Dell XPS 15z: Sincerely Flattering
by Jarred Walton on September 2, 2011 1:30 AM ESTDell XPS 15z Gaming: Another Midrange Mobile GPU
If you were hoping for a gaming powerhouse in a sleek form factor with the XPS 15z, you’re probably asking for too much. The GT 525M is a reasonable laptop GPU, but compared to desktop GPUs it would be strictly entry-level. 96 CUDA cores running at 600MHz with a 128-bit memory interface clocked at 1800MHz? That’s pretty similar to the desktop GT 430, which you can snag for $45 after rebate. Maxing out the resolution and detail settings with such a GPU certainly isn’t going to do you any favors on modern games.
We’ve included results at our Low, Medium, and High settings in Mobile Bench (as well as results for Civilization V and Total War: Shogun 2), but we’ll stick with the Medium and High settings here (since Low tends to look pretty awful in a lot of games). We’ve also run our Medium settings at the native 1080p resolution, which ends up being reasonably playable in about half of the titles we tested.
Medium Detail Gaming
As expected, the 15z with GT 525M falls right about the middle of the charts for the tested laptops. Nearly all of the games in our test suite break 30FPS at Medium settings and 768p resolution—Metro 2033 and Civilization V being the two exceptions. Bump the resolution up to 1080p, and even at Medium settings Mafia II, Mass Effect 2, and Total War: Shogun 2 join the sub-30FPS club. If you’re a serious gamer, you’ll want something more than the GT 525M, but for mainstream users it runs most titles well enough to make PS3 and Xbox 360 games look bland with low quality texturing.
High Detail Gaming
At our High settings, we start to lose steam. DiRT 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Mass Effect 2 are the only games in our suite to break 30FPS at 900p “High” settings. Considering the only LCD options are 768p or 1080p, and we’re very keen on the 1080p upgrade, you’ll usually need to temper your desire for nice graphics on mainstream notebooks like the 15z.
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MobiusStrip - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
"What is it with people simply lifting the design work of Jonathan Ives for Apple"What is it with people who don't understand that a rectangle with buttons on it isn't the private domain of one company, especially a company that didn't invent the form in the first place?
Do you bitch about every car that has four wheels ripping off the work of some ancient cart-builder?
How about every camera maker that puts the lens of the camera ON THE FRONT, and the viewer on the back?
Plus, your pathetic strawman here doesn't even hold up for superficial similarity. Show us the Apple laptop that has upward-sloping, curved bottom sides?
zepi - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
You should just take all three Macbook Pro configurations trough your normal Windows-test to give people a measurement stick.A lot of people install Windows to a bootcamp partition to play games that are not released for OSX.
Doing the same with iMac would not hurt either.
Rob Sims - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
+1Considering how common the 6750m is (the default card in all base model iMacs and also high spec MBP15 and MBP17) there are surprisingly few reliable gaming benchmarks of it.
I run my games through bootcamp on a MBP17 2011 and would be very interested to see how it stacks up to standard windows laptops.
tipoo - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
+2'ed.darunium - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
Why the need for a discrete graphics card with intel HD3000 pulling its weight out there? Sure it is no replacement still for a solid discrete solution, so if you want a moderate gaming-capable laptop you still need to look for a separate card, but the GT525M doesn't significantly outperform Intel HD3000 at all, all it will do is add heat, cost, and reduce battery life. It's just another means to sell to an unknowing consumer who will be turned on by the presence of a useless (and now I imagine much-discounted anyway) discrete VGA solution.tipoo - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
What would be "significantly outperform" to you? If I recall correctly it offers about twice the performance of the HD3000. Besides, the laptop will automatically switch between them anyways, so if your not doing anything intensive it will use the lower power chip.Iketh - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
aside from what's already mentioned, it also frees up thermal limitations for the cpu and memory bandwidthJarredWalton - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
Without the dGPU, gaming on the XPS 15z would be a no-go, especially at 1080p. There's a huge difference between 30-40 FPS at 1366x768 at minimum detail (what the HD 3000 can handle) and 30-40 FPS at 1080p and medium detail.seapeople - Saturday, September 3, 2011 - link
As a corollary to the OP's point, I don't understand why they went with Sandy Bridge in this laptop instead of Core 2. Sandy Bridge doesn't significantly outperform Core 2 anyway, so it's just adding heat, cost, and reducing battery life.Brad4 - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
Low quality monitor. Not good for productivity. I like Windows, but Apple is the only company these days making a 16:10 display laptop. All 16:9 laptops are inferior.