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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jphughan - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Argh, again with not being able to edit posts. My old $5200 system was a Precision M90, and the modern-day equivalent would be the Precision M6800.fokka - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
exactly my thoughts. dozens of different lines and models, but completely gimped customization options. and i have to cringe when thinking about their website.katinavcloutier - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
hiNWBarryG - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Well done article.I bought the same configuration in December. It's - by far - the best laptop I've ever owned (and I've owned well over 30 over the years). I use it as a business laptop - mostly using Office apps and occasionally Adobe Creative Suite and some very light CAD work. Admittedly, I don't use it for gaming or any massively taxing workloads. I ran into the issue of losing mouse clicks but a driver update fixed it.
The screen is beautiful. I use my laptop for customer presentations so the screen was a major consideration for this purchase. I have never been a fan touch screens, but have to admit that when doing a customer presentation, the touch screen is pretty damn cool - especially when visualizing 3D models. The battery life is amazing. This is the first laptop that I've owned where I can travel around to meetings for an entire day and never even have to think about plugging it in. That peace of mind is amazing. It was not one of my original considerations, but now that I can get away with it, I would never give it up. Least of all, it looks cool, is incredibly light for being a 15" class notebook, and it feels good to carry around.
My only complain is that I wish the keyboard had dedicated home, end, pgup and pgdwn keys. I am getting used to not having them and it's a minor complaint. Other than that, this thing is fantastic! For what I use it for, it is perfect and would gladly have spent more. Once can always find things to complain about with any product, but for my needs, there is nothing on the market that even comes close. I did tons of research on options and have not been disappointed. For someone looking for a Windows business notebook with a 15" screen (lots of options available for notebooks with smaller screens) I don't think there is a better product available.
bloc - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
"My only complain is that I wish the keyboard had dedicated home, end, pgup and pgdwn keys. I am getting used to not having them and it's a minor complaint. Other than that, this thing is fantastic! For what I use it for, it is perfect and would gladly have spent more. "Yes I have no idea why they're making up new keyboard layouts. Developers prefer to have independent home/end/pageup/pagedown keys.
GTVic - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
If you preferred the Apple, is there any reason not to purchase that and run Windows 8.1 on it? Or will that just be a bunch of headaches.jphughan - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
That has its share of headaches. Examples are driver updates, keyboard layout not being ideal for a Windows environment, Thunderbolt ports not supporting hot-plugging in Windows (i.e. if the device isn't connected when you boot, you can't use it until you reboot), and I believe you're forced to use the NVIDIA GPU full-time on Windows, never the Intel GPU, so your battery life is far worse. Those are just off the top of my head, and I remember reading a long post on a forum about other niggles like that. Bottom line is that buying a Mac to run Windows 8.1 full-time is probably not the best idea.rish95 - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
I don't have any problems running it on my 2012 Air. My only issue is that Apple's trackpad driver for Windows sucks. It doesn't support any Win8.1 gestures and scrolling/zooming are poorly done.Battery life is ok. I get about 5 hours in Windows and 6 in OSX.
DanD85 - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
I think your argument of paying the extra 400 for SSD is flawed because you forget that if you choose to do it yourself you still have the HDD and you can choose to flip it for some bucks back or keep it as external hard drive. A better choice in my opinion.JarredWalton - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Larger batteries usually cost $100 (and you can't buy this one AFAICT), the SSD costs $350 for a Crucial or $450+ for the SM841, and the 500GB HDD is only worth $50 if you're lucky. For the ability to avoid cloning/reinstalling the OS, I'd just get things pre-configured with the 512GB SSD. It's not a great deal, but it's not raking you over the coals at least.