Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

You should be able to make that a permanent 3.1Ghz turbo using Intel XTU and a bit of undervolting. A 4700HQ consumes 37.5W in full load at 3100Mhz with standard voltage but goes down to 31.5W with a -90mV undervolt.

On the other hand, the 4960HQ might have a pretty hard time maintaining 3600Mhz turbo for quad core loads. Again, the 4700HQ clocked to 3400Mhz for quad core loads cannot maintain it's max turbo multiplier with standard voltages, meaning it goes over 47W under full load. It takes a rather significant undervolt (at least -60mV) to make that 3400Mhz stick for longer/indefinite periods of time. Be advised I'm not taking thermals into consideration, just the enforced "TDP". (thermals are fine)

So, in order for the 4960HQ to be able to keep a quad core 3.6Ghz turbo boost it would have to use a surprisingly low voltage table to mitigate both the frequency bump and the wattage penalty from the more beefy integrated graphics & eDRAM.

 

Bokeh, the M4800 review in notebookcheck.net said

the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4600 cannot be used due to the QHD+ screen installed in our review sample and is disabled. This naturally has an impact on the power consumption, which is much higher with a minimum of 19.6 watts than that of a system with an enabled Intel graphics.

Can you double check this again?

BTW, can you confirm that the southbridge does not have the USB 3.0 bug?
Thank you.

 

Sorry to be a pain, I did start a new thred, but what is the difference between this and the xps 15 besides the GPU? is the build better? are they the same shell?

 

-90mV Dynamic CPU offset and -90mV Cache Voltage offset gives 38.4W. Runs at a stable 3.0Ghz with all 4 cores fully loaded. Going past -100mV does not give any additional benefit and makes things less stable. Let me know if I am doing something wrong.

 

First of all, big thanks to Bokeh for this thread and in depth analysis as well as question answering.

I have a few concerns which have been covered somewhat, however, they are as follows:

I am coming from a 2011 Dell XPS L502x which was and still is a phenomenal laptop apart from the weight and bulk.
The JBL speakers are the best I've heard on any laptop to date and I often even get a surprised reaction from people that hear them for the first time, I also have the Soundblaster X-Fi installed in my Dell.
Secondly the 1920x1080 95% gamut display is fantastic and I do a lot of photo editing, lightroom, photoshop.
After putting a 512gb SSD into it along with 16gb RAM, the laptop flies... with my only problem being bulk and weight.

I skipped the 2012 Dell XPS 15 due to far poorer screen and not as great speakers.

Now the 2013 Dell XPS 15 / M3800 is out and I'm trying to decide whether it is in fact worth it because again the screen on one hand is better with higher resolution, but like was mentioned earlier in the thread, such a resolution comes with its own problems with not all applications yet being optimised for it, secondly it is 72% gamut and although it covers sRGB it isn't 95% gamut like the briliant L502x screen...

And of course the speakers in the the new Dell... 4W, no soundblaster X-Fi... earlier in the thread it was mentioned that they maintain 90% of the performance of the JBL's? I guess I'm looking for verifcation of this and any additional thoughts you might have. As I think quite a few people might be in the same boat as me, clinging onto the Dell XPS 15 L502x.
In your opinion is the new screen that good that despite the lower gamut will it still produce more accurate and overall better colours compared to the 2 year old L502x? (Especially after Spyder calibration?)

Thanks

 

Planning to check it tomorrow. HDMI has worked on the U3014, but the refresh rate is 30hz. The refresh rate is noticible to me.

Going to see what it will do as far as running multiple screens tomorrow.

100% sure that Optimus works on the M3800.

Will have to read up on the USB bug so that I know what to check for.

 

Is the fan-volume similar to the macbook 15 retina under load?

thanks!

 

So, pretty quiet!

 

"You can hear them when you put a heavy load on the CPU and/or GPU. "
I just hope it is not louder than a macbook...

 

it would be impressive if it was louder than a macbook, currently trying one out from the apple store while i wait for the xps 15, man this thing gets loud under practically no load.