Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

This may depend on where you are. Dell UK only offers the XPS 15 with a dGPU although the FHD display is an option.

866Mbps is plenty in the business context given there's usually plenty of people simultaneously trying to use a wireless network and actual speed s will be much less. Those that need a fast network will have a wired connection. At home the wired option is less likely to be available plus fewer people competing for the WiFi service. Intel is usually the robust option (although they had driver issues 2 or 3 generations back).

The i7-6820HQ also has the 8M cache. However, I hadn't appreciated the difference in the integrated graphics. Dell lists different drivers.

John

 

Read my last post re:weight.

You should check to see if the 5510 itself and/or the Nvidia M1000M are ISV certified for the software you plan to use. This eliminates the need for trial error, and it's largely why the Precision 5510 costs more than the XPS.

Also, don't buy 32GB of RAM from Dell. Order it with 8GB and upgrade right away. You'll end up with faster RAM, and you save around $100 even after the upgrade. Dell's upgrades are insanely overpriced.

Look at my post history on here, I made a post with some tips that could save you a ton of money. You should be paying substantially less than the price listed on Dell's website, and if you time it right you can get 12-15% cash back from Ebates on the entire order. I got a cash back check for $300 for this order.

 

Ah I noticed you're in the UK and figured that could be the case.

And I was joking about the 866Mbps being just "adequate" . It would be an incredibly rare situation where a real world network speed of say 600Mbps is your bottle neck. Unless you're transferring huge multi-gigabyte files from SSD to SSD across the local network, I think it would be tough to saturate that much bandwidth! I was poking fun at the fact that I like to have the latest technology, regardless of how incredibly unnecessary it is.

It was very cool to see files transfer between my usb pocket HD and my NAS with 5400rpm HDs (non-RAID) at 280Mbps wirelessly! I don't see myself upgrading to faster backup storage any time soon, so I think I'll be able to make due with a theoretical max of just 866Mbps

 

FWIW, I have never had any problems running SolidWorks on non-ISV/gaming cards (I've actually had more problems with older desktop Quadros) - I can't say anything about other programs that maintain list of ISV-certified hardware, but I've never had problems over 6 years managing ~40-60 machines running SW.

 

EDIT: Derp, replied to a post from December.

 

New 5510 bios makes the screen flicker

 

Yes, at the minimum brightness and the next step up. I can't see it at about 20% brightness which is as low as I would want to go.

**Edit**
Different subject. I discovered that having my mouse dongle plugged into the USB C port via a USB to USB adapter increased the power drain when running on battery by about 3.5W. Considering that light usage with the display at about 30% brightness gets a battery drain of around 5W, an extra 3.5W is a big hit. I suspect there is plenty of scope for improvement to the Thunderbolt / USB C power management and the high speed capability isn't slowing down to suit the needs of the attached device.

PS: And Thunderbolt seems to make the fan start even though HWiNFO showed the temperatures of the various thermal monitors to be around 35C.

John

 

Off on holiday, so haven't had the time to update yet, did anyone else?

http://www.dell.com/support/Home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=P52W9

"Enhancements: Added support for updating the Dell Docking Solution"

I'm curious, does the dock itself run on its own firmware? At first I thought it did, then not, and now I'm in doubt.

 

The TB15 Thunderbolt dock has an ASMedia USB controller with updatable firmware. This controller drives the connection to all of the USB devices (ports, Ethernet, and audio) but not the display connections. They just pushed a new firmware package for it (this morning? yesterday?). I haven't seen anything for the WD15 USB-C dock.

 

You're correct. I must've been thinking of the i5.