Dell XPS 15 (9550) Review: Pushing The Infinity Edge (Updated)


Dell XPS 15 Far Cry 2 And Bioshock Infinite Game Testing

We continue to turn up the workload a notch here with some real in-game testing in DirectX 10 and DirectX 11. Granted, Far Cry 2 and Bioshock Infinite are older titles, but they're stable and mature, offering a good view of basic gaming and graphics performance for an thin and light notebook like the XPS 15.

Far Cry 2 Game Benchmark
Light Duty DirectX Gaming Performance
minipic farcry2When it comes to lush vegetation in a steaming, sinister jungle, no one pulls it off quite like Ubisoft does in its Far Cry series. Far Cry 2 uses high-quality textures, complex shaders, and dynamic lighting to create a realistic environment. The game’s built-in benchmark gives us a good look at a system’s graphics performance with DirectX 10. Though it's not a demanding test by today's standards for heavy duty graphics cards or gaming PCs, it does make for a good barometer of raw graphics horsepower in ultralight notebook architectures, which typically don't cater to hardcore gaming workloads. 

FarCry2

Again, in this test we're comparing results to a group of light ultrabooks with only integrated Intel graphics. At these relatively low resolution settings, the XPS 15, with its GeForce GTX 960M GPU enabled, is light-years ahead of the pack. Turn off discrete graphics and we see what Intel's HD Graphics 530 engine is capable of as well. Here we see a 30+ percent advantage for the XPS 15 with its 6700HQ Skylake quad-core CPU and its HD Graphics 530 IGP.

Bioshock Infinite Game Benchmark
DirectX 11 Gaming Performance
Based on Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, BioShock Infinite takes you (as former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt) to the mysterious, flying city of Columbia. You find yourself helping Elizabeth, who soon turns out to have unusual powers. The game offers a first person shooter (FPS) style view but the storyline is as compelling as the battles and Bioshock infinite has won awards and praise for its story and art design.

Bioshock Infinite

In this test we once again return to pitting the Dell XPS 15 against significantly more powerful premium notebooks and gaming notebooks. And here again we see the XPS 15 best similar offerings from Lenovo, HP and ASUS. This test was completed on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M GPU for the XPS 15 and it's clearly capable of smooth 1080p gaming with ultra quality settings in Bioshock Infinite.

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