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New XPS 15 absolutely crushes MBP
- Thread starter grennis
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The XPS 15 battery specs are listed as "56 or 97 WHr". I wonder if the larger battery sticks out of the back? Don't like those.
On a wider note though, there are some really cool things appearing at CES. Once in a while its good to pull the head out of Cook's rear and have alook around
With the XPS's, if you get a model w/ a mechanical hard drive, you get the 57w battery. However, if you get one of the new SSD's (like the MacBook Pro has and I get on my XPS back in July), you get the larger battery since there is more room.
Wait, I thought I got called a troll because I was comparing the 15w Kaby Lake with the 45w Skylake and I was always being told that TDP did not matter at all? I thought the Kaby Lakes beat all Skylakes.
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Also, I was ALL FOR Windows 10 when it first came out. I told everyone I knew to upgrade, I upgraded all my systems, even purchased two additional copies from the Microsoft Store. However, as of late, Windows 10 has become more of a pain. Yes, I find the release version much less buggier than I find the newer 1607 version! Edge used to run PERFECTLY FINE, all of the sudden if it is open for more than 10 minutes, it will say website is not responding. Even after clean installing the OS! 1511 broke webcams that were working fine. 1511 removed my AV which made me spend the time to reinstall it. Clicking on a program shortcut after 1511 for WEEKS caused "data was not sent to the program" error. They fixed that with an update. But shortcuts were working fine on the RTM build of Windows 10! Every time I launch Chrome (because Edge is broken), it displays a dialog saying "Edge is better!!!".
At this point, I find even Windows 8.1 much better. Windows 10 looked like it would be great, and it was. But the last few major updates have caused serious issues! And they are REQUIRED updates too!
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I find it is slow for me too on an 850 Pro. By slow, I do not mean minutes. It should just be much faster on those SSDs. MacOS, on my 2010 Mac Pro, with an 850 Evo, with TRIM DISABLED, been running for months, shuts down faster!
I find Windows 10 startup to be slow too for whatever reason. I cannot figure it out. I have a $3,000 desktop custom built. How can my $350 work computer with the same type of drive (home PC has a 1TB 850 Pro and my work computer has a 250 GB 850 Evo) start up faster? It has a weak processor (home has i7 6-cores, work has an i5 4-cores). It has less RAM (home has 32GB of RAM, work only has 8 GB). And so on.
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Yeah. Suddenly my Adobe programs are crashing on Windows 10. I did not install any plug ins or anything. Never had that happen to me with the Adobe programs on MacOS.
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Millions and billions of software/hardware combinations make software development (especially systems that use the GPU for processing like Adobe does) more difficult. Having only, what a dozen hardware configurations on Apple makes development easier!
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Agreed. This is like Person A offering a Founder's Edition GTX 1080 at $400 and Person B offers the SAME GTX 1080 Founders Edition for $2,000. We aren't smart enough to know to go with Person A?
You buy Apple computers for more than the hardware! And back when Windows 7 was the latest OS, I purchased the Ultimate edition for $320. I would gladly pay $300 for MacOS! This is why I am not complaining and whining about the price of the laptop, because the OS is built in!
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Nice system! I built a similar one in 2015. But with a GTX 1080 FE, 32GB of RAM, 3x 1TB SSDs, and a 5TB HDD. I use it just for gaming and Visual Studio. Most of my time is spent STILL on my 2010 Mac Pro system. MacOS is just much much much easier and nicer to use. I did put a GTX 980 in that system though!
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Unless you use programs that make use out of OpenCL. Even an older AMD card beats newer NVIDIA cards with those kind of tasks.
Hmm, baiting post but still :
The XPS are indeed good. The Yoga (especially the one with OLED is really good too), The new razer Stealth Blade is awesome. I heard the Spectre is good but it's HP and I wouldn't touch that brand with a 10 feet pole.
And while I'm disappointed in the mac and find all of those much superior, they still run Windows. And Windows is an abomination. If they were running macOS, I'd be gone long ago anyway.
It's not. Low tier KL has a TDP of 15W and perform (slightly) better than the Skylake in the 13", including the maxed out one (core i7).
So you get better perf and much less consumption + more native capabilities.
The specs are nice, but ultimately, I think the people on here who buy Macs know what they're buying. They know there are things with better raw specs for a lower cost, but it's all about the entire user experience. I don't have a huge budget for laptops, but I still bought the new 15" and I'm enjoying it. I hadn't bought a laptop since my 2008 MBP, so my cost per year is still pretty low. I had a Dell, others I know have had Dells, they switched. My parents have a Dell and an HP, both trash compared to my MBP. Yes, they're cheaper, but no, they're not worth it if you can save up for more and appreciate the ease of use enough to make it worthwhile, imo anyway. Unless you want to game, in which case, then you shouldn't be looking at Macs.
It's a bummer they don't have Kaby Lake, I would've gladly waited a couple months for it, but not til next fall/winter. Also a bummer about the terraced battery. But even given that, it's still better than every alternative I've seen.
It's a bummer they don't have Kaby Lake, I would've gladly waited a couple months for it, but not til next fall/winter. Also a bummer about the terraced battery. But even given that, it's still better than every alternative I've seen.
The problem is the speed race can be fully reflected of the user experiments ?
Many PC try to use min. circuit (Many powerfully PC use one phase CPU DC-DC instead of all Apple Mac with two or more phase )
and put max hardware spec to pull buyer buy this powerful machine.
However, i don't know why nowadays game need design very very hungry resource but implement poor game experiments that the game builded in old era (such as Sim 4 much better that today SimCity), game house and hardware try to tell game user, you require a very very good computer for the best game feeling.
Many PC try to use min. circuit (Many powerfully PC use one phase CPU DC-DC instead of all Apple Mac with two or more phase )
and put max hardware spec to pull buyer buy this powerful machine.
However, i don't know why nowadays game need design very very hungry resource but implement poor game experiments that the game builded in old era (such as Sim 4 much better that today SimCity), game house and hardware try to tell game user, you require a very very good computer for the best game feeling.
-Skylake 45w will outperform 15w Kaby lake. Generational jump from skylake to kaby lake isn't a huge improvement, specially on the desktop side of thing. The improvements are more in power usage, etc.
-Windows 10 works great for me on my desktop. My 2016 13in MBPtb is more stable than my recent windows 10 laptops, but my desktop is more stable than the MBP.
-Some would argue that adobe has lagged behind on the macOS, just go check reddit. I don't have problem with adobe systems on either, but they have recently really begin to concentrate on features that directly benefit windows 10 (such as touchscreen integration, etc). I find very little difference when switching between the two.
-"millions and billions" of hardware and software combinations isn't the problem you think it is. OEM bloat by companies like dell are often what cause problems. There may be several companies making GTX 1080s, or whatever graphic card you want to mention, but they are based off the same design, capabilities, and drivers released from the parent company. An ASUS gtx 1070 (which I own) may cool and overclock higher than the founders edition, allowing a bit more performance; but they run off the same drivers, etc. So this doesn't cause problems for developers. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Samsung (ssds), etc are setting the guidelines, and developers follow that. Its really not a problem.....
-You are correct "getting what you pay for" ideology on MBPs, hence why I just bought one after selling an XPS 15 9550. But windows 10 is closing the gap, when it comes to laptops, and the surface book is an example of that. Windows 10, IMO, is already superior as a desktop OS. But macOS is better when it comes to laptops, IMO.
-Your system sounds nice. I built one this summer, i7-6700k, gtx 1070 OC, 16gb ram, 512 ssd, 2X2tb HDD, etc. I use it for gaming, and everything else. If I am at home, and I have serious work to do, I turn to the desktop. It is more powerful, has a mechanical keyboard, and a bigger display. But if the work is light enough, I am more likely to set on the coach and do it on my MBP; with football on in the background
.I suspect what you are seeing is the different drive configurations of the XPS. It can come with the m.2 sad, 2.5 hard dive, or both. Is you have the hard drive the battery is smaller to make room for the drive.
Exactly, I had the larger battery on my recent XPS 15 9550.
I would never buy one of those laptops without the larger battery. Granted, I had the 4k display, but I couldn't imagine trying to use it with a smaller battery.
The XPS 15 battery specs are listed as "56 or 97 WHr". I wonder if the larger battery sticks out of the back? Don't like those.
On a wider note though, there are some really cool things appearing at CES. Once in a while its good to pull the head out of Cook's rear and have alook around
Any of the cool stuff coming from Apple? Or is everything always a big secret? Don't know why they always have to keep a "refresh" a big secret. At this point it's expected. MBP "s"?
These MBPs were just released, so I wouldn't expect a refresh for a bit. March at the earliest, maybe.
But again, I don't see the MBPs benefiting greatly from the jumpy to Kaby Lake.
The xps 15 refresh isn't going to drastically increase its processing power. It's the inclusion of the nvidia pascal (that's what it's called?) discrete gpu. The 1050 (or was it 1060?) is a drastic increase over the current 960m in the xps 15 9550. I believe they added a few other things, but the processor isn't the stare of the show here; unless you REALLY want 4K Netflix via the edge browser.
I'm in awe in how much you missed the point of his post by concluding it's anti Apple.
When Android phones were created. Windows and Android folks always shout about specs and crushing.
-Skylake 45w will outperform 15w Kaby lake. Generational jump from skylake to kaby lake isn't a huge improvement, specially on the desktop side of thing. The improvements are more in power usage, etc.
-Windows 10 works great for me on my desktop. My 2016 13in MBPtb is more stable than my recent windows 10 laptops, but my desktop is more stable than the MBP.
-Some would argue that adobe has lagged behind on the macOS, just go check reddit. I don't have problem with adobe systems on either, but they have recently really begin to concentrate on features that directly benefit windows 10 (such as touchscreen integration, etc). I find very little difference when switching between the two.
-"millions and billions" of hardware and software combinations isn't the problem you think it is. OEM bloat by companies like dell are often what cause problems. There may be several companies making GTX 1080s, or whatever graphic card you want to mention, but they are based off the same design, capabilities, and drivers released from the parent company. An ASUS gtx 1070 (which I own) may cool and overclock higher than the founders edition, allowing a bit more performance; but they run off the same drivers, etc. So this doesn't cause problems for developers. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Samsung (ssds), etc are setting the guidelines, and developers follow that. Its really not a problem.....
-You are correct "getting what you pay for" ideology on MBPs, hence why I just bought one after selling an XPS 15 9550. But windows 10 is closing the gap, when it comes to laptops, and the surface book is an example of that. Windows 10, IMO, is already superior as a desktop OS. But macOS is better when it comes to laptops, IMO.
-Your system sounds nice. I built one this summer, i7-6700k, gtx 1070 OC, 16gb ram, 512 ssd, 2X2tb HDD, etc. I use it for gaming, and everything else. If I am at home, and I have serious work to do, I turn to the desktop. It is more powerful, has a mechanical keyboard, and a bigger display. But if the work is light enough, I am more likely to set on the coach and do it on my MBP; with football on in the background
And the ASUS is a different hardware card than the NVIDIA FE one. Therefore, different hardware. There might be some issues that only present themselves with an overclocked card like your ASUS one.
Take, Blizzard for example. Their games run fine right? Well my GTX 980 was a factory overclocked card. When playing ANY Blizzard game, my entire system would freeze, the display driver would crash, and make me restart my computer. I never have this happen if I play Doom (2016 one), GTA 5, Crysis 3, and more on max. Different hardware. My card was fine, others noticed the same issue with the exact same card as mine. After that happened, I decided to never get a factory overclocked card again. I now have the GTX 1080 FE, did nothing to it, and everything runs fine. I put my GTX 980 in my Mac Pro as I do not do heavy games with it. But my friend launched a Blizzard game with it (running on Bootcamp), and the same issue occurred. EVGA's response was it is a "known issue" and to fix it you needed to downclock your GPU.
In certain configurations of video cards, back in the CC 2014 release, the system would become extremely unresponsive if you have rulers turned on in Photoshop.
But that is a problem with overclocking and that particular game. You can't compare your OC card with the next gen 1080. That is truly different hardware.
Yes my ASUS gtx 1070 is made by a different company, may have a different fan and heat sink set up; but the actual gpu and its architecture is the same for all gtx 1070s. Period. If there is a software problem, nvidia fixes it. There was recently a firmware issues with a majority of this cards, and it require a video card bios update from the manaufactuer; because the OEM is responsible for that sort of thing, as well as warranty, etc.
If your problem with your 980 was related to a manufacture defect or firmware, that is evgas fault; but all 980s core gpu was the same.
All the issues you mentioned are related to software, or in one case OCing. OC isn't for everyone, and if you do you may experience unexpected problems; the hardware was necessarily optimized for that.
- I don't want a touchscreen laptop
- I don't need 32GB RAM
- I don't do gaming on the laptop
- I don't want Windows
- I don't know what the build quality is like
I am in awe how assumptive you are by reading one post and not knowing the history of posts I am referring to. So maybe just reserve some judgement before you become awestruck by something so trivial.
I'm using an XPS 13 and a RMBP 15 side by side right now. Both are great and I could totally live with either one by itself. It's great to have quality choices. If you hate MacOS, you can get the Dell. If Windows horrifies you, get an Apple.
If you care about TB3 at all, hopefully Dell doesn't do something like this again:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comme..._may_cause_tb3_ports/?st=ixj7rfq9&sh=a7e9f0bf
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comme..._may_cause_tb3_ports/?st=ixj7rfq9&sh=a7e9f0bf
People need to look beyond the headlines of specs. PC manufacturers are using non-optimal parts for notebooks to compete against apple for the next 6 months. But the cost will be weight, power, and battery life and heat.
Just an idea of what I mean.
Testing wise from Micron, DDR3L 11 days of standby, while LPDDR3 (current laptops like mbp) yields ~55 days of standby. That's a 5x increase in standby drain. DDR4 will be same or worse as DDR3L.
So yes 32 GB ram in a laptop great, in form of DDR4, no thanks, esp not when LPDDR4 is right around the corner.
In addition the AC adapter is 130W on the XPS, vs 87 MBP. FYI the reason apple did this was to come under the travel/planes power restrictions which is 90W. So your super fast XPS draining huge power draw cannot be used plugged in a plane, unless you buy a 90W adapter which will throttle the performance and might not be enough to use and charge it under load.
This goes on and on for specs.
In 6 months the new power efficient KL chips will be out, 32 LPDDR4 will be out, etc...and everyone will be dumping this model XPS because you'll get same power if not more, with better battery life, better TDP etc.. in the next XPS model.
There is a 6 month window right now where PC builders can beat the performance from a raw part standpoint by using non-optimal parts in a laptop, but the price is you need a lot of power. And when you get weight, heat issues, throttling etc... the overall experience gets really bad and you end up moving elsewhere.
Getting a car have more power at the expense of more gas is fairly easy compared to getting the same power at more efficient usage.
Its' like comparing a mature model Mercedes and Corvette (exaggerating here) throwing in parts that are used just to beat the specs of the Mercedes, so yes its' somewhat faster, but uses way more gas, gets really hot, super heavy. While the overall experience of the Mercedes build is something you enjoy every moment you use it.
There is a reason why domestic car quality build can leave something to be desired compared to Japanese and European brands, along with gas milage. And why the market leaned that way over time.
Do you buy a car based solely on which is fastest? Or do you drive them and find out that the fastest car is not always the best built. Specs vs Real world usage, power vs wisdom.
The overall satisfaction rate on MBP are so high because over time, the build quality, design, longevity, resale value and thoughtful engineering always wins out, much like a car.
I used both Mac and PC, and they both have their place but PC's tend to age poorly because the build quality and choices are much more reactive than Apples approach to sustained quality over time.
I'm not knocking anything here but there is always more than just the headline specs. Knowledge is good.
Just an idea of what I mean.
Testing wise from Micron, DDR3L 11 days of standby, while LPDDR3 (current laptops like mbp) yields ~55 days of standby. That's a 5x increase in standby drain. DDR4 will be same or worse as DDR3L.
So yes 32 GB ram in a laptop great, in form of DDR4, no thanks, esp not when LPDDR4 is right around the corner.
In addition the AC adapter is 130W on the XPS, vs 87 MBP. FYI the reason apple did this was to come under the travel/planes power restrictions which is 90W. So your super fast XPS draining huge power draw cannot be used plugged in a plane, unless you buy a 90W adapter which will throttle the performance and might not be enough to use and charge it under load.
This goes on and on for specs.
In 6 months the new power efficient KL chips will be out, 32 LPDDR4 will be out, etc...and everyone will be dumping this model XPS because you'll get same power if not more, with better battery life, better TDP etc.. in the next XPS model.
There is a 6 month window right now where PC builders can beat the performance from a raw part standpoint by using non-optimal parts in a laptop, but the price is you need a lot of power. And when you get weight, heat issues, throttling etc... the overall experience gets really bad and you end up moving elsewhere.
Getting a car have more power at the expense of more gas is fairly easy compared to getting the same power at more efficient usage.
Its' like comparing a mature model Mercedes and Corvette (exaggerating here) throwing in parts that are used just to beat the specs of the Mercedes, so yes its' somewhat faster, but uses way more gas, gets really hot, super heavy. While the overall experience of the Mercedes build is something you enjoy every moment you use it.
There is a reason why domestic car quality build can leave something to be desired compared to Japanese and European brands, along with gas milage. And why the market leaned that way over time.
Do you buy a car based solely on which is fastest? Or do you drive them and find out that the fastest car is not always the best built. Specs vs Real world usage, power vs wisdom.
The overall satisfaction rate on MBP are so high because over time, the build quality, design, longevity, resale value and thoughtful engineering always wins out, much like a car.
I used both Mac and PC, and they both have their place but PC's tend to age poorly because the build quality and choices are much more reactive than Apples approach to sustained quality over time.
I'm not knocking anything here but there is always more than just the headline specs. Knowledge is good.
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If you have one handy, could you please give a source on the 90W limit on chargers? First I've heard of that.
http://upgrd.com/blogs/josh/the-ult...hat_if_I_have_a_really_power-hungry_computer_
https://www.seatguru.com/articles/in-seat_laptop_power.php
https://www.ana.co.jp/wws/ca/e/asw_common/departure/inflight/battery/howto/index.html
There are planes that only have a 75W limit as well.
Steve/Apple made this decision awhile ago. If your a Mac user you'll never noticed because they deliberately kept the Wattage under 90, old mbps are 85, new ones are 87 and old MacBooks are 60W draw. One of those thoughtful Mac things.
https://www.seatguru.com/articles/in-seat_laptop_power.php
https://www.ana.co.jp/wws/ca/e/asw_common/departure/inflight/battery/howto/index.html
There are planes that only have a 75W limit as well.
Steve/Apple made this decision awhile ago. If your a Mac user you'll never noticed because they deliberately kept the Wattage under 90, old mbps are 85, new ones are 87 and old MacBooks are 60W draw. One of those thoughtful Mac things.
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I love how Steve/Apple are always telling me what I need/want. They're actually right most of the time like in this case. Not always, but more often than not. This only happens when you think about user first, not catching up to some unnamed competitor.