Dell XPS 18 Portable All-in-One: Haswell Reloaded
PCMark & 3DMark Tests
Futuremark’s PCMark 7 benchmark includes a suite of tests designed to measure the way your computer would perform during typical tasks. It includes an Entertainment Suite, which offers gaming scenarios and tests its media playback capabilities. The benchmark also has a Creativity Suite, in which the system processes images and video. Other tools include the Computation Suite and the Storage Suite. The latter is capable of measure SSDs and hard drives, either individually, or as a whole.
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Right off the bat, we get a broad picture of what Dell's upgrades bring to the table. Notice that the previous XPS 18 Portable we reviewed last summer turned in a middling score in PCMark 7, a benchmark that leans heavily on storage performance. That wasn't bad considering the combination of a 5400 RPM hard drive supplemented with a 32GB mSATA solid state drive, but the late 2014 model reviewed here does even better.
It scored more than a 1,000 points higher than the previous model, putting it in second place and within view of the top spot. A dedicated SSD -- especially a fast one -- is certainly the way to go for optimum performance, and the upgrade to a faster, newer generation processor paid dividends as well.
As a gaming benchmark, 3DMark 11 puts extra emphasis on your system’s handling of DirectX 11. But it measures more than the graphics card’s performance (the processor can make a big difference to a score, for example) and is a good way to get a feel for a system both as a gaming PC and as a general-use computer. Futuremark recently updated 3DMark 11 to support Windows 8, so if you plan to run this test on your own Windows 8 system, be sure to get the latest version.
Futuremark recently launched PCMark 8, which has several separate benchmarks. The Home test measures a system's ability to handle basic tasks: video chatting, web browsing, photo editing, an similar day-to-day activities. The test is designed to be run on just about any Windows 7 or 8 computer. The Creative test offers some of the same types of tasks, but puts more stress on the system and is meant for mid-range and higher-end PCs. The Work test simulates the workflow of a typical office user. And the Storage test - you guessed it - benchmark's your computer's data storage performance.
Since it's a relatively new benchmark, we don't have enough all-in-one comparison points to flesh out a graph, though we're including the results of the XPS 18 Portable here both for future reference and in case you want to run your own comparisons at home.
From what we have seen, however, the scores above are where they should be based on the hardware inside. In other words, there are not troubling outliers that could mean something is amiss or misfiring.
It scored more than a 1,000 points higher than the previous model, putting it in second place and within view of the top spot. A dedicated SSD -- especially a fast one -- is certainly the way to go for optimum performance, and the upgrade to a faster, newer generation processor paid dividends as well.
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As a gaming benchmark, 3DMark 11 puts extra emphasis on your system’s handling of DirectX 11. But it measures more than the graphics card’s performance (the processor can make a big difference to a score, for example) and is a good way to get a feel for a system both as a gaming PC and as a general-use computer. Futuremark recently updated 3DMark 11 to support Windows 8, so if you plan to run this test on your own Windows 8 system, be sure to get the latest version.
While there have been upgrades to the CPU and storage, the XPS 18 Portable still relies on integrated graphics, so it's no surprise that our test system scored below other all-in-one machines with discrete GPUs. As we'll see later on, this isn't a PC that's geared towards high-end gaming.
That said, the new flagship does show some pixel pushing promise. In 3DMark 11, it scored 72 percent higher than the previous model, part of which is due to the bump up to Intel HD Graphics 4400.
That said, the new flagship does show some pixel pushing promise. In 3DMark 11, it scored 72 percent higher than the previous model, part of which is due to the bump up to Intel HD Graphics 4400.
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Since it's a relatively new benchmark, we don't have enough all-in-one comparison points to flesh out a graph, though we're including the results of the XPS 18 Portable here both for future reference and in case you want to run your own comparisons at home.
From what we have seen, however, the scores above are where they should be based on the hardware inside. In other words, there are not troubling outliers that could mean something is amiss or misfiring.
