Dell XPS 13 9300 Core i5 vs. Dell XPS 13 9300 Core i7: What's the Difference?

[Redaktion]

Everyone likes to compare the XPS 13 to the Razer Blade Stealth, MacBook Pro 13, HP Spectre 13, or the Asus ZenBook S13, but how does the latest Dell Ultrabook compare to itself?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-9300-Core-i5-vs-Dell-XPS-13-9300-Core-i7-What-s-the-Difference.459137.0.html

[william blake]

the Core i7 is about 70 percent faster in graphics

really? where did you get this number? i see +45+55% in witcher and +40+47% in bioshock. who told you about 70%?
..
anyway, according to the article, i5 version is the only usable. because extra SEVEN DECIBEL IS A FREAKING HUGE DIFFERENCE.
you know why all media pisses me off for years? their priorities are broken, the whole scale what's important and what's not is broken.
if 3 decibel between environement and load is perfect, 10+ decibel is unbearable crap. but you say pay more for the crap and maybe this tiny gpu advantage will compensate it. what a joke :(

[Bryan Shin]

Imagine using League of Legends as an example of a game that needs the extra graphics power to function properly.

What a joke.

[_MT_]

really? where did you get this number? i see +45+55% in witcher and +40+47% in bioshock. who told you about 70%?
..
anyway, according to the article, i5 version is the only usable. because extra SEVEN DECIBEL IS A FREAKING HUGE DIFFERENCE.
you know why all media pisses me off for years? their priorities are broken, the whole scale what's important and what's not is broken.
if 3 decibel between environement and load is perfect, 10+ decibel is unbearable crap. but you say pay more for the crap and maybe this tiny gpu advantage will compensate it. what a joke :(

I guess it came from 3DMark.

Where is the 7 db difference? It's certainly not in the average value. It's the maximum. It's hard to tell what exactly it means beyond "it got louder at some point." There is no value for Witcher for the i5. I mean, the maximum power draws are practically the same, average is lower on the i7. So why should the i7 be louder? There is something wonky. Was it a software hiccup or what?

Frankly, 3 dB is a barely noticeable difference. You'll need a direct comparison to say which is louder with any certainty. 10 dB is a clear difference. I read years ago that when you reach for a remote to increase volume of a TV, you're likely to up it by roughly 10 dB or at least that much. As it really is a clear step up for our ears. Of course, in raw numbers, 3 dB is a big difference and 10 dB is huge. Our ears just have logarithmic response. So, if the difference between on and off is 10 dB, you'll be able to clearly tell the difference, just walking into the room. If it's 3 dB, you won't really know unless you hear the transition. Of course, in the real world, fans have a frequency signature that can give them away. That doesn't mean 40 dB is unbearable. We're quite adaptive. Whether it's sound or smell, brain adjusts. Up to a point. Coincidentally, 40 is the limit for annual average exposure during night time (sleep). That should roughly correspond to the noise from a quiet residential street. Hardly unbearable.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with the i7. Except I want more than 8 GB RAM. 16 is the minimum for me. And I don't mind having 1 TB storage rather than 512 GB (that's the minimum for me). In Germany, the difference is €300. I wouldn't call it a bargain, but it seems palatable. Certainly more palatable than Surface or MacBook pricing. Everything is relative.

[william blake]

That doesn't mean 40 dB is unbearable. We're quite adaptive.

for the same device, 32 vs 39 is enormously huge. we are not talking about heavy gaming laptop vs ipad. some load on a slightly different apu and one is 3 times more loud than the other.
being adaptive is good but why?

[_MT_]

for the same device, 32 vs 39 is enormously huge. we are not talking about heavy gaming laptop vs ipad. some load on a slightly different apu and one is 3 times more loud than the other.
being adaptive is good but why?

I wouldn't call it enormously huge. Noticeable, yes. 7 dB is actually five times, not three. But that's not relevant because our ears just don't work like that. It might be five times as much dynamic pressure but to our ears, it's like yeah, whatever. It's a small difference. It's a difference we can hear but hardly large. 40 dB is a large difference. The difference between whisper and normal conversation can be more than that. 40 dB is ten thousand times more. 10 000 times.

Whether it's acceptable or not depends on the configuration. 39 isn't that much. In this case, however, the real question is why is there such a difference. Power draw essentially represents how much heat the laptop produces (some energy escapes as sound, some as light, but it's mostly heat). So, if you have two laptops with the same chassis, same cooling, same average and maximum draws, why the heck is one louder than the other other than manufacturing variance (mainly in the fan). Is the BIOS setup differently? Did the software hiccup? Etc. That's the real question. If it's not consuming extra power, it can't be producing more heat and there is nothing more for the cooling to do.

In the end, I'll accept a laptop like this going up to 39 if there is a benefit to it. 50, no (that's territory for gaming laptops and workstations going balls to the wall). But 39, yes. That's what the modes are for. So I can choose my priorities. Am I in a dead quiet library or a noisy airport terminal? Am I writing emails or compiling code? And again, the frequency spectrum and how the loudness changes are important. Some frequencies can be more annoying to us than others. Spreading the same power across wider frequency spectrum can significantly help. And because we're adaptive and notice smaller changes only in direct comparison, steady noise is better than fluctuations. In the end, steady 39 could be better than fluctuation between 32 and 36. Because you're going to hear the fluctuation as long as the environment is quiet enough. While you'll stop perceiving the steady 39 even if you could hear it initially. Your brain is going to shut it out because it's not interesting. We have evolved to notice changes. That change could be an approaching predator or prey. Environmental drone isn't interesting.