 and flash back to 1.3.0 but temperature limit on GPU is still 75C.
Is there any way to restore higher temp limit? Or is it related to GPU drivers from nvidia?

 

No it's related to the bios and you can't downgrade from 1.4.1 and higher versions.

 

I know, thats why I'm still on 1.3.x.
But I downgraded to 1.3.0 and it seems that temp limit hasn't changed. So maybe it's not related to BIOS version.
I'm currently on 1.3.0 so I can check things but I don't know which ones any suggestions?
Maybe downgrade to even lower version?

 

I see what you're saying. Have you loaded the bios defaults? You can also try the earlier version or doing a bios recovery as well. How are you testing it?

 

Nope. Haven't loaded bios defaults. I'm using gpu-z to monitor max temp during some gameplay or furmark gpu stress test. You can see results here. Never passed 75C.
https://imgur.com/a/oFIqaEx
Second screenshot is interesting, it's like temp limit can be adjusted by drivers.

 

Do you guys have screen flickering too after waking the 9570 up from sleep running on battery? Would love to know whether or not this is a general issue. I'm running intels .6326 drivers but the flickering occured on dells older drivers, too.

 

I was on the previous BIOS 1.2.2 until recently and the limit was 78 degrees. Have you tried rolling back to 1.2.2? Maybe they introduced the 75 degree limit with BIOS 1.3.0?

I'm on the same driver, and before that was using Dell's Intel GPU drivers, and there was no flickering.
What are your power saving settings in Intel Graphics control panel? If all the power saving settings are turned to the max then maybe you want to lower them, or turn off the Enhanced power savings.
Also, I know that in some other laptop models the Panel self refresh option was causing display flickering. Maybe try to turn it off if it's turned on?

 

Hi, thanks for the suggestions. I have already disabled all the power saving features including: Panel Self-refresh, Display power saving technology and Extended battery life for gaming. Flickering persists.

Are you saying that you did not have the flickering issue with the driver from dell? If yes, why are you using the newest driver from intel?

 

How do you turn all these off? just in regular windows settings??

 

You can do it in the 'Intel Graphics Settings' through the tray icon. If you don't have the tray icon, you might need to install the latest driver from intel, as, if I remember correctly, Dell has removed that from their driver.

 

This damn fan logic of the XPS is still one of the worst and most garbage I've ever seen on any laptop, and it is still one of my biggest concerns I have about it, especially when I'm browsing the web in bed in the evening with it. Can someone actually explain this to me:



WHY THE HECK are the fans running under this condition? The fans actually don't seem to be "just" related to temperature, it is something "more complex". Under some conditions, even with all temps are that low, they still kick in and are running "forever". Sometimes they kick in for just 1 second and go off again, then randomly they spin for 5 minutes even all temps are low again. Then they are often triggered for example when I open task manager. It somehow seems they monitor iGPU activity and if there is some threshold point, they turn on, even all temps are low. And why is the lowest spin already 2500RPM btw... this is actually already generating an annoying frequency if youre in a silent room.

 

No, I never had any flickering with any driver I've used.
I switched to the new driver from Intel website because I read its change log, and it looks like they improved lots of things and fixed some bugs.
But in all honesty, I don't see any difference...
I only disabled the driver updating (System properties, Hardware tab, Device installation settings, No) because Windows automatically "updates" to the driver from Dell.

Maybe it has something with the sensors particularly in your laptop?
I really hardly ever get the fans running, and never get this 1 second fan spin that some people mention. I guess you could "debug" and observe ALL the sensors, and see to which sensor the fans react the most...
If you suspect it's mostly related to the Intel GPU then have you tried to enable all the Intel Graphics power savings to the max? That might push the GPU to be less active and therefore less hot. I don't know... Or update to the newest Intel GPU driver...

 

Does padding the PCH to the bottom case help? Dell had a very low temp threshold for the 9550 and 9560, maybe 38*C but I can't remember.

Of course, Dell Command I Power Manager can be used to reduce fan speed by selecting "quiet". And you can set SpeedShift EPP=0 to help a bit.

 

Yes it comes and goes. Usually reinstalling the driver will make it go away for a while.

Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk

 

awesome thanks i will see if it makes any difference with battery or performance! Have not have any issues though with screen flickering but I have 4k panel if that makes a difference!

 

Not sure if anyone else has this issue, but I’ve recently noticed that my i9 has been power throttling hard. Previously, I could cinebench in the 1200s with the core clock holding 4ghz for at least 30 seconds. Now it seems that any load causes it to shift back to 12w power draw (2ghz - PL1 limit) and performance absolutely tanks. Temperatures aren’t an issue so what’s going on? It is plugged in.

Bios 1.5.0

Cheers.

 

Has there been any progress on resolving this issue? Very annoying to deal with and it makes me not want to use my eGPU.

 

? via 130W power adapter or TB dock + 240W ? (TB + 180W only supply 65W!)

 

Wow, I didn't know they changed the temperature limit for power throttling on the GPU from 78°C to 74°C until now. That's really an bad move. I am not an owner of the XPS yet, but since this is still the line I'd go with, such things make me angry. The more I read, the more I could puke.

Also: why do they always limit the GPU? The CPU always overheats earlier, but they give it temperatures like 90°-100°C whereas the GPU stays much cooler (actually in almost every existing notebook the 1050/Ti stays around 15-20°C cooler compared to the CPU), and yet throttle the GPU instead of the CPU. How dumb is that?

And don't anyone to tell me that CPU is so much more important, because if it were, then they should just put no GPU in there at all, or a MX150 at best. Because who needs the gtx 1050Ti anyway... only gamers... but "this is not a gamer notebook"... huh? Why is it even in there?!

Why not put a gtx 1060 in there? With throttling methods like above everything is possible... advertise it as the best of the best laptop and just cripple it again at 74°C... (that's probably what we have to expect in future).

Anyways, to cut the rant:
In the Dell forums someone said, when he disabled some "Thermal Framework", that the 74°C limitation was gone and the GPU was throttled only by purely hardware throttling somewhere between 85-90°C.

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/...U-set-point/m-p/6201913/highlight/true#M19258

Is this true?
Have others tried it as well?

 

you are right. Going back with bios to 1.2.2. Limit is rised from 75C to 78C.
https://imgur.com/a/mEZ94ov

 

Some Dell XPS 15 9570 laptops may have a BIOS related GPU bug

Interesting... I wonder if this is causing more throttling than the 75 degree limit...
I'm the article they offer a workaround as well. Just start 2 GPU intensive processes to "unblock" the throttling.

 

Sounds like it's true.
That means the GPU throttling is actually enforced by the Intel thermal management driver and not BIOS itself, which probably just sets the "recommended" throttling temperature...

 

Maybe I will try that by time, I dont really want to mod my XPS internally though. No, the "quiet" profile doesnt change the fact, that lowest fan spin is 2500RPM.

Sadly, no, I dont know any new updates on it.

It has nothing to do with bios 1.5.0 or 1.4.1 (maybe 1.4.1, but not 1.5.0). It is the same issue I reported here months ago ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-15-9570-owners-thread.817008/page-130#post-10795925 ). I can easily reproduce it still in several games, and I even said the same he mentions in the article, that you kinda can "work around it", by opening, for example, a video in the background and "push" the GPU load a little bit. The threshold where and how the dGPU wants to save energy is just too aggressive, and that is already there since months, not sure if it was from the beginning or introduced somewhen with Nvidia drivers or bios around 1.3.0 maybe. Using the "prefer high performance" profile in the Nvidia control panel doesnt really help much, and is kinda ignored. It is mostly in "low load" games, but also randomly with others, like I mentioned Life is Strange 2, for example. I have to toggle back and out of the game so that triggers a high GPU peak load, and then, from some point, suddenly the clocks boost up properly and FPS stays stable at 60. I actually hen, after it happened, use a hotkey with TS, to disable turbo boost and cap CPU at 2.2GHz. If I do it before opening the game, the GPU mostly will be stuck around 900MHz and wont boost up correctly, mostly because of a too low trigger load point in GPU activity. I noticed it actually happens more often in games which have no true fullscreen mode but use Window fullscreen, so it may also be a Windows 10 bug in a combination of this laptop, for whatever reason.

One interesting thing of the article though is this:

"The NVIDIA GPU achieves between 5/15 FPS in the UNIGINE Heaven benchmark when the core temperature is below 48 °C/118 °F. The GeForce GTX 1050 constantly power limit throttles to between 949/1,278 MHz when operating at below this temperature threshold, while the system also keeps the Intel UHD Graphics 630 running during this time too."

That would be a total "Picard double face palm". So if the dGPU temp gets below 48°c it just throttles down (even more) regardless if youre in a game and it has 99% load, seriously? That could explain, why under lower load games, it doesnt boost up. How stupid is that if it's true...

I was always wondering, why in some games it didnt boost up and kept at 99% GPU load, good low temps, but bad FPS. Then randomly it started to work and then randomly fall back. I never got on the point, that it might be TOO LOW temperature related.

Ok I also read the reddit post and now it all makes total sense...

If this is true, it is ridiculous. So if dGPU temps fall below 48°C... it throttles DOWN... maybe even switch to iGPU... regardless of the load it has? This cant be true. But it would explain a lot.

Because I try a lot to optimize my XPS 15... undervolt, set all to low in games, fps cap at 60, and I dont game intensive games anyway. That could explain, that I optimized the laptop "too good", and then it throttles because of this? This is pathetic. Pure pathetic Dell. I just love this laptop...

So not even now we have a >=74°c throttle... we also have a <=48°c throttle. HOW PATHETIC IS THAT...

I am sure it is in bios, but the Intel thermal driver just loads the recommended value and then uses it as the first throttle point. If you disable it, then the chip itself uses the last hard coded emergency throttle temperature. So it mostly has two values, one recommended used by software throttle, and one shutdown/throttle point via hardware around 90.

 

I've noticed that the GPU sometimes (rarely for me) doesn't run in full power mode. Typically just letting the game run for a minute or two causes the GPU to be properly utilized. Well properly until it hits 74C and then throttles again...

Looks like the bug is present in multiple Dell models though, based on the comments of the article.

 

Lol. Dell should then adjust XPS specs sheet to say:
operating temperature of nVidia GPU: 48 - 75 degrees. Keep it hot, but not too hot.

Shall we warm up the laptop in the oven before playing a game?

 

I honestly dont know if I should laugh or cry right now... I actually did a few tests in the last hour and it seems to fit 100%. If the temps of the dGPU fall around somehow <48°C it throttles down to 900MHz and FPS go bad. That explains, why I saw it just in "low load" games like WoW and others I play. And why for example, I had a few "cold runs" with Cinebench, where the GPU wasnt warm enough and still under 48°C to give proper results.

I wonder what motivation behind this is!? To cheat with battery life maybe? "Hey the GPU is under 48°C, so they dont game at all, lets switch to iGPU to give them better battery"... I WANT to decide how MY LAPTOP behaves, for STANDBY... for fans, GPU, clocks, or whatever.

If this wont get fixed, I will try to get rid of this laptop and look for something else. I guess a Gigabyte Aero, Asus Zenbook Pro or maybe Razer...

 

Hi, could someone here extract the IFR of a 9570 BIOS?
You can follow this tutorial to get a file called "setup IFR.txt" and then paste it to pastebin or wherever you want.

I want to check the full BIOS menu to see what hidden "features" these new XPS models have (and maybe changing a few settings using the EFI shell can solve some of your problems).

 

I not quite sure what you’re asking since you list three different methods of charging the laptop. That said, the only power source is the 130W adapter that came in the box.

I’m fairly sure I did this in the past and there wasn’t anything useful in there. That said, I’m not going to say anything definitive and leave it to people who know more about the BIOS than me.

 

What is the best bios to use if you like gaming? Mine currently has 1.3.1.

 

I remember when @maffle, @custom90gt and I talked about this issue a month ago or so. It got mixed up with the 75c threshold reduction.
I would have never have thought that they also introduced a cold threshold. Can't really understand why. Anyway, this is software solvable... let's hope that they do something...

Regarding the C-states/sleep drain, they told me that they have escalated the issue and are looking into it.

@maffle perhaps something can be done regarding the fans. In HWInfo if you open the fan control page, you can see that the fan can actually only have 3 values. 0/2500/5000. If you slide to 5000 and click "set manually", it looks like nothing happens. However, if you click constantly and quickly "set manually" you will hear the fan actually spinning faster. This happens because the value that you set only lasts for fraction of a second until the DELL fan management regains control and sets its value. I don't know if there is a way to disable it.

 

The c-states power issue is present on nearly every laptop I have plugged into my eGPU. It is why I don't use my Thinkpad P1 with the eGPU