Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I actually prefer to stock up on HDMI cables and then buy adapters that have an HDMI female connector and a DVI male connector. That way the cables I have are generally smaller (both the HDMI connectors compared to DVI and often the thickness of the cable itself) and have the most potential (HDMI can do more than DVI), but if I ever have a DVI connector to deal with, I can just add the adapter onto one or both ends of said HDMI cable. HDMI has become far more commonplace than DVI anyway these days, and HDMI to DVI cables are only as good as regular DVI cables because they can't carry audio, audio return, 4K, or Ethernet like HDMI can.

 

This is very helpful. Do you have a part number for the AC adapter dongle? Dell is not help.

The 130W adapter will not work on United Airlines.... trips circuit breaker. Would like to use one with a smaller draw to at least keep unit topped off.

Found it: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/Pop...&cs=04&sku=331-9319&price=11.69&client=config

 

130W...wow, I don't envy someone with an M6800 or AW17 trying to use their 180 or 240W adapters.


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I thought it was under the silver flip-up door on the bottom of the machine.

 

I haven't been here for a few months, glad to see this thread is still going strong!

Anyone successfully use a 4k display at 60Hz with the M3800 yet? I know DP1.2 supports 4k @ 60Hz but I'm not convinced the vid card has enough juice to run it seamlessly while running GPU intensive applications. XPS15 wiki is inconclusive. Would like to hear people's experiences before I pull the trigger on one.

 

Nobody here or in the XPS 15 Haswell thread seems to have access to a 4K display to test with. You're almost certainly right that the framerate won't be pretty on GPU intensive applications, but you can already determine that by trying those applications on the near-4K internal QHD+ panel. I'm pretty sure gaming and using other GPU-demanding apps at 4K was not within this system's design goals since desktops are only now getting graphics cards that can handle that, and some of those cost more than this entire system (e.g. NVIDIA Titan Z). But regular 2D applications should display fine, and even applications with limited GPU acceleration like Photoshop would probably still work reasonably well, even if those accelerated functions weren't butter smooth.

 

I have a question I am wondering about - my m3800 has the NVidia 1100 graphics card in it. Can that easily be replace with a NVIDIA® Quadro® K5000M with 4GB GDDR5
-- Dell Part number [320-3727]? Is it the same form factor would screws etc. work?

I got my hands on one from another machine - if I can easily replace I probably will. Thanks for your help!

 

If I'm not mistaken the GPUs on these M3800 workstations are a part of the motherboard and not removable like the M4600+ series.

 

The GPU is soldered onto the motherboard in this system -- and even if it weren't, Dell laptops (and maybe others) usually won't boot if you install a GPU that the BIOS doesn't explicitly support. Additionally, this system's AC adapter wouldn't be up to snuff to handle the resulting increase in power requirements from the K5000M, to say nothing of the fact that there's absolutely no way that a system this thin would have sufficient ventilation to handle the heat it would generate....

Even if two GPUs have matching screws and connectors, you can't swap GPUs around as readily on laptops as you can with desktops, especially when the GPUs in question have such radically different performance profiles. Believe me, if there were a way to cram the performance of a K5000M into a laptop this size, Dell and others would be selling it directly.

 

OK, thanks for the very comprehensive answers Illustrator76 and jphughan!