Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

From what I understand Adobe has FINALLY gotten their act together and fixed the QHD UI scaling issues on Windows, so you should be fine there. I believe that Autocad should be good to go as well.

The other programs you listed I'm not too sure about.

I went with the QHD screen because of the higher pixel density and for the fact that those screens are the wave of the future, so more and more companies are making their programs compatible with higher resolutions. It will soon get to the point where it's not even an issue worth talking about anymore.

You really can't go wrong with either screen though.

 

It's worth noting that most Adobe apps have only been fixed in the most recent Creative Cloud versions, so if you don't already have those, you'll either need to factor in the cost of upgrading your applications when considering this system, buy FHD, or buy 4K and run at 1920x1080 whenever you use those apps. Obviously if you use Adobe apps heavily, that third option isn't particularly viable without mostly defeating the point of having purchased a HiDPI display, unless you're ok buying it solely for futureproofing even if you can't use it for the time being.

 

Speaking only to the Autocad question; I prefer a minimum vertical resolution of 1200 for Autocad since some of the dialog boxes for Autocad for Architecture (the vertical I use) don't do as well at 1080. For that reason I chose the QHD screen and after trying full resolution and different scalings I chose to use it at 2048 x 1152. That's close enough to 1200 and it works better with my external monitor than a scaled full resolution screen. It should be noted I'm using Windows 7. Windows 8 may handle the scaling issues better.

 

Hello guys, I am trying to overclock my GPU (K1100m). Nvidia inpector and MSI Afterburner only allow me to overclock it up to 840Mhz.

Do you know if it can be overclocked further than that ?

 

Have you considered that there may be a reason why those apps won't let you clock it higher? This system is already known to run on the rather warm side when under load, and in fact early on the XPS 15 (whose GPU seems to be clocked a bit higher from the factory) was prone to serious GPU throttling under load. There's also the fact that having this kind of GPU in a system this thin and light already seems to be pushing the limit (just look at the dearth of equivalent systems out there even after more than a year), so there's probably little to no additional thermal headroom. And that doesn't even consider that warranty claims stemming from damage after overclocking would undoubtedly be denied.

 

Yeah, good point. I have the Creative Cloud versions, so I am good to go, but you are right, I didn't think about people on older versions of Adobe apps.

Good catch, and definitely something to take into account when choosing which screen to go with.

 

Hey There. Can you guys can help me decide. I want to get this laptop and I am trying to decide between FHD and QHD display. I feel like getting the higher resolution screen but I cannot afford any applications I currently use to look too tiny. A lot of people have been reporting that the QHD makes the UI of various applications is too tiny to be usable. Some found solutions like scaling and dropping the res. Does that actually work? Is there any point in future-proofing now in hopes softwares will catch up with thoSe new displays. I honestly don't need too see too many things at the same time on a 15" screen. I use programs like Revit, Adobe Suite (PS, ID, AI), Autocad, Sketchup, and other design softwares and usually work on one thing at the time. Usability and compatibility is a must for me. Any suggestions? THANKS.

 

If you can't afford for any of your apps to have scaling issues, I recommend the following strategy:

1. Do research on the apps that are important to you to find out how well they scale, e.g. by contacting their support personnel or researching forums dedicated to those applications.
2. If you find that some of your apps (or at least the versions of those apps that you use) have scaling issues, figure out whether the latest version is better and decide whether you'd be willing to pay to upgrade to those versions.
3. If you're not willing to pay or there's no fix available at all, accept that whenever you want to use those problematic apps with the built-in panel, you'll need to drop to a lower resolution, which also means logging out and back in so that the scale factor can truly adjust and therefore things can look as good as they can at that lower resolution. That solution will ALWAYS work because it means you won't be using scaling anymore, but obviously if one of the problematic apps is one that you use on the built-in panel very frequently, this switching and logoff/logon dance could quickly become a huge irritation, to the point that you may just find yourself constantly running the built-in panel at the lower resolution. If you think that might happen, then decide whether the cost of upgrading to the 4K display is worth it just for the futureproofing even if you won't actually be taking advantage of it immediately. That's a valuation only you can make.

But yes, I think it's absolutely worth betting on applications being updated to support HiDPI displays since it's clearly where the PC industry is (finally!) headed. The only question is how long it will take and how much the upgraded versions may cost. The only exceptions would be applications that are simply no longer under development.

Also keep in mind that if you would usually be using one or more non-HiDPI external displays when running these applications (especially problematic ones), then it won't matter how well the applications scale because you'd be running at 100% scaling on those occasions. These scaling concerns are only a factor when using a HiDPI panel. That said, if you plan on using the built-in panel (assuming you go 4K) and external display(s) simultaneously, then you should either plan to drop the built-in panel to a lower resolution during those times or just buy the FHD panel, since HiDPI and non-HiDPI coexistence just doesn't work very well right now. That too may change in the future (and Windows 8.1 already has the APIs in place for application vendors to improve this), but handling that is even more complicated than just handling scaling, and for now the coexistence experience is mediocre at best. It's definitely better than the Windows 7 and 8.0 approach of forcing you to use a single scale factor across displays of radically different pixel densities, which leaves no truly usable options for this scenario, but it's still not ideal. But Apple's handling of this HiDPI and non-HiDPI coexistence scenario isn't any better, fwiw.

I wrote an article about the coexistence issue on the XPS 15 Wiki if you're interested: http://xps-15.wikia.com/wiki/Multi-monitor_Setup.

 

My question is do things look the exact same at the 1920 x 1080 resolution on both the FHD and 4k screens? If so, why not just go with the 4k screen and then run it at the 1920 x 1080 resolution until most (or all) of your apps get updated to HiDPI, then just switch over to the 4k resolution then. The screen upgrade cost really isn't that expensive, so if things are going to look the exact same at 1920 x 1080 on both screens, you may as well future-proof your machine by getting the higher resolution screen.

Now if things are going to look all blurry and messed up on the 4k screen running a lower resolution, then I can understand going for the FHD screen instead.

 

The only person here with experience with the new 4K display is Bokeh, who said in his mini-review a little while ago that there was no blurring at 1080p. He even said it was better than 900p on the QHD+ display, which I've never had any problem with even though I'm the type that notices and hates blurring, although granted I didn't have a native 900p panel next to me to compare.