Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

just the holes ? or holes with screws in them ?

i have to say macbook pro ( not the retina ) was easier to work on than this precision. i upgraded both ram and hard drive on my macbook pro and all it took is a few screws - i never had to use force. on this precision everything requires force - even removing the bottom cover - it is there pretty snug. when you're opening the macbook you feel more like a surgeon - and on this precision more like a chiropractor.

on the upside i like how the bottom cover makes contact with the chassis at many points that are evenly spaced throughout the entire surface. with macbook it's only about 10 contact points and they are all on the perimeter with the middle of the bottom cover just hanging in space. i never felt that design was sturdy enough - at least compared to how strong the machined aluminum unibody is.

 

I picked up the m4 msata last week and it did not include a screw.

 

That was the problem, missed that. Thanks Bokeh!

 

On the plus side, you were getting 72% of NTSC. That means sRGB mode was working properly.

The XM is unlocked, but it is not overclocked or overclockable in the M6700.

The difference is that the XM is allowed to pull 55 watts vs the 45 watts of the QM chips. Dell actually allows the XM chip to pull around 61 watts to allow the chip to always run at its fastest turbo speeds.

 

+1

Had the same impression, but there were too many points to address and some made no sense (e.g. a Macbook-thin body and a wide GPU selection??). Glad to see Dell and HP still sticking to the 17" workstations (though, the 16:9 is a sore point).

 

i think i figured out the reason for the weird cooling system ( gpu on two fans, and cpu on one ). since the Nvidia/ATI is normally barely used it makes no sense to spin a second fan for it most of the time. the CPU fan is primary fan and is enough to cool both CPU and GPU in normal use ( little GPU load, or running on HD4000 ). the secondary fan should only come on when Nvidia/ATI is used heavily.

this is smart because fans cannot be throttled down to arbitrarily low speed - below 700 rpm or so fans stall just like a car engine will stall below 500 rpm or so. also electric motors run less efficiently when heavily throttled. therefore at low power the system will simply switch to 1 fan.

this could be accomplished on a symmetrical 2-fan system like Retina MBP as well. but because on Precision graphics card is removable it made sense to separate its cooling system for ease of service. then in order to avoid one set of heatpipes blocking another during disassembly the CPU had to give up the secondary fan, and simply got a larger fan instead.

potential problem here is if primary fan puts the inside of notebook at negative air pressure it will suck air into the laptop through the secondary fan and this will suck some hot air from the secondary fan's heatsink inside the notebook. this might cause problems ( like secondry fan motor getting cooked ) on something like retina MBP, but on precision there is a huge vent under the fan which will suck in cold air and should dilute the hot air sucked through the exhaust. in other words there must be sufficient intake vents to prevent negative pressure buildup.

at least that's my guess on what's happening !

tested headphone output using Sennheiser HD558 ( with internal reflector removed / 598 mod ) i just played this video:

This Is Deutsch (Donald Duck) - YouTube

and the sound was powerful and crisp. i got to about 40% volume and it was as loud as you would want to listen to for any extended period of time. for what it is - a headphone output on a laptop - i would say the performance was more than adequate. it did not sound weak, thin, washed out, etched or radio-like at all. it sounded as good as you could expect from a YouTube video. i'm not going to test it using CD quality material because that's not what a laptop is for IMO. i'm not going to compare a laptop against my Benchmark DAC. my reference for laptop headphone jack was macbook's headphone jack and i would say it is close - i expected much worse.

i also played the same video through the speakers and quite frankly i was shocked - the treble was quite good. obviously not like on my Mackie H824 monitors but i would say about the same level as your average $500 Bose sound system. as i already mentioned i don't care about bass in laptop speakers - that's not what laptop speakers are for. laptop speakers are to reproduce speech. speech intelligibility is not compromised when there is at least 7 khz bandwidth - and from what i heard it sounded as if there was as much as maybe 12 khz. loudness was also quite good at the positon you would be when using a laptop. i would rate these speakers as twice as good as on my 13" macbook pro, at least 10 times better than on 17" Asus G75VW.

the speakers were not as good as on 20" HP Dragon "Notebook" that i used to have but that machine was about 15 pounds and a top-of-the-line multimedia powerhouse complete with TV tuner and Remote control cradle in the palmrest.

when i got 17" Asus G75VW i expected speaker sound quality at least remotely similar to what i had with HP Dragon ... but instead it had the sound quality of the speaker integrated in my iPhone. actually it was even worse than iPhone speaker - twice as bad, no four times as bad. it was like some kind of long distance radio station that keeps breaking up. i was SHOCKED at how awful it was. it went straight back to Best Buy. i can't stress this enough - the Asus G75VW is the worst piece of junk ever. and i'm not hating on Asus - i LOVE my Asus Dark Knight router.

when i got the M4700 i expected the speaker sound quality of a $10 Sony pocket AM/FM radio with 1" speaker ... and was equally shocked to find out it is much better than that ! - MUCH crisper, cleaner and louder. not any more bass though.

compared to my 13" macbook the speakers are all around better - crisper, cleaner, fuller and louder. but then 13" macbook is unfair comparison as it is half the price and due to size its speakers are under the keyboard. a more fair comparison would be to Retina MBP which has MUCH better speaker system ( compared to 13" macbook ), but i don't have one to compare to. i would expect the Retina MBP speaker performance to be slightly better than M4700 due to 2-way speaker design on Retina MBP. however for a business laptop i will rate speaker performance on M4700 as five stars.

one complaint i have is the headphone jack was ridiculously stiff. so was the USB port for that matter. i didn't like that. the power plug feels very good though.

 

Hi Guys, I'm looking to purchase in the next few days and I have a few questions I hope someone can help me with.

1- Did anyone configure with the 32 GB Ram Option? It seems as if there is only 2 slots with a Maximum of 16 GB Max memory possible (2x8GB), how is the 32 GB option configured then? I'm thinking of buying with the minimum possible ram and upgrading to 32 GB myself to save some $$$ but I'm not sure how that's possible?
Memory info from Crucial: Computer memory upgrades for Dell Precision M6700 (2 SODIMMs) Laptop/Notebook from Crucial.com

2- which would be the better option, 32 GB @ 1600 or 16GB @ 1866 ? I'll be using the system for CAD, 3DS, and other similar software.

3- Is it worth the extra $350 for the IPS display and how is the screen hardware in the IPS different from the cheaper FHD option?

4- Do the M6500 docks work with the M6700?

5- I've read about the 15% or so discount some got from ordering by phone and talking with a Dell rep, how does that work exactly? Is there any other way of getting a discount? I'm a student and the configuration I'm looking at comes to about $5500 plus tax, I really need to get some sort of a discount to be able to afford it!

Thanks!!

 

overall my impression with M4700 is that the quality is as high as with apple. but the consistency is not as good. that is to say 90% of it are executed with the same kind of commitment to excellence that apple has - but there is that 10% of slip ups, like headphone jack and usb ports that are too stiff, and an SD card slot that is nearly impossible to get the card in and out of. with apple you don't really get those kind of slip ups. although i was very disappointed with the poor quality plastic volume rocker on my iPad 3. after the machined metal volume up/down buttons on the iPhone 4S the volume rocker on iPad 3 was so poor i almost had a fit. but the positives on the iPad3 ( retina IPS screen, 4G LTE connection, monstrous battery ) were so huge that i was forced to overlook the volume rocker.

i really like the finish on the M4700. it is sort of dark gray with a hint of metallic and some chocolate overtones. i am quite happy with the finish. its somewhat similar in texture to the finish on Apple products but somber and reserved. you can't see it on the pictures but the finish is quite classy - it is neither plain nor ostentatious - i think it would be a perfect match to a dark grey business suit.

 

I created a M4700 owners thread. If you could compile your review and post it in that thread, I"m sure more potential M4700 owners would find it there than in this thread. http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/682758-m4700-owners-thread.html

 

there are 4 slots on quad core models and apparently 2 on dual core.

crucial has both 4 sodimm and 2 sodimm options - for both quad and dual core models.

when selecting crucial options you have to pick 4 sodimm or 2 sodimm based on what CPU you have, NOT on how many sticks you want to buy.

as for how much ram you need ?

2GB = your computer will perform like its 5 years old
4GB = your computer will work OK
8GB = your computer will work at its best

any more than 8GB is either for:

a: future-proof your system
b: large projects in specialized software ( like a Revit project for a large building )

i personally just ordered a second 8GB crucial kit. so i will have a total of 4 x 4 = 16GB. in my case i needed 8GB to get best performance and i went for another 8GB to make sure the system still runs smoothly 2 - 3 years from now.

i could have waited that 2 years before adding the second 8GB but i decided that it is better to have all 4 sticks matching.

thanks, i bookmarked it.