Dell XPS 15 (L501X): Intel Core i7 840QM/2GB nVidia GT435m Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. The Dell XPS 154. The Hardware and Software Installation5. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra6. Synthetic: PCMARK Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3dMark 119. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Synthetic: CrystalMark & HDTach11. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.512. Real World: BluRay Playback with Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 Ultra13. Real World: Flash HD Playback Performance14. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink Espresso15. Real World: File Copying with Kingston HyperX Max 3.016. Gaming: Left4Dead 2 (DX9)17. Gaming: Resident Evil 5 (DX10)18. Gaming: Lost Planet 2 (DX11)19. Gaming: Tom Clancy H.A.W.X. 2 (DX11)20. Technical: Power Use 21. Technical: Battery Life22. Technical: Acoustics Performance23. Technical: Thermal Dynamics24. Closing Thoughts25. View All Pages

Dell have been releasing some great mobile products in 2010, and KitGuru has reviewed many of their range, including the fantastic Dell Streak smartphone which earned our coveted ‘must have' award.

While Dell release a plethora of machines over the course of a year, one of their latest releases caught our eye … the new XPS 15 (L501X). While the internal hardware is highly specified, we were actually quite intrigued by the moderate size of the chassis.

Dell offered us the high end Intel Core i7 840QM model with 2GB nVidia GT435m for review today, which is modestly priced at £1,319 (after a £149.00 savings offer).

If you have money left over after Christmas this could well be the high powered workhorse and gaming solution you need in 2011. At KitGuru, we will give it a jolly good thrashing with a variety of synthetic and real world testing. We don't waste our money and we don't expect you to either.

The XPS 15 arrives in a plain, corporate looking black box. The laptop is protected with flexible, heavy duty foam inserts.

The laptop chassis is protected with a felt cover, this ensures that no scuffing can occur during rough shipping.

Inside there is a box containing all the literature and software discs, including a well written manual.

The power supply is a Dell branded unit which delivers 19.5V/6.7A. This is self switching and can be used anywhere in the world.

The Dell XPS 15 is a reasonably slimline unit and while ours shipped with a plain metallic (‘metalloid aluminum' as Dell call it) finish, you can customise the colour scheme with over 130 designs, the prices for this vary but generally they charge £69.00 for the additional work. It is a great way to personalise the laptop to your tastes.

The machine is only 15×1.3×10.4 inches and is built around an aluminum design, weighing 2.78kg.

One of the many themes shown above. We really like the ‘Tweeqim NorvusOrdo – Mamba' skin.

The laptop itself is a two tone affair, with a coloured metal chassis highlighted against the silver accented lines around the edges.

The keyboard and trackpad are a high quality design which are intuitive to use and we had no problems typing at speed either. We need to point out the added bonus of a double width return key, which makes high speed typing much easier.

The XPS 15 ships with a protective layer between the screen and keyboard, this helps to minimise any direct key pressure being forced directly onto the glass of the panel during rough shipping. There is a 9 in 1 card reader at the front of the chassis, useful to move files between a camera and the hard drive.

The metallic finish is very attractive, with the fine lines of metal grain apparent under close scrutiny. The sound system is a JBL design which features 2×4 watt speakers on either side of the keyboard and a 12w subwoofer underneath the chassis. Dell have also used a Maxx processing system onboard to help enhance the sound even further, it really is impressive when you consider the limited dimensions. This certainly won't replace a dedicated speaker system you might have at home, but for on the move it is as good as we have heard.

Along the top of the keyboard is a row of capacitive touch buttons which offer various functionality, such as enabling/disabling the wireless, launching programs or analysing the status of the caps lock key.

It is not often we can note that a laptop has a USB 3.0 port onboard, but Dell have covered the ‘performance' bases here by offering a single port on the left side of the machine. This is fully backwards compatible with USB 2.0.

The right side of the machine offers an eSATA/USB 2.0 dual port and 3.5mm SPDIF headphone and microphone ports, as well as an LG-Hitachi BluRay/Dual Layer DVD drive nearer the front.

At the rear of the chassis there is a mini displayport connector and an HDMI 1.4 port, sitting next to a gigabit capable Intel LAN socket. You may not see in the image above, but the XPS logo above this is clear, and it lights up when the system is switched on. Along the right we have a second USB 3.0 connector, a power socket and a Kensington locking slot. Power and drive activity lights are above this, although with the screen in an upright position you can't see them from the front of the laptop.

Opening the machine is a straightforward process, there are three small Philips head screws to remove and the centerpiece pulls off to expose the majority of the upgradeable internals. We will look more at the hardware configuration on the next page.

The Dell battery is a 6 cell unit rated at 11.1 V with a capacity of 56Wh.

First indications from the Windows Experience Index show that the machine performance is limited to the mechanical hard drive, which is a 7,200 rpm Samsung unit with 16mb of cache.

The software installation isn't too bad, although as always Dell include McAfee, an immediate deinstall for us. While we also appreciate the fact that Skype and other social networking software is preinstalled, we do wish Dell would offer a ‘bare bones' software configuration like some of the smaller, dedicated system builders in the UK.

The Intel Core i7 840QM is at the heart of this machine. This is a £280 optional upgrade from the 740QM processor. Both are 4 core designs with Hyperthreading (4 physical, 4 logical), but the 840QM has an additional 2MB of cache (8MB) and runs at 1.86ghz, an increase from the 1.73ghz of the 740QM.

The nVidia Geforce GT 435m handles the Dell  XPS 15 graphics. It has 16 ROPs, 96 unified shaders with a hefty 2GB of GDDR3 onboard tied into a 128 bit bus. The core runs at 650mhz and the memory at 800mhz with shaders running at 1300mhz. This will be no gaming powerhouse, but it should manage most titles at moderate or lowish settings. The screen is a full 1080p panel (they do offer 720p screens in the configuration tool), so the GT 435M has a fair amount of pixels to push if you want to game at the native resolution. Intel HD graphics are also onboard and with nVidia's Optimus technology it will switch between both, depending on the task at hand.

There is 4GB of Samsung PC3-10700 (1333mhz) memory installed which is running at 9-9-9-24 1T timings.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The Intel Core i7 840QM shows a massive amount of performance difference between not only the Atom processor, but even the Core i3 330M. There is over double the performance in the Cryptography test for instance. Memory bandwidth is also significantly increased when compared against the other mobile configurations.

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

PCMark Vantage shows considerable performance gains when compared next to the Core i3 laptop. We will look more into real world performance later, but for now the XPS 15 shows promise.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The Intel Core i7 processor scores exceptionally well for a mobile solution, at 11807 points. The nVidia 435m scores much less, delivering a total of 3151 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

Again, we can see the processing power which helps to boost the physics score considerably.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We test at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings. 1080p is also the native resolution of the screen in our Dell XPS 15 sample.

The nVidia GT435m struggles at these settings with this demanding tessellation heavy engine.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance so we used two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach to rate the 2.5 inch 7,200 rpm SATA drive.

Hard drive performance is fairly good for a mechanical unit. Under real world conditions however the speed differences between this drive and a quality SSD are clearly felt. We would need to replace this unit with a SSD drive for 24/7 use.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

This is the first laptop we have used this year that can handle professional rendering. The 4 physical and 4 virtual cores really help to push rendering into a whole new level for the mobile sector. These are extremely impressive results.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our Bluray and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 is one of the finest solutions for the Blu-Ray experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the Bluray Disc of Avatar, one of our favourite sci-fi films in recent years.

Average load is around 9 percent, which splits out across the 8 logical threads. This machine can easily handle multiple tasks in a multitasking environment, even when enjoying HD video content.

We then recorded the CPU demand over a specific set of time to get a ‘real world' rolling scale of activity. The Core i7 processor delivers the best results we have recorded from a laptop system.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

The Core i7 processor averages 16 percent load when viewing our HD Flash content via YouTube. It dropped as low as 3 percent, maxing out at 25 percent. Flash code isn't particularly well optimised so these are very good results from the Intel and nVidia combination.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4.

Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 1.1GB 720p MKV file to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

With the CUDA hardware acceleration enabled, the 435M drops the time taken by 37%, from 7 minutes and 37 seconds to 5 minutes and 38 seconds. If this was a high priority user demand then a huge amount of time would be saved over the course of a year. Core i7 performance in this test is also the best we have seen yet from a mobile platform.

We are now going to test the USB 3.0 and 2.0 speed, so we used the fastest drive we have, the Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 128GB, which is an Toshiba based SSD product within a USB 3.0 capable enclosure.

We copied files to and from the drive and were impressed with the USB 3.0 performance. We are somewhat limited by the internal drive, but even so the differences between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 is clearly evident.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead. The game launched on November 17, 2009, for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in the United States; it launched November 20 in Europe. It builds upon the cooperatively-focused gameplay of the original and uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine, the same game engine used in Left 4 Dead. The game made its world premiere at E3 2009 with a trailer during the Microsoft press event.

In a similar fashion to the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale.

We tested at 1080p with 4AA enabled and all other settings on maximum.

Left4Dead was a great experience on the Dell XPS 15 and at the native screen resolution with high image quality settings, the frame rate never dropped below 30 fps.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

We tested at 1080p in DX10 mode with settings on full. 4AA was enabled.

A very good set of results from the nVidia GT 435M, dropping to 29 fps on only one section of game play. Perfectly playable at the native resolution of the screen.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing with a mixture of medium and high settings.

This engine is incredibly demanding, but at 720p the GT435 is able to maintain playable frame rates throughout our testing environments.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

At 720p with 4AA, the system is capable of powering the engine with all settings on full.

Today we are measuring power drain at the wall with a Kill A Watt meter.

At idle, the system takes 24 watts of power and when fully loaded this rises to 118 watts.

Battery life of a 15inch laptop is very important, especially if you are a business man and frequently checking email and working in Microsoft Office.

To test the battery today we put the machine through two sets of real world situations. One as a gamer on the move, who wants to play games on a train journey or bus with two thirds screen brightness. Secondly as a business man, using the machine for productivity with wireless enabled and balanced power settings with a mid way brightness setting.

The 56Wh battery proves to be more than capable of powering this system for around 3 hours 15 minutes under light, general use, which is a great result. When gaming, we managed to get just over 2 hours out of the battery before the machine would shut down.

Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Dell XPS 15 is generally silent with a noise output level just under 30 dBa. Under full load, it rises to 35.7 dBa which is clearly audible but never intrusive.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running Furmark and Cinebench together.

We placed 5 diodes on the rear to give a rough indication of how hot the machine might feel on your knee.

The cooling system is very capable, maintaining the temperatures of the CPU and GFX under 80c at all times. The rear of the chassis is also very cool, apart from the top left position (Diode 1 is in this position). The hot air is expelled from here, out the side of the chassis.

The Dell XPS 15 (L501X) is a hell of a machine and while we know that many people immediately dislike the name ‘Dell' even before judging a system on its merits, we can easily say that this is one of the fastest mobile machines we have used to date. I am also finally able to state that a laptop is capable of being used as a rendering machine in a work environment. Sure it isn't going to be as fast as a well equipped desktop machine, but the Intel Core i7 840QM is a mobile powerhouse.

While we could pick holes in the default software installation, there is very little to fault on a hardware level. The machine is very quiet and it doesn't generate a lot of heat on your legs as the airflow is forced from the top left of the chassis, out the side. This singular position is the only warm area on the chassis and is a very clever design so people can be productive with the machine on their lap.

The keyboard, quality of the screen and overall design is absolutely brilliant and will certainly help Dell win over the minds of the high performance enthusiast audience. Those who are willing to give the company a chance anyway.

The inclusion of several USB 3.0 ports with a dual eSATA/USB port is very forward thinking from Dell and we have seen just much potential this technology has, as more people release USB 3.0 storage devices in 2011. It is certainly a small market right now, but with the Dell XPS 15 you have futureproofing and peace of mind.

The machine isn't perfect – we are slightly bewildered at Dells positioning of the activity lights …. behind the screen, meaning that people sitting opposite you on a bus or in an airport can see that your machine is writing data to the hard drive, but you can't. Well, unless you continually twist your head around the side of the screen. Its not a major issue by any stretch of the imagination, but I just don't understand who thought that position was a good idea. We would also have liked to see another USB 2.0 port included somewhere on the chassis, as a total of three ports is the bare minimum for a performance machine.

Pricing of this specific machine is £1,319 including VAT, although if you don't need the BluRay drive and are willing to downgrade to the 740QM, you could reduce the cost by £370. Dell also offer a 9 cell 90Whr battery for £50 more, if you need to work or play for longer periods of time before a recharge. If you want to upgrade to an SSD you will have to do this yourself later as there are no SSD options offered for this unit in the Dell store.

You can build your own over here.

KitGuru says: An excellent machine, with very few weaknesses in any key areas. A very powerful mobile system equally suited to both gamers and professional level designers and modelling artists.

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