Latitude 15 3000 - Gaming system for $780? Too good to be true?

Went through the almost 900MB patch yesterday. No change in gpu performance or sleep stability. I was able to run 14.3 beta's for a little bit...but the laptop won't even shutdown right with those. Performance is very good tho.

I went through last night and was going to re-install older drivers and start again from there...I could not get the intel drivers from dell to install at all...only the newest intel drivers I've downloaded will install the other ones error out and pop up en error message stating there was an error installing device driver.

I was able to get Dell AMD drivers installed...I found an x64 version I hadn't tried yet. But no matter what I couldn't get the Dell drivers installed...I decided to just reinstall the Dell AMD drivers and leave the Intel GPU as Standard MS Display (or similar). Bad idea...I lost desktop video and had to go into safe mode which was another issue in itself.

Tip for those that don't know: Windows 8 Safe Mode on Dell Laptop

Power Off
Hold Shift + F8
While holding power on unit
Hold until Please Wait message comes on screen

I was able to install the newer Intel drivers again and was okay after going into safemode. Still cannot install the older Dell drivers...cannot overwrite the new ones and cannot install when new ones aren't installed. I'm looking into it. Hoping to resolve that without a reinstall. I did use DDU at one point to clean out modded driver installs. Leschat and LeeK's modded drivers brought about no stability changes for me.

As it stands now with older AMD drivers + Newest Intel drivers, the unit will go to sleep, shutdown, restart...but crashes on sleep resume. I haven't had time to test performance with this AMD driver yet. I've been testing with World in Conflict in DX10 on Hi @ 1080P. Even after 7 years, still a good gpu performance test for these situations.

 

Update. Itchy, I found the 9.18 drivers for Intel from the Dell site. They work great...solid performance from the 4400 GPU for SW Empire at War (will not run on the AMD GPU...game bug), sleep/resume works PERFECTLY. At this moment I'm also using an Dell AMD GPU driver and it's giving good performance as well.

The Intel Dell driver I'm using is for Windows 8 (not 8.1) x64. The AMD Dell driver is the 8.1 x64 driver at this moment. I am going to try the 13.12's and see if they play nice.

I also ordered a 1TB SHDD and extra 4GB RAM. Cost the same as one 240GB SSD. Couldn't pass it up.

 

Not to create more work for you but it sounds like you might benefit from a re-pasting..

All things aside though I am currently running a slimmed down version of Ubuntu and this laptop handles it like a pro. I am able to run my steam games and I get a bit more stable OS.I have not had Windows on this thing in a while.

 

I had the same issue to on my laptop with a WIndows 8 build that I tried. I ended up giving up and just reimaging WIndows and after reinstalling all of the drivers it seemed like it was working again. Right now I am running Ubunru 14.04 without any of the previous issues with sleep or performance.

 

Update... 14.4 WHQL's work great! Do a clean driver install (Express Uninstall AMD drivers). I got a nice performance increase where World in Conflict DX10 plays with 25FPS average on Very High preset in the Graphics Stress Test, where before it was medium-high custom to achieve the same results. Pretty damned impressive IMHO. Setting to High presents closer to 35FPS average, which again is quite an increase from before. Also I was able to go from Medium to UBER on Planetary Annihilation and still maintain smooth gameplay. Keep in mind both of those were also tested at 1080p. Overall great performance...I am considering reapplying thermal paste as I am pushing 75C peak.



Download 14.4WHQL's: Mobile

Download Dell Windows 8 x64 Intel GPU Drivers: Driver Details | Dell US

Then install Intel Windows 8 x64 drivers, version 9.18.10.3165. Restart.

Install 14.4WHQL's. Restart.

Enjoy.

The big thing here is to NOT use 8.1 Dell or Intel drivers, but Dell 8 drivers.

Running great. And this lappy will see Ubuntu in a few weeks when school is out. I upgraded the RAM to 8GB and put a 1TB SSHD in. Much better with SSHD.

Now I have plenty of room for a dual boot situation. I run Win 8.1 and Ubuntu 13.10 on my gaming rig...I am going to go 14.04 soon I believe.

I have not tested Mantle. But sleep, resume is great, temps seem decent, performance is the best I've experienced yet. I'm very happy with this product.

NOTE: HD 8850M will now be identified as R9 M265X
GPU-z loses most of the details, but temp sensors and clock sensors (Open Hardware Mon, HWMon, AIDA, etc) all read the same.

IF YOU HAVE ISSUES IN BATTERY MODE

So, I found I had sleep/resume issues in battery mode, also noticed that if I closed the lid while plugged, that after about 3 hours my laptop would awake from sleep mode stuck in converting to hibernation state...cranking heat out...about burnt down in my school pack laptop pocket last night.

I also lucked upon a couple things I tried that resolved it. The for-sure thing is the older drivers for ATI...which while they perform good, are not nearly as good.

FIX 1:

- Go into CCC, (right click, click graphics properties).
- Click Power option on LH menu.
- Click "Switchable Graphics Global Settings".
- Uncheck "Allow additional power-savings.

If doesn't do it, apply FIX2. I had Fix 1 and 2 applied first...then removed Fix 2...so far it's gone great this afternoon and evening. I will post if that changes.

FIX 2:

-Apply Fix 1 first.
-In the same Global Settings, change Battery to "Force power-saving graphics". This forces the Intel GPU and I believe if it even loads the AMD card in this setting it's at idle clocks. I haven't verified this yet...but 3d performance suffers greatly on battery mode with this set like so. But battery life estimations seem to go up.

Thanks for reading!

 

Hot dang! That sounds awesome. I guess I'll experiment with the new drivers while using Win 7.

 

So far 14.4 + Dell/Intel 9.18 drivers are solid for me with Fix 1.

I tried clean and dirty installs, all on Win 8.1...and all ended up experiencing this battery + sleep-state issue. I hadn't ran unplugged while testing these drivers initially and I apologize for sharing this info without the fixes first...as I hadn't needed them yet. I hope more of you try it and report back Success or Fail. Windows 7, 8, 8.1, etc.

If you're on Ubuntu, what are you using? I know 14.04 is supposed to support graphics switching at low-level without issues (though I've read more about Optimus support....).

I will be posting this fix on Techpowerup and Gaminglaptopsjunky as well. This lappy is now earning it's performance reputation like a champ. What it can handle playing at 1080P for me makes all the headaches of trial and error worth it. Cheers.

 

Reporting back on AMD Catalyst Driver 14.4 + Intel HD Driver 9.18.10.3234 (slightly different cuz this lappy uses Windows 7 Pro 64-bit).

Sleep and hibernate all work. I have stop watch times for the sleep feature as well. When closing the lid, the lappy reaches sleep mode in 8.45 seconds. When using the sleep feature on Windows 7, the lappy reaches sleep in 8.93 seconds. Not bad. Of course the lappy will start up instantly from either of these sleep modes.

As for the AMD Catalyst 14.4 drivers, I can report that they are slightly better versus 13.11 Beta 2 while running Tomb Raider. The settings in Tomb Raider were 1080p, Ultra setting, FXAA enabled, Tesselation enabled, etc. Basically everything was enabled. The 13.11 drivers had a hard time averaging 21 fps (sometimes only reaching 19 fps). The new 14.4 drivers are reaching 22.4 fps.

Also, I can confirm that the new Catalyst 14.4 drivers play nice with the Intel drivers. In other words, the switchable graphics feature is working as intended. This lappy never had an issue with it, but I'm reporting that it works anyways. The 8850m gpu turns on whenever Catalyst recognizes a game running, in this instance - Tomb Raider, Mass Effect 2, The Darkness II, and Dishonored. Meanwhile, when exiting a game, the fans will throttle down until it's dead quiet. This happens within 2 minute of closing a game. There is also no heat coming from the side vent. I'm interpreting this as graphics switching to the Intel HD gpu.



EDIT: I checked to see if Catalyst was using the "Allow additional power-savings" feature. Yes, it was in fact - checked. I hadn't notice this feature before but since I just discovered it, I'm going to leave it how it is since that was how it was by default.

EDIT 2: Woooaaahhh you're right Kursah - the 8850m is now being recognized as "AMD Radeon R9 M265X". It says so in both the Catalyst Control Panel and in the Device Manager. I'm happy that it is being considered an R9.

 

Hi guys,

I've been following this thread on and off for a while, mostly out of curiosity. Today, my bosses asked me to look into picking up ten laptops for the company to use with a small fleet of 3D printers we ordered (The Bukito, if you're interested). I believe the plan is to use them for education (hands-on classes about basic CAD and 3D printing) and portable demo units for events.

Long story short, we pulled the trigger on this order right before I left for my weekend (Friday/Saturday) because we need to have these ready by the 19th. I was just wondering if anyone has recommendations for what should be updated/unistalled/etc. on these machines when I receive them on Monday? How much bloatware did you find you had to remove from your own machine?

Thanks!

 

The model that I had did not have any of the bloatware that notebookcheck said it had. Mine was pretty much stock Windows 8 and that was it. As far as CAD stuff though I cannot speak to it but it seems like it should be fine for basic CAD and Solidworks stuff. Durability wise I should note that the chassis seems OK but I noticed that the motherboard seems a little weak. Maybe it is just my model but I need to place a call to have the audiojack replaced as it is acting up and I cannot push a headphone all the way into the jack otherwise I loose sound. Instead I have to pull it out slightly to get sound out of it, also my power button seems to be behaving strange as you need to press on it at certain angles to have it turn on the laptop. The plus side to all of this is that my laptop comes with a 1 year onsite Dell warranty that I have already used once.