Dell XPS 15 Haswell Edition: QHD+ with a Refined Design
by Jarred Walton on March 6, 2014 7:00 AM ESTDell XPS 15: Gaming Performance
With that lengthy preface about throttling, let’s just make it clear that all of the benchmark results here are from post-reboot testing, so throttling should not be present. What we find is that the GT 750M is a reasonable mainstream mobile GPU that can easily handle our “Value” settings and outside of the most demanding titles (e.g. Metro: Last Light) it can run our “Mainstream” settings as well. Not surprisingly, “Enthusiast” quality is mostly out of the question, except with older and/or less demanding titles. As for gaming at the native 3200x1800 resolution, that’s generally more than you can hope to get out of the GT 750M. Some games will certainly break 30 FPS at low to moderate settings, but in most cases opting for a lower resolution with higher quality settings will provide the better experience.
I also want to make note here that with 2014, we’re going to be reducing the number of games we test in our laptop reviews. There’s a real concern that running too many GPU-centric tests can distract from the overall target market for a device. While I’ve gone ahead and included most of the games from our 2013 test suite in Mobile Bench, moving forward we have decided to focus on just four games. Our current list consists of Bioshock Infinite, GRID 2, Metro: Last Light, and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. These should provide a sufficient amount of data that we’ll be able to say how well a system handles gaming workloads. In some reviews we will also include other titles (e.g. if there’s a new GPU that warrants additional investigative work), including some less demanding games that will better illustrate the “casual gaming” aspect.
Considering this isn’t really being targeted at a gaming audience – Dell has their Alienware brand if that’s what you’re after – the XPS 15 still manages to hold its own in the gaming tests. Throttling concerns aside, when the fans and GPU are running as expected, gaming at one fourth the native resolution and high detail settings is easily accomplished, and even 1080p medium/high detail is possible.
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tipoo - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
Do the larger battery sizes change the size (do they jut out like older models) and how much do they change the weight?Zoolookuk - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Mmm, nice power brick - and it gets its own box too! Nice touch!inperfectdarkness - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link
It's thinner and lighter, but the cost, performance and features are less than that of MSI GT-60 20D-261. Dell would have done much better (in my opinion) if they'd gone with 16:10--which would have differentiated the XP15 from every other Windows laptop with > 1080p display.acme64 - Sunday, April 13, 2014 - link
You had me at the specs and exterior, you lost me at the interior.Irma Gonzalez - Tuesday, April 22, 2014 - link
To put it mildly, this is the laptop that nightmares are made of. I purchased a fully loaded custom built XPS15-9530 with 512 SSD and full high end everything for over $3000. When it arrived, it wouldn't even boot up! What a failure and I feel that I've been ripped off royally. All I get is 3 beeps, a pause, then 3 beeps and the cycle repeats itself. Stay away from this brick is my advice. See for yourself my experience as I unpacked and turned it on:Can you believe this? https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=y2-m...
I cannot even give a review on anything else as it fails to boot up. Customer service transferred me to Tech support, which then asked "What do you want me to do?" Really, WHAT do I want? I working brand new unit. Instead after a 3 hour conversation being transferred to everyone under the sun (but on supervisor as I repeatedly asked for) I have no resolution.
mxruden - Sunday, April 27, 2014 - link
Thank you very much for the great review, Jarred!I already purchased my XPS 15, expecting it next week. I'm planning to occasionally play games on it and was wondering, are there any changes to GPU throttling issue since the time of your review? Have Dell done anything to solve this problem during this time?
Max
Zhongrui - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
Is there anyone who succeeded installing OS X mavericks on XPS 15 (9530)? Do the wireless and Audio work fine? Any information and comments are highly appreciated.eanazag - Monday, May 5, 2014 - link
I was looking at this laptop, the Blade, and the Macbook Pro Retina. Each one had some pros and cons to me. This was before the refresh occured on the Blade (new high res screen and GPU). I ended up not having enough money for any of them. If I were looking again, I'd be setting my eyes on the Blade because they fixed the screen drawback. I was still hoping for a Maxwell based GPU in the Blade that was a performance model - not what Nvidia released thus far.rpagespollo - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
Has someone checked the unit with a 1080p display? There is a lower configuration with a 1080p display instead of the HiDPI display.sethboyardee - Monday, December 15, 2014 - link
When will the NEXT version of this type of system be coming out? I'm debating buying one now, but if a newer/better version is coming in the next few months, I will wait.Also - the battery is NOT (easily) removable, is that correct? That frightens me - I prefer to lug around an extra battery.