Dell XPS 13 Review
by Brett Howse on February 19, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Dell
- Ultrabook
- Broadwell-U
- XPS 13
Gaming Performance
Normally on an Ultrabook we would not dedicate an entire page to gaming performance, because the integrated GPUs do not perform very well on our gaming tests. However, with this being our first example of Broadwell-U, it is a good time to revisit this and see how the new graphics capabilities of Broadwell compare to the Haswell processors.
With the Core i5-5200U in both of the XPS 13s that we received, we have 24 execution units, compared to only 20 on Haswell-U. In addition, the 14nm process should help with throttling. The FHD model (1920x1080) arrived with a two 2GB memory modules and the QHD+ version came with 2 x 4GB.
First, let's look at the synthetic benchmarks, starting with 3DMark and then moving on to GFXBench.
The 3DMark results begin to show the increased GPU performance of the Gen8 graphics. Broadwell-U outperforms all of the Haswell-U parts on all of the tests, and the QHD+ model gave a fraction more performance as well in a few tests.
The initial results for the new GPU look pretty good, with the new GPU soundly beating the Haswell-U parts. The HP Stream 11, with just 4 EUs, trails quite far behind. GFXBench is one of our newer benchmark choices for Windows 8, and we will add more data as we get a few more devices to test.
Next, let's look at our gaming benchmarks. Due to the low performance of the integrated GPUs, I just ran our gaming tests at the Value (1366x768 ~Medium) settings.
Here we can see once again that the new GPU is certainly stronger, but it is still not quite enough to make any of these games very playable on our Value settings. The Dell XPS 15, with its discrete GPU, carries a huge lead over the integrated GPU offerings. Still, the new Gen8 Graphics with more execution units per processor, as well as a change to the architecture of each execution unit, has made a healthy improvement. The new GPU has only eight EUs per sub-slice now, as compared to ten in Haswell-U, which help in many workloads. Ian has a nice writeup on the changes.
However, our gaming benchmarks are not tested at the lowest possible settings. All of the benchmarks start at 1366x768 with medium settings, so let's drop down another notch.
By setting the games to their lowest settings, some of them are now playable. We are still a long ways off of the performance of a discrete GPU, but slowly integrated graphics are improving.
Finally, we have a new gaming benchmark to add to our repertoire. Anand first used the DOTA 2 bench for the Surface Pro 3 review and it will be our go-to benchmark for devices like this without a discrete GPU. Our Value setting will be 1366x768 with all options off, low quality shadows, and medium textures. Midrange will be 1600x900 with all options enabled, medium shadows, and medium textures, and Enthusiast will be 1920x1080 with all options maxed out.
We do not have any other comparison points at the moment, but it is very clear that a game like DOTA 2 is very playable on a device with an integrated GPU. Frame rates, even with good settings, are very reasonable.
So Broadwell has raised the stakes again, but the end result is Intel's Integrated GPU is still not going to let you play AAA titles with good frame rates. Hopefully we can get some good comparisons between Broadwell-U and the AMD APUs in the near future. It will also be interesting to see what happens on the higher wattage Broadwell parts, some of which will contain significantly more EUs.
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rstuart - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Finally laptop's are catching up to their tablet cousins in battery life and display. One feature the article doesn't mention but I really miss with laptops is Access Point mode for the wireless card. The Intel card in particular is poor - no AP mode, 1 radio so it can't do both 2.4 and 5 GHz at the same time, can't handle multiple SSID's. I would really like to see more detail on the WiFi components.kevith - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
47 dB?! No thanks.Dr_Orgo - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
My laptop (Gigabyte p34g) runs at 47-48 dB under full load as well. It's noticeably quite loud. I don't find it distracting while gaming as I'm engaged. It definitely wouldn't want to do video/photo editing with fans that loud though.tipoo - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
" we have 24 execution units, compared to only 20 on Haswell-U."Isn't it 40 on the HD Graphics 5000, which is in Haswell-U? That's why I was confused about how a 24EU part at a lower boost clock does better than the old 40EU part at a higher boost, even with Broadwells new GPU features.
Brett Howse - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
This is not the Iris or HD 6000 version of Broadwell-U, so it compares to HD 4400/4600 more directly, which had 20 EUs. HD 6000 has 48 EUs, but I don't know a single laptop using it yet.tipoo - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Understandable, I'm curious what's making it perform better than the 40EU part though. I know a lot of that die space was used for running at a lower base clock to save power, but it had a higher turbo than the 5500 as well as near double the EUs, so the 5500 with less EUs and lower clocked performing better is what confused me.lefty2 - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
This seems to be the first Broadwell-U review done by AnandTech. It's a pity you didn't compare performance with Kaveri laptopsBrett Howse - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
We have not had any Kaveri laptops in for review unfortunately. The only one in Bench is a prototype, so not all testing was done on it, but here's a comparison on what we have:http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1422?vs=1236
lefty2 - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Thanks. At least that's something anyway ;)Brett Howse - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Don't forget though that's a 35w Kaveri vs 15w i5.