Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Hi all - has there been a conclusion to the M3800 + W7 sleep mode issues? I've gone through the thread and read a bunch of different suggestions, but done seem affirmative. Would appreciate a heads up!

 

What sleep mode issues?

 

Some questions to the owners, does the system throttle under heavy load or does it get dangerously hot?

How is the battery life with maximum screen brightness and wifi on etc, with the 61 Wh battery and with the 91 Wh battery?

Also when I tried a friends once, it could be easy noticed that scrolling in google chrome was very laggy compared to IE. Firefox was somehow a little better. What do you say about that ?

Regards

 

The system shouldn't throttle severely under heavy load, but it may throttle somewhat, just as many thin and light performance machines do. Of the more severe throttling cases reported, some have been caused by people using the system on a non-level and/or heat-retaining surface (bed, blanket, etc), which you shouldn't do. A couple others have turned out to have defective thermal assemblies that Dell replaced to resolve the issue, and some people have replaced the thermal grease even without observing any throttling and seen temperatures drop up to 10 C. BIOS A03 also seems to have helped throttling by adjusting the thermal map. The result of all of this is that the throttling discussion that was very active on these boards earlier has gone away, despite some very severe throttling cases early on. For what it's worth, Bokeh hasn't noticed any on his M3800, and I haven't noticed any on my XPS 15 even during multi-hour sustained loads.

Battery life reports of course vary by usage, but under "typical use" the smaller battery seems to clock in around 3-4 hours and the larger one around 5-7, though people have managed to significantly extend those with power saving measures. The bottom line is that battery life on this system seems to be considered marginal with the smaller battery and merely acceptable on the larger battery -- not especially impressive but not grossly unreasonable given this system's performance. However, if you're getting the QHD+ display, chances are you won't use it at full brightness. I've used every other laptop I've ever used at full brightness, but the QHD+ display gets so bright that I never set it above 60%.

Someone in the XPS 15 thread mentioned that getting the latest 64-bit release of Chrome (not an official release yet) solves the scrolling problem.

 

Even under sustained loads for multiple days. It is completely normal for the M3800 I use to be running at 100% CPU or GPU loads for over 8 hours.

The only way to get the M3800 to throttle is to 1) block the air vents 2) overclock the GPU and then run Prime95 and MSI Kombuster to create a synthetic 100% load on the GPU and CPU at the same time.

Under normal use, the system won't run that hot and the fans won't blow very much. If you are pushing the system harder with something like an Autocad project or a modern game, you will create more heat and the fans will need to run more. I have no problems with using the M3800 on my lap even when it running under a heavy load. You sort of have to let the sides of the bottom be on both legs so that the middle of the bottom can draw in air. If you were to set the machine on the middle of one leg, you might cause airflow problems if the fans were running on high. Like I said, under normal use (web, movies, email, office apps, etc), it does not run hot.

On the throttling question, it will not throttle under any normal use case. There were some throttling issues with the XPS15, but the GeForce 750M GPU in that system draws more power than the Quadro K1100M in the M3800. If you overclock the K1100M and then present the system with some very specific software, you can get it to slightly throttle. Even overclocked, I have not seen the M3800 throttle in any real-world application or game.

The 91Wh battery should give you 5-7 hours without doing anything special to the system. If you lower the brightness and disable applications and services to keep CPU usage low, install the Dell battery saving software (part of the Quickset drivers) 9-10 hours should be attainable depending on what you run. I will typically run my mail client, IM, browser, and word processor with the display set to around 50% brightness and get over 9 hours out of the system. If I am at a conference with the display set to minimum brightness to discourage people looking over my shoulder at the screen, I can get 10 or 11 hours. If I am running the CPU at 100%, I will only get a little over 2 hours.

 

working with some 3 or 4 vms the m3800 gets hot and I have to use a wooden plate underneath it. I do leave some space for the air to be sucked. I'm looking for a cooling pad. I found some good review about this one:

Amazon.com: Zalman NC1000-B Laptop Cooling Pad with Black Panel (NC1000-B): Electronics

 

I just bought the 4k Samsung U28D590 and it works perfectly with my M3800. I get 3840 x 2160 60Hz via the displayport cable. Very easy to setup and works right away. I recommend the U28D590 to anyone who wants to use high res. external monitor with the M3800.

 

I am wondering whether the DisplayPort will have excess bandwidth to feed a 4k screen plus an extra (chained?) hdmi output. If that were the case, that chained hdmi could be combined with the normal hdmi output and feed any 4k screen that support inputs via 2 hdmi cables.

This way it would be possible to use simultaneously 2 x 4k screens @ 60 hz. Probably some driver support or Xorg configuration may be required so that the system detected the setup correctly.

Does any of the above make sense, is there just not enough bandwidth, or is this just sci-fi?

Otherwise, we can add 2 or 3 USB3 cables into the mix and have a complete franken-cable. Happy Friday.

 

There's one reason this definitely won't work, and another why it almost definitely won't. First, DisplayPort can't output DisplayPort signalling and HDMI signalling at the same time; daisy chaining requires DisplayPort across the board. And second, from what I've read about DisplayPort 1.2, MST, and bandwidth in general, as you suspected, it doesn't look like you'll have enough bandwidth anyway. DP can do 2x 1600p, 4x 1200p, and 6x 1680x1050 displays, but only 1x 4K. Doing the math on the bandwidth required for the other multi-display configurations compared to 4K, there just doesn't seem to be enough room for any secondary display, never mind half of a second 4K @ 60 Hz display.

The upcoming DisplayPort 1.3 spec will allow 1x 8K, 1x 4K 3D, or 2x 4K 2D though. I can't find refresh rate information, but I'm assuming that if it can "only" do 2x 4K @ 60 Hz, then 1x 8K support will be @ 30 Hz since 8K is 4x the resolution of 4K, not 2x.

 

Thank you very much, Bokeh and jphughan.

I'm going to order one in late summer (in the end of august month) but I cannot decide which one to get. The top-end modell with the 91Wh battery was my first choice, but the thing is that I have a completly new and unused sandisk extreme II 480 GB that I want to use somehow with the precision m3800. Its just waiting in the box to be used =)
So help me please, which one, the one with smaller battery or the bigger, is the way to go ?

I have decided to go for the precision m3800 simply because it has great support for linux in general and ubuntu in particular. It is very rare to find a high end laptop like this in the market right now, and with so great out of the box support for ubuntu.