Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

You have a penchant for the understatement. If those figures are accurate, the time differential is enormous! Which is why I asked for comments. It seems almost too good to be true.

EDIT: Okay, maybe I have a penchant for hyperbole?

 

Yes sorry, the faster one was the 6700. Installs are almost identical, I reviewed the 6600 to install software on the 6700 - I keep an inventory sheet of everythinbg I do, including major settings and configurations. All was uneventful. I suspected the speed up was substantial because I have been doing some partial database updates and without timing it, it just felt it was a lot faster. I know it's been doing it in about 3.5 hrs, just never benchmarked. The numbers are from log files that are updated throughout the process.

The 6700 has a WEI of 7.7, the 6600 is 7.5.

SSD memory is about the same, within a few GB - about 290GB of the "512GB" available on both.
I remember bokeh talking about how much better the CPU is, I suspect that - the tol data generated is about 35GB, so it's computation heavy although I know disk speed helps. I have a Precision 7500 desktop I ran this on too, 32GB memory, it's a dual Xeon 2.9MHz CPU set, 1 TB of 7500 RPM disks, and it ran the same update today in 6:27.32.

 

Could any owner of new Precision 6700 confirm whether firepro M6000 is 3.0a or 3.0b? Thanks in advance.

 

The AMD FirePro M6000 is a full size MXM b card.

 

I'm not sure how important that is, but I do know that manufactures can sometimes make it enormously difficult to get these detail that matter.. When you get up to this level of computing, all these things become significant, and can make the difference between a purchase and a pass.

For example, with the HDMI port how many people know that there are 4 generations (and sub-generations) of this port? At the moment, the latest is HDMI 1.4 with sub designation a and b. and the only version that can support 4k.

When you're selling a product marketed to professional, having these details available should be a no-brainer. Fortunately for those that know about it, there are sites such as these.

 

don't think i would care about 4K hdmi. there is displayport for crazy stuff like that, and hdmi is just convenience for consumer gear compatibility like watching some divx on your big screen tv.

the one port i miss is DVI. even if it is almost the same as HDMI i would still like to have that port, because my monitor for example has DVI but neither HDMI nor DP. i could probably use some adapter cable but it would be nicer to be able to plug in directly.

i think the omission of DVI port was a fail ... Mano G are you listening ?

look at any good graphics card out there - DVI is the primary choice of output. you should have put in a DVI-I port and included a DVI to VGA adapter, instead of a VGA port. don't listen to Bokeh - an adapter is not that hard to use, and it costs pennies because it is passive.

for M6800 do this:

1 X DVI-I
1 X DVI-D
1 X HDMI
1 X DisplayPort

this is pretty much standard on any $500 desktop graphics card. no need to reinvent the wheel !

although considering this is a Quadro, not a Geforce:

1 X DVI-I
1 X HDMI
2 X DisplayPort

bottom line replace VGA with DVI-I ... because that VGA is just an eye sore. it makes your $5,000 machine look like something you found in the garbage.

why do people buy Apple ? because it LOOKS HOT. that stuff matters. apple would NEVER put a VGA port on a laptop - no matter how useful it was.

 

Ah, but you appear to forget that these are not just very expensive toys for show and tell. But professional tools designed and marketed towards professionals. Only a small segment are sold to enthusiast like yourself and those outside that segment. Somebody's got to create the content for it to be a usable item for you in the fist place. Right?

An easy fix and with a basic adapter. A very miniscule complaint:

Amazon.com: SANOXY New Gold Plated HDMI Female to DVI-D Male Video Adaptor: Electronics

One more thing, Apples continues to get thinner and lighter but would you take it into the field during military maneuvers? And the last time I check it didn't come with a DVI port either? You might like to keep that in mind before you compare the two.

 

Whoa whoa whoa. Forgive me if I actually expect the ports on my computer to be useful.

I think that VGA is going to stick around as long as VGA projectors are still common. This is a business machine after all. Traveling and giving a presentation, best if you don't need to worry about having a dongle to connect to the projector.

DVI takes up a lot more space than HDMI or DisplayPort, I can see why they wouldn't really want to include one. I have mine connected to two DVI monitors. I bought a HDMI->DVI cable and a DisplayPort->DVI dongle. Cost me about $7. I don't mind that much.

 

Yeah, Apple folks like dongles, lol

 

Well, the good news is they delivered me a Covet yesterday as they promised...problem is it didn't include all the drives I paid for. After working with tech support last night to confirm the drives were missing vs. not configured or seated properly, I had to call customer support this morning for instructions. Their solution is ship it back and order a new one. So, I’ve placed a new order and will be heading to the UPS store today to drop off the return. The new Delivery estimate is 8/27.

While the production/processing has definitely left me frustrated, I do have to give credit and thanks to George from Tech Support and Dexter from Customer Service for their assistance. Both have been extremely helpful and timely with their feedback and guidance.