Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Hi, first thanks for your reply.
I made up my mind. Waiting for the device to arrive is an issue if I place a new order for the M3800. Well, I am willing to wait another four weeks, knowing that the working experience will be better than with the XPS 15.
Thanks!

 

Thanks for the tip on the accelerometer; I have both mSATA and HDD, so I'm assuming free fall protection will be turnedon?

Oddly enough I do not have any unrecognized devices in Device Manager; I installed the NFC driver from the XPS 15 page and tried getting my Windows Phone to link, which did nothing. Eventually I just gave up and took a look inside once again. What I found:

No NFC chip in mine. But there is a small area with "NFC" written on it. I'm guessing this highlights how the M3800 and XPS15 are mirrors of each other. Maybe some M3800s happen to have NFC in them because of some weird inventory flop or something,
NFC isn't that critical for my usage, just would have been convenient. I am not excited about doing a full-on take down on this to get a better look at the underside...yet haha. I may look into a repaste in the future when it grows a bit old. In the meantime here's as good of a shot as I can get of the NFC area:

Happy to see a fellow DJ, musician, and photographer on the forum! My M3800 has been playing nice with Serato DJ with four decks, it should handle Traktor fine. The touchscreen has been extremely handy, as all the buttons and pots can be easily manipulated without mouse now.
IMO It would be preferable to get the M3800 for your application, GeForce is in no way optimized for CAD. For comparison, the 750M scores an average of 10.2fps in the Maya SPECviewperf benchmark, 780M SLI scores an average of 11.4fps, while the K1100M scores an average 62.8fps (this is according to NBR's GPU database)
The K1100M can also handle games despite being a workstation GPU. I actually have LoL installed, but I've yet to run it haha. It handles WoT just fine though. Does not seem to have throttling issues, median CPU temps under a gaming load are around 85C and GPU temps stay around 78C according to Realtemp.

 

Happy to see a fellow DJ, musician, and photographer on the forum! My M3800 has been playing nice with Serato DJ with four decks, it should handle Traktor fine. The touchscreen has been extremely handy, as all the buttons and pots can be easily manipulated without mouse now.
IMO It would be preferable to get the M3800 for your application, GeForce is in no way optimized for CAD. For comparison, the 750M scores an average of 10.2fps in the Maya SPECviewperf benchmark, 780M SLI scores an average of 11.4fps, while the K1100M scores an average 62.8fps (this is according to NBR's GPU database)
The K1100M can also handle games despite being a workstation GPU. I actually have LoL installed, but I've yet to run it haha. It handles WoT just fine though. Does not seem to have throttling issues, median CPU temps under a gaming load are around 85C and GPU temps stay around 78C according to Realtemp.[/QUOTE]

Hi, thanks for your user review.

I want to get the M3800 so badly but after talking to my salesperson at Dell who had helped me place the order on the XPS 15, I found out that the M3800 is much more expensive than the XPS 15 here in Korea. Although with the same specs as the XPS 15. With VAT almost a 1000dollars. That is ridiculous and I will have to stick to the XPS 15 although I so badly want the M3800.. I don't see a reason for me paying an extra 1k for the almost the same except for the gpu.
I hope that the XPS 15 will still be a good companion for the intended purposes...
Thanks again. I am already looking forward using the touch screen while DJing in Traktor and composing in LIVE.

 

Just received my 3800 the other day. I am a professional photographer and color calibration is very important for printing. I have an xrite color munki and it seems to work fine until I restart the system. It reverts back to a default color that is not my default color profile in windows. If I log off then back on, it seems to change back to my profiled color. After some test prints and looking at the same image on 3 computers and ipad I know without a doubt cal is not sticking. The intel graphics control seems to take over on restart. Has anyone else seen this? And better yet found a solution?

On another note I also got a Lenovo w530 with the xrite color profiler sensor in the computer. It absolutely sucks. I used the munki with better results. Very surprised.

So both systems geared toward professional graphics people and artists have trouble with calibration it seems? Maybe lots of hardware competing for control here.

 

gwonhong, THat is quite a difference for what is basically a difference in GPU...I would probably do the same given that scenario. I don't think the XPS 15 will underperform, just that the Quadro would help a bunch in CAD especially with larger projects. I believe that some of Adobe's software already uses nVidia GPU's regardless of GeForce or Quadro, so the 750M will be carrying some load anyhow.

 

Hey, sadly that is a huge difference I am not willing to pay..
It makes me think: I could but why should I. haha

Well, as you've said, I hope that the XPS 15 will be a good companion for CAD, Rhino, Adobe, Traktor and Ableton Live work!

Thanks again!!

 

Anyone know if Dell will be offering an IPS panel for the FHD-screen? I have seen the one with the qhd+ screen, and the viewing angles are not good at all which is important for me.

Very disappointing.

 

Someone has reported the product number of FHD display (maybe just a page ago), it seems the same AUO panel of previous XPS15 L521x, so it's not an IPS display.

 

That is indeed disappointing. Crappy tn-panel on such a high-end machine? What is dell thinking ?

 

Usually is used on low tier model, also is a TN with wide angles of view (but can't compete with a IPS)