Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

...and crud, I finally try some games on it tonight and it's not scaling up most of the full-screen games, and most games windowed are too small to play. Amazingly, some things actually run at 3200x1800, the framerate is too low to usefully play, but the ones written to scale up the UI look good.

Is there a setting I'm missing somewhere? It does appear to vary by game; of the couple of oldies I loaded from Steam backups, Fallout 3 just worked at 1600x900, Bioshock worked if I set the desktop res down to 1600x900 first, and Civ 5 and Sleeping Dogs wouldn't scale no matter what I did.

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I am going to cross-post this in the XPS thread, as there are likely more gamers there.

 

Thanks it makes sense if less used to these devices to be safe so yes I will at lest disconnect and see if there is room with out removal for changing HD. The manual has you disconnect both battery and HD first and reconnection last. Given you found the HD fiddly would it be better do the reconnection before reattaching the holder, or is the connection a bit lose for that?

 

The USB extender thingie plugs into a single USB port, and provides 5 additional ports, and I have the keyboard & mouse plugged into that. I removed the USB extenter completely this morning, but it is still having the same problem, and it is even happening more frequently today. Ugh!

 

Now when I finally have the money to buy the thing with qhd screen, the website (UK) says that the estimated delivery date is 26 February! I understand that there might be a shortage of components but really do not want to order sth and wait more than a month for it to be delivered. I will probably wait until the gap between order and delivery dates shortens a bit.

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Everyone here waited more than one month, well, maybe a few exceptions. You wont receive it earlier if you order later, you do understand this, dont you?

Galaxy Nexus Tapatalk

 

Update on color issues. I disabled the entire start menu in MSCONFIG. I enabled only the 2 Color Munki programs and synaptics for the mouse. Now, I have the correct color on startup. I will have to start selectively loading to see what the issue is. I called Dell and tech support was not really helpful about this. They sounded as if I was the only person on earth to ever have had such a problem. But he did have the suggestion of just blasting the entire startup. And that did narrow things down a bit. Very disappointing to need to do this for a laptop that on its main product page on their website shows it running Adobe Lightroom.

This isn't happening with docking or external monitors. This is only with the laptop display. Using Win7.

 

of course, I do understand that. The thing is, my old laptop is still running ok, albeit slow, and in the coming month there may well be a manufacturer who, if not announce something new, might offer a better deal on a similar config. Also, the so called deal for current price expires on 6 Feb and I seriously doubt Dell will make it more expensive, rather the price will stay the same (the deal will be 'extended') or - one can dream - it will make it cheaper.


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I have resolved this issue. I looked in the Windows Event Viewer for anything happening at the same time as the USB disconnects/reconnects, and I found out that the Intel Wireless AC-7260 was giving an error at these times. I was running Intel driver 16.5.3.6 for the 7260. I found a newer version 16.6.0.8 driver on Intel's website and downloaded & installed it, and the USB disconnect/reconnect problems went away.

 

That's a strange connection! If it had been the Bluetooth segment of the card I wouldn't have been as surprised since it connects over the USB bus rather than PCI-E like the WiFi segment, but in that case I doubt updating the WiFi driver would have solved it. How strange, but glad it's fixed!

 

I think the Intel driver I installed includes both the WiFi and the BT driver. I think they are bundled together in the 7260.