Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Seems like a heck of a good computer for $1300. I would miss the SSD and QHD screen but if it were my money I would probably same the $1k and use some of that to put in an SSD drive. Good deal. Hope it comes out as clean as the Dell refurbs I've bought.

 

I think you're one of the few who's got access to an external QHD display, so I'm definitely interested to hear your feedback. Fyi though, the Intel GPU always handles all output to displays, even when the NVIDIA GPU is running, because the NVIDIA GPU is not physically attached to any display outputs. Instead, when it's enabled, it does all of the graphics rendering and then pipes it over to the Intel card, which then acts as essentially a passthrough to the displays themselves -- so your output capabilities are always determined by the Intel GPU.

So it's possible that the Intel GPU can only output one QHD signal at a time. Have you tried connecting the QHD+ panel and then enabling it while also disabling the built-in panel (or driving it at a lower resolution)? If you can currently only get the external QHD panel to display at a lower than native resolution, that would lend credence to that theory. If you can't get your external display to work at all, play with settings on the display itself, specifically MST vs SST modes. QHD being so new, different display vendors are doing different things to get it working, and one of them is to essentially present the display as two physical panels for systems that don't support DisplayPort MST. This system should, but some older systems don't, so your display might be defaulting to SST mode. If you still can't make it work, I'm not sure what's up. Any DisplayPort cable will handle 4K (even those that were made when DisplayPort 1.1 was all that existed), so that wouldn't be it, but of course try different cables if you have spares. You're not using any sort of adapters, correct? You could also test your display with an HDMI cable as long as it would accept 4K @ 30 Hz or less, which is all that the HDMI output will handle.

 

Have a 960GB M500 SSD waiting for this baby to arrive

 

Well Dell Canada says officially that there is "no issues related to coil whine" and that a few posts on a bulletin board to not mean such a thing exists. They point out that there are many happy customers who have made no mention of such a thing existing. but from what I am reading, its more like, people are willing to live with it and "hope" Dell will resolve it in the future....hope however is not a plan for resolving the issue. I suppose if all the people here who have the coil whine have not reported it, then I'm not sure how or why Dell would do anything. If you have a coil whine issue, minor or not, you should report it and have it put on the record. Seeing so many messages about it on a forum wont have Dell do much about it, especially if the official word is ...it doesnt exist..regardless of what a couple of reps say. Those who have coil whine are just unhappy owners and a tiny fraction of all of the happy Dell owners. You dont speak up, you wont get heard. So for all the griping and hope from people here that Dell will fix the coil wine issue...they officially deny its existence until now. U want to change that? Call Dell and let them no..because based on the email I got...there is no fix coming now or in the future especially if the company wont even acknowledge its existence in the first place.

Up until now yes I too have heard..we know its an issue and are working on it. Get your Dell rep to send u an email and put it in writing in a documented format...watch how difficult that will be. Good luck.

 

Reps say whatever they want. I know a lot of XPS15 owners have reported it - this rep was probably just unwilling to admit to any issue.


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So i just received the m3800 (QHD version) and got a few questions:

1. Can anything be done about the heat (without impacting performance)? I find that even though i only do light browsing this laptop isn't really nice to have in the lap. It seems a bit odd that light web browsing should generate heat. My two year old computer (i7 2670QM) doesn't generate as much heat even though its processor uses more energy.

I read that the intel wifi card in this laptop uses 7W which contributes to some heat (more power = more heat), is there any update that fixes that?

Core temps (laptop in lap, web browsing using Chrome):
Core #0: 46C
Core #1 42C
Core #2 42C
Core #3 45C

While these temps are hardly anything to get upset about the m3800 is designed in such a way that this heat comes in direct contact to ones legs when having it in the lap which makes it "hot" even though the temps are fine.

2. Are there any drivers that should be updated outside of the Dell-tool? I've read people talking about manually downloading drivers but no one actually state what problem(s) that solves, what benefits there are or what specific driver(s) they use.

3. Do one really need intel RST? Isn't that mostly for enabling SSD caching? SSD caching doesn't fit my usage pattern since i'll be using the secondary drive for large files only and also want to separate that drive completely. I've got the 256GB SSD + 512GB HDD combo.

4. Best way to calibrate the screen without hardware calibration? I've already disabled the splendid color profile that pretty much killed some colors.

 

Is that true regardless of which native display you configure the M3800 with? I have a 1920x1080 M3800 and bought a 27" QHD monitor assuming the K1100m would drive it, but it would not recognize the monitor. I'm using a miniDP to DVI-D cable.

 

Son of a gun, I was about to pull the trigger on it. Enjoy it mate

Although I'm a tad worried, how can I know for sure that the laptop has the coil whine issue, and if it does, how can I manage it..? (still haven't purchased one, looking for a good deal)

 

A Wifi card won't contribute to heat in a meaningful way, otherwise it would at least have a heat sink on it, which it doesn't. The reason the notebook industry switched from the term "laptop" to "notebook" is to discourage use in one's lap because of heat issues and the possible lawsuits that can (and did) result. Using a laptop in your laptop is ergonomically pretty bad anyway. So no, not much you can do.

There aren't any drivers that HAVE to be updated outside of what Dell provides. Wifi drivers for a while solved incompatibility issues, but Dell has a newer version on their site. Some people prefer the touchpad performance using Synaptics drivers, but Dell's version has again since been updated to improve that somewhat. And some people always like to have the latest GPU drivers. An yes, many people actually do post what versions they're using and the differences they've observed, you just have to search a bit.

You need the Rapid Storage driver for the AHCI/RAID controller, but not the actual Rapid Storage application. I always download the F6 Floppy version for this reason.

For the display, a couple people posted ICC profiles for their calibrated displays in the XPS 15 Haswell thread, but it's not clear how well those apply to separate displays. Other than that, you're asking how to calibrate without calibration equipment, which you really can't. Some colors get "killed" because splendid mode overblows them in the first place. White people look pink in photos and some subtler color gradations are totally wiped out in that mode. But thanks mostly to TVs demoed in big box retailer stores, people have come to view vivid colors as a sign of high performance or color nirvana, which it simply isn't.

Did you see my earlier reply to your previous post? You can't drive 4K over DVI, and even if you're using dual-link DVI, you can only go up to 30 Hz, which your display might not accept. Use a MiniDP to DP cable and you should be fine. If not, go back to my earlier post where I added some suggestions.

 

Thanks for the answers!

Drivers: Everything is working ok except the touchpad that doesn't allow me to scroll inside select fields (dropdowns) in Chrome and three finger tap to trigger middle mouse click doesn't work as well (even with the regedit hacks that can be found online). I read that the Synaptics driver (if replacing the Dell supplied ones) needed to be some certain version in order to work. Seems a bit odd.

Heat: Nothing i can do? Have anyone had any luck with undervolting? (undervolting usually drop the temps by 5-7C)

Screen: I could not find a single source for a ICC-profile even though there was a couple of people mentioning ICC profiles in the XPS 15 thread. I used Googles site: -command and searched for a variety of keywords without any luck. Are you sure people actually uploaded them somewhere? Would be great to at least have something even though that profile wouldn't be optimal.

Intel RS: What about the caching thing?