The XPS 15 ups the ante with Intel’s quad-core Skylake processors, adds dedicated graphics in the guise of Nvidia’s capable GeForce GTX 960M GPU and throws in superfast NVMe SSDs on the pricier models. There’s also a choice of 8GB or 16GB of DDR4 memory. Dell hasn’t cut any corners at all here.
The result is a laptop that feels brutally fast in pretty much every scenario. Press the power button, and Windows 10 is up and running in seconds. This is largely due to the NVMe Samsung PM851 SSD in our review unit: with sequential read speeds of over 1, it’s obscenely fast.
The Skylake Core i7 in our review unit is the same 2 . 6GHz processor that’s included in all but the cheapest XPS 15, and – to use a technical term – it’s fast. In our demanding suite of image-processing, video-transcoding and multitasking benchmarks, the XPS 15 skipped through to a very csgo keys cheap respectable score of 111 – identical to Alienware’s 3. 8kg gaming laptop, the 17 R2.
Speaking of games, the XPS 15 is unusually capable when it comes to 3D gaming. Our current go-to benchmark is Metro: Last Light, and while it’s no walkover, the Dell’s GeForce GTX 960M and 2GB of GDDR5 memory are more than capable of doing it justice. Cranking the resolution up to 4K and lowering the detail to Medium provided a slightly stuttery, if utterly gorgeous-looking experience – frankly, it’s hugely impressive that this laptop didn’t melt into a pile of hot metal and plastic.
It didn’t take much fiddling to make Metro: Last Light completely playable: lowering the resolution to 2, 048 x 1, 152 provided a much sharper image than 1080p, while still sending average frame rates soaring past 60fps.
The result is a laptop that feels brutally fast in pretty much every scenario. Press the power button, and Windows 10 is up and running in seconds. This is largely due to the NVMe Samsung PM851 SSD in our review unit: with sequential read speeds of over 1, it’s obscenely fast.
The Skylake Core i7 in our review unit is the same 2 . 6GHz processor that’s included in all but the cheapest XPS 15, and – to use a technical term – it’s fast. In our demanding suite of image-processing, video-transcoding and multitasking benchmarks, the XPS 15 skipped through to a very csgo keys cheap respectable score of 111 – identical to Alienware’s 3. 8kg gaming laptop, the 17 R2.
Speaking of games, the XPS 15 is unusually capable when it comes to 3D gaming. Our current go-to benchmark is Metro: Last Light, and while it’s no walkover, the Dell’s GeForce GTX 960M and 2GB of GDDR5 memory are more than capable of doing it justice. Cranking the resolution up to 4K and lowering the detail to Medium provided a slightly stuttery, if utterly gorgeous-looking experience – frankly, it’s hugely impressive that this laptop didn’t melt into a pile of hot metal and plastic.
It didn’t take much fiddling to make Metro: Last Light completely playable: lowering the resolution to 2, 048 x 1, 152 provided a much sharper image than 1080p, while still sending average frame rates soaring past 60fps.
