Dell XPS 15 Haswell Edition: QHD+ with a Refined Design
by Jarred Walton on March 6, 2014 7:00 AM ESTDell XPS 15: General Performance
With all the talk of potential throttling, some of you might be concerned with general performance – and again, let me reiterate that a reboot appears to clear the problem, so hopefully Dell’s engineering time can track down the root cause in the coming days/weeks and fix it. Even if they can’t/don’t, the reality is that in most cases the throttling is a complete non-issue. PCMark and other tests that hit the CPU never showed any problems, and even most of the other graphics testing that I ran didn’t have problems. Of course, with a reboot apparently being a workaround, that’s not too surprising.
As you would expect from the hardware, the high-end model of the XPS 15 that we’re testing runs plenty fast and should satisfy anyone short of extreme performance types. If you want more CPU power in a laptop, you’ll basically need to get something quite a bit thicker and heavier, and even then the top model i7-4930MX/4940MX are only about 25% faster in practice (4.0GHz maximum Turbo Boost vs. 3.2GHz). The 512GB SSD also helps keep things running smoothly, 16GB RAM should be sufficient for quite some time (outside of perhaps running lots of VMs or a few other specific workloads), and when needed the GT 750M is waiting in the background to help with graphics/compute tasks. Here’s a look at our general performance testing results, which have been updated to use the latest versions of 3DMark11, 3DMark (2013), PCMark7, and PCMark8 along with Cinebench 11.5 and x264 HD 5. PCMark8 v2 scores are not (entirely) comparable with the earlier release, so for now we only have this one system tested, but that will change in time.
There’s really not much to say about overall performance. The new Dell XPS 15 may not be the absolute fastest laptop around, but it’s certainly a capable offering that can handle any reasonable load most users might want to run. If you need more performance, you likely knew before even looking at these graphs that that would be the case. As a premium consumer/business laptop, I know plenty of people that would be quite please to have one of these to tote around.
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dragonhype - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
Thank You! I will look into it! Otherwise I love the laptop!xaml - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
Regardless of what causes it, the electric noise issue also is present on the XPS 13 – both Sandy Bridge and Haswell.http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop...
jphughan - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
It sounds like the display performance impressions were taken before disabling Dell's questionably named "splendid mode", which grossly oversaturates colors. It's unfortunately enabled by default in the factory build and it's managed unintuitively in Windows Mobility Center -- but once it's disabled, multiple calibrators have found that the display delivers a DeltaE of less than 1 BEFORE calibration, and perfect coverage of sRGB. I have no idea why Dell shot themselves in the foot by setting up their system this way out of the box, but display perfection is just one buried option toggle away, no calibration required.skiboysteve - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
I could not find this setting in my windows mobility center. I see:Brightness, volume, battery status, screen orientation, external display, sync center, and presentation settings. The bottom right box is empty.
I'm going to contact dell support about this.
Also, I didn't get any throttling issues with mine.. so wonder if mine is different somehow
skiboysteve - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Found it, you have to install dell quickset to get these options. You get 4 more:Keyboard backlighting, fn key behavior (change between requiring fn press for f1-f12 or requiring fn press for media controls), touchpad on/off, and the SPLENDID color setting
jphughan - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
You need Dell Quickset installed and your built-in display needed to be enabled when your system booted (not just an external display).VisionX302 - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Great article. I picked one up a few months ago. This was my experience exactly. This thing should be a GREAT laptop, but it wasn't. I did some comparisons with the MacBook Pro using both OSX and Windows 8.1 under BootCamp and the new Lenovo X1 Carbon. The Dell was certainly a really good laptop, but the battery life was much better on the other two, resuming from sleep, even things like the keyboard and the touchpad in particular are much better on the other two. I was really hoping that the Dell would be my one size fits all solution for all my various needs, but it just left me wanting. If I hadn't compared it against the other laptops I wouldn't have noticed these little differences, but they really do add up. Things like the battery life are especially noticeable. With the Lenovo, I don't really even carry a charger anymore, I just top it off every couple of days. After a few hours, the Dell would have to be charged. The Mac very similar. I also had a problem with the touch screen that had to be replaced and ultimately returned the Dell due to a serious thermal issue / failure. I'm still waiting on the replacement. With those issues, I'm also left wondering whether the build quality is really there with the Dell or not.jphughan - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Dell has definitely had some QC issues on this system. Much of those issues pertain to the QHD+ display (dead pixels, dust under the glass, pressure point revealing a weird color distortion in a corner when gripping the lid a certain way) and there's also the widely reported coil whine issue that Dell is currently investigating after numerous reports. The unresponsive touchscreen issue was resolved with a firmware update though.hfm - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
If I recall the notebookreview threads the firmware update actually bricked some systems and they needed service. I wouldn't touch this thing until Dell gets a handle on the numerous build quality issues. It's really a shame as there are so many plusses with it.I'm personally waiting for the thin-and-lights sporting the 860M that are imminent. MSI GS60 looks like a 4.4lb monster.
jphughan - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Two people reported bricks that were fixed with replacement displays. I don't know if that was due to a bug in the firmware updater code or perhaps a bug in the existing firmware on the display itself, in which case those people would either have to stick permanently with buggy firmware or get a replacement display anyway that can actually be updated. In any case, my firmware updated fine for what it's worth.The QC issues are indeed disappointing. I ordered before they came to light but I've been fortunate to only have the coil whine issue. I don't even consider that much of an issue since I've had that issue on numerous other laptops that use high-wattage AC adapters. But if Dell does actually fix it, I'll consider using my warranty to get a replacement motherboard at that time. I've got 3 years, after all.