The Dell XPS 15 9550 Review: Infinity Edge Lineup Expands
by Brett Howse on March 4, 2016 8:00 AM ESTCompute
The XPS 15 is not marketed as a gaming laptop, and while any gaming laptop can pull double duty, people buying the XPS 15 may not be interested in gaming at all. The GPU can still be leveraged for certain workloads such as photo and video editing. The parallel computing power of the GPU makes it a great choice for these types of tasks.
CompuBench
The only other device we’ve tested with Kishonti’s CompuBench is the dGPU version of the Surface Book. I felt it would be a nice comparison to see just how much more performance the GTX 960M would give in compute tasks. Compared to just integrated graphics, there is a big jump in performance from both of the discrete cards, but the GTX 960M is roughly double the performance of the GT 940M in the Surface Book. If you need compute power, you get a lot more in the XPS 15 with the quad-core processor and much more powerful GPU.
Storage Performance
Dell does offer the XPS 15 with a mechanical hard drive as the baseline option, but once you step up a couple of tiers it can be outfitted with a PCIe based SSD, and in the case of our review unit it is the Samsung PM951. This has become incredibly popular it seems, since it lets companies check the box beside PCIe on storage, but unfortunately it is a TLC based drive so write speeds aren't as high as what we've seen MLC-based PCIe drives do. Clearly Samsung is aggressive with the pricing on this drive since it is in pretty much every device we’ve seen that has PCIe storage.
Recently PCMark 8 updated their testing for storage to better differentiate drives with NVMe storage. As such, the existing scores are no longer comparable with those from the new suite. The XPS 15 scored 5036 in the new test, but we'll need more devices tested in order to have something to compare it to.
Despite the TLC NAND, Dell shipped the 512 GB version of the XPS 15, so it has enough NAND dies to help the write speeds through parallel work, keeping even this slower TLC drive performant over short bursts. I actually expected read speeds to be a bit higher as well but over 800 MB/s is still faster than what SATA drives can do.
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Valantar - Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - link
In a laptop as thin as this, you need to consider that the last 1.5-2cm of each side is unusable for keyboards due to ports directly under the keyboard bezel. Unless you want a thicker laptop or a keyboard with zero key travel, this would leave you with far too little space for a numpad.Nightwolf1 - Thursday, March 10, 2016 - link
It is appalling that a computer at that price is a do it yourself project (assemble yourself)!Firmware updates back and forth, take it apart to move the mother board so USB and other ports fit into the holes so the connectors can come in!
Chinese junk, why would Dell put there name on this?
Valantar - Saturday, March 12, 2016 - link
It seems like you've had a bad experience, would you mind expanding on that? Taking it apart to move the motherboard (which should be very firmly screwed in, after all) seems pretty drastic.Nightwolf1 - Saturday, March 12, 2016 - link
Just start reading this thread!http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-xps-1...
Valantar - Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - link
Ouch, that looks bad. Hopefully they get that sorted out pronto, and fix the issue for anyone involved free of charge. That should NOT have passed QC.Nightwolf1 - Monday, March 14, 2016 - link
If that's not enough, then read here!http://www.ultrabookreview.com/10234-dell-xps-15-9...
esii - Monday, March 14, 2016 - link
Hi AnandTech, will you be able to confirm what thunderbolt 3 controller does XPS 15 9550 use? It seems to me that i cannot find any x4 link in PCIe configuration with HWINFO64, so i am suspecting that it uses a x2 link for thunderbolt 3. If this is true, then it can only interact with motherboard with a rate up to 20Gbps for PCIe 3.0 x2. I hope i am wrong.Nightwolf1 - Wednesday, March 16, 2016 - link
It would be great if Anandtech would contact Dell, for an explanation of all these problems buyers have experienced with their Dell XPS 15 9550, but it is perhaps too much to ask for?The question is, when it is possible to have one that is not faulty (if at all)?
luyuan20 - Thursday, March 17, 2016 - link
Can anyone that owns an XPS 15 9550 comment on how long the fans take to return back to idle after playing an intensive game? I've had Dells in the past not be able to reduce fan speed back to idle after gaming. Thanks in advance. Looking into a UHD/i7/16GB/512GB model.jacksonjacksona - Thursday, March 17, 2016 - link
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