Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Hi,

I've just seen that this machine comes with a UHD screen now. It appears to be the new panel Dell is using on the 5510. Quick question to anyone who may still have this machine: have the issues been worked out and is the machine reliable?

Cheers,

Hex

 

It's been a long time since I've posted here as my early build M3800 (2 years ago) has been operating without issue until this week. The battery had to be replaced due to unusual swelling of a couple of cells. It was causing the touchpad to raise up from the palmrest and made button pressing difficult. A new battery design appears to have been created that seems like it will mitigate swelling should it occur. ProSupport replaced it next business day.

Looking forward to another 18 months or so of daily use.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience, craigo81. Which panel did you get and what sort of work do you do with the machine, if you don't mind me asking?

 

I do photo/video work with it. If by panel, do you mean the LCD? I have the 3200x1800 version.

 

Thanks!

Yes, panel = LCD = screen. I've been looking at whether the UHD panel may cover more than sRGB and get closer to AdobeRGB but can't find a definite answer on that just yet.

Did you use the mSATA for OS/programs and installed a second HDD for storage/project and use a USB 3 HDD as scratch?

I got a Thinkpad W530 set up similarly (3HDDs) but they are all internal. I get it that with the M3800 you can only use 2 HDDs but for video I often find it that your workflow speeds up with 3 HDDs so I wonder what your workflow is for that.

Also, are you using the M3800 as your main machine for this work or is it your portable solution for another desk-bound computer? I'm thinking of complimenting the M3800 with an M4800.

Last but not least, apologies for the barrage of questions, what files are you working on video? AVCHD, XAVC-S, 4K XAVC-S? I'm currently using hacked AVCHD from a GH2 at 150mb/s and have plans to switch to 4K XAVC-S in the near future.

 

Most of my work is high res photo retouching and a little video, so I'm using the SSD as the OS/scratch drive and the second for storage.

 

Has anyone had problems with the new versions of Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework (150)? I think I had the Windows 8.1 version installed up to now; I just upgraded the BIOS and the recent driver releases, and while my battery life improved a lot, the machine won't turbo.

It's definitely a driver issue; Windows 7 runs turbo fine, and having uninstalled the newest version (with none installed) turbo works fine. I rolled back to the prior Windows 10 version (146) and tried the new version shipped with the 7510 (etc -- 174) and both showed the same problem. I put the Windows 8.1 version, which at least got rid of the unknown devices in device manager, and it seems to be behaving basically the way it did before the upgrade so I think that must have been what I was running.

That said, is there any way to get turbo to work AND run the newer drivers?

edit - found my own answer, and it's weird! -- there seems to be a version dependency between the Intel video driver and Turbo mode. Updating to the newest (win64_154010.4300) video drivers off Intel.com seem to have fixed it. (I'm also now running an even newer DPTF driver (8.1.10604.207) off the Precision 5510 page, but I had the same symptom with it as I did with all of the ~100MB Windows 10 versions of the drivers -- 147 from over the summer, 150 from the current M3800 drivers page, 174 from the 7510.)

As a plus, the system seems a bit quieter and cooler at idle; as long as I've had Intel Power Gadget, it's had the GT Frequency stuck at 1.15ghz, and it now idles at 0.6ghz plugged in and as low as 0.2ghz on battery.

 

I hadn't noticed this but you are right. My 2.20ghz CPU never gets higher than 2.18ghz, much less 3.2ghz turbo boost. I am assuming this started happening when Windows Update installed 4279 version of the Intel video driver a couple of weeks ago (there are so many things I hate about Windows 10, but this is one of the worse). However 4300 didn't solve the problem. I never see CPU go past 2.18 even when artificially spawning a bunch of 100% threads in Visual Studio. I could have sworn I used to see CPU in Task Manager go past 2.20 in bursts all the time. Now, never. Is there a surefire way to test whether Turbo Boost is or isn't working?

EDIT: I uninstalled DPTF and installed the version you suggested from the Precision 5510 page and now I have turbo boost back. So installing new video driver alone doesn't seem to fix the problem (at least not for me). THANK YOU for posting this information. I never would have figured this out. And I'm pretty smart.

 

I find Intel Power Gadget to be the best way to monitor turbo behavior on Windows -- or i7z on Linux.

And I think the issue may is compatibility between the DPTF and the Video driver -- it seems like if either one is too new for the other, turbo goes. In my case, I hit it by upgrading DPTF (trying to fix an unrelated problem) and it sounds like in your case the video driver got too far ahead of DPTF.

Annoying, regardless, and glad this fixed it for you!

 

Same problem here on a XPS15 9530 with Windows 10 ( using latest stable Intel video driver for Windows 10 or latest Intel video driver supplied by Dell for Windows 10 with latest DPTF 8.1.10600.147), also I have noticed higher CPU temps in idle, but maybe this is due to a dirty cooling system, I'm still investigating.
I suggest to use Core Temp to monitor CPU temps, Load, and CPU clock on system tray (to see numbers with the right size you have to modify setting):
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/