Dell XPS 13 / 15 - Integrated vs Dedicated GPU

boYce · 12 Aug 2016 at 19:30

Im looking at moving from my desktop to a Dell XPS laptop and weighing up between the small form of the 13" against the dedicated graphics and performance of the 15".

It will be used for the standard web / films / office. Along with CAD (SolidWorks), Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign + Lightroom and ocassionally KeyShoy.

Doesn't seem much between the CPUs with the top end 13" i7 6560U and the 15" i7 6700HQ.

The 13" have now been upgraded to Intel Iris 540 integrated GPU. Whereas the 15" has 960M dedicated GPU.

Which would be better suited?

terley · 13 Aug 2016 at 04:44

boYce said:
Im looking at moving from my desktop to a Dell XPS laptop and weighing up between the small form of the 13" against the dedicated graphics and performance of the 15".

It will be used for the standard web / films / office. Along with CAD (SolidWorks), Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign + Lightroom and ocassionally KeyShoy.

Doesn't seem much between the CPUs with the top end 13" i7 6560U and the 15" i7 6700HQ.

The 13" have now been upgraded to Intel Iris 540 integrated GPU. Whereas the 15" has 960M dedicated GPU.

Which would be better suited?

You will most certainly see better performance on photoshop/CAD/Illustrator/indesign and lightroom with a dedicated GPU.

Both ultrabooks are beautiful pieces of technology, the 15" isn't huge in fact it is probabbly the smallest 15" ultrabook on the market, and fits in a lot of 13" sleeves.

TheOtherOption · 13 Aug 2016 at 21:07

I'd suggest that for your use the 15" would be the better option as the 13" only has a dual core i7 whereas the 15" is a full quad core i7.

My XPS 15 zips through games and I'm hoping it'll also be nice and quick in Lightroom as that can now take advantage of dedicated graphics as mentioned by terley above!

Paul11 · 14 Aug 2016 at 13:07

defo the 15 for your uses

alle · 14 Aug 2016 at 22:15

...the XPS13 is really really nice though

Not convinced the 13 wouldn't be suitable but in your case the 15 may well just pip it.

Portability was more important for me.

phinix · 15 Aug 2016 at 13:45

I had XPS15 for last 3 years, now just picked T460s.
If you gonna do ocassionally graphics tasks, then no point getting XPS15.

XPS13 is awesome, you would be fine with all tasks you want do on it.
I only didin't go with XPS13, cause to get 1TB SSD, I would have to get 4K. WHich I don't want and need.

CPU wise - I have recently disabled 2 cores on my XOS15 to see how all my tasks will go on 2 core laptop.
I do a LOT of ms Access databases, emails, web browsing, all other office work.
I didn't feel any difference on 2 cores! 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD I had in XPS15 was enough and 2 cores with 4 threads was also enough.