Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Thats great. Thanks!
I can deal with the turbo driver later on my own.

Anyone help with the other questions?

Cheers,

 

Dell DOES have something similar, but I'd never trust it, and I've heard of cases where it's not worked correctly.

As far as the 10-bit color, I'm not sure but I don't think it will work.


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It doesn't seem to go above 2.2GHz but I might not be testing this correctly. How would I test it?

 

Really? That's one of the core strengths of acquiring a Quadro card: 10 bit colour per channel to external monitors....

Oh man. That...that would be really sad.

Also, Anyone tried to fit a 1TB mSATA on the M3800? Found a few lappys out there with the large battery so the mSATA has to be maximised. Any experience?

 

The Turbo mode is activated quite often in common use, but to be sure that turbo does not work, one of the easiest test is to compress a large file using WinRAR for example, the CPU clock will run at 2.9GHz while performing this task (2.9GHz is the maximum clock on 4702HQ when all 4 cores are used).
Another way is to use the benchmark in the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/it/downloads/eula/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-?httpDown=https://downloadmirror.intel.com/24075/eng/XTU-Setup-exe.exe

My advise to solve this issue is to use DPTF 7.1.0.2103 released by Dell for XPS 15 9530/Precision M3800.
You can find it in Dell website on Windows 8.1 downloads, it works fine even on Windows 10.
DPTF 8.1.10604.207 is not correct solution for XPS15 9530 or M3800, in fact this driver sets Intel GPU base clock to 600MHz instead of usual 400MHz, also fans seem do not work properly and so temps are higher than usual, in my case never a restore point or using others DPTF drivers were able to restore the original situation, I hope that a fresh install will solve this issue...

 

As far as I can tell, the Nvidia chip is 100% virtual writing to the Intel framebuffer, and has no direct connection to any output. This is a plus when running Linux (compared to some older Optimus implementations where VGA would be on Intel, but any digital outputs are on Nvidia), but I think this would preclude 10-bit color.

MiniDP is DisplayPort 1.2 and can do 2.5k 16:10 at 60hz, from experience with monitors at my last job. Per online sources, it should be able to do UHD at 60hgz as well.

The HDMI port is 1.4, which would be UHD at 30hz only.

Dell has their own auto-update software. As of when I last tried it for Windows 7 and 8.1 (both about 2 years ago when the machine was new) it was terrible compared to Lenovo's; they've updated a bunch of the stuff as "Dell Command" and I think there's a newer version, but I haven't tried it.

 

Yeah, I'm running the 1TB Samsung 840 EVO mSATA; not amazingly fast on paper, but outside of benchmarking I've never noticed the difference. The 850 EVO is out now.

Not sure if anyone else has a 1TB mSATA drive, or if Samsung has an 850 Pro in 1TB, but my experience with slowdowns on heavy writes with the 840 Pro left me rather less than fond of paying Samsung extra for the "faster" drives.

That enabled Turbo for me, but also came with other problems (including the GPU being stuck at 1.15ghz permanently.)

The issue with the fans and weird turbo behavior was fixed on mine by updating the Intel graphics drivers. I've seen the 600mhz GPU speed but it's not bothersome, and on battery it sometimes throttles down further; either way, it's better than the 1.15ghz it had been stuck at on the Windows 8 driver.

Unfortunately, I suspect that there are interactions between various drivers (possibly chipset and management engine versions, as well as the GPU and DPTF) and possibly the BIOS as well.

 

^ ^ ^ ^ This is a somewhat maddening situation. I hadn't noticed the fans never really come on now with DPTF 8.1...207. So, really, there is NO real solution as each one breaks something different. It's time someone from Dell responded in this forum. I know they have done so from time to time.

At this point, I don't care if it's MS's fault, Dell's, Intel's, whoever. I actually blame Windows 10. It has been a constant source of frustration for me in a way that NO Windows release ever has been for me... including Windows Vista. It all just feels like a.... I dunno... big mess.

 

I can add that I have been using the 1TB 840 EVO mSATA for nearly 2 years although not in the M3800 - first in a Samsung NP900X4C, then a Latitude E7440 and now in a Latitude E7450. I have encountered the read speed slowdown problem and periodically run MyDefrag and the Samsung Performance Optimization. I haven't seen evidence that the newer 850 EVO mSATA also suffers this problem, but only time will confirm this.

If you want 1TB and only have an mSATA slot then there's not much choice in storage devices. And, as the M.2 PCIe x4 drives are demonstrating, trying to achieve better performance in small storage devices encounters thermal problems. Giving the drive its own heatsink may mitigate this. If not, the transfer rate drops due to temperature-related throttling. I have not encountered thermal throttling with my EVO mSATA.

John

 

My system is already compromised by DPTF 8.1.10604.207, so whatever DPTF I use, and even without DPTF, my Intel GPU idle clock is ever 600MHz, now I'm using DPTF 7.1.0.2103 and Intel GPU has idle clock of 600MHz.
DPTF 8.1.10604.207 in my opinion it's dangerous because fans do not work properly.
Even DPTF 8.1.10600.147 is dangerous in my opinion, to the same reason of DPTF 8.1....207 (fans work poorly) but at least Turbo is disabled, so overheating is most unlikely.
I started to search info before to notice 2.2GHz issue in this thread, because I had a brutal thermal shutdown just some day ago, without any apparently reason (at that time I was using DPTF 8.1.10600.147), I was only browsing with Chrome, I even smell a rat, I did't hear the fans run loudly before of the shutdown, so any warning, I was convinced that my xps was expired, fortunately after 15 minutes it's back to work.

I don't know if DPTF 8.1...207 has compromised only my system or it's a general situation, my advice is to use DPTF 7.1.0.2103, we have used it for almost 2 years without problems, it works fine even in Windows 10, unfortunately I can't say if what reported by mr_handy about an issue with Intel GPU clock in idle (locked at 1150MHz) was only his problem or it's a general situation, in my system Intel GPU clock in idle is still 600MHz with DPTF 7.1.0.2103, but as I already said my system was compromised by DPTF 8.1....207.