Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Are you sure you don't have hibernate enabled? My 9550 takes less than 3 seconds from when I touch trackpad into Windos 10 Desktop screen (I have password disabled) and no Dell logo screen preceding that. Takes the same time to go back to sleep after touching power button

 

Indeed, if you are seeing the Dell logo, your system has hibernated.

 

So, felt brave and went ahead and updated drivers and firmware. I meticulously updated the drivers according to the installation order specified here: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...t/product/precision-m5510-workstation/drivers

I didn't install the apps, just the drivers. Avoided the Intel RST ones (I'm using AHCI), and the Dell Commands. A couple didn't update saying the device isn't present or something. Updated thunderbolt firmware, and finally updated BIOS to 1.1.19. Everything went smooth. Notable drivers:

Intel GPU: 20.19.15.4331
Nvidia: 10.18.13.5894
Storage Controller: Standard NVMe Express (Microsoft, 2006).
IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller: Intel 100 Series / C230 Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller (14.5.2.1088)
Firmware: 1.1.19 (February 5th, 2016 release).

So far, no crashes. Soft reboot and hard reboot works. Some notable things from previous firmware:

* Power mgmt is much better (it seems).
* Previously, on battery, I got around 2.8GHz cpu (according to cpuz). Was pretty stable. As soon as I plugged in, it'd drop to 1.8GHz. Now, idle is around 800MHz. And swiftly ramps to around 3.4GHz when under load. Plugging in doesn't slow down things. Bus speed is just south of 100MHz per core, but the multipliers go up and down much more rapidly now.

If BSODs don't start, I'm a happy bunny.

 

is this version much better than the m3800? I know this version supports 32gb ram, does the m3800 i7 4702hq take 2x 16gb

 

M3800 will not take 16GB modules. The maximum memory is 16GB (2x8GB).

 

This is miles better on a number of fronts:

* Skylake pocessors (and the first ever Xeon for laptops)
* 32GB DDR4 RAM
* Far better GPU
* m.2 SSD (NVMe)
* Optional 4k screen
* Slimmer, lighter profile. Minimum bezel display.
* Battery life (and option for 84Whr battery if you only take an m.2 drive).
* Thunderbolt, and USB C support.
* Supports the upcoming thunderbolt docks.

 

Now that Intel has released the GT4e Xeon chips, I am not sure when to order my Precision 5510. I have a couple issues to consider: 1. Will Dell bring the Xeon 1515M with Iris Pro to the Precision 5510 anytime soon? 2. Will the Iris Pro make a huge difference for me? (I primarily run a Linux Distro for development) Thanks!

 

That's an interesting question. In all fairness, the Quadro is going to be what you'll use for graphics heavy stuff (the XPS15 has a *better* consumer GPU, but lacks Xeon, CUDA, etc.). A few points:

* I've had nightmares around Skylake and HD graphics drivers catching up. I doubt Iris Pro (being newer) won't have a similar period where nothing works.
* If you're on Ubuntu, the next LTS in April will have the updated kernel, which has better Skylake support. Maybe waiting till then could make things smoother? Although we're getting reports Ubuntu 15.10 is working ok now, and you can of course upgrade the kernel. My attempts a couple of months back to get Arch / Ubuntu / Mint on this ended in abject failure.
* Here's a comparison of the two processors: http://ark.intel.com/compare/93358,89608 . If your workload would benefit from moderate GPU load (not enough to warrant the NVidia kicking in), then you could squeeze some more battery life out of the Iris Pro. However, if your dev work doesn't need that much graphics, the Intel HD 530 is more than capable (I run Windows 10, IntelliJ, SBT, lots of chrome tabs, etc. and it's mostly silent, with only local Spark jobs causing the audible fan to kick in). And for playing the odd game, the NVidia card takes over (I have auto switching on, but I think this is still manual in Linux - could be wrong). Would the Iris Pro be better? Obviously. Does it warrant waiting while Dell makes it ready? Unless it turns up soon (noting that the cool new Thunderbolt 3 docks aren't available even now), it likely won't make that much of a difference.

Btw, I've got linux in VMS, and while not as good as a straight boot, Windows 10 Fast Boot lessens the pain significantly. And it's a workaround while waiting for the Linux drivers to catch up. My biggest issue was the higher power consumption in Linux. Win 10 had significantly longer battery life, and it seems the latest BIOS has improved that even more. The thermal efficiencies are maintained when running Ubuntu in a VM, while booting to Ubuntu used a lot more power. It's a shame, but hopefully things will improve soon.

 

i doubt Dell will release a "base" version with only GT4e xeons . It'll probably come with quadro's like the current ones. I'm not sure the extra edram has any significant perf advantage.

 

Seeing that the Iris Pro is still "less" powerful than the Quadro 1000M (though the distance is lessening every year), and that the power consumptions are similar (just checked, they're both at the 45W mark), I'd say ghegde is likely correct. The only reason for it seems to be 4K WiDi which the P530 doesn't support.