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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prophet001 - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
This kinda makes me mad about all the crappy screens they've been putting in 15+" laptops for the last 7 years.jphughan - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
The QHD+ display is definitely not crappy; the problem is that the display was tested with Dell's questionably named "splendid mode" enabled, which grossly oversaturates colors. I wrote about it a few pages back in a reply. But I've notified Jared (the author of the article), who confirmed that he was unaware of that setting. He immediately saw its effect though and said he'll be rerunning the LCD tests.prophet001 - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
I wasn't talking about this screen. I was talking about the screens that laptops have been using in the recent past. Like 15.6" LCDs with 1366x768 resolution.CommanderK - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
I bought this machine in Germany, and I sent it back. Bought maxed out configuration for 2000 Euro (now 2100), but alread for this price I had the feeling it was not worth the money. Reasons were almost the same you had here:- Throttling in games
- Touchscreen stopped working occassionally
- CPU coil whining ... this was especially annoying with fans off in the bed, but also audible in normal desktop usage
- Fan was first off, but already minimal level was annoying (and this one was almost always on when using external monitor with PSU)
Dell wanted to repair, but I refused. When selling such a top level machine at such a high price, it MUST work as expected. Originally I didn't want to, but now I simply bought another retina Macbook Pro with similar specs. It is very quiet, doesn't have such an annoying fan and almost no coil whine. And of course no throttling.
What is especially interesting is that this machine must sell like sliced bread. The price was raised and the waiting time increased. But with the even higher price, the decision for the macbook pro was even more easy (about 200 Euro difference). Dell service is good, but I don't want a machine that needs repair on arrival.
Sit down Dell, learn, try to be better next time.
CommanderK - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Small update: I received the machine with described flaws about three Months ago. I sent it back because I expected Dell couldn't repair the problems. Now seeing this review that my guess was right. Even worse for me from a publicity point of view, they are still selling the machines with THE SAME flaws as three months ago. This shouldn't happen.Flunk - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
I had similar problems with the last revision of the XPS 15. It looks great, but the performance really doesn't match up to the looks or price tag. Really disappointing that Dell would do the exact same thing again.jphughan - Sunday, March 9, 2014 - link
The touchscreen was resolved with a firmware update, coil whine is still an issue (discussed above) that Dell is currently investigating due to widespread reports, and the increased wait times were because of a shortage on QHD+ panels. But I don't know how you encountered throttling on the XPS 15 and not the rMBP. Unless your XPS had a defective thermal assembly, the rMBP is known to throttle even more heavily than the XPS, partly because its 85W power adapter is totally undersized given that the combined TDP of just the CPU and GPU is I believe 95W -- and that's before counting the display, WiFi, BT, powered USB devices, etc. The rMBP under heavy load while plugged into the wall will actually DRAIN the battery as an auxiliary power source in order to make up for its AC adapter's inadequate power delivery. Anyway, sorry you had a bad experience with yours.praeses - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Be sure when doing benchmarks that you are not charging the battery at the same time. Sometimes either the power draw will be too much or more likely the increased heat from the charging circuitry can cause it to start throttling.Kenazo - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
I'd be all over this if it had a number pad. Hard to justify it as an accountant otherwise. :)bloc - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Buy a separate number pad. The rest of us want to sit in front of the monitor and the touch pad in the middle under the scroll bar. You spend $1500+ on a computer and why do people endure sitting 20 degrees to the left of the screen. Apple and Samsung got it right with their high end laptops - NO numbpads.