Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

You can use legacy, but like I mentioned, you'll have to delete all of the partitions on the disk before Windows will let you run the install. This is because the system Windows 8.1 was previously installed using UEFI which uses a different format for storing partition information. Alternatively, you can install Windows 7 using UEFI (it is supported if you disable secure boot), but I'm not sure if some trick is needed to get bootable USB media working that way.

 

There are differences in performance between legacy and UEFI?
Can I delete the partitions directly with installer for windows 7?
I lose the guarantee of hhd?
Should you need to send it in for service, how to restore all partitions to the original state ?

 

The reason you can't install Windows 7 on any of those partitions is because your disk has a GPT layout at the moment, which Windows 7 can't use unless you install it in UEFI mode, which requires booting the installer in UEFI mode. UEFI might boot a bit faster than Legacy, but it shouldn't be a big deal. If you want to create a UEFI-compatible Windows 7 installer though, follow these instructions: UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows. If you've already got the bootable flash drive, just follow Step 11.

Yes, you can delete all partitions from inside the Windows installer, and that's what I would do regardless of whether I was installing in Legacy or UEFI. However, you would then lose the Dell factory image recovery option. Dell won't expect you to have all of the partitions intact if you have to send it in for service (they don't care about that). If you wanted to try to keep it, I would delete the WinRETools and Primary OS partitions since Windows 7 will need to recreate those two. If that's not possible, then you have no choice but to wipe the disk. And even if that DOES work, I'm not even certain that the factory image will continue to be accessible.

 

I created the image of the factory with the software already installed in win8.1 of. Nemmemo with this picture I can bring hhd as the original?

So, I have:
1. create usb flash UEFI boot support following the guidance
2. Start win7 from usb and delete all partitions
3. install win7 on the only partition left

 

I'm not sure whether you can bring back the entire disk as it shipped from the factory; it likely depends on the imaging solution you used and how you configured it, and I'm not an expert on a wide variety of imaging solutions. But honestly if you're comfortable wiping and rebuilding your system, I wouldn't worry about getting the factory setup back. Dell isn't going to care if that's missing; they're used to people wiping their systems, especially in businesses that deploy standard images to multiple machines.

 

So I got a reaction from MA Lighting and CAST Wysiwyg.
Here is the reaction from CAST:

and here is the reaction from MA Lighting:

So I think the best decision for me is going for the xps 15 with the 3200x1800 screen...
Or do you think I should buy the precision? haha

 

I had really considered buying the lower end model and swapping out the hdd for an ssd and changing to 8.1, but after not understanding a thing that's been said the last 5 pages, I realize this probably not a smart move for me.

 

I wouldn't let the discussion discourage you too much. The physical replacement is extremely easy (once you the right Torx bit), there are automated tools to help you create a Windows 8.1 USB installer from an ISO (though the M3800 I'm told comes with a bootable USB Windows 8.1 installer anyway), and after that as long as you're confident going into the BIOS to make sure you're in UEFI mode and then installing drivers after Windows is installed (all of which are available on support.dell.com), you should be able to do this. A lot of the other discussions focused around HDD+mSATA cache setup and the various Intel technologies (Smart Response, Rapid Start, Smart Connect), none of which I'd argue would be useful to you on an SSD-only system -- so you can ignore that completely. From there it's just a matter of customizing driver settings, Windows settings, and application settings, but you'd have to do all of that when you first got your system even if you used it out of the box without a swap and rebuild.

And as you can tell, there are several knowledgeable people here who are happy to help (myself included), and they may be willing to respond to PMs if you require additional help in order to avoid cluttering up the thread with one-on-one troubleshooting posts. But I'd encourage you to consider it; it's empowering to do something that you weren't sure you could do.

 

Neither one of those answered the important question, which is whether their app supports DPI scaling of their actual UI. Of course the app will technically run at a higher resolution, but that doesn't make it usable. Photoshop will WORK at 3200x1800, but the UI is so small that it would be rather painful to use for any extended period of time. Then again, if the GT 750M is apparently on the low end of the GPU recommendation spectrum, then chances are you might not be able to run that app at 3200x1800 with acceptable performance anyway. And if you can't do that, then you may want to just get the regular FHD to avoid having to constantly switch resolution (and scaling, which requires logging off and back on) every time you open and quit that app. It's unfortunate that the WYSIWYG rep didn't quantify how much of a performance difference you can expect between equivalent GeForce and Quadro cards, but I'm certain that you'd see better performance using a Quadro to drive only FHD resolution than using a GeForce to drive four times as many pixels in QHD+. A GeForce may be a bit faster for that app, but it won't be 4x faster to make up for that huge resolution difference.

Another possibility might be the Precision M4800 instead. I know it's a Quadro card, but a significant step up the Quadro performance ladder might give you more performance than you'd lose by going from GeForce to Quadro, and it can be had in either FHD or QHD+.

 

Is there any real advantage/disadvantage to running UEFI and/or Secure Boot with this system? I haven't been up to date with the BIOS/UEFI revolution . I didn't give UEFI a thought while installing and I realize that I'm running legacy right now. Would I have to reinstall Windows with UEFI enabled in BIOS, or will Windows reconfig itself as needed if I try to engage it now? Ugh, I don't even know how to engage it actually, when I go into BIOS and try to add UEFI boot it starts prompting me for boot files and I have no idea what I'm doing. Sorry, please help out someone with a brain stuck in the Nehalem generation