Dell XPS 15 L521X: A Detailed First Look
by Jarred Walton on July 25, 2012 1:10 AM ESTFirst Impressions: Skin Deep?
When I first laid hands (and eyes) on the new XPS 15, I was extremely impressed. It’s such a noticeable upgrade compared to previous XPS laptops in terms of build quality that I really can’t understate the fact. Dell’s in a bit of a Catch-22 here, of course, with a design that’s very similar to the MacBook Pro 15. On the one hand, if they do a 15” laptop that’s similar but not built as well (e.g. the XPS 15z from last year), they get complaints from people saying, “Apple can do it, so why can’t Dell?” Now they’ve basically silenced those naysayers and instead they’ll get others accusing them of copying Apple’s design. Does that really matter, though? I’d rather have something that looks and feels like a high quality laptop that borrows good design elements from other successful laptops than to get a unique laptop that looks and feels poor. Dell has also taken a few steps to differentiate their design from Apple’s MBP15, and as someone who has often wondered, “Why don’t other OEMs make machined aluminum laptop chassis?” it’s nice to see a laptop that really nails that element of the design.
As good as the XPS 15 looks, it also has plenty of performance potential. The XPS 15z made some compromises to keep thermals in check, and with Ivy Bridge and Kepler moving the CPU and GPU to smaller process nodes Dell is able to increase performance within the same power envelope. 1080p gaming is still going to be a bit too much with some titles, but if you’re really looking for a gaming laptop Dell already covers that market with their Alienware brand. The XPS is basically a stylish and well built brand that straddles the line between business offerings like the Latitude and Vostro laptops and gaming offerings like the Alienware and Inspiron SE models. (Yes, if you didn’t realize, the new Inspiron SE 15 and SE 17 both sport more powerful GPUs than the XPS 15—along with larger, bulkier chassis that don’t have the cachet of the XPS line.)
The problem is that good looks and performance potential can only take you so far, and when you really try to put the pedal to the metal with the XPS 15, the engine overheats and you end up taking an unscheduled pit stop. How big of a problem this is will depend on what you plan on doing with the laptop. I can certainly see gamers getting very frustrated with the current throttling issues, but I suspect the next official BIOS update will largely address those concerns. For general use—Internet surfing, office tasks, listening to music and watching movies, video encoding, etc.—the throttling problems will most likely never even show up. It’s only when you really push both the CPU and GPU that heat becomes a problem. So if you’re not a super demanding laptop user but you want a stylish and sturdy laptop that should last for half a decade—and you don’t want to deal with business class laptops, or OS X and Apple products—I can still readily recommend the XPS 15 as a good notebook that pleases me on many levels.
As good as the XPS 15 might be for mainstream/fashion conscious users, for power users or enthusiasts that really like to push their hardware to its limits I suspect that the XPS 15 will come up short. Even if Dell can create a BIOS that won’t throttle as badly as the current A04 release, I remain skeptical of their ability to have the XPS 15 run a heavy CPU+GPU load without dropping clock speeds on one or both chips. 1.8GHz was stable with my ThrottleStop testing, but that’s in an air conditioned testing environment, and I wasn’t using the most demanding workloads possible. If you run a pathological workload or “power virus” like OCCT or Furmark or similar, and if you require a laptop that can handle such applications without throttling CPU or GPU clocks, you’ll want to look elsewhere—and probably forget about laptops that are less than an inch thick. And on a related note, I should mention that I’ve seen at least some minor throttling with several other “thin but fast” laptops, so Dell’s not alone here; we’ll be making a concerted effort to check for throttling on all future laptop reviews.
For now, the throttling issues are a big enough concern for me that I’m holding off on a final verdict until we can see what the firmware updates bring. I know from past experience that laptops that seem to run a bit hot and/or loud when they’re new will only get worse as they start to age. If running any game on the XPS 15 today means 100% fan speed and juggling CPU/GPU clocks to keep thermals within an acceptable range, a year or two down the road you might be looking at a laptop that can’t really handle gaming at all. Maybe that matters to you and maybe it doesn’t, but if you don’t plan on doing anything that leverages the discrete GPU, why even have it there in the first place? Depending on what Haswell brings to the table, we might actually see dGPUs disappear outside of dedicated gaming laptops like the Alienware line—and I’m not sure that’s even a bad thing.
If we were judging the XPS 15 by appearances alone, it would easily walk out of here with an award. Depending on what Dell can do with the firmware over the next couple of weeks, we might still have a delayed prize to hand out. Unfortunately, out of the gate the XPS 15 stumbles and Dell will have to work to make up the difference. Until that happens, the XPS 15 is a beautifully crafted laptop with some personality quirks that could be hard to live with long term. Make sure you know what you’re getting into before committing to a relationship, or you could end up feeling burned.
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robco - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link
You had some decent, respectable opinions, until that dig in the last line. Plenty of people who know how to use computers use Macs - especially the laptops. There are lots of people who fire up Terminal and use the CLI. Lots of *nix software works on OS X - because it is BSD. I know plenty of engineers sporting MacBooks. The stereotype of only computer novices using Macs is a tired one.As for proprietary hardware, that's the case with most laptops. They're not like desktops where you can assemble one from standardized, interchangeable components. Sure the CPUs, drives and RAM may be, but not the motherboard, cooling system, case, GPU, battery, etc. You can't mix and match the parts you like about different Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops and make a Frankenstein box like you can with a desktop. Laptops are sold more or less as complete packages. You can get DIY kits in different sizes, but you're just installing the CPU, drives and RAM. There's a lot less choice.
Luke2.0 - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
Hi, Jarred. Good first look. Well done.But I miss the audio / speaker test (You did it for the N56 Preview). You see, Dell was leveraging on their JBL speakers back then. And it helped their 2010 XPS15 to earn AT's gold medal.
How about the current offering?
I would love it be mentioned again, especially when you are going to update and finalize the review. Even if the testing would be somewhat reviewer-subjective, still I'm gonna appreciate your effort.
Thank you.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 9, 2012 - link
The speakers are good, better than the 15z, but not as good as the original XPS 15 (L501x/L502x). I think that's because the last XPS 15 had a dedicated subwoofer, where this version does not. That's too bad. So basically, the earlier XPS 15 had a (much) better 1080p display, better audio quality, but worse build quality and aesthetics (though some of that is certainly subjective). Of course, with the proper power adapter, the original XPS 15 didn't have any issues with throttling that I experienced.alfling - Wednesday, August 8, 2012 - link
BIOS A06 is out! Could you please give it a try and tell us how it is in gaming? Thank you!ftp://ftp.dell.com/FOLDER00719182M/1/L521XA06W.exe
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 9, 2012 - link
Interesting... where did you get that link from? Dell sent me a couple beta versions of A05 that didn't fix the throttling issues (actually, they throttled the GPU instead of the CPU, which was even worse for gaming). I haven't heard anything from them for the past 10 days or so, though, so I'm not sure what the current status is. I'm guessing that A06 is another beta, but I'll give it a shot and report back shortly....JarredWalton - Thursday, August 9, 2012 - link
Okay, I only tested with DiRT 3, because that's been very good at showing the throttling. It looks like the A06 (beta?) you linked is better than the A05 betas I've played with, but I can see exactly what Dell is trying to do and I don't like it. With the CPU and GPU loaded (i.e. playing a game), the CPU is no longer throttling. At all. So throughout 10 minutes of running DiRT 3 tests, the CPU always had at least one (usually two or three or all four) CPU cores running at 2.8GHz (2795.5-2795.9 MHz to be precise). The problem is the CPU is thus still generating a decent amount of heat, and in order to compensate Dell is throttling GPU clocks.Looking at the GPU, after about 2.5 minutes (and over half of that time is spent launching DiRT 3), the "GPU Geometry Clock" drops from 708.8 (Boost Clock) to 669.8 MHz (still boosting but not as much), and then about 10 seconds later it drops to 615 MHz (now slightly lower than "stock"), and after a few more seconds it drops way down to 405MHz. There are even times where the GPU clock drops down to 270 MHz -- so basically running at less than half the expected GT 640M clock speed. At the same time, the GPU Memory Clock starts at 1000.4 MHz (4GHz effective) and stays there for the first 2.75 minutes, and then the clock starts to fluctuate between 1000MHz and 400MHz.
Ultimately, you get a much better gaming experience with the CPU running at a steady 1.8GHz with the GPU at maximum clocks than dropping GPU clocks while leaving the CPU at max -- so from that perspective, the A04 BIOS is still better, especially if you're willing to play with ThrottleStop.
Temperatures incidentally are higher than I saw with A04 -- I'm seeing a maximum of 92C on the CPU (but the throttling causes the temps to drop quite quickly after that to around 85C). and the GPU tops out at around 81C. And this is all just in 10 minutes of testing. But then, I'm using the built-in DiRT 3 benchmark, so let me try actually playing the game to see if that's any different....
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 9, 2012 - link
So, as expected the issues carry over into the actual gameplay, and in fact the GPU throttling is even worse than I at first suspected -- not that it occurs more frequently, but that it really messes up the experience. I'm still seeing steady 2.8GHz CPU clocks with the GPU usually at 405MHz after the first couple of minutes, but the GPU memory going back and forth between 1000MHz and 400MHz causes very noticeable fluctuations in frame rates. One second everything will be going smoothly, and the next you feel the lag and the slower frame rates, and then it kicks back to higher speed.... It might not be as bad in some other games, but in DiRT 3 it makes it very hard to drive a consistent line, with the game actually slowing down and speeding up. Ugh.I also tried the A06 BIOS with ThrottleStop, and while it took longer for the GPU to throttle, it did after a few minutes. Then it stayed at 405MHz most of the time (with one 10 second drop to 270MHz), and the VRAM was more commonly at 1000MHz, but the 400MHz VRAM clocks do show up periodically and really mess with the gaming experience.
So in short, A06 is still beta in my book, and I prefer A04 with the CPU throttling rather than A06 with GPU throttling.
On a different note, when I flash the BIOS there's clearly one higher fan speed that kicks in that I'm not seeing in normal use. At this point, Dell should be looking at CPU clocks in gaming workloads closer to 2.1GHz and they should be running the maximum fan speed once the CPU core hits 80C. I'd be okay if they limited the CPU clock to 2.4 GHz any time the GPU clock was higher than 270MHz, personally -- it's not ideal, but it's far better than what's currently happening.
Flunk - Sunday, August 12, 2012 - link
Hi Jarred, I have one of these and your experiences above mirror what I'm seeing. I've had 2 different L521x units in my house and they both perform identically (first one had a bad screen).Even if you set the CPU speed to 99% in power options to prevent boosting on A06 (which is up on their standard page now) it still downclocks the GPU in much the same way.
Frankly it is quite infuriating that Dell would sell such and obviously flawed product in the first place. There is no reason to have a dedicated graphics chip if you can't use it.
At this point I'm hoping that they get back to me and tell me they're going to replace the thermal solution because it doesn't seem like they can figure out how to do this with a BIOs update.
Thanks for bringing this up in your review, the more pressure Dell has on them to fix this the better.
alfling - Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - link
Did you experience any drops in battery life with A06 BIOS? I ask because of this post in notebookreview:http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xp...
alfling - Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - link
Thank you very much! I got the link in Notebookreview forum from an XPS 15 owner (not sure how he got it, but he shared it)