The new Dell XPS 15 9510 OLED has problems with the GPU Performance
After a little delay, we have finally received a sample of the new Dell XPS 15 9510 with the Core i7-11800H (Tiger Lake-H), the 3.5K OLED screen and the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti. Dell advertises the 45W version of the RTX 3050 Ti on its website, so it is one of the slowest models available (range between 35 up to 80W TGP). During our initial tests with the XPS 15, however, we noticed that the performance is not stable and there will be a performance drop of around 20% after a very short period.
Dell Power Manager
Dell once again installs its Power Manager software, which offers several settings for the battery as well as the thermal management. The default profile is Optimized, which is supposed to offer a good balance between performance, fan noise, and temperature. We have also tried the Ultra-Performance profile, but it does not change much. The fan noise is slightly louder, but there is no real performance advantage and the GPU performance also drops.
The Witcher 3
The game Witcher 3 illustrates the problem of the new Dell XPS 15 9510 very well, because there is a performance drop after a very short time. All in all, the laptop performs slightly better with the Ultra-Performance profile, but you have to expect a drop of around 20% with both profiles. This means the new model with the RTX 3050 Ti is even a bit slower than the old XPS 15 9500 with the GTX 1650 Ti Mobile.
Update 08/04/21: Dell released a new BIOS update (version 1.4), which improves the gaming performance when you use the Ultra-Performance profile (see chart below). The full analysis will follow in our review of the XPS 15 9510.
Witcher 3 FPS Chart
| The Witcher 3 - 1920x1080 Ultra Graphics & Postprocessing (HBAO+) | |
| Dell XPS 15 9510 11800H RTX 3050 Ti OLED (BIOS 1.4 Ultra Performance) | |
| Dell XPS 15 9510 11800H RTX 3050 Ti OLED (BIOS 1.4) | |
| Dell XPS 15 9510 11800H RTX 3050 Ti OLED (BIOS 1.3.2 Ultra Performance) | |
| Dell XPS 15 9510 11800H RTX 3050 Ti OLED (BIOS 1.3.2) | |
| Dell XPS 15 9500 Core i7 4K UHD | |
The following diagram shows a comparison of the performance data of the processor and the graphics card during a 30-minute session of the Witcher 3 (Ultra preset). The CPU load is not very high in this game, so we will focus on the performance of the RTX 3050 Ti. A look at the power consumption reveals that the new XPS 15 9510 cannot even maintain the 45W under combined workloads, because the consumption quickly levels off at around 30W with both profiles. This is a very disappointing result and as of right now it looks like the gaming performance is lower compared to the predecessor.
First Impressions - Performance of the new XPS 15 9510 disappoints
The first results are no particularly promising. We will obviously continue our comprehensive tests, but it looks like the CPU performance is also massively affected when you use the GPU at the same time. The consumption of the i7-11800H drops to just 20W after ~2 minutes during our stress test. The cooling system is subjectively a bit quieter than before, but we still have to perform our measurements.
We are currently working on the review, but it will take another 2-3 days before publishing. Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions or questions for the review.
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