Dell Precision M4700 and M6700 - Preliminary Info

I only found out about it recently, myself. It uses the RAID functionality in newer Intel chipsets to set up a special RAID-1 array between a hard drive and smaller SSD. Obviously the entire hard drive cannot be mirrored on the SSD if the SSD is smaller, so it attempts to figure out which blocks from the hard drive would be best to mirror and copy those to the SSD. If supported by the system, it works with any HDD+SSD combo, so you can choose whatever drives you like. (Though the cache is capped at 64 GB, if you have more space than that on the SSD, the leftover will be available to partition and mount as a regular drive.)

Read requests are serviced by the SSD if the block is available there, otherwise it is pulled from the HDD. Write requests can be optionally accelerated as well — if this feature is enabled, write requests will be considered serviced once they are written to the SSD (and will be copied to the HDD later), though this can cause an inconsistency if you lose power or crash during a write.

The Intel driver attempts to avoid caching things that won't help. For instance, long sequential reads from the HDD won't trigger that data to be cached on the SSD (since sequential access is what HDDs are good for). Also, it attempts to avoid caching from activity caused by anti-virus scans.

This seems like a good use for the mSATA slot if you don't want to shell out the money for a large SSD. Buy a ~60 GB mSATA SSD and set it up to be a cache for your system drive. During regular work conditions, you should be hitting the cache most of the time and get SSD-like performance. The extra space on the HDD is there if you need it, too, and you don't have to worry about manually balancing data between the two drives.

Benchmarks indicate substantial performance gains with Intel SRT enabled; and it is way better than ReadyBoost.

(I'm planning on having a 500 GB 7200 RPM system drive accelerated by said 60 GB mSATA SSD, and a 1 TB 5400 RPM drive for extra data. I'll replace the 500 GB drive with a full SSD down the line when they are cheaper.)

It doesn't appear to be supported on the M4600/M6600. The new Elitebook supports it though.

 

I could be completely wrong with what I am about to write. I am basing it on news articles and personal observations...

In 2009, Apple made a $500 Million dollar deal with LG to supply their LCD screens through 2013. Samsung also supplied their panels, but Apple appears to be moving away from them due to court battles. Replacing Samsung is Sharp, which just got a major investment from Foxconn.

It looks like most 2011 MacBook Pro 17s were running part number 9CCD or 9CCE which are the glossy and matte versions of the LG panels. The 15" versions did have more variety in the vendors.

What you have to remember is that the whole deal with LG was inked almost 5 years ago. The deal included LCD panels for Macs and the upcoming new mobile devices. ALL Mac computing products only made up 20% of Apple's sales. The real money was in making the panels for the iPhone and iPad. When you are putting together a deal where 10% of the product has to be built in a certain way to get 80% of the sales - you build that 10% the way they want. It is enormous leverage.

Now the flip side. What if Apple wants out of 16:10 but is stuck with it because of the contract through 2013? We know Apple loves smaller and faster. They went to 16:9 in the 11" Macbook Air. Desktop iMacs and all of their current monitors are 16:9.

The Macbook Pro is the 16:10 holdout.

Getting back to the LG Deal. It runs through January 2013. We already know that LG was supplying all or close to all of the 17" panels in the 2011 Macbook Pro since Samsung is being slowly pushed away. My *guess* is that the LG deal is running out and the production of 17" 16:10 panels is too expensive for LG to produce or Apple to pay. To Apple, LG was the last supplier and they could name their price.

But what about the leverage Apple could have by working in LG building panels for other Mac devices? It went away when LG shipped out a ton of panels to Apple with yellow tint. When Apple has to halt the iPad 2 from shipping with LG panels, and then focuses on getting more suppliers, it takes away what made that 2009 deal so special. LG failed at being able to completely supply Apple. Apple had to diversify suppliers. The 17" 16:10 panel was a casualty.

The Retina display makes things interesting. The DPI in it means that at normal viewing distances, you can't see individual pixels. It also means that you would not be able to see a lot of other things designed to fit on a 15" display. They are still working to take advantage of the increased resolution and it looks like they are making progress with application developers. To fix the look of everything else, they made the apparent native resolution 1440x900 through pixel doubling.

I have talked with friends that only use Macs and they liked the direction Apple is taking, but not this particular machine. They say that even with all of the pixels, it is still a 15" display. They both have 17" MBPs right now. Their argument was what is the use in having that much virtual desktop space, when everything is so cramped together that your eyes can't see it. They contend that you can still see more on the 130 sq inches of the 17" than 106 in the 15". I understand their logic. Even at full 1080p, an HD video taking up 1/4 of a 15" panel is still only physically being shown on 1/4 of a 15" panel. That is kinda small.

My hope is now that Mac has shown that high pixel density is something LCD panel makers can make money with, that there is an industry wide move towards the 4k video standard. 3840 x 2160 would work well with 1080p and be over 200 DPI on all laptop panels. 17.3" would be around 240.

Not sure of how this ended up being a long winded rant. Also not sure if I am right.

 

Bokeh, I think your post sounds perfectly plausible. I would be surprised if the truth was much different.

 

Do you think this laptop will be released in the next few weeks? I'm eyeing the m4700, but would need it before college starts in august. Also is it pretty much assumed that the two nvidia gpu configurations will be the k2000 and k1000?

 

yes, it will be released in a few weeks.

 

Dell Bill said 3 weeks

Sent from my GT-N7000

 

3 weeks, that was stated in the past. To be more accurate, we may see something on the *ahem* 24 of July.

 

Almost 1.5 weeks ago

I'm also expecting an announcement during the week of July 23.
(Probably will be another two weeks before systems start shipping... Still time to get one by mid-August.)

And yes, the M4700 will have the NVIDIA Quadro K1000M and K2000M plus an AMD GPU option.

 

NVIDIA Quadro K2000M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

Looks good. Can't wait for this to come out!!

 

looking at
http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/product-comparison/Quadro_Mobile_Product_Comparison.pdf
are there any benefits in comparison to the old Quadro2000?
ok DP 1.2...