Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Well depending on how the BIOS was configured when you booted that install media, it might have given you two options for the same boot device, one UEFI and one Legacy, and what you selected there would have determined how Windows was installed. Or it could have only shown the legacy option, or only the UEFI option. The easiest way to check is to open up Computer Management > Disk Management and check the partition layout of your internal disk. If you have a small (99MB by default) EFI System Partition, you're in UEFI mode. If you don't, you're in legacy mode. That will in turn determine what if any changes you can make to your current BIOS configuration to improve boot time and possibly security.

Actually I believe Ubuntu now released a bootloader that supports Secure Boot (or maybe it was a specific Linux bootloader), so if you the right version and import the appropriate certificates, you'd be golden on dual boot. You can still dual boot easily if you turn Secure Boot off, but if you want the benefit of integrity verification, you need to provide the machine with something to check the integrity against. It's basically like having to obtain an SSL certificate if you want to host a website securely. Of course you can host without one, but if you want the security benefit. you need to do some extra legwork to get things running.

 

I originally tried booting off the Windows 8.1 USB thumb drive provided, but it detected that Windows 7 was already installed, and instructed me to just run the Setup.exe off the USB drive from inside Windows 7 instead. I did not have any files or documents to save, so I chose the option to perform a clean install. I did not see any choice concerning UEFI or Legacy, but I see now in Disk Management that the 100MB EFI partition exists, to that matches me having to switch it to UEFI mode to boot up after the cloning.

 

It's under Windows Mobility Center. When I first turned it off after reading this thread (while a bright red flower was shown as my default Windows background), I felt like my entire panel had washed out. But as I played with it while viewing other content, I realized how obscenely oversaturated the questionably named "splendid mode" makes colors, whereas "generic" is actually an extremely faithful reproduction. It's too bad that this setting is buried and enabled by default; one photographer on the XPS 15 thread was on the verge of returning this machine because colors were so out of whack and he couldn't understand why so many people were raving about it and calibrators were saying colors were spot on. I told him to disable splendid mode and he went from hating it to loving it and realizing that it was actually more accurate than his professional desktop display.

 

Googling "WinSAT Optimus", it appears that lots of people have trouble forcing the dedicated GPU to activate for that test. You can control the apps that use the dGPU (though apparently adding the WinSAT executable doesn't work) under NVIDIA Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings. You can also force an app to run ONCE on a non-default GPU by right-clicking its application shortcut on the desktop (not the Start screen) and selecting the desired GPU under "Run on graphics processor".

I wouldn't worry about the WinSAT score. Just run a proper 3D benchmark app like 3DMark if you want to gauge graphics performance.

 

Interesting, I'm not sure how the installer decides what to use when you begin the installation inside the OS; I would have guessed it maintains the mode the existing OS was installed in, but Windows 7 isn't usually installed in UEFI mode, and someone else mentioned that the M3800 by default ships with the BIOS in Legacy mode, which would prevent Win7 from being in UEFI mode. Also, for future reference you could have started the install from the USB boot interface if you'd deleted all of the existing partitions before clicking Next.

Anyway, if you have the EFI Partition, you can of course enable UEFI mode. If you want to further speed up boot times, you can disable Legacy Option ROMs, but I'm not certain Acronis will boot in that configuration.

 

Here is what my Windows Mobility Center looks like (at least the one that's hidden underneath the Power Meter tray icon...

Am I missing something "splendid"?

 

Thank you for the additional info. Faster boot times would be nice, so I may play with this a bit further, and also see if I can get the Acronis software to generate a UEFI bootable USB thumb drive. Their website is bragging about UEFI compatibility, so this may indeed be an option.

 

Hmm, I noticed the same thing you just posted even though I know mine is there. I disconnected my external displays and rebooted, which fixed it. Then somehow it stayed there even after I reconnected and re-enabled those displays. Never noticed that until I just tried it when you posted this. Upon further testing, it looks like if you boot Windows with the built-in panel disabled (which I usually do since I use two external panels at my desk), that option won't appear even if you subsequently re-enable it. You need to enable the built-in panel AND reboot, at which point it appears and stays even if you then disable it after logging in. Wow, Dell made this one REALLY hard to find.

And I just played with this setting again while having a full-screen photo displayed on the built-in panel and Mobility Center on an external panel to toggle quickly back and forth, and holy hell skin tones look ridiculous in splendid mode. Not so splendid after all. What was Dell thinking with this? They took a display that out of the box is superior to most professional desktop displays (calibration Delta E less than 1, which is less than can be distinguished by the human eye, and an incredible color gamut), and completely ruined it! Then they made ruined mode the default setting and put it in a place that nobody would think to look for adjusting colors.

 

FWIW using the Acronis media builder to produce a bootable CD, I can confirm that the disc works with UEFI (secure boot disabled). Haven't tried the USB media.

 

Yup, I'm booting directly to an external display. This is just not very well thought out (design wise). Thanks for solving this for me, though.