I am a DJ and is currently looking for an XPS to get for DJing purposes. I will be returning the Alienware 17 R2 as its causing a lot latency problems and a lot of audio stuttering that you've mentioned in this review. I didnt have any problem with my old Alienware 14 and tried on a Dell 7450 as well. Does this have to do with the Nvidia GPU? should I just grab an XPS or Latitude with a Intel shared GPU like the 630 instead? Please advise as this is very annoying for my 3rd exchange with Dell. Please and thanks....

I think everyone should get over with the undervolting. It's a super easy and by now a very common thing to do for anyone, even if you're not a techie. It should become a norm in all benchmark tests.

Some companies like Apple and Razer undervolt their laptops out of factory. Who knows, Dell might do it as well in a future Bios update...

If you're buying some ordinary convenience laptop then yeah, no one would expect you to undervolt it. But most owners of laptops such as XPS 15, MacBook 15, Razer, etc. would be willing to do a simple 5 min undervolt with ThrottleStop to increase their performance, increase battery life and reduce the heat.
125 mV undervolt is safe for all i7 and i9 Gen 8 and Gen 9 Intel H CPUs.

Can you still cook an omelet on it? (aka, how hot does it get?)

Quote from: DF on July 24, 2019, 06:02:36
Black crush from the OLED panel (possibly an annoyance in games)

I believe that needs to be confirmed with a gamma test.

Can I give a suggestion for fixing GPU throttling in games?

Maybe you can hard-limit CPU power consumption to 5W, 10W, 15W, 20W etc. and run some game benchmark every time for an hour to get FPS and whether the GPU will throttle. My bet is that about 20W will give the highest FPS without throttling as more cooling budget will be available for GPU.

For comparison, I power-limited my 27" iMac with i7-7700K to 50W with Volta app instead of 95W rated (or 75W of cooling that is could actually provide before thermal throttling), and only lose 300MHz in all-core loads while the cooling system works lazily at near-idle fan speeds. It looks like throttling comes in when CPU sharply raises it's voltage to get the last few hundred MHz of turbo boost.

Quote from: MichaelW on July 24, 2019, 06:51:54

QuoteLuckily, applying a -125mv undervolt resulted in much improved performance, with the firestrike stress test score increasing from 60.7% to 98.6%.

What program did you use to undervolt the Nvidia GPU?

Sorry; to clarify, I undervolted the CPU only.

QuoteLuckily, applying a -125mv undervolt resulted in much improved performance, with the firestrike stress test score increasing from 60.7% to 98.6%.

What program did you use to undervolt the Nvidia GPU?

Black crush from the OLED panel (possibly an annoyance in games)