Dell Precision M3800 - 2013!

Notebookcheck has a (german) review of the M4800. The battery life is very disappointing. It's only gets 3.5 hours of WLAN surfing. This makes the M3800 all the more tempting for mobile users.

Test Dell Precision M4800 Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

 

Apples to apples my friend. You're comparing a V6 to a V4.

The elder Precision values power over all else, while it younger sibling is tuned towards a greater battery life. They're both at the top of the line for what each is intended to do.

 

They complained about the QHD+ icons being small on Windows 7. They should have tested it with the W8.1 for the best results.

The WLAN battery life hit might be the Intel Wireless Hotspot software kicking up the CPU more than usual. If wireless was on, and no network is connected, the Intel software keeps looking for a connection over and over. I disabled it.

 

Makes sense... I wonder what the smallest mSATA ssd is that I can get...

I think I'm going to go with the bigger battery. I have a usb3.0 msata external drive that I can use if I need additional high speed storage.

 

The problem with that argument is that several older Precision models, like the M4600 or M6700, got excellent battery life under low stress situations. The thing that prevents some of the models from having excellent battery life has little to do with the maximum power they were capable of reaching. There are certainly optimisations for low power usage in the M3800 that aren't present in the M4800, but these can not explain the low battery life. The problem, battery wise, has been that some models have not had Optimus support. This is understandable if the display cannot be driven by the iGPU. The ability to switch to lower power consumption then becomes a sacrifice you make for better color accuracy. However, I don't see why the M4800 should be incapable of Optimus if the M3800/XPS 15 can use it. The display seems to be of the same quality, except one is matte and the other is touch enabled. Didn't the M4700 have problems with Optimus at launch as well? Maybe this is something Dell can fix with software updates, but it's definitely disappointing.

 

Does anyone know if the QHD+ screen can run on iGPU at 1/2 Res (1600x900)?

- sent via mobile -

 

I asked Dell support whether the QHD+ screen supports optimus. They said that it did (obviously YMMV with reps), and considering how no one has a QHD+ screen on any Dell yet, it is possible Notebook Check did get an early model that did not have it enabled properly. I also don't see any components on the QHD+ screen that would make it inoperable on the iGPU (like the old 10-bit IPS screens).

 

The rMBP supports switchable graphics (Intel and NVIDIA GPUs) so I don't know why the M3800/M4800 couldn't also support it.

 

The review used the old bios (A01). There's already an A03 bios, which has the following changes:

Fixed:
- Enhance AMD Graphics S3 function in Discrete mode.

Enhanced:
- Improve KVM support.
- Add Windows 8.1 support.
- Update to Intel RC 1.6.1
- Update Intel GOP VBIOS 5.0.1035
- Update MEFW to 9.0.21.1462
- Update MEBX to 9.0.0.0025
- Update PXE to 1.5.38.1
- Update Diagnostics to 4228.23

 

Nov 14 release date

Dell | Dell