Dell Precision M4700 and M6700 - Preliminary Info

I think you guys are forgetting that the Xeon E5 1650 has turbo boost also and can hit the exact same clockspeed (3.8Ghz), has 50%more L3 cache, and access to twice the RAM bandwidth. Also given it has WAY more TDP headroom, it will be able to maintain turbo for longer, and with more threads. Unless the 3920xm is overclocked, I doubt it would win ANY performance benchmark. Not to mention that Xeon also costs half the price.

 

The thing is the 3920xm is unlocked and that's the reason why it costs that much. There's absolutely no point in having a XM cpu if you don't use it's potential. 2x price for the extra 100mhz? C'mon. But if you manage to unlock the BIOS, which should be doable nowadays, you can get it to 4.5ghz easily. Looking at the Mx700 heatsinks, I'd say it's possible to run these chips at 4.5-4.8ghz without too much of a problem.

 

I thought it was the same GPU as the 680M, but the 3d Mark 11 numbers at notebookcheck.net are worringsome - while the 680M scores about 6000 points (a bit more then 7970M and about as much as I expected from the K5000M), the K5000M scores only 4300? Is it that much lower clocked or the numbers are wrong there? Did you run some 3d Mark 11 tests (1280*720)?

I'd also appreciate any experience with the battery life with Optimus (or with the IPS screen) during normal internet usage (e.g. not the max brightness, WiFi on, etc.).

 

Running Prime95 with 8 threads, the 3920XM stays at 60 watts pull and all 4 cores stay at 3.6ghz - for hours. Not the 2.9ghz standard clock speed, but 3.6ghz until you stop the benchmark. To me, this is a built in overclock.

 

K5000M 3D Mark 11 performance GPU score is 5705 on a non-optimized run with lots of other software running. 680M results are 5772 to 6025. Best case they are the same, worst case the 680M is 5% faster. The 680M should be faster because of the 1800mhz ram vs the 1500mhz ram in the K5000M. Both chips have the same amount of processors and both support on demand overclocking which should keep their speed closer to each other.

By the way, the 5010M scored 2693. The K5000M is 2.118 times faster than the 5010M.

Battery life for my usage is hovering around 4 - 4.5 hours of web surfing. Much depends on the ads that a site runs because the video card's power usage is the biggest variable. Video and flash ads kick up the power usage.

 

Can you even utilize the unlocked multiplier? I though the Precisions, Lenovos, and Elitebooks were all locked via motherboard. If you have a link to an unlocked BIOS, please, let's see it.

 

3.6ghz is the max turbo for 4-cores, that's how it should be. How hot does the CPU get?

 

One should also keep in mind that these two GPU are designed for radically different purposes: One is the horsepower jack rabbit, while the other (torque) can haul a full load up the mountain all day. Nevertheless, both can give you and enjoyable ride.

 

Two days in and my order status bumped over from "Order processing" to "Pre-production."
Meanwhile, my aftermarket upgrades (memory, extra drives, BD-RE, misc. accessories) have all shipped and are looking to arrive on Tuesday, well ahead of the system. Waiting game...

It is for this reason that I use Flashblock (Firefox) or disable plugins (Chrome) — either option leaves a block you can click to activate the Flash widget and has the ability to white-list sites. Don't need ads kicking up my CPU fan... (grumble).

 

Which display? I hear that HPs Dreamcolor was full of grain due to the glare reducing screen?

As someone who will be heavily involved in photo and video editing, more than anything else I must have a pristine display without errors. Also 3D capability. Any information anyone can provide on this would be greatly appreciated.