Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

mr_handy covered good points and (much more than) what I was trying to say. My basic argument was that in that workstation class market, there is the lower/mid/high end. Just because they don't have a config to address the highest end of the market does not mean the low-mid segment will fail. It's a killer product. I would absolutely love to see them come up with a higher end config too. And given how this is the first iteration of this line, I expect them to do so in succeeding models.

 

I am loving this thread. Thanks for the work you are putting into answering all these questions. I'm in the market for a new laptop, and it seems like the XPS 15 or the M3800 fits the bill for me. I am a software engineer who needs quad core power, but hates 17" door stops. Can anyone summarize the differences between the XPS and the M3800? They seem quite similar.

 

Pretty much the quadro GPU, the ISV certification and the warranty. Chassis look to be the same, but there could be minor differences for all we know.

 

Maybe they will become options later on. The system has the thermal capacity (imho) to handle the 47 watt 4960HQ.

 

I looked at the prices of the maxed out XPS 15 compared to a similarly configured MBP since I expect the m3800 to be at least as much as the XPS 15 with the same configuration (except for the k1100m instead of the 750m). Outside of battery life, touch, support and other concerns, the MBP's raw performance would be better due to that insane PCIe SSD (~800 mb/s r/w vs ~500) and the CPU that goes to 3.5 turbo instead of just 3.2. Meanwhile, the price is a close $2600 vs $2250. Considering the educational discount and that I actually wanted a 1 TB PCIe SSD (which is also ~3% faster than the 512GB SSD) and the fastest CPU available (2.6 GHZ with turbo to 3.8 and Iris Pro 5200), the decision became easier.

This way, I can still use all my OS X software and get the new iLife, iWork free (never used them but still nice to have). While most programs aren't multithreaded well to take advantage of the 4 cores, I can set 2 cores to Windows in Parallels and 2 to OS X so that I have basically perfect lag-free performance in both while actually making use of what the hardware's capable of. Parallels' virtualized Windows is actually better than the real thing (at a small performance cost) with complete integration using Coherence. I can drag and drop files from one app to the other, use the OS X dictionary tool in Windows programs etc. I don't think I'll even bother installing Boot Camp because the laptop's performance should make working with a virtualized OS unnoticeable in performance. In any case, I expect the maxed out MBP with virtualized Windows to perform at the same level as the XPS 15 running it natively due to the faster SSD and CPU.

I'm not so sure that this makes sense or that it really works that way. If the max that the power supply can output is 85w, that would seem way too little for the computer running at anywhere near max performance. Just the processor and GPU could potentially reach 92w if not using Iris Pro. Add in USB ports, thunderbolt, the motherboard, the screen etc. and it's obvious that this would be insufficient even with throttling. I really doubt that it works this way or Apple would have to be completely retarded to even include the option for a discrete GPU and 4960HQ. This isn't a radically new design of the MBP. In fact, it's the same design as last year's with some internal upgrades so I think they should be very experienced with how to optimize everything and eliminate the kinks at this point.

 

How do you think it works then? It's not magic, the numbers have to add up. Most of the extra stuff you mentioned doesn't draw that much power (the machine should be able to run under 10 watts at idle), but under load it may well throttle because of this power issue if they are only bothering to include an 85W power supply. Maybe they're betting that people won't run loads that are simultaneously high-CPU and high-GPU most of the time. Anyway, can't make claims until someone does some hard tests.

 

It is my understanding that the battery is solicited under heavy load, meaning it can only last for a while before it has to throttle down. It has always amazed me how the MBPr has apparently avoiding the law of physics, but there is no free lunch. It is a neat trick, though if you only need the power for a while.

 

Edited the first post in the thread. First pics are up.

 

Awesome -thanks for doing those! (nice and professionally done )

 

Starting at price is $1799. This includes i7 quad core, NV K1100M w/2GB GDDR5, FHD panel w/ 5 finger touch & Gorilla Glass, 8GB 1600Mhz memory, 500GB Hybrid SSHD w/ 8GB cache, 61WHr battery.
Tks
Mano