Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

It's not "like" they're doing that. That's exactly what they're doing, and it's been happening basically since the Quadro line was created, though it's not OpenGL in general that's limited; it's certain features that only really come into play in those types of productivity apps and hardly if ever in games. But the actual silicon between equivalent GeForce and Quadro cards is identical, with the only differences being in drivers, firmware, and perhaps actual lithography to put hardware enforcement on the feature lockouts.

And the reason this is done is because PC gaming is already so much more expensive than console gaming that if NVIDIA and AMD tried to spread their GPU R&D costs evenly over their gaming and professional line (which would actually be a single line in this theoretical world), there wouldn't be enough gamers who would actually buy those cards. So instead the gamers get a discount (with features removed/crippled that aren't used in games anyway) and the pros subsidize a disproportionate chunk of the R&D that went into the GPUs by paying higher prices on their cards, which they can and do pay because those markets are actually making money off of these cards' performance.

Of course people using professional apps as a hobby or in school sort of get the short end of the stick in this arrangement, but I would argue that the extra performance of the pro GPUs is wholly unnecessary for their needs.

Incidentally, Intel does something similar with some of its CPUs. Some of their CPUs ship with extra cache actually present and simply disabled to create an arbitrary feature distinction -- and I'm talking fully working cache, not cache that was disabled because part of it failed quality check and thus forced the CPU to be sold as a lower SKU. Intel does that because it's apparently cheaper for them to manufacture a single hardware SKU and lock out features (even though they're actually paying to install the materials onto the unit) rather than deal with manufacturing two distinct types of CPUs. Car manufacturers sometimes do this as well, e.g. equipping all of their cars with navigation but only unlocking that feature in the infotainment unit if you pay for it.

 

Even if it was possible to upgrade the CPU, mobile CPUs don't come cheap. If money is an issue, look at the HP envy 15t. Almost same specs but half the price (in the US anyway). We have someone around the office with one, it's decent for the price.

Back in the day I had an ATI 2900XT softmodded to a FireGL v8600 just to play around with. It definitely improved the workstation performance but there were glitches and artifacts. As far as I know, Nvidia locked out the possibility of softmodding the GeForce cards a few generations ago.

 

I've looked over it, but I already fell in love with the XPS Series / M3800. The keyboard is very important for me and until now, only the XPS Series and Lenovo ThinkPads could satisfy me. Unfortunately, my Lenovo ThinkPad T440s had massive issues with the display bezel and the display itself, so I had to send it in for a repair and then sold it to someone else. I'm not going to buy a ThinkPad again this time; I'll try out the Dells.

I'd really like to buy the M3800, but at the moment, I can't afford it. However, I just got about enough money ready for the XPS 15 and could buy it right now - there are some discounts on the Dell website, which leads to about 1200€ for the i5-4200H model, which is just fine for me; the discount lasts until February 18th. But there is no chance for me to get +250€ until February 18th. If I wait, I'll probably miss the discount and will have to buy the M3800, which is available for 1450€ at Amazon. But again, there is no guarantee, that the price will stay at 1450€, until I get the money ready. Amazon is currently the cheapest in Europe with that price, don't think, that it will last very long. It's a tough decision...

About the GeForce -> Quadro discussion, I've found this: [MOVED] Hacking NVidia Cards into their Professional Counterparts - Page 1. It seems, that there is actually a method, to turn your GeForce into a Quadro, but you need soldering experiences. 150€ GTX 660 -> Quadro K4000 looks sweet for sure! But as you said, there are no Softmods.

 

What kind of msata ssd do yo recommend?
I've found this one: 240GB Crucial Crucial M500 240GB SATA 6Gbps mSATA Internal SSD
Is it a good ssd? How faster is the 240GB Crucial Crucial M500 240GB SATA 6Gbps mSATA Internal SSD than the base 2.5" 500GB sshd? Can you feel the difference?

 

That one and the 840 Evo mSATA (announced but maybe not released yet, not sure) are the front runners. Others that are obtainable but not officially sold at retail are the Samsung SM841 (the unit Dell uses on their 512GB offering), the Samsung PM841 (similar to the 840 non-Pro or maybe Evo since it uses TLC flash), and the LiteOn M4M (one of the options Dell uses with its 256GB offering).

Any SSD is going to be absurdly faster than a hybrid drive overall. If you read benchmarks of Seagate hybrid hard drives, you'll find that they offer a noticeable boost over regular hard drives but fall way short of SSDs. Pairing up the hybrid drive with a 32GB mSATA cache unit might change the game a bit more, but it's still not the same as having all of your data always on super-fast flash storage.

If you've never had an SSD system before, try it. It is an absolute paradigm shift no matter what you do with your system, and once you use one you'll never be able to go back. I got more than 2 extra years of usable life out of an old Precision M6300 purely by adding an SSD, and new systems that don't have one feel extremely slow compared to that system. No exaggeration, an SSD makes a system about 2-3x faster overall in regular use. Best performance per dollar investment available IMHO.

 

Yesterday the D: drive disappeared again for no reason - it had completed a backup around 3 AM, and had been sitting until around 9 AM. When I first loookoed at it, the D: drive was gone - not in Disk Admin either.

I used the Passmark DiskCheckup disk utility to look at the SMART error codes, and I found that the D: drive failed (it is a Seagate 500GB), the End-to-End detection count was past the threshold count of 99 errors. Quite a few of the better sites (Anand, overclock, acronis, etc.) say this is critical error that could be showing the drive will fail. Mostly being out of ideas, I had a brand new Samsung 840 Pro SSD drive, I replaced with that one, and SMART was happy on that drive. I ran a bunch of diags, did several backups, and so far no D: drive disappearing! I won't be able to declare victory for about 2 weeks, as I have seen it go a week without the error.

 

Hi all,

Today I got twice a black screen with thin vertical lines on the left side of the screen.
The laptop didn't respond to anything and had to restart it.
After restarting everything works fine.
The black-screen freeze happened at random times, many hours after powering-on the laptop.

Has anyone experienced something similar?
Have you seen any posts mentioning similar issues?

I am using Ubuntu Linux 13.10 64bit, kernel 3.11.0-15-generic, and keep disabled the Nvidia graphics using bumblebee.
There is no evidence of system/kernel/Xorg crash in the logs.

Unfortunately, I don't have a windows installation to check if the problem occurs with other OS.
I'll run tonight Memtest and see if RAM chips have defects.

Thanks

p.s.: I re-post this question here, since XPs-15 Haswell and M3800 share very similar hardware

 

Hi dimos,

to opt out a kernel 3.11 related issue, I'd recommend either using the 14.04 betas or trying out something like Antergos, which builds on top of ArchLinux, thus it will give you the latest packages (Antergos). On my T440s, I had some issues with Ubuntu 13.10 aswell, therefore, I'd definitely recommend at least kernel 3.12 to test, if your problems are 3.11 / Ubuntu 13.10 specific or not. If not, I'd return the unit for a refund.

As for my M3800 vs XPS 15 decision: I've decided to pick up the M3800. The CPU doesn't seem to be replaceable (at least according to the official manuals). Amazon doesn't have them on stock atm, I've to wait about 1 - 3 months for the delivery. However, I could save the absolutely crazy price of 1450€; they won't charge, until they ship the M3800 - so, I have enough time to get the +250€ ready (which is a steal, for a dual-core -> quad-core + workstation gpu upgrade).

 

The M3800 processors are the i7-2702HQ and the i5-4200H which are both soldered-only, not socketed -- the socketed versions are the M/MQ. The processor will only be upgradeable via motherboard swap.

I recommend the Intel 525, personally; faster across the board (even with compressed data) than the Crucial, and more consistent performance than the Samsungs when kept close to full (although especially on compressed data, the better Samsungs will have faster peak performance.)

The 500GB SSHD is not noticeably faster than any other rotating hard drive. ANY SSD from the past 3-4 years is going to be noticeably faster.

--

Has anyone seen any audio-related or video playback freezes in Windows 8.1? I was trying to watch some TV episodes tonight in VLC, and 8.1 started getting corrupted audio and then freezing -- froze the whole machine twice. No non-stock audio/video drivers on here (just what Dell provided plus whatever updated via Windows Update) although the wifi drivers. VLC uses build-in codecs, so no codec issues are likely.

Rebooted to Windows 7, and they all played fine in the same version of VLC, so it's probably Windows 8.1 somehow...

 

Thanks for your help.
The issue has occurred only when I use an external monitor connected via the HDMI port.
I am now using the laptop without external monitors and see if it happens again.

Yep, will install a custom kernel (3.12+) if the problem occurs again, and hopefully this will fix things, otherwise, I 'll have to RMA the laptop...

Thanks