Processor and Graphics Performance
While the hardware inside the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 seems impressive for the price, how does the performance match up?
Processor
The Intel Core i5-6300HQ in the base configuration Dell Inspiron 15 7000 should be plenty for any gaming related tasks, but we still put it through a couple of CPU benchmarks to see where it sits relative to other notebook processors.
Cinebench is a great benchmark to test multithreaded performance on processors, through rendering a single frame from a complex 3D scene.
The true quad core, but not HyperThreaded Core i5-6300HQ performs quite well. It becomes even more impressive when you compare it to the Core i7-4870HQ found in the MSI GS30 Shadow. Even though the i7-4870HQ has HyperThreading enabled, and a 200-500MHz advantage in clock speed, the Skylake i5-6300HQ nearly matches it in multithreaded rendering performance. This is quite the ringing endorsement for IPC improvement from Haswell to Skylake in these 45W notebook processors.
Taking a look at a more common end-user task, media encoding with Handbrake, we see a similar story. Here the Core i5-6300HQ actually beats out the i7-4870HQ by a few frames per second, although it seems to be within the margin of error. Regardless, the performance level of these two parts is very similar for media encoding.
Graphics
While we didn't have any similarly configured notebooks available to put directly head-to-head with the Dell Inspiron 15, we did run it through some demanding titles.
At the native 1080p resolution of this notebook, we were able to play games like Battlefield 4 on high presets, Crysis 3 on medium presets, and GTA V on high presets all at around 45-50 average FPS.
Even though the GTX 960M isn't the highest end mobile GPU available, performance in today's games should mean that you will be able to play modern titles for the next few years, even if you have to turn image quality down a bit.
Love it. The past three
Love it. The past three gaming laptops I have bought have been Lenovo simply due to gaming-per-dollar. I’m glad to see Dell dip into this territory.
I assume due to it being GM107 instead of based on GM206 that HDMI 2.0 output is not present?
A agree, in for couple of
A agree, in for couple of years Dell has been trying to break in the gaming space and happy to see that they have been able to cover quite a ground. What I also like about Dell ias they have started listening to the needs and requirements of the users and that is resulting in such awesome piece.
If you are in USA, Dell Inspiron 7559 which sold in USA as i7559 is the best you can get in this price category as a pretty decent gaming machine. Other than the price, I think 7559 is an elegant looking great gaming machine with pretty decent hardware. This perfectly suits the needs of those who can’t afford to burn their wallet, but still want to have fun playing the latest games on the go– if not on the highest, then at least on medium settings. I have checked couple of detailed reviews videos of gaming laptops here on https://fanreviews.co/gaming
Seriously, single channel
Seriously, single channel DRAM in a “gaming” laptop? I get that it’s price sensitive and users can at least add a second DIMM here, but some of these decisions are becoming a bit tiresome.
For a gaming rig with a
For a gaming rig with a dedicated GPU, it doesn’t make a difference.
It’s true that in MOST cases,
It's true that in MOST cases, dual channel memory on this platform isn't going to make a noticeable "real world" performance difference. I'd rather than a single 8GB in this case than dual 4GB, giving me the ability to upgrade over the next 6 months as memory continues to fall.
In that case you could easily
In that case you could easily argue that the CPU is overkill then. You’re already using slower DDR3L vs DDR4 and in workloads that are truly driving all four of those cores near peak I’m pretty sure you’d see a noticeable difference. And yeah, those workloads are probably not games, but the point stands.
I upgraded mine with a second
I upgraded mine with a second 8 GB module, mainly because I’m OCD and wanted dual-channel. If there are any tests you would like me to do with single-channel vs dual, let me know.
The ability to add a stick in
The ability to add a stick in the future is more important to me
A couple of questions — Can
A couple of questions — Can you swap the Wi-Fi module for a 2×2 or 3×3? Is the LCD glossy or mat? I’m very interested in this model, it really is compelling — especially with the increase battery life.
“Personally, I prefer the
“Personally, I prefer the default, non-touch 1080p display option since it brings increased battery life, and also maintains a matte finish.”
Englash, muthafukka! Do you speak it?!?
What?
What?
Pretty sure it’s a reference
Pretty sure it’s a reference to Pulp Fiction:
https://youtu.be/HbvYeLxMKN8
Matte finish on the body or
Matte finish on the body or the screen, I heard what he said. Wouldn’t have commented if I didn’t already watch the video. I’m assuming you’re saying the screen is a matte finish.
I don’t think you can. There
I don't think you can. There is only a single antennae connected to that wireless card for Wi-Fi, the other is for Bluetooth. It's possible that you could use the BT antennae for the second part of a 2×2 Wi-Fi config…but I can't say for sure.
This might be a stupid
This might be a stupid question, but is the Wi-Fi card an M.2 connector or something else? I have made the mistake of ordering the wrong replacement part when fixing others notebooks when their Wi-Fi would not work. Reason I’m asking is I don’t think any spec sheets will show that. Also, that allows us to determine what types of modules can be placed in that slot.
Yes, you can. I put an Intel
Yes, you can. I put an Intel 7265AC card in mine, works fine. If you don’t mind some disassembly, you can purchase an additional antenna and upgrade it to 3×3.
The base 1920×1080 panel is matte/no touch, whereas the 3840×2160 upgrade has glass over it (it’s also a touchscreen).
With many hinges of that
With many hinges of that design, the screws loosen over time. You eventually have to take the laptop apart partially in order to tighten them, if you do not, then you reach a point where not enough of the threads are gripping, and it ends up breaking the mount of for the hinge (super glue will not fix that).
Overall, laptop makers need to design their laptops around users servicing them. Things like moving parts and heatsinks should have easy access for servicing.
They need to fix their
They need to fix their motherboard problems and warranty issue, seem like when the warranty runs out, that’s the life expectancy of the product.
Every year you can go back
Every year you can go back and add another year onto your warranty for @ $100 until you have added the 5th year.
If something goes wrong, I add on a year, then call it in and get it repaired under warranty. Easy.
On the table on page two it
On the table on page two it lists 64 across the board for the display what does this number refer to?
That’s one Hell of a deal for
That’s one Hell of a deal for $799
Oh nos…Major quality
Oh nos…Major quality control issues reported by owners on Amazon…guess you get what you pay for…this thing is junk.
Lots of Dell haters out
Lots of Dell haters out there. I have owned MANY Dells and the 7000 series is always the best quality short of an XPS.
Great bang for the buck. Is
Great bang for the buck. Is there an I7 CPU option for this dell laptop and if you can get a m.2 SSD installed with OS and a 1TB for mass storage?
I still love my Lenovo Y510P with SLI 750m GPUs, which handle today’s games at high setting dishing them out at 40+ FPS.
For the question regarding replacing the WiFi card, it is very likely that DELL has white listed wifi cards for their laptops and any aftermarket wifi card will not work.
That’s the only drawback for my lenovo is that it is still sporting a wireless N wifi card and I cannot upgrade to a wireless AC card.
There is an option for an i7
There is an option for an i7 CPU. You can install your own M.2 SSD, as long as it’s SATA based. It apparently doesn’t support PCIe M.2 SSDs (I was looking forward to dropping in a Samsung 950 Pro :().
I bought mine on Amazon in November and it came with a 256 GB SanDisk Z400s M.2 SSD. I then put a 2 TB mechanical drive in the empty 2.5″ bay. No problems.
As for WiFi, I haven’t seen anything mentioning whitelists with this particular model. While I don’t have a stockpile of M.2 cards to test with, I had zero issues upgrading it to an Intel 7265AC.
I had that exact lenovo
I had that exact lenovo laptop! Anyway, if you want to switch your network card, back then I found a “homebrew” bios on the web that removed the white list. Upgraded to a Killer Wireless 1535. Look around dor custom bios if you still wanna upgrade your network card
here is the link for y510p
here is the link for y510p custom, unlocked bios, I went back to my
old bookmarks 🙂
https://www.techinferno.com/
index.php?/forums/topic/3546-lenovo-y410p-y510p-unlocked-bios-wlan-whitelist-mod-vbios-mod/
had to cut the link because of pcper spam filter bu it is not a spam!!!
The notebook that could.
It
The notebook that could.
It has very good specs for the price. Let’s forget about Thunderbolt 3 and DisplayPort over USB-C.
And even casual/entry level gamers always went elsewhere for their fix than to the Inspiron range.
But, for the non-gamers
No DisplayPort 1.2 port equals no 4K@60Hz external monitor, or 2 daisy chained QHD@60Hz monitors.
No HDMI 2.0 port equals no 4K@60Hz external monitor.
DEAL BREAKER!
Sad really if you know about this: http://www.displayport.org/cables/driving-multiple-displays-from-a-single-displayport-output/
I was just looking at the
I was just looking at the laptop on dell’s website and right now they have coupon code that takes an additional 50 bucks off. I don’t know how long the code will be around. The code is listed on there somewhere. For 750 bucks, this laptop is an insane deal. Take that lenovo
Looked at getting this
Looked at getting this laptop, it costs $1698.99 AUD here in Australia.. dunno wtf is up with that. I think the low price might be a US only thing.
GSYNC 75Hz would have made
GSYNC 75Hz would have made this ideal.
Since we don’t need a GSYNC module in laptops (due to the known screen specs), what’s preventing GSYNC on every laptop with a new NVidia GPU?
There’s no cost, so is it just taking time due to the design pipeline for new laptops or what?
Apparently the tradeoff is
Apparently the tradeoff is that you either get GSync or Optimus. Dell went with the latter.
Anyone tell me is that
Anyone tell me is that upgradeble internal WiFi? and what SSD type will use in this laptop?
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Inspiron-15-7559-Notebook-Review.154635.0.html
according to this link
*Brightness Center – 276
*Contrast – 354
hope this is lower display level to compare other laptop brands. so this will affect display performance?
can any one explain clearly?
Thanks
Yes, you can upgrade the WiFi
Yes, you can upgrade the WiFi card – it uses an M.2 slot. I swapped mine out for an Intel 7265AC. If you don’t mind some disassembly and buying an additional antenna, you can upgrade it to a 3×3 setup.
As for an SSD, it has an M.2 2280 slot for a SATA-based SSD (no PCIe), as well as a 2.5″ bay. If you look at the picture in the review of it opened up, the M.2 2280 slot is between the battery and the left fan. I got mine from Amazon and it came with a 256 GB SanDisk Z400s in the M.2 slot. I then tossed a 2 TB mechanical drive in the 2.5″ bay. Works great.
As for the review you linked to, I can’t comment much there – that one uses a 3840×2160 screen, whereas mine has the base 1920×1080 one. While both are IPS, the color gamut is pretty low on them, especially the 1080 one (somewhere around high 40% AdobeRGB, low 60% sRGB). For me, it’s acceptable as I’m not doing any photo/video editing on it – just web browsing and gaming. I haven’t had any issues with brightness indoors, I usually have to turn it down a little bit.
I bought mine in November to replace an Inspiron E1705 that I bought in February 2006 (it’s still going!). Other than the clickpad, which I hate, it’s been a fantastic upgrade in every way.
Thanks for your good
Thanks for your good explanation and quick reply Thordrune.
me too want to replace my 6 years old Dell Inspiron 1464. so i have to buy this in few months.
am hardcore gamer so its need maximum brightness even though hope this brightness enouth
i see the 3 vents in this model
how about cooling? is this enough for continues 5 to 6 hours of games use. did you get any warm.
as you said i want to assemble
can you suggest best reliable brands to this
1) 1tb 7200 rpm 2.5 bay
2) 512 GB ssd
3) 802.11 AC wifi card with linux injection support(atheros chipset).
some people spotted the wifi issues in this model.
Sorry for the late reply, I
Sorry for the late reply, I forgot about this.
There’s 3 vents and 2 fans (the left fan blows out of 2 vents). I just checked the keyboard surface with my cheapo infrared thermometer, the hottest area was around the F12 key – ~45 C. That was with the GPU running Folding@Home for several days with the screen completely closed (and thus insulating the keyboard surface somewhat). To me, it didn’t feel uncomfortable touching it. The underside was slightly cooler at the hottest spot (middle), everywhere else was room temperature.
The GPU on mine maxes out around 60 C while running Folding@Home on my desk (as I write this, the 960M is running at 58 C at 96-99% load, 23 C ambient). When gaming on my lap, it goes anywhere between 62-74 C, depending on how much I choke off the fans. That’s plenty of thermal headroom to try your hand at overclocking, which I hear the GPU does pretty well at (I haven’t tried it…yet 😉 ).
The CPU on mine tends to run a bit on the hot side when stressed, although I think there might be thermal paste application issues (two coworkers bought the same laptop around the same time, I tested one of them myself and the CPU in it ran much cooler than mine under Linpack). Two of the cores on mine run about 10-12 C hotter than the others when running full blast, and it’s not hard to push them above 80 C. The cooling system seems to do a good job isolating that heat though, it doesn’t translate to “burning hot lap”. At some point, I’ll take mine apart and try reapplying the thermal paste. Even with the CPU running well above 80 C, it doesn’t seem to throttle – it sat happily at 2.8 GHz with Handbrake running all four cores at 100%.
For hard drives, an HGST Travelstar seems to be your only option for that size and speed. I’ve used 3 different Travelstar 7K drives in my old Inspiron and had zero issues with all of them, so I have no reservations with recommending them. I put a 2 TB Seagate/Samsung 5400 RPM drive in mine to hold my Steam collection and some movies.
For SSDs, there doesn’t seem to be too many retail options for SATA-based M.2 SSDs. It looks like your best bet for that would be either the Crucial MX200, or Samsung 850 Evo (SanDisk X-series would work as well, if you can find one). Make sure you DON’T get a Samsung XP941, SM951, 950 Pro, or any other PCIe M.2 drive! If you get a 2.5″ one instead, then there’s tons of options (but then, no mechanical drive).
I haven’t had any wifi issues with mine since updating the UEFI a week or two after I got it. Back then, it had an issue with the laptop slowing to a crawl after coming out of sleep. Since then, it’s worked fine. I haven’t tried running Linux on it though, so I can’t help you there.
If you want a laptop that comes with the three criteria that you listed, you might have to look at a Clevo reseller (Sager, Eurocom, etc). They tend to have lots of options for each component. There are some smaller vendors out there that sell laptops that come with various Linux distros, although I have no familiarity with them. Presumably, those ones would be less likely to have compatibility issues.
Good luck!
Hi Thordrune,
Thanks for your
Hi Thordrune,
Thanks for your such a wonderful reply.
you have explained almost everything. HDD,SSD,GPU,Temperature,WiFi.
coming April Nvidia pascal GPU will be release, am just confusing now between Maxwell and pascal.
but i hope after pascal release Maxwell price slightly reduce.
yes sager have lots of options in custom build.am in India.
sager customize laptop price is good. but shipping/Import cost seems to be little high. i would like to buy asus/msi but in my country there is no msi authorized service center.no asus high end laptops here. am frustrated.
so that i looking for other brand like dell.
if am live in USA and i must get laptop from sager.
Thanks
@Dilip
Got one of these a couple
Got one of these a couple days ago. Great for what I need it for (web, videos, Steam games). Got the 256Gb SSD model through Amazon, $799. Added another 8Gb memory, put a 128Gb 2.5″ SSD in the other drive bay. May add the 7265 wifi card to boost through-put.
No complaints with the keyboard or trackpad, no better nor no worse than other low end laptops I’ve used. Excellent bang for the buck.
It’s not a high end gaming laptop so those expecting that kind of performance/features really need to read the specs before they buy.
great job guys on the review
great job guys on the review , so good that I bought one . Good machine for the money . Thanks to all who wrote this and thanks to Ryan for the good vid review
I ended up returning the i5
I ended up returning the i5 model and getting the i7 for $699 through a Dell special though the SlickDeals site. I put in a 850 Evo 256Gb M.2, replaced the 1Tb HDD with a 500Gb 850 Evo, kept the 8Gb ram module and the 7265 wifi card I had gotten for the i5 model and added them to the i7 one.