Dell XPS 15 L501 Thread

Well as there is now a XPS 14 and 17 thread I feel it is about time we have a XPS 15 thread!

My XPS 15 arrived this morning with the following specs:

i7 740qm
nvidia 435m
4gb ram
500gb 7200 HDD
1080p B+RG LED Display
5540 WWAN card
Intel 1000n wireless
6 cell battery

I will be adding to this initial post as I run benchmarks but to get you started:

Build quality:
The overall build quality is of a high standard. The metal lid and palm rest is very nice. Unfortunately the base is plastic which is a shame and lets down the high quality image slightly. The is no creaks and the laptop feels solid.

Keyboard:
Firstly the UK version is NOT backlit now I have got that out of the way I will mention the keyboards performance. It feels very much like a sxps 16 keyboard, the keys are very responsive but slightly mushy. Its a good typing experience but not on par to the Envy 15 or 14 chicklet keyboards.

Speakers:
1 word...Awesome! These are the best laptop speakers I have owned (And I have been through a lot of laptops!). These wont replace a good set of seperates but for listening to music on the go they are amazing!

Screen:
I ordered the 1080p screen as I know Dell use terrible 720p as default panels.
The 1080p B+RG screen is on par with the Envy 14 radiance display. The colours are beautifully saturated, blacks are amazing and the brightness is above average. It buries my Envy 15's ultrabright 1080p screen.
The viewing angles arent as good as I hoped but again better than an average TN panel.

Heat:
So far I have only been installing and testing battery but I can tell this laptop runs nice and cool doing these tasks. I will update later with a prime and furmark test.
Update on heat:
Although the internal temps get quite high on the prime and furmark the external temperatures are still fantastic. The WASD keys got warm and my palm rest was still cool! This makes a welcome change after using a sxps 16. See benchmark screen shots for internal temps.

This laptop did not throttle in any way whilst running prime and furmark

Throttlestop log attached whilst running prime on 8 cores. Temps reachead 69c


Noise:
Again, this is only initial idle observations, but so far so good and no strange revving up and down of the studio 15/17 series.

Battery life:
First battery test, listening to music on speakers, screen lowest brightness, power saver, wifi on:
2 hours with 11% battery remaining

Performance:
WEI


3dmark06 stock clocks


3dmark06 @ 750/1500/900


Furmark and prime temps



***i5 is not compatible on the 435m motherboard ***
Thats all for the moment.

 

Amazing work mate.
Any chance of some benchmarks?

 

They are coming mate, just been testing battery and burning DVDs.

First battery test, listening to music on speakers, screen lowest brightness, power saver, wifi on:
2 hours with 11% battery remaining

 

Dude... Which battery do you have?

 

Mannn that looks quite less as compared to the anandtech review results...

 

Which battery buddy? Really hoping it's not the 9 cell

 

If you have time, try to do test with 1) Idle at Windows Desktop with LCD at 100nits and 2) x264 720p Playback with LCD at 100nits... That should give a clear comparison with the anandtech results... That too again only if ur using a 6-cell battery...

Boy, I'm asking for so much...

 

sorry guys, its the 6 cell. Its about average with i7 and dedicated gpu

 

Thats fine mate, but you will have to give me time to run the tests. I want to get some benchmarks done

 

I think it shouldn't be... Keeping fingers crossed though...

 

Dude... We're happy that it's 6-cell...

No problemo... Eager for benchmarks too...

 

just installing 06 and furmark now.

God it is hard going back to a hard disk drive....cant wait to get my 160gb intel ssd in here

 

That just reminds me... Does this also have an extra bracket-thing for a 2nd HDD (seen after opening the bottom lid) as in XPS 17??

 

Ordered my XPS 15 today:i5-460 / Nvidia 420M/ 8Gb RAM/ 640Gb@7200 / 1080P FHD / 9 Cell Batt

I am told that it might take upto 3 weeks to deliver.

Has anyone in India got the "CONFIRMED" estimated delivery date on their order?

 

no only the xps 17 can hold 2 hard drives. You could put a hard drive in the dvd bay

 

Nopes... Yet to order one for myself... I will be ordering mine somewhere around end of november... So if it takes 3 weeks, it leads you to thinking... "Should I wait for Sandy-Bridge"...


@Ninja2000: How much time did it take for your order to be delivered?

 

Is there a DVD Hard Drive holder thingy available?

 

imurgame - mine took less than 2 weeks.

NMiller - There are plenty available on ebay, they usually go for around $15.
Only thing might be difficult is getting the dell dvd facia on the caddy

 

Not familiar with how these worked. I had presumed that Dell sold the caddies with the a matching facia for different laptops. Your saying you can get one that fits (they are standard sizes?) and attach the facia from the dvd drive?

I might consider this if it is possible. But will the XPS 15 allow me to use RAID1?

 

Unfortunately not. You will need to buy a generic caddy and mod it.

Front page updated with benchmark results

WEI
3dmark06 stock
3dmark06 OCed to 750/1500/900
Furmark and prime temps.

Although the internal temps get quite high on the prime and furmark the external temperatures are still fantastic. The WASD keys got warm and my palm rest was still cool! This makes a welcome change after using a sxps 16.

I will be opening her up soon to add SSD and repaste the cpu and gpu with MX-3

 

Nice. So... what does that mean? As good as expected? What is the xps 14 getting? how about the envy?

 

Nice work Ninja

 

Thanks guys.

It is better than I expected. I am going to try and clock further when I get home from work

I am also going to run COH/DOW and Forged alliance benchmarks against my Envy 15 and see how the 435m stacks up against a 5830

 

Nice review! Thanks! Even am planning to order one with Core i5 though! Few pics of the laptop would be better

 

Stuck at work at the moment. Will try and take some photos later

 

Nice work ninja. Ordered mine today(but saw this after ordering).
i7-740qm+GT 435m.Took the 720p though.

I ordered today. Not online, went to a Dell store (they place the order online themselves)
They said it will be delivered in 8-15 working days maximum. That would be after 22nd Nov and before 30th hopefully

 

please don't remove current results for plain HDD, that would be grerat if we can compare SSD/non-SSD performance :-D

 

will do mate. I will also compare boot times and run hdtune between the ssd and hdd too for you

 

wooow... That's getting hot... It's a good thing the outside is still cool/warm... The design change might have a nice impact on it too, for in the previous SXPS, the primary vents were blocked by the screen when it was opened...

Thanks for the benches btw... Waiting for the battery life ones...

 

Is the screen a very glossy type that gets glare when in a lighted room?

Those temps seem very hot...96C for the GPU?? I recently owned a Sony Vaio F1290x which I returned due to an annoying high pitched whine that the fan made. It was an i7-740QM and GT330M and would max out around 70C for both GPU and CPU. 96C seems to be closing in on the dangerous range, I don't think it should be getting that hot.

 

I am going to do game benchmarks tonight and will do more battery life tests tomorrow (As I can set up a test and leave it going whilst at work)

 

Hmm..i think the internal temperatures are bit high. The GPU already reached 87 C just for 3DMark06. Just imagine if gaming for 1 hour. I was expecting better results with the new vent design.

BTW, from the Dell documentation, it looks like it’s very hard to access the XPS 15 heatsink. We need to dismantle almost the whole laptop. XPS M1530 and SXPS 16 are much easier and effortless (just open the bottom cover).

 

The screen is not as glossy as an E2E screened laptop. Plus it is so bright I can overpower reflections

When you say the 330m would max out at 70, was that with prime and furmark? As that really puts a lot of strain on a system, much more than normal gaming.
Whilst running 3dmark overclocked @ 750/1500/900 it only hit 87c which is pretty good. Also the fan isnt that loud so I think it is letting the gpu get hotter than necessary, I am sure dell will increase the fan speed via a BIOS update.

Also note that Sony undervolt their gfx cards which give lower temps but also makes it much harder to overclock

 

Just ordered the i5-560M and nVidia 420M GPU. I wanted to order the 1080p screen but couldn't justify the £170 upgrade cost here in the UK. I understand the upgrade cost in the US is $130. At the current exchange rate that makes the upgrade twice the price in the UK! The review on cnet is good for the 720 screen and that is what I am used to anyway. If I want to see 1080p I would use my 50inch plasma in any case.

Delivery should be within 10 days - we'll see .....

 

One interesting thing about those temps is the cool HDD temp. At least with my SXPS 1645, it hits 51C with Prime/Fur (CPU 82C, GPU 91C) and 50C while gaming (CPU 76C, GPU 80C). As you can see, the heat spreads throughout the laptop quite a bit.

On this XPS 15, it only hit 45C even though the CPU and GPU temps were quite a bit hotter. It's pretty nice that are keeping the HDD temp lower since heat is bad for hard drives. Also as the OP said, this means cooler surface temps.

 

Hey TS, if I were you I would repaste it asap. Those temps are way above the norm, I wouldn't be surprised if you got a bad paste job.

If you did get a bad one, well at least we know the design can handle inordinate amounts of heat.

 

I will do some more tests tonight, but It only seemed to hit 87c briefly before the fan kicked up a notch and brought it down. I just think Dell set the fan profile a little high, I dont think it is a cooling issues as currently the fan doesnt get anywhere near as loud as a sxps 16 or studio 17.

I will run it through some BFBC2 later and monitor temps on a second screen and let you know how I get on

 

I have some MX-3 ready for a repaste job, Dell never do a good job so it is common place for me to do it again.

But as I stated above I think in my case its more to do with the fan not kicking in high enough.

I will log the temps with gpuz later and see if those high temps are just a spike whilst gaming

 

Sorry, just saw your message.
Yeah the cost is stupid! we pay double what the US guys pay
But as I got such a good deal I didnt mind the cost of the screen. Mine came to £650 in total.

And it is not the resolution I have a problem with, the last couple of dell 720p panels I have received from dell were so bad I sent them straight back. The blacks were grey, the colours were washed out and the viewing angles were dreadful.
Hopefully they wont use such poor panels in the XPS line, but if they do remember you have 7 working days to return it

 

Thanks for the reply ninja. I went on the cnet review for the display as they were reasonably impressed with the standard display:

Dell XPS 15 Review - Laptops - CNET Reviews

My other reason for going for the 720p is that the 1080p screen is only any good for movies on laptops, and you would need the extra expense of a bluray drive for that. For games you would need a much more powerful GPU and you generally don't get GPU's of the power found on desktops on a laptop. For general use the 720p screen could actually be better. Icons, etc. would be bigger naturally compared to a higher resolution screen.

 

i got my xps 15 today and the first thing i did a clean install of win7 ultimate, however after installing all of the drivers from the dell website the device manager still reports one missing usb driver, so im like ? did anyone encounter the same issue?
also i dont have any working nvidia drivers, those from the nvidia website wont install and the latest driver from laptopvideo.com kinda screws up as it doesnt really recognise my gt 420m...
any help would be greatly appreciated ;P

 

Yea, I noticed that Dell doesn't have the nvidia driver up on their drivers site either. I'm surprised the ones from nvidia's site don't work. Let me know if you find the missing USB device driver. Usually a google search of the device ID string will get you what you need.

Keep us posted on your finds because I'm sure a lot of us are planning to do a clean install first thing after getting the laptop.

 

I have 2 questions. Firstly, I cannot find the dell video driver for the 435m anywhere, and the copy on the supplied disc is corrupt!
Secondly, can anyone confirm that the connector on the 1080p screen is the same as the standard screen? Apparently the 1080p panel is the same as the one on the studio 15, if that helps.
Thank you.

 

The USB driver is here:
Drivers and Downloads

 

...........

 

oh thanks a lot for that usb driver, i also found the same usb driver in the xps17 download page Drivers and Downloads

now its just the nvidia driver that is missing ...

 

Could someone with one of these do me a very quick favor?

Open the laptop to a normal viewing angle and measure the vertical distance from the very top of the monitor bezel to the table top. It's probably in the 10-11 inch range or so.

Thanks.

 

oh btw i found the nvidia drivers in the xps14 downloads section Drivers and Downloads
although that one might be hopelessly outdated but i guess thats still better than nothing... i just hope laptopvideo.com will catch up soon with an adequate *.inf

what tool could i use to overclock the gt 420m? i guess it shud be quite easy to set the clocks on par with the gt 435m right? after all its the same chip according to nobebookcheck.com

 

I ordered mine on 9th. Just curious, how many USB ports available? is it 3 or 4 (either 2.0s or 3.0s)?

Thx!

 

3 total. Two USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 which is also an eSATA port.