50 PCWorld JUNE 2020REVIEWS DELL XPS 13 9300
PERFORMANCE
For the newest XPS 13 9300, Dell takes an
interesting approach for the CPU, which is
somewhat of a step back in performance. You
read that right: The performance of the newest
XPS 13 9300 is step back compared to the XPS
13 7390, which features a 6-core CPU. We’ll
get into how to navigate that later on.Cinebench multi- and single-thread
We’ll kick off the benchmarks with Maxon’s
Cinebench R15. It’s a standalone benchmark
that measures CPU performance while
rendering a 3D image. While it’s not a task
many will do on an ultraportable laptop, it’s still
a good way to gauge multi-core performance.
The keyword is multi-core, because thequad-core 10th gen Core i7-1065G7 isn’t going
to beat the six-core 10th-gen Core i7-10710U
that’s used in the XPS 13 7390, even if the latter
CPU is a little older. Those concerned about
multi-core performance in an XPS 13 may want
to nab the older XPS 13 7390 (go.pcworld.
com/xp73) instead of the XPS 13 9300.
Luckily, the most mundane work on
ultraportable laptops mostly use just a single core
on the CPU. We measure that performance using
Cinebench R15 again, set to a single thread.
Here, the higher clock speeds of the 10th-gen
Core i7-10710U in the XPS 13 7390 still take it
higher (coming close to the much heavier, much
faster Dell XPS 15 7590), but we’re looking at only
a 7-percent gap compared to the XPS 13 9300.
Most people would never even feel that.The XPS 13 9300’s webcam is fair and far from the worst we’ve seen.