Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I'll see what RMCLock or ThrottleStop can do to disable throttlng in this situation.

 

Encountered a very strange issue today with two projectors which are behind a HDMI matrix splitter.

M3800 was set to duplicate and the picture was only shown on one of the two projectors.
The HDMI matrix splitter is supposed to send the input to both projectors.

I was able to fix this by lowering the resolution from 1920*1200 to 1920*1080.
After updating the display driver of the nvidia card to A03 (must have been A01 or A00) (Intel was already at the latest A02) I was able to use 1920*1200 with both projectors.

Never seen the behavior before, that one of the two will fail.
The driver must have done something very strange to the HDMI output causing such issues.

(Also updated the Bios from A02 to A06, but the issue was still present before updating the Nvidia drivers)

 

Since December 2013 we have 5 M3800 units with i7 in our office.

All exhibit the following issues:

- WiFi has really poor performance after standby (disabling/enabling adapter resolves issue)

- Bluetooth mouse randomly disappears while working (loses connection)

- Bluetooth option in Windows 8.1 x64 disappears entirely (cycle power sometimes fixes issue; reinstall driver usually resolves, for a while)

- Charging regulary does not work, despite Windows notifying battery is charging (for hours). Disconnecting power adapter then reports that battery is empty!

- Trackpad click remains stuck (mouse click stays down).

All 5 laptops exhibit above issues.

Please advise!

 

Hey guys,

Apparently the coil whine issue has been solved. Apparently new system boards have fixed the issue and I was wondering if someone has had theirs replaced and could confirm if it's fixed or not.

Source: XPS 15 9530 - Noise problem? - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

 

since the notebook is available for quite a while now, do you think that its worth buying one now or will there be a new version out soon? Eg. with a non-glare non-touch screen? Any hints if there will be a new version from Dell?

 

Has anyone really done a non-glare touchscreen other than perhaps the old resistive touch screens? I've thought about putting a glare filter on mine but I've just come to accept the screen as is.

 

i don't even want it to be a touch screen at all a non-glare-non-touch one would be awesome! Are you using the touch?

 

I already posted in the thread you linked, but I got the revised motherboard on my XPS 15 and the persistent "mosquito ringtone" type of coil whine is gone. There's still an electronic noise when I scroll if the built-in panel is enabled (not if I'm only using external displays), which is the noise some others have referred to and are complaining about, but I've encountered that noise on a lot of laptops in the past (both Dell and non-Dell) and it's never bothered me on those systems or this one. Perhaps it's a bit louder on this one than others, but if so I imagine it has to do with this system using more current than the average notebook.

 

Had this system been a non-touch screen I probably would have gone for the M4800. I basically had a budget and figured my actual CAD needs didn't require me to get something as powerful as the M4800 (really I was still doing OK with my M4400 but a new computer was take it or leave it). I was really torn between the two. In the past I had used a Toughbook with touch screen. I was hooked on the touch screen after that. When I used other computers I find it hard to remember that they aren't touch. My wife pokes at her Mac screen from time to time.

Anyway, beyond that the M4400 already seemed large to carry around. Prior to it I had a 4.5lb M20. When I got the M4400 it wasn't about the GPU but the 1920x1200 screen. The only M2400 screen was 1280x800 which was an unacceptable step back from my M20's 1400x1050. I even decided to forgo the M4500 because it went from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080. Had something like a 1600x900 14" screen been an option I would have gone for it. While I like high power graphics for my CAD work, most of the time I don't need the power.

So when the M3800 vs M4800 came up it was hard to pick The M4800 is more powerful and if I wanted to play games it would be the better pick. It also had the numeric keypad which I really missed on my M4400 (the M4500 also didn't have one) since I did a bit of data entry. The M4800 had PC Express card slots which again I did use on the M4400. The M4800 had a full set of keys including the home/end/page u/d keys. All of these were things I wanted and some were things I missed in the M4400. Oh, the M4800 was also a matte screen. I really like matte better and I've never had gloss on my primary computer before.

So now that you have heard my life story, I got the M3800 for three reasons.
1. It looked really cool
2. I really liked the idea of going back to a 4.5lb computer vs increasing the weight to near 7lb.
3. touch screen.

I went for light vs powerful and I don't regret it. Incidentally I had an anti-Dell coworker how was looking to replace a very old consumer line HP. He also decided to go for the M3800 after checking out mine.

 

I got the external battery and the power tip. just connected it. I had the adaptor warning, clicked the F1 to continue. the system started and was running at 800MHZ
I started ThrottleStop 6. Disabled ProcHot and was back to 3000Mhz and some . I can also adjust the cpu speed by disabling protect and using the multiplier. Will try to get more info on Throttlestop and will also report here about the external battery (energizer xp18000A) runtime.

Throttling on startup 800Mhz
View attachment 115692

Throttling disabled through ProcHot disabling:
View attachment 115693

Cpu clock lowered using the throttlestop multiplier (requires disabling prochot)