Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I've noticed similar behaviour when using lightroom. Didn't expect CPU to be so high

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Nope. Solidworks uses the CPU to render. Rendering can happen in parallel, so it's passing work to all eight "cores," pegging your CPU at 100% until it finishes. Totally normal.

The GPU is only used for rendering during normal modeling.


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How does one know if CPU or GPU processing is utilised by the application?

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You could use the task manager (to view CPU usage), and GPU-Z (to view GPU load) if needed.

In the case of SolidWorks and PhotoView 360, I know what it's doing for a fact. Lightroom, not so sure.

 

Quick update on throttling on a lower power adapter: I recently had to spend a day and a half using a 90W (with connector adapter) rather than 130W adapter, and while compared to the Latitudes (which throttle very aggressively when on a lower wattage or unidentified adapter) there is little or no noticeable CPU throttling (as I mentioned up-thread) I have now seen some definite GPU throttling -- SWTOR was running at about 25FPS at settings that normally do about 40FPS.

Not awful, but not ideal.

 

Anyone able to recommend a good case / carry bag (something that looks good and protects well, fits everything I.e. charger and laptop and maybe a cable or two, snug) with a business feel to it for the m3800?

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Thanks all for the interesting read.

I have had my M3800 for a couple of months and am having some wifi speed issues when using an access point which is not 802.11ac.
Most of my work environment (large building) uses older access points (presumably a/b/g/n) and there are some areas with 802.11ac routers.

When I am on the ac access point the speed is incredibly fast, as would be expected.
When I am using 802.11 a/b/g/n the speed is awful. Comparing side-by-side with an older Dell Latitude (which does not have an ac wifi card) using speedtest.net there is ~30-50% "upload" speed reduction on the M3800. For example, if the Latitude uploads at 50 Mbps, the M3800 only gets 30 Mbps. This has been confirmed in multiple locations. The speed is even slower compared to my iPhone.

My job requires me to real-time manipulate large (~300 MB) files stored on a central server so connection speed actually matters. With the speed issues the workflow is actually probably slower on my new machine than on the old Latitude.

Any thoughts on this issue? My IT department says it is inherent to the new Intel Wi-fi card and the only option would be to downgrade to a non-ac card (if they can find one) which is obviously not desirable. I suggested switching to a
Other options include hard-wiring in using an Ethernet USB adapter but this isn't optimal either.

 

Yup this is a known problem with that card. Check out the networking and wireless subforum.


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Tumi Alpha 2 Laptop Cover. Not cheap by any means, but it fits the laptop perfectly as if designed for it. I have the charger, cables, and a small Logitech mouse in the side pocket.

 

Just thought I would bring this up since someone else had mentioned this with their XPS 15. Does anyone have issues with their USB randomly disconnecting/reconnecting when plugging in mobile devices like phones, tablets, etc, but not with external hard drives or USB thumb drives? My M3800 will do this randomly and I can't seem to establish any pattern to a particular cable, port, or the device itself. It works fine if I connect the device to another computer. Just seems the M3800 has problems with anything that isn't a drive.

My main use-case is creating backups for my iPhone, and sometimes it takes a couple tries before i can create a good one. I won't even try doing a fresh iOS restore on it anymore as I fear it could brick my phone.